Smokejumper Magazine, January 2002

This issue of the National Smokejumper Association (NSA) Smokejumper Magazine contains the following articles: Leap of Faith/first fire jump, Paradoctor Jumped to Help Crash Victims (Mark Matthews), Rookie Training Day by Day (Mike Blinn), profiles Jerry Schmidt (CJ), Joe Gutkoski and Dave Bennett. Smokejumper Magazine continues Static Line, which was the original title of the NSA quarterly magazine.https://dc.ewu.edu/smokejumper_mag/1033/thumbnail.jp

Using sorbent waste materials to enhance treatment of micro-point source effluents by constructed wetlands

Sorbent materials are widely used in environmental settings as a means of = enhancing pollution remediation. A key area of environmental concern is that of water pollution, including the need to treat micro-point sources of wastewater pollution, such as from caravan sites or visitor centres. Constructed wetlands (CWs) represent one means for effective treatment of wastewater from small wastewater producers, in part because they are believed to be economically viable and environmentally sustainable. Constructed wetlands have the potential to remove a range of pollutants found in wastewater, including nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and carbon (C), whilst also reducing the total suspended solids (TSS) concentration in effluents. However, there remain particular challenges for P and N removal from wastewater in CWs, as well as the sometimes limited BOD removal within these treatment systems, particularly for micro-point sources of wastewater. It has been hypothesised that the amendment of CWs with sorbent materials can enhance their potential to treat wastewater, particularly through enhancing the removal of N and P. This paper focuses on data from batch and mesocosm studies that were conducted to identify and assess sorbent materials suitable for use within CWs. The aim in using sorbent material was to enhance the combined removal of phosphate (PO4-P) and ammonium (NH4-N). The key selection criteria for the sorbent materials were that they possess effective PO4-P, NH4-N or combined pollutant removal, come from low cost and sustainable sources, have potential for reuse, for example as a fertiliser or soil conditioner, and show limited potential for re-release of adsorbed nutrients. The sorbent materials selected for testing were alum sludge from water treatment works, ochre derived from minewater treatment, biochar derived from various feedstocks, plasterboard and zeolite. The performance of the individual sorbents was assessed through preliminary desorption studies, isotherm and kinetic adsorption studies, as well as through final desorption studies. Batch studies demonstrated that alum sludge and ochre effectively removed PO4-P from solution (maximum sorption capacity up to 45 mg/g), whilst biochar from both bamboo and rice feedstocks demonstrated effective removal of NH4-N from solution. The potential benefit of using combined reactive media in conjunction with wastewater recirculation to enhance N, P and C treatment was examined using mesocosm studies, and we report initial data from these mesocosm studies

Low-Voltage Electron-Probe Microanalysis of Uranium

Electron-probe microanalysis of uranium and uranium alloys poses several problems, such as rapid oxidation, large poorly constrained correction factors, and a large number of characteristic x-ray lines. We show that U-metal can grow 10 nm of oxide within ~20 s of air exposure, increasing to 15–20 nm within a few minutes, which can produce a 30% quantification error at 5 kV. A 15 nm carbon coating on the UO2 reference material also produces an ~30% quantification error of the uncoated but surface oxidized U sample at 5 kV. Correcting for both the coating and oxide improved the analysis accuracy to better than ±1% down to 7 kV and ~2% at 5 kV, but the error increases strongly below this. The measurement of C in U identified a previously unreported U N6–O4 line interference on the C Kα peak, which can produce over 1% error in the analysis total. Oxide stoichiometry was demonstrated to have only a small impact on quantification. The measurement of the O Kα and U Mα mass absorption coefficients in U as 9,528 and 798 cm2/g, respectively, shows good agreement with recently published values and also produces small differences in a quantification error

Orion Entry Display Feeder and Interactions with the Entry Monitor System

The Orion spacecraft is designed to return astronauts to a landing within 10 km of the intended landing target from low Earth orbit, lunar direct-entry, and lunar skip-entry trajectories. Al pile the landing is nominally controlled autonomously, the crew can fly precision entries manually in the event of an anomaly. The onboard entry displays will be used by the crew to monitor and manually fly the entry, descent, and landing, while the Entry Monitor System (EMS) will be used to monitor the health and status of the onboard guidance and the trajectory. The entry displays are driven by the entry display feeder, part of the Entry Monitor System (EMS). The entry re-targeting module, also part of the EMS, provides all the data required to generate the capability footprint of the vehicle at any point in the trajectory, which is shown on the Primary Flight Display (PFD). It also provides caution and warning data and recommends the safest possible re-designated landing site when the nominal landing site is no longer within the capability of the vehicle. The PFD and the EMS allow the crew to manually fly an entry trajectory profile from entry interface until parachute deploy having the flexibility to manually steer the vehicle to a selected landing site that best satisfies the priorities of the crew. The entry display feeder provides data from the ENIS and other components of the GNC flight software to the displays at the proper rate and in the proper units. It also performs calculations that are specific to the entry displays and which are not made in any other component of the flight software. In some instances, it performs calculations identical to those performed by the onboard primary guidance algorithm to protect against a guidance system failure. These functions and the interactions between the entry display feeder and the other components of the EMS are described

Automated Discovery of Flight Track Anomalies

As new technologies are developed to handle the complexities of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), it is increasingly important to address both current and future safety concerns along with the operational, environmental, and efficiency issues within the National Airspace System (NAS). In recent years, the Federal Aviation Administrations (FAA) safety offices have been researching ways to utilize the many safety databases maintained by the FAA, such as those involving flight recorders, radar tracks, weather, and many other high- volume sensors, in order to monitor this unique and complex system. Although a number of current technologies do monitor the frequency of known safety risks in the NAS, very few methods currently exist that are capable of analyzing large data repositories with the purpose of discovering new and previously unmonitored safety risks. While monitoring the frequency of known events in the NAS enables mitigation of already identified problems, a more proactive approach of finding unidentified issues still needs to be addressed. This is especially important in the proactive identification of new, emergent safety issues that may result from the planned introduction of advanced NextGen air traffic management technologies and procedures. Development of an automated tool that continuously evaluates the NAS to discover both events exhibiting flight characteristics indicative of safety-related concerns as well as operational anomalies will heighten the awareness of such situations in the aviation community and serve to increase the overall safety of the NAS. This paper discusses the extension of previous anomaly detection work to identify operationally significant flights within the highly complex airspace encompassing the New York area of operations, focusing on the major airports of Newark International (EWR), LaGuardia International (LGA), and John F. Kennedy International (JFK). In addition, flight traffic in the vicinity of Denver International (DEN) airport/airspace is also investigated to evaluate the impact on operations due to variances in seasonal weather and airport elevation. From our previous research, subject matter experts determined that some of the identified anomalies were significant, but could not reach conclusive findings without additional supportive data. To advance this research further, causal examination using domain experts is continued along with the integration of air traffic control (ATC) voice data to shed much needed insight into resolving which flight characteristic(s) may be impacting an aircraft's unusual profile. Once a flight characteristic is identified, it could be included in a list of potential safety precursors. This paper also describes a process that has been developed and implemented to automatically identify and produce daily reports on flights of interest from the previous day

Not seeing the carbon for the trees? Why area-based targets for establishing new woodlands can limit or underplay their climate change mitigation benefits

Acknowledgements: The James Hutton Institute is supported by the Scottish Government’s Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS). This research was funded through both ClimatexChange and two strategic Research Programs (2011-16 and 2016-21). The authors acknowledge the assistance provided by other staff – Marie Castellazzi, Nikki Baggaley, Allan Lilly (The James Hutton Institute); Jo Smith (University of Aberdeen); Philip Taylor, Duncan Ray (Forest Research).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Are spherulitic lacustrine carbonates an expression of large-scale mineral carbonation? : A case study from the East Kirkton Limestone, Scotland

BP Exploration Co. is thanked for funding, and particularly the Carbonate Team for supporting this research and for fruitful discussions. West Lothian Council and Scottish Natural Heritage are thanked for allowing access and permission for sampling the site. The Core Store Team at BGS Keyworth is particularly acknowledged for their assistance. Mark Anderson, Tony Sinclair (University of Hull), and Bouk Lacet (VU University Amsterdam) are thanked for technical support. Anne Kelly (SUERC) for carrying out the Strontium Isotope analyses. Mark Tyrer is thanked for his advice on PHREEQC modelling.Peer reviewedPostprin