Summary Account of the Carolina Parakeet in Arkansas

The extinct Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) once was part of the Arkansas avifauna. The first two reports of the species in what is now Arkansas were made in 1673 and 1718 by early French explorers. The remaining records are from the 1800s when parakeets were found in nearly all parts of the state, often in abundance. The last literature reference for the species still definitely occurring in Arkansas pertains to birds present in the summer of 1885 along the White River at Newpor

Records of the Carolina Parakeet in Ohio

Author Institution: Department of Biological Sciences, State University of New York at Albany, N.Y.A review of ornithological and early travelers' reports of the Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) in Ohio shows some long-standing claims to be unconvincing. This applies to Audubon (Lake Erie at the mouth of the Maumee), Moselcy (near Sandusky), Langdon (a lone claim of breeding near Cincinnati). There appear to be reliable northerly reports for the species from Tuscarawas and Summit Counties westward to Miami County and southward to the middle and lower Ohio valley. Records for southeastern Ohio counties along the Ohio are scarce. A Cleveland specimen (ca. 1863) can probably be ignored, while a late report of a flock at Columbus in 1862 probably warrants more confidence

Fast and Reliable Autonomous Surgical Debridement with Cable-Driven Robots Using a Two-Phase Calibration Procedure

Automating precision subtasks such as debridement (removing dead or diseased tissue fragments) with Robotic Surgical Assistants (RSAs) such as the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) is challenging due to inherent non-linearities in cable-driven systems. We propose and evaluate a novel two-phase coarse-to-fine calibration method. In Phase I (coarse), we place a red calibration marker on the end effector and let it randomly move through a set of open-loop trajectories to obtain a large sample set of camera pixels and internal robot end-effector configurations. This coarse data is then used to train a Deep Neural Network (DNN) to learn the coarse transformation bias. In Phase II (fine), the bias from Phase I is applied to move the end-effector toward a small set of specific target points on a printed sheet. For each target, a human operator manually adjusts the end-effector position by direct contact (not through teleoperation) and the residual compensation bias is recorded. This fine data is then used to train a Random Forest (RF) to learn the fine transformation bias. Subsequent experiments suggest that without calibration, position errors average 4.55mm. Phase I can reduce average error to 2.14mm and the combination of Phase I and Phase II can reduces average error to 1.08mm. We apply these results to debridement of raisins and pumpkin seeds as fragment phantoms. Using an endoscopic stereo camera with standard edge detection, experiments with 120 trials achieved average success rates of 94.5%, exceeding prior results with much larger fragments (89.4%) and achieving a speedup of 2.1x, decreasing time per fragment from 15.8 seconds to 7.3 seconds. Source code, data, and videos are available at https://sites.google.com/view/calib-icra/.Comment: Code, data, and videos are available at https://sites.google.com/view/calib-icra/. Final version for ICRA 201

Development and validation of direct contact gas liquid heat exchange for energy storage

Decarbonisation of the electrical grid, necessitated by international targets to limit further global warming, will require a steadily increasing penetration of non-dispatchable intermittent renewable electricity generation sources. Energy storage has the potential to substantially increase the grid’s ability to accept greater quantities of renewables while maintaining stability. Pumped-Heat Energy Storage (PHES) is a form of electrical energy storage targeted to provide storage on the order of days or weeks, as opposed to short durations of storage currently available through battery technologies. PHES systems could be utilised at substations across the country to help the grid endure diurnal load fluctuations and periods of low wind and solar resource. This system is based upon the Joule-Brayton cycle, which operates in the reverse direction to store exergy and the forward direction to generate electricity. An inert gas is the cycle working fluid, and a liquid is used to transfer heat to and from thermal exergy stores. Exergy is stored as temperature differences from ambient in balanced hot and cold stores. PHES development at the University of Edinburgh has iteratively explored different system architectures, and focused on increasing confidence in components within these architectures where there is uncertainty with regard to performance. Early work concentrated on gas-liquid mixing within the cylinder of a compressor/expander machine, while current work has eliminated such mixing and instead proposes the use of large scale, direct-contact heat exchangers. Such exchangers suffer from significant uncertainty for this application owing to the lack of existing experimental correlations with which to predict their behaviour at the proposed operating pressure and temperature. As a result, gas liquid surface interactions and heat-transfer between gas and liquid streams are largely unknown, hindering system development. Two experimental campaigns were conducted to verify components in both the early and current system iterations. The first demonstrated a novel in-cylinder gasliquid mixing device and quantified device behaviour against the no-mix condition. The second campaign demonstrated operation of a scaled pilot packed-column direct contact heat exchanger, where gas and liquid comingled to exchange heat. Existing experimental correlations for high pressure packed column flooding were verified against experimental results, and the overall heat exchange coefficient was calculated. Results were used to validate a finite volume heat transfer model based upon previous correlations. Successful gas-liquid heat exchange in the temperature and pressure range of interest was demonstrated, advancing PHES development and informing future iterations of the system

Laboratory and in-flight experiments to evaluate 3-D audio display technology

Laboratory and in-flight experiments were conducted to evaluate 3-D audio display technology for cockpit applications. A 3-D audio display generator was developed which digitally encodes naturally occurring direction information onto any audio signal and presents the binaural sound over headphones. The acoustic image is stabilized for head movement by use of an electromagnetic head-tracking device. In the laboratory, a 3-D audio display generator was used to spatially separate competing speech messages to improve the intelligibility of each message. Up to a 25 percent improvement in intelligibility was measured for spatially separated speech at high ambient noise levels (115 dB SPL). During the in-flight experiments, pilots reported that spatial separation of speech communications provided a noticeable improvement in intelligibility. The use of 3-D audio for target acquisition was also investigated. In the laboratory, 3-D audio enabled the acquisition of visual targets in about two seconds average response time at 17 degrees accuracy. During the in-flight experiments, pilots correctly identified ground targets 50, 75, and 100 percent of the time at separation angles of 12, 20, and 35 degrees, respectively. In general, pilot performance in the field with the 3-D audio display generator was as expected, based on data from laboratory experiments

Marangoni convection in droplets on superhydrophobic surfaces

We consider a small droplet of water sitting on top of a heated superhydrophobic surface. A toroidal convection pattern develops in which fluid is observed to rise along the surface of the spherical droplet and to accelerate downwards in the interior towards the liquid/solid contact point. The internal dynamics arise due to the presence of a vertical temperature gradient; this leads to a gradient in surface tension which in turn drives fluid away from the contact point along the interface. We develop a solution to this thermocapillary-driven Marangoni flow analytically in terms of streamfunctions. Quantitative comparisons between analytical and experimental results, as well as effective heat transfer coefficients, are presented.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CTS-045609)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CCF-0323672

Reproducibility of a novel model of murine asthma-like pulmonary inflammation

Sensitization to cockroach allergens (CRA) has been implicated as a major cause of asthma, especially among inner-city populations. Endotoxin from Gram-negative bacteria has also been investigated for its role in attenuating or exacerbating the asthmatic response. We have created a novel model utilizing house dust extract (HDE) containing high levels of both CRA and endotoxin to induce pulmonary inflammation (PI) and airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR). A potential drawback of this model is that the HDE is in limited supply and preparation of new HDE will not contain the exact components of the HDE used to define our model system. The present study involved testing HDEs collected from various homes for their ability to cause PI and AHR. Dust collected from five homes was extracted in phosphate buffered saline overnight. The levels of CRA and endotoxin in the supernatants varied from 7·1 to 49·5 mg/ml of CRA and 1·7–6  µ g/ml of endotoxin in the HDEs. Following immunization and two pulmonary exposures to HDE all five HDEs induced AHR, PI and plasma IgE levels substantially higher than normal mice. This study shows that HDE containing high levels of cockroach allergens and endotoxin collected from different sources can induce an asthma-like response in our murine model.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75467/1/j.1365-2249.2004.02461.x.pd

Allergens induce enhanced bronchoconstriction and leukotriene production in C5 deficient mice

Abstract Background Previous genetic analysis has shown that a deletion in the complement component 5 gene-coding region renders mice more susceptible to allergen-induced airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR) due to reduced IL-12 production. We investigated the role of complement in a murine model of asthma-like pulmonary inflammation. Methods In order to evaluate the role of complement B10 mice either sufficient or deficient in C5 were studied. Both groups of mice immunized and challenged with a house dust extract (HDE) containing high levels of cockroach allergens. Airways hyper-reactivity was determined with whole-body plesthysmography. Bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) was performed to determine pulmonary cellular recruitment and measure inflammatory mediators. Lung homogenates were assayed for mediators and plasma levels of IgE determined. Pulmonary histology was also evaluated. Results C5-deficient mice showed enhanced AHR to methylcholine challenge, 474% and 91% increase above baseline Penh in C5-deficient and C5-sufficient mice respectively, p < 0.001. IL-12 levels in the lung homogenate (LH) were only slightly reduced and BAL IL-12 was comparable in C5-sufficient and C5-deficient mice. However, C5-deficient mice had significantly higher cysteinyl-leukotriene levels in the BAL fluid, 1913 +/- 246 pg/ml in C5d and 756 +/- 232 pg/ml in C5-sufficient, p = 0.003. Conclusion These data demonstrate that C5-deficient mice show enhanced AHR due to increased production of cysteinyl-leukotrienes.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116863/1/12931_2006_Article_520.pd

MICRO X-RAY COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY OF ADHESIVE BONDS IN WOOD

Micro X-ray computed tomography (XCT) is an emerging technology that has found many applications in biology and the study of materials. Synchrotron-based micro computed tomography has been adopted for the study of adhesive bonding in wood. This paper reviews recent developments of an integrated project that uses micro XCT to assist with modeling of adhesive bonds and to assess the role of cell wall penetration on moisture resistance.  The research includes study of: anatomical features of several commercially important wood species, penetration of three adhesive types into wood, moisture effects on bonding, and mechanical performance of bonds during XCT scanning