Water quality monitor (EMPAX instrument)

The impetus of the Viking Mission to Mars led to the first miniaturization of a X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer (XRFS). Two units were flown on the Viking Mission and successfully operated for two years analyzing the elemental composition of the Martian soil. Under a Bureau of Mines/NASA Technology Utilization project, this XRFS design was utilized to produce a battery powered, portable unit for elemental analysis of geological samples. This paper will detail design improvements and additional sampling capabilities that were incorporated into a second generation portable XRFS that was funded by the EPA/NASA Technology Utilization project. The unit, Environment Monitoring with Portable Analysis by X-ray (EMPAX), was developed specifically for quantitative determination of the need of EPA and and any industry affected by environmental concerns, the EMPAX fulfills a critical need to provide on-site, real-time analysis of toxic metal contamination. A patent was issued on EMPAX, but a commercial manufacturer is still being sought

Equation of State and Isentropic Releasem of Aluminum Foam and Fluoropolymer Composites

There is considerable interest in developing a better understanding of the dynamic behavior of heterogeneous materials. This study investigates and compares the dynamic response of 20 and 47% dense aluminum foam systems with and without a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE or Teflon) fill. Experiments on 47% foam were conduced in a 60 mm bore gun in a reverse ballistic configuration at velocities ranging from 350 m/s to 2.5 km/s. The particle velocity of the backside of the anvil was monitored with a VISAR system. Mesoscale simulations are in good agreement with the available experimental data. Both the experimental and simulated data are in good agreement with an analytic release isentrope when released from Hugoniot stress levels less than 5 GPa. However there is significant deviation from the analytic isentrope as the Hugoniot stress level is increased

Biomass estimations of invasives Yaupon, Chinese Privet and Chinese Tallow in east Texas Hardwood and Pine Ecosystems

Forest understory fuels can have profound effects on fire behavior and crown fire initiation. Accurate fire behavior prediction in understory fuels is an essential component for estimating fire intensity and severity during wildfire and prescribed fire events. This study focused on estimating temporal and seasonal changes in fuel loading parameters associated with the expansion of invasive yaupon (Ilex vomitoria), Chinese privet (Ligustrum sinense), and Chinese tallow (Triadica sebifera) in East Texas pine and hardwood ecosystems. Fuel loading data of invasive species infested sites indicated significant increases in understory biomass when compared to 1988 estimates, suggesting a clear need to revise regional fuel models. Multiple and simple regression biomass prediction equations were developed for all three-invasive species to facilitate fuel load estimates. These improved prediction equations will enhance fire management efforts as well as invasive species mitigation efforts in east Texas

Global warming is dead, long live global heating?

We discuss how global heating is used in comparison to global warming, look at its semantic history and examine the communicative problems it may pose and the confusion it may lead to

Global warming is dead, long live global heating?

We discuss how global heating is used in comparison to global warming, look at its semantic history and examine the communicative problems it may pose and the confusion it may lead to

Reviews

Successful Instructional Diagrams by Ric Lowe, London, Kogan Page, 1993. ISBN: 0–7494–0711–5

Developing measures for valuing changes in biodiversity : final report

This document reports the findings from the DEFRA funded research project 'Developing measures for valuing changes in biodiversity'. The aim of the research was to develop an appropriate framework that will enable cost-effective and robust valuations of the total economic value of changes to biodiversity in the UK countryside. The research involved a review of ecological and economic literature on the valuation of biodiversity changes. The information gathered from this review, along with the findings from a series of public focus groups and an expert review of valuation methodologies, were used to develop a suite of valuation instruments that were used to measure the economic value of different aspects of biodiversity. Contingent valuation and choice experiment studies were administered to households in Cambridgeshire and Northumberland, while valuation workshops were conducted in Northumberland only. The data from these studies were also used to test for benefits transfer

Spaces for knowledge generation. Final report

The Spaces for knowledge generation: a framework for designing student learning environments for the future project has been funded via an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Priority Projects Grant and aims to address the need to create learning spaces that are based on strong design principles, informed by student needs, with the aim of producing forward-looking, flexible and sustainable Learning Spaces. Integral to the process is fostering the adoption of teaching practices to support student-directed learning and knowledge production. Longer-term outcomes include strategic cultural change to university practices and physical changes to campuses to advance learning and teaching

The economic imagination

To apply the term ‘magical’ to modern economic thought is to suggest that there remains within it an unassimilated and unexamined residue of irrational thought. Further, it is to hold that this remnant persists despite the discipline’s century long attempt to “submit the abstract laws of theoretical political economy or ‘pure’ economics to experimental and quantitative verification, and thus to the extent possible to constitute pure economy as a science in the narrow sense of the term” (Frisch, 1926: 1, our translation). The specific instance of irrationality to which we refer is perfectly visible but systematically overlooked because it exists in economics’ most basic assumptions: not only the assumptions about the causal mechanisms that determine human action, but even more in what is increasingly acknowledged to be the theoretical Achilles heel of economics, the concept of the market itself