Laser apparatus for removing material from rotating objects Patent

Laser device for removing material from rotating object for dynamic balancin

Assessment of Stormwater and Snowmelt Quality and Quantity Discharging from a Cold-Climate City to a Freshwater River

Stormwater (SW) and snowmelt (SM) are waters which originate from precipitation and thaw events, run off the urban landscape, collect surface contamination, and discharge from storm sewers to receiving water bodies. Effluents are typically untreated and the impacts of these contaminants on various water quality parameters and on aquatic organisms is well-documented. Regulatory bodies are seeking management strategies for these effluents in response to the toxic risk posed by SW and SM contaminants to receiving environments and human health. Moreover, SM runoff in cold climates differs in flow and contaminants from ice-free SW. Local data is necessary for identifying sources of contamination and selecting locally appropriate management strategies. This study examined the quality and estimated loading of SW and SM discharging to a river from a semi-arid urban landscape. Four ice-free storm events were sampled across seven SW outfalls draining major catchments (>1 km2) over June-August 2019. The spring melt season comprised sampling four snow storage facilities between April 2019 and March-May 2020. Aggregate samples from the surfaces of snow piles (SPs) were collected in 2019 while on-site SM puddles were collected in 2020. Analyses included pH, electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), chemical oxygen demand (COD), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), total suspended solids (TSS), metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and bioassays on Rapidocelis subcapitata and Vibrio fischeri. Coliforms were additionally analyzed in SW and select samples were analyzed for chloride and/or rubber tire vulcanizers. Using existing GIS land-use data, catchment loading was estimated for SW. Traffic-related loading was estimated for SM using UAS-LIDAR data to estimate the volume of the SP present at a designated snow storage facility and to extrapolate city-wide loading data based on site-specific contaminant data. Snow sample pH was comparable to SW sample pH, with higher pH in SP relative to SM. The TDS and EC of SM was 1-3 orders of magnitude higher than in SP, though average TDS concentration was similar to SW. Conversely, TSS was approximately an order of magnitude greater in SP relative to both SW and SM (which ranged comparably in this study). The range of COD was comparable across samples except for those proceeding a road surfacing event. Limited DOC was found in SM and values in SW were attributed to the same road surfacing event as elevated COD. Average dissolved metals were highest in SW and lowest in SP. Concentrations of aluminum, copper, and zinc exceeded the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) Guidelines for the Protection of Aquatic Life in almost all samples, with regular lead and selenium exceedances in SP, arsenic and cadmium exceedances in SW, and chromium exceedances in SM. Average dissolved targeted PAHs were twice as high in SW as in SM and 60-fold greater in SP as in SW. Pyrene, anthracene, and benzo[a]pyrene concentrations exceeded the aforementioned CCME guidelines in almost all samples and benz[a]anthracene exceeded thresholds in 51% of SP and SW samples. Threshold-exceeding concentrations of fluorene and phenanthrene were also observed in almost all SP samples. Of the five targeted vulcanizer compounds, N,N’diphenylguanidine (DPG) was the most abundant, with peak SW concentrations representing some of the highest reported concentrations of this compound in urban runoff globally. 6PPD-quinone was measured in 57% of SW samples with >20% exceeding the acute LC50 for coho salmon. The compound was also present in >80% of SM samples. Aquatic sample toxicity, however, was not pronounced in R. subcapitata nor V. fischeri with little to no observable growth inhibition in diluted samples. Toxic contamination may be particle-bound, indicating a potential impact to benthic organisms. Catchment-scale evaluation of SW contaminant loading was performed using previous GIS analysis mapping land use distribution in study catchments. Land use-based SMCs obtained from literature were used due to lack of local SMC data and compared to experimentally obtained seasonal averages. The strongest correlations for overall SW loading derived from industrial followed by residential land use. Contaminant loading from SM was considered with respect to city-wide winter traffic loading. Basic seasonal loading estimates of TDS, TSS, COD, DOC, copper, chromium, manganese, nickel, lead, selenium, zinc, and ΣPAHs were highest at the paved facility, though TDS and DOC values indicative of poor on-site infiltration were observed at one of three non-paved sites. In addition, TSS values in SM were comparable across three differently characterized sites, indicating SM may uptake TSS by eroding transport pathways versus transporting SP-deposited particles. Highly concentrated pulses of contaminants in both SW and SM may misrepresent site-specific loads and further analysis is limited without flow measurement values

Laser system used for dynamic balancing of gyros

System using a pulsed ruby laser balances or trims gyro rotors spinning at speeds of up to 24,000 rpm. It is designed to detect high spots on the spinning rotor and to focus a precisely timed laser beam on these detected spots

Native American Women, Past, Present and Future

Native American women traditionally belonged to a culture that gave them respect and where they had power, autonomy and equality. Through the last hundred years and due to European colonization they have lost all that they had. Presently Aboriginal women suffer from a high rate of poverty. They also experience racism and sexism from Western cultures and have even lost respect from their own culture. European legislations, reserve life and residential schools have led to a loss of language, culture, family and self-esteem. But Native American women are the hope of the future for their culture. Native women are making visible efforts to renew traditions and to improve education, through self rule and by healing from within the culture itself. They are a strong group who will not quit fighting for their people because they are still the nurturers, counselors, spiritual and medical healers and providers of the First Nations People

The Enigma of Number: Why Children Find the Meanings of Even Small Number Words Hard to Learn and How We Can Help Them Do Better

Although number words are common in everyday speech, learning their meanings is an arduous, drawn-out process for most children, and the source of this delay has long been the subject of inquiry. Children begin by identifying the few small numerosities that can be named without counting, and this has prompted further debate over whether there is a specific, capacity-limited system for representing these small sets, or whether smaller and larger sets are both represented by the same system. Here we present a formal, computational analysis of number learning that offers a possible solution to both puzzles. This analysis indicates that once the environment and the representational demands of the task of learning to identify sets are taken into consideration, a continuous system for learning, representing and discriminating set-sizes can give rise to effective discontinuities in processing. At the same time, our simulations illustrate how typical prenominal linguistic constructions (“there are three balls”) structure information in a way that is largely unhelpful for discrimination learning, while suggesting that postnominal constructions (“balls, there are three”) will facilitate such learning. A training-experiment with three-year olds confirms these predictions, demonstrating that rapid, significant gains in numerical understanding and competence are possible given appropriately structured postnominal input. Our simulations and results reveal how discrimination learning tunes children's systems for representing small sets, and how its capacity-limits result naturally out of a mixture of the learning environment and the increasingly complex task of discriminating and representing ever-larger number sets. They also explain why children benefit so little from the training that parents and educators usually provide. Given the efficacy of our intervention, the ease with which it can be implemented, and the large body of research showing how early numerical ability predicts later educational outcomes, this simple discovery may have far-reaching consequences

Pharmacokinetics of Ceftriaxone in Liver‐Transplant Recipients

The disposition of ceftriaxone was studied after a single 2 g intravenous dose in seven patients 3 to 5 days after liver transplantation. Ceftriaxone concentrations in plasma, urine, and bile were measured by HPLC, and plasma protein binding was determined by equilibrium dialysis. Plasma protein binding was nonlinear, and the unbound fraction varied between 0.05 and 0.56. Both capacity and affinity were markedly different from reported values for normal subjects. The pharmacokinetic parameters obtained were: total body clearance (TBC), 11.2 ± 7.8 mL/hr/kg total and 44.8 ± 29.1 mL/hr/kg unbound; volume of distribution (Varea), 224 ± 76 mh/kg total and 767 ± 432 mL/kg unbound; steady‐state volume of distribution (Vss), 212 ± 68 mh/kg total and 651 ± 368 mL/kg unbound; terminal disposition half‐life (t1/2), 21.6 ± 14.3 hour total and 16.3 ±11.1 hour unbound. TBC for both total and free drug was considerably lower than literature values for normal subjects. Varea for total drug was greater than normal whereas the corresponding value for free drug was smaller than normal. The plasma ceftriaxone concentrations at 12 and 24 hours were above the reported minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). The fraction of the administered dose excreted in urine over 24 hours was 38 ± 29% and did not differ markedly from that reported for normal subjects. Less than 2% of the administered dose was excreted in 24‐hour bile; however, biliary concentrations were always above MIC. Ceftriaxone can be administered once or twice daily at a dose of 2 g/day for prophylaxis in liver transplant recipients. 1991 American College of Clinical Pharmacolog

Testing the Relations between Real Estate Costs and Novel Measures of Human Capital

This dissertation provides novel tests of two recent theories that relate human capital variation among and within cities to differences in the price of interior space. The tests are novel in that they rely on measures of human capital that are typically unmeasured in previous research. In particular, the application to obesity as an alternative measure of human capital is entirely new. In a separate chapter, the dissertation tests the implications of these two theories on a small subset of the labor force (medical doctors), disaggregated by specialty, and distinguished by quality of the medical school that they attended. The empirical results of both novel tests are consistent with implications of the two theories tested; that both among and within cities, differences in human capital and real estate prices are positively related