Regional update : U.S. slowdown reaches Texas

Economic conditions - Texas ; Recessions

Tailoring crystallinity of electrospun Plla fibres by control of electrospinning parameters

Poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA) fibers were fabricated by electrospinning. The effects of various electrospinning process parameters on the thermal properties, especially the crystallinity of the electrospun fibers were investigated. Thermal analysis of the fibers revealed that they exhibited degree of crystallinity ranging from 23% to 46% while that for the as-received granules was approximately 37%, suggesting that the crystallinity of electrospun PLLA fibres can be controlled by optimizing the electrospinning process. This finding is very important because crystallinity affects polymer properties such as degradation, stiffness,yield stress, modulus and tensile strength, solubility, optical and electrical properties which will in turn affect the behavior of these materials when they are utilized in energy,environment, defense and security applications. The results presented in this paper show that the degree of crystallinity of the electrospun fibers decreased with increasing the polymer solution concentration. Furthermore, an optimum electrospinning voltage at which maximum degree of crystallinity can be obtained was observed. At voltages higher or lower than the optimum electrospinning voltage, the degree of rystallinity will decrease or increase,respectively. The effect of the needle tip to collector distance (NTCD) on the degree of\ud crystallinity follows no predictable and consistent pattern

Quantifying slope-channel coupling in an active gully and fan complex at Tarndale, Waipaoa catchment, New Zealand

Two RIEGL LMS‐Z420i scanner surveys (November 2007 and November 2008) of the Tarndale Gully complex and its associated fan were used to generate a digital elevation model (DEM) of difference in order to quantify gully‐fan‐channel connectivity. The Te Weraroa Stream, into which the first order Tarndale system feeds, is buffered from sediment generated by the gully complex by a fan. Sediment yields and the role of the fan in buffering Te Weraroa Stream are inferred from the TLS of the entire complex. DEM analysis suggests that c.25% of material derived from the gully is buffered from the stream by being stored in the fan. This figure was applied to fan behaviour since December 2004, mapped on nine successive occasions using detailed GPS surveys to get a longer‐term picture of sediment supply within the system and appraise a qualitative assessment of connectivity constructed on the basis of fan behaviour alone

How to Reduce Drought Risk

This guide describes a practical step-by-step process for identifying actions that can be taken to reduce potential drought-related impacts before a drought occurs. Step 1 begins with making sure that the right people are brought together and supplied with adequate data to make informed and equitable decisions during the process. Steps 2 and 3 narrow the focus of the study by identifying high priority drought-related impacts that are relevant to the user’s location or activity. Step 4 demonstrates that in order to reduce the potential for the identified impacts to occur in the future, it is necessary to understand the underlying environmental, economic, and social causes of the impacts. Finally, Steps 5 and 6 utilize all of the previous information to identify feasible, cost-effective, and equitable actions that can be taken to address the identified causes. In this manner, true drought vulnerabilities can be addressed that will subsequently reduce drought-related impacts and risk

Driving the waste prevention agenda: an evaluation of weighing kerbside household waste arisings methodology, in Dorset, UK

Household waste prevention in England has been recognised in national strategy as a key component for future sustainable practice. To support the policy agenda, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in England has funded an extensive programme of fundamental research in the area. Previous attempts to assess the impacts of waste prevention initiatives have faced a number of problems. These have generally centred on difficulty in separating the effects of initiatives from external factors and inadequate sample sizes or methodology. The specific research aim reported on here, in this Defra funded project, was to trial and assess methods for monitoring and evaluating approaches detailed in the National Resource and Waste Forum (NRWF)’s Household Waste Prevention Toolkit. The primary objective of this research was to quantify the direct waste tonnage impacts of implementing a targeted household waste campaign in Dorset. The key performance indicator chosen for this assessment was the weight of waste collected at the kerbside from households. The results are informative and will help future teams design campaigns on the basis of rigorous methodology. It was found that there are a wide range of factors that need to be taken into account and that had hitherto been given little prominence, such as careful matching of pilot and control areas. Analysis of the results leads to the conclusion that waste arisings for residual waste has decreased in the pilot area (≈ 10.5%) more than the controls (e.g. ≈ 5.5%). This method for monitoring can be used, in the hands of an expert project team, to communicate to the public the direct benefits of waste prevention

Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western: Politics, Violence and Popular Italian Cinema, by Austin Fisher

The Western genre film has undergone innumerable variations over the history of global cinematic production. While widely regarded as an elegiac paean to a bygone era in which morality and progress presented few interpretive obstacles, the form is peculiarly amenable to radical reinscription, especially on the part of filmmakers from outside of the United States. Austin Fisher identifies the so-called Spaghetti Western as one among many filoni (sing.: filone, literally “vein”) or generic cycles that are characteristic of Italian film production. As such, this subgenre includes manifold permutations, “from slapstick comedies to baroque tales of intrigue and horror film hybrids” (1)

West by Northeast: The Western in Brazil

This chapter examines the relationship between American Westerns and Brazilian Nordesterns, films set in the arid northeastern region known as the sertão. US cultural and economic imperialism, in Brazil and throughout Latin America, is both cause and effect of persistent underdevelopment. The northward flow of natural resources has long been accompanied by a southward flood of mass media. American cinema thus becomes both an insidious tool of economic subordination and a cherished vehicle for popular entertainment. This apparent paradox animates the dialectical style of Glauber Rocha’s Antônio das Mortes (O Dragão da Maldade contra o Santo Guerreiro, 1969), which juxtaposes Western iconography with Brazilian folklore in a self-consciously hybrid form and through a radical mode of transnational spectatorial address. The protagonist Antônio is not simply a transplanted Western gunslinger, but the manifestation of a syncretic process through which Rocha borrows ostensibly colonialist forms to tell his decolonial story

Through a Tube, Darkly: Critical Remediation in High and Low (1963)

Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 police procedural is, as its title suggests, intensely interested in the socioeconomic valences of spatial relationships, literalized in Yokohama’s affluent hills and its low-lying slums. The central conflict between inhabitants of these two spaces articulates this local topography into a global framework, in which concrete spaces of social interaction and functional production become abstract places that act as conduits for flows of media and capital. Previous analyses have read the film as an historical reflection of and nationalistic reaction to Americanization. Attending to the film’s transnational, transtemporal, and transmedial articulations reframes the film as a critical engagement with globalization rather than a symptomatic reflection thereof. The immediate context of the rapid adoption of television, concomitant with Japan’s emerging consumerism, allows Kurosawa to figure abstract economic patterns through intermedial formal techniques. These textual practices associate the materiality of celluloid with manual labor, and the ephemerality of TV with speculative finance. By further linking the protagonist Gondo with the former pair and the antagonist Takeuchi with the latter, High and Low formally and structurally critiques economic globalization as a form of criminality