From Orbit to Ocean—Fixing Southeast Asia’s Remote-Sensing Blind Spots

Improving maritime domain awareness (MDA) in Southeast Asia is critical not only for regional states but for the national-security interests of the United States. MDA in the coming decades will be dominated by cheaper, more-efficient remote-sensing tools, and the United States and other outside parties should shift toward introducing partners to the booming private-sector offerings in remote sensing

Energy Storage Capacity Of Reversible Liquid‐phase Diels Alder Reaction Between Maleic Anhydride And 2‐methyl Furan

Calorimetry was used to determine the heat of reaction and equilibrium constant at 318 K for the reaction between maleic anhydride (A) and 2‐methyl furan (B). The values were −60 kJ/gmol and 614 cm3/gmol, respectively. The motivation for this work was to find a single phase‐reacting system that could be used to store solar energy. Thus, the energy storage capacity was calculated for a mixture of A and B, both initially at 7 kmol/m3, in dioxane. The maximum apparent heat capacity of 7.37 J/cm3·K occurred at 334 K. This maximum value is 76% higher than the heat capacity of pure water. Copyright © 1983 American Institute of Chemical Engineer

Reliability Testing of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs Under Multiple Stressors

We performed an experiment on AlGaN/GaN HEMTs with high voltage and high power as stressors. We found that devices tested under high power generally degraded more than those tested under high voltage. In particular, the high-voltage-tested devices did not degrade significantly as suggested by some papers in the literature. The same papers in the literature also suggest that high voltages cause cracks and pits. However, the high-voltage-tested devices in this study do not exhibit cracks or pits in TEM images, while the high-power-tested devices exhibit pits

Numerical framework for transcritical real-fluid reacting flow simulations using the flamelet progress variable approach

An extension to the classical FPV model is developed for transcritical real-fluid combustion simulations in the context of finite volume, fully compressible, explicit solvers. A double-flux model is developed for transcritical flows to eliminate the spurious pressure oscillations. A hybrid scheme with entropy-stable flux correction is formulated to robustly represent large density ratios. The thermodynamics for ideal-gas values is modeled by a linearized specific heat ratio model. Parameters needed for the cubic EoS are pre-tabulated for the evaluation of departure functions and a quadratic expression is used to recover the attraction parameter. The novelty of the proposed approach lies in the ability to account for pressure and temperature variations from the baseline table. Cryogenic LOX/GH2 mixing and reacting cases are performed to demonstrate the capability of the proposed approach in multidimensional simulations. The proposed combustion model and numerical schemes are directly applicable for LES simulations of real applications under transcritical conditions.Comment: 55th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting, Dallas, T

Using giant african pouched rats to detect human tuberculosis: a review

Despite its characteristically low sensitivity, sputum smear microscopy remains the standard for diagnosing tuberculosis (TB) in resource-poor countries. In an attempt to develop an alternative or adjunct to microscopy, researchers have recently examined the ability of pouched rats to detect TB-positive human sputum samples and the microbiological variables that affect their detection. Ten published studies, reviewed herein, suggest that the rats are able to detect the specific odor of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes TB, and can substantially increase new-case detections when used for second-line TB screening following microscopy. Further research is needed to ascertain the rats' ability to detect TB in children and in HIV-positive patients, to detect TB when used for first-line screening, and to be useful in broad-scale applications where cost effectiveness is a major consideration

The Development of Models for Carbon Dioxide Reduction Technologies for Spacecraft Air Revitalization

Through the respiration process, humans consume oxygen (O2) while producing carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) as byproducts. For long term space exploration, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere must be managed to prevent hypercapnia. Moreover, CO2 can be used as a source of oxygen through chemical reduction serving to minimize the amount of oxygen required at launch. Reduction can be achieved through a number of techniques. NASA is currently exploring the Sabatier reaction, the Bosch reaction, and co- electrolysis of CO2 and H2O for this process. Proof-of-concept experiments and prototype units for all three processes have proven capable of returning useful commodities for space exploration. All three techniques have demonstrated the capacity to reduce CO2 in the laboratory, yet there is interest in understanding how all three techniques would perform at a system level within a spacecraft. Consequently, there is an impetus to develop predictive models for these processes that can be readily rescaled and integrated into larger system models. Such analysis tools provide the ability to evaluate each technique on a comparable basis with respect to processing rates. This manuscript describes the current models for the carbon dioxide reduction processes under parallel developmental efforts. Comparison to experimental data is provided were available for verification purposes