Chromium electrodes for REDOX cells

An improved electrode having a gold coating for use in the anode compartment of a REDOX cell is described. The anode fluid utilizes a chromic/chromous couple. A carbon felt is soaked in methanol, rinsed in water, dried and then heated in KOH after which it is again washed in deionized water and dried. The felt is then moistened with a methanol water solution containing chloroauric acid and is stored in a dark place while still in contact with the gold-containing solution. After all the gold-containing solution is absorbed in the felt, the latter is dried by heat and then heat treated at a substantially greater temperature. The felt is then suitable for use as an electrode and is wetted with water or up to two molar HCl prior to installation in a REDOX cell. The novelty of the invention lies in the use of KOH for cleaning the felt and the use of alcohol as a carrier for the gold together with the heat treating procedure

Will This Paper Increase Your h-index? Scientific Impact Prediction

Scientific impact plays a central role in the evaluation of the output of scholars, departments, and institutions. A widely used measure of scientific impact is citations, with a growing body of literature focused on predicting the number of citations obtained by any given publication. The effectiveness of such predictions, however, is fundamentally limited by the power-law distribution of citations, whereby publications with few citations are extremely common and publications with many citations are relatively rare. Given this limitation, in this work we instead address a related question asked by many academic researchers in the course of writing a paper, namely: "Will this paper increase my h-index?" Using a real academic dataset with over 1.7 million authors, 2 million papers, and 8 million citation relationships from the premier online academic service ArnetMiner, we formalize a novel scientific impact prediction problem to examine several factors that can drive a paper to increase the primary author's h-index. We find that the researcher's authority on the publication topic and the venue in which the paper is published are crucial factors to the increase of the primary author's h-index, while the topic popularity and the co-authors' h-indices are of surprisingly little relevance. By leveraging relevant factors, we find a greater than 87.5% potential predictability for whether a paper will contribute to an author's h-index within five years. As a further experiment, we generate a self-prediction for this paper, estimating that there is a 76% probability that it will contribute to the h-index of the co-author with the highest current h-index in five years. We conclude that our findings on the quantification of scientific impact can help researchers to expand their influence and more effectively leverage their position of "standing on the shoulders of giants."Comment: Proc. of the 8th ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM'15

AN EVALUATION OF EXPECTED VALUE AND EXPECTED VALUE-VARIANCE CRITERIA IN ACHIEVING RISK EFFICIENCY IN CROP SELECTION

This article evaluates the performance of expected value and expected value-variance criteria in achieving risk efficiency in crop selection. Results indicate that the expected returns criterion achieves risk efficiency in many situations because of constraints. However, in the absence of many constraints the expected returns criterion performs poorly except when highly mean-dominant activities are present. The expected value-variance criterion achieves a high degree of risk efficiency for all situations examined. This result implies that criteria more complex than expected value-variance are not necessary for crop selection analysis, given empirical returns distributions.Crop Production/Industries,

A probabilistic model of insolation for the Mojave Desert area

A discussion of mathematical models of insolation characteristics suitable for use in analysis of solar energy systems is presented and shows why such models are essential for solar energy system design. A model of solar radiation for the Mojave Desert area is presented with probabilistic and deterministic components which reflect the occurrence and density of clouds and haze, and mimic their effects on both direct and indirect radiation. Multiple comparisons were made between measured total energy received per day and the corresponding simulated totals. The simulated totals were all within 11 percent of the measured total. The conclusion is that a useful probabilistic model of solar radiation for the Goldstone, California, area of the Mojave Desert has been constructed

Science Leadership: Impact of the New Science Coordinators Academy

This article discusses the impact of the New Science Coordinators Academy (NSCA) on two cohorts of participants. The NSCA is one of four components of the Virginia Initiative for Science Teaching and Achievement (VISTA), a United States Department of Education (USED) science education reform grant. The NSCA is designed to support new school district science coordinators (with less than five years of experience) and to continue building the state science education infrastructure. Research in education leadership traditionally focuses on teacher leaders, principals, and district office personnel. Interestingly, research on district office personnel rarely distinguishes between the different roles of district personnel. This article seeks to inform the field by sharing the impact of an academy designed for new science coordinators on their learning, and to begin to understand their role and impact in their district. The five-day Academy engaged participants in a variety of experiences designed to facilitate the following: 1) build leadership skills; 2) build a common understanding and vision for hands-on science, inquiry, problem-based learning, and nature of science in the science classroom; 3) investigate data to improve student learning goals; 4) and, develop a science strategic plan. The data indicate that the NSCA was successful at meeting its goals to support the participants and to build a common language among these new coordinators. Initial data also support the variety of responsibilities of these participants and the positive impact of the Academy on their district work

Chromospheric Inversions of a Micro-flaring Region

We use spectropolarimetric observations of the Ca II 8542~\AA\ line, taken from the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST), in an attempt to recover dynamic activity in a micro-flaring region near a sunspot via inversions. These inversions show localized mean temperature enhancements of $\sim$1000~K in the chromosphere and upper photosphere, along with co-spatial bi-directional Doppler shifting of 5 - 10 km s$^{-1}$. This heating also extends along a nearby chromospheric fibril, co-spatial to 10 - 15 km s$^{-1}$ down-flows. Strong magnetic flux cancellation is also apparent in one of the footpoints, concentrated in the chromosphere. This event more closely resembles that of an Ellerman Bomb (EB), though placed slightly higher in the atmosphere than is typically observed.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, accepted in ApJ. Movies are stored here: https://star.pst.qub.ac.uk/webdav/public/areid/Microflare