Internet of Texas Water Data: Use Cases for Flood, Drought, and Surface Water –Groundwater Interaction

Texas’ public and private companies, organizations, and agencies have collected water data for different purposes and at different scales for many years. These data are scattered across multiple platforms with different standards, often making important data sets inaccessible or incompatible. This leaves Texas’ decision makers, industries, landowners, and communities with significant amounts of data of limited use to support real-time decision making, development of opportunities for water security, or for modeling an accurate picture of Texas’ water future. On April 17, 2018, the Connecting Texas Water Data Workshop brought together experts representative of Texas’ water sectors to engage in the identification of critical water data needs and discuss the design of a data system that facilitates access to and use of public water data in Texas. Workshop participants described desires for future water data management and access, and key attributes of a comprehensive, open access, public water data information system.https://digitalcommons.tamusa.edu/water_books/1000/thumbnail.jp

Real-Time Interferometric Monitoring System for Exposure Controlled Projection Lithography

Stereolithography is an additive manufacturing process in which liquid photopolymer resin is cross-linked and converted to solid polymer with an ultraviolet light source. Exposure Controlled Projection Lithography (ECPL) is a stereolithographic process in which incident radiation, patterned by a dynamic mask, passes through a transparent substrate to cure a photopolymer layer that grows progressively from the substrate surface. In contrast to existing stereolithography techniques, this technique uses a gray-scale projected image, or alternatively a series of binary bit-map images, to produce a three-dimensional polymer object with the desired shape, and it can be used on either flat or curved substrates. Like most stereolithographic technologies, ECPL works in a unidirectional fashion. Calibration constants derived experimentally are fed to the software used to control the system. This unidirectional fabrication method does not, by itself, allow the system to compensate for minor variations, thereby limiting the overall accuracy of the process. We present here a simple, real-time monitoring system based on interferometry, which can be used to provide feedback control to the ECPL process, thus making it more robust and increasing system accuracy. The results obtained from this monitoring system provide a means to better visualize and understand the various phenomena occurring during the photopolymerization of transparent photopolymers.Mechanical Engineerin

The Framing Effects of Professionalism: Is There a Lawyer Cast of Mind? Lessons from Compliance Programs

Professionals working inside companies may bring with them frames of mind set by their professional experience and socialization. Lawyers, in particular, are said to think like a lawyer -to have a lawyer cast of mind. In seeking power within a company and in exercising the power that they obtain, professionals may draw on their professional background to frame, name, diagnose, and prescribe a remedy for the company\u27s problems. In making decisions about their compliance with the law, companies are constrained not only by their environment, but also by their agents\u27 understanding of whose (or what) interests the company should serve. In particular, compliance managers\u27 understandings will frame and influence their companies\u27 calculations of the value, benefits, and costs of compliance activities. The profession of the compliance manager then may influence how the company complies with the law. This Article uses data from a survey of 999 large Australian businesses to examine the professional background of the person in charge of compliance and (1) how they analyze the costs, benefits and risks of non-compliance; and (2) their company\u27s structures and practices of compliance. Contrary to our hypotheses, we find that the professional background of the individual responsible for compliance has little impact on a company\u27s compliance management structures and practices or assessment of stakeholders. The exceptions are that having a lawyer in charge of compliance is associated with the company\u27s perception of heightened legal risk; and where the person in charge of compliance is a lawyer, the company compliance efforts will be marked by manuals and training programs, but not more fulsome compliance structures, which are present when a compliance specialist leads the department. Unfortunately, our data also reveals that these compliance structures are generally merely formal-and likely largely symbolic

The Framing Effects of Professionalism: Is There a Lawyer Cast of Mind? Lessons from Compliance Programs

Professionals working inside companies may bring with them frames of mind set by their professional experience and socialization. Lawyers, in particular, are said to think like a lawyer -to have a lawyer cast of mind. In seeking power within a company and in exercising the power that they obtain, professionals may draw on their professional background to frame, name, diagnose, and prescribe a remedy for the company\u27s problems. In making decisions about their compliance with the law, companies are constrained not only by their environment, but also by their agents\u27 understanding of whose (or what) interests the company should serve. In particular, compliance managers\u27 understandings will frame and influence their companies\u27 calculations of the value, benefits, and costs of compliance activities. The profession of the compliance manager then may influence how the company complies with the law. This Article uses data from a survey of 999 large Australian businesses to examine the professional background of the person in charge of compliance and (1) how they analyze the costs, benefits and risks of non-compliance; and (2) their company\u27s structures and practices of compliance. Contrary to our hypotheses, we find that the professional background of the individual responsible for compliance has little impact on a company\u27s compliance management structures and practices or assessment of stakeholders. The exceptions are that having a lawyer in charge of compliance is associated with the company\u27s perception of heightened legal risk; and where the person in charge of compliance is a lawyer, the company compliance efforts will be marked by manuals and training programs, but not more fulsome compliance structures, which are present when a compliance specialist leads the department. Unfortunately, our data also reveals that these compliance structures are generally merely formal-and likely largely symbolic

Functional correlates of optic flow motion processing in Parkinson’s disease

The visual input created by the relative motion between an individual and the environment, also called optic flow, influences the sense of self-motion, postural orientation, veering of gait, and visuospatial cognition. An optic flow network comprising visual motion areas V6, V3A, and MT+, as well as visuo-vestibular areas including posterior insula vestibular cortex (PIVC) and cingulate sulcus visual area (CSv), has been described as uniquely selective for parsing egomotion depth cues in humans. Individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) have known behavioral deficits in optic flow perception and visuospatial cognition compared to age- and education-matched control adults (MC). The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate neural correlates related to impaired optic flow perception in PD. We conducted fMRI on 40 non-demented participants (23 PD and 17 MC) during passive viewing of simulated optic flow motion and random motion. We hypothesized that compared to the MC group, PD participants would show abnormal neural activity in regions comprising this optic flow network. MC participants showed robust activation across all regions in the optic flow network, consistent with studies in young adults, suggesting intact optic flow perception at the neural level in healthy aging. PD participants showed diminished activity compared to MC particularly within visual motion area MT+ and the visuo-vestibular region CSv. Further, activation in visuo-vestibular region CSv was associated with disease severity. These findings suggest that behavioral reports of impaired optic flow perception and visuospatial performance may be a result of impaired neural processing within visual motion and visuo-vestibular regions in PD.Published versio

Internet of Texas Water Data: Use Cases for Flood, Drought, and Surface Water – Groundwater Interactions

Experts representative of Texas’ water sectors identified critical water data needs and described the design of a comprehensive open access data system that facilitates use of public water data in Texas at the April 2018 Connecting Texas Water Data Workshop as reported in the Texas Water Journal. Participants described potential use cases to initiate work on the most critical data hubs for connecting Texas water data. This note is an update to work on the Internet of Texas Water Data initiative that describes progress on a flood dashboard by the Texas Water Development Board and development of use cases by workgroups of stakeholders with expertise in water data for drought and for surface water – groundwater interactions

Polarized 129Xe129Xe optical pumping/spin exchange and delivery system for magnetic resonance spectroscopy and imaging studies

We describe the design and construction of a laser-polarized 129Xe129Xe production and delivery system that is used in our in vitro and in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) experiments. The entire apparatus including lasers and optics, rapidly actuated valves, heating and cooling, and transport tubing lies in the high magnetic field environment of a 2 T MRI magnet. With approximately 7.5% 129Xe129Xe polarization, 157 cc atm of xenon gas is produced and stored as xenon ice every 5 min. Large quantities of polarized 129Xe129Xe can be obtained by cycling this process. The xenon is subsequently delivered in a controlled fashion to a sample or subject. With this device we have established the feasibility of using laser-polarized 129Xe129Xe as a magnetic tracer in MRI. This reliable, effective, and relatively simple production method for large volumes of 129Xe129Xe can be applied to other areas of research involving the use of laser-polarized noble gases. © 1999 American Institute of Physics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69879/2/RSINAK-70-2-1546-1.pd

Transnational Legal Practice 2006-2007

Law practice continues to expand across borders, and lawyers and law firms from the United States and other countries are substantially invested in representations that take them outside of their home jurisdictions.[1] Unfortunately, reliable information relating to the extent of internationalization of the legal market is scarce. Neither the number of lawyers and law firms working in the international legal services market nor the receipts generated from internationally-related work are readily and reliably available. Nevertheless, statistics from both the United States and United Kingdom provide a sense of the numbers from the largest present sources of international legal practice. In the category of outbound services, for example, we can consider how U.S. lawyers and law firms serve foreign clients and U.S.-based clients in their offshore activities. One measure of these services could include the offshore activity of U.S. law firms. The American Lawyer Global 100 includes nine U.S.-based law firms with more than a quarter of their lawyers stationed outside of the United States, three of which support more than 50 percent of their lawyers working from overseas offices.[2] Another study of approximately sixty large U.S. law firms reported that those firms support approximately 375 offices overseas, where approximately 8,000 lawyers are working;[3] three-quarters of these lawyers are working in offices located in Europe. The U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that the export of legal services from the United States generated $4.3 billion in receipts in 2005, while imports of legal services were valued at$914 million, yielding a 4:1 surplus for balance-of-payment accounts.[4] According to the U.K. Department of Constitutional Affairs, British law firms generated £1.9 billion in exports in 2003, compared to £1.5 billion in imports.[5

Report of the panel on earth rotation and reference frames, section 7

Objectives and requirements for Earth rotation and reference frame studies in the 1990s are discussed. The objectives are to observe and understand interactions of air and water with the rotational dynamics of the Earth, the effects of the Earth's crust and mantle on the dynamics and excitation of Earth rotation variations over time scales of hours to centuries, and the effects of the Earth's core on the rotational dynamics and the excitation of Earth rotation variations over time scales of a year or longer. Another objective is to establish, refine and maintain terrestrial and celestrial reference frames. Requirements include improvements in observations and analysis, improvements in celestial and terrestrial reference frames and reference frame connections, and improved observations of crustal motion and mass redistribution on the Earth