Creating a piratical state organization for benevolence, the Commission for Relief in Belgium: 1914-1915

On October 22, 1914 a temporary institution named the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) was created by a group of diplomats, industrialists, businessmen, and volunteers under the direction of American engineer-financier Herbert C. Hoover with the goal of providing emergency food relief in Belgium. Within twelve months the scope of the CRB expanded from providing relief to the communes surrounding Brussels to an effort geared towards making Belgium self-sufficient by the harvest of 1915 before becoming the permanent, on-going, official charitable organization supporting Belgium. In the course of development the Commission evolved into a worldwide charitable organization network with diplomatic and political powers reserved primarily for sovereign states. Described as A Piratical State Organization for Benevolence the CRB combined seemingly disparate elements of private charity and philanthropy with principles of American big business and engineering into an organization with a single purpose of Belgian relief. In 1914 and 1915 the CRB set up an infrastructure of relief under the Provisioning and Benevolence Departments that systematically accumulated, coordinated, and distributed charity in the form of money and material from around the world through volunteer organizations, cooperation with large freight companies and food producers in the United States, and shipping interests in Europe to deliver products to the Belgian communes. Working in conjunction with the Comity National the Commission scientifically determined the actual needs of the civil population and set up a network of warehouses, soup kitchens and canteens to deliver pre-specified rations on a daily basis. Active at every step of the provisioning process the delegates, representatives, and volunteers of the CRB stood constantly vigil to make sure that its promises were maintained Whether it was coordinating the collection of wheat and cornmeal in America, writing appeals and pamphlets explaining the plight of Belgium, manning the Commission\u27s warehouses and private fleet of shipping vessels, or serving as delegates inside the communes the thousands of volunteers that made up the CRB fought with resolve and tenacity to make sure that Belgium survived World War I. This project focuses on the formative period of the CRB during its first year and a half of operations spanning from October 1914 to December 1915 in Belgium and Northern France. Over its first fifteen months of existence the Commission set into action its program of theoretical imports, established the basic parameters for diplomacy with belligerents, launched a vigorous press world-wide press campaign, and forged the system of charity that coordinated vast sums of money and supplies at an overhead expense rate of less than one-half of one percent--a figure unprecedented in the realm of charitable and philanthropic organizations. Tracing the experience of the CRB from multiple points of view the text examines the history of the Commission from the farms of North America to the dangerous waters of the English Channel, the negotiating table in London and Berlin, the occupied city of Brussels, the several thousand communes distributing rations and all places in between. Under the constant threat of starvation, governmental prohibition, public scrutiny, harassment by the German military and financial failure the Commission pressed to feed Belgium in the most efficient manner possible under the guidance Hoover and his cadre of volunteers. While the CRB faced new challenges calling for it to adapt to conditions in Belgium and Northern France between 1916 and its retirement in 1919 the Commission\u27s program of relief was fundamentally in place by the end of December 1915. For the remainder of its existence the structure and strategies employed by the CRB remained virtually static

Design and Implementation of a Compact Receiver Module for an Ice Penetrating Radar Depth Sounder

The study of global climate change is an important issue in the scientific community and radar depth sounding and imaging data is very useful in modeling and predicting the changes to the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. A compact radar receiver module for CReSIS's MCoRDS/I system was developed to standardize the system across various platforms and accommodate future upgrades to the system that will increase its performance and produce more complete and accurate data products of the most challenging target areas. Design parameters for the receiver module were determined by considering all possible current and future operation conditions of the MCoRDS/I system. The receiver module was designed, simulated, implemented, and tested in the field and shown to achieve its design goals

Uncertainty Quantification Framework for Design Optimization

Difficulty to obtain neutron sources of interest have driven the need for optimizationtechniques to tailor a neutron generator as a replacement. A proposed solution usesoff-the-shelf neutron sources coupled with an energy-tuning assembly to mimic thesource of interest (i.e. AmLi, AmBe, thermonuclear fission spectra, etc.). Theseenergy-tuning assemblies have been designed with complex optimization algorithmscoupled with Monte Carlo simulations. These new system surrogate designs oftendo not have an experimental counterpart for validation and comparison, and lacknon-statistical uncertainties. This work aims to improve confidence in the predictionsby providing a tool for fast uncertainty quantification to use with transport tools,necessary for future validations. The tool, TOFFEE, has been developed to use thesensitivity coefficients and covariance data along with the sandwich rule to assignvariance in cross-section data and subsequentially to reaction rates, neutron flux, andk-eff.TOFFEE is a Python framework that uses MCNP6.3 to calculate sensitivitycoefficients (generated by KSEN, PERT, etc.) and NJOY to generate a covariancelibrary. The tool generates new input files and calculates the cross-section uncertaintywith the sandwich rule. To test the tool, TOFFEE is used to generate cross-sectionuncertainty on three models: two benchmarks, Jezebel, BeRP ball, and a newlygenerated energy-tuning assembly designed with an advanced optimization algorithm.The results presented in the example application are the uncertainty on kef f forJezebel, the uncertainty on kef f and the volumetric flux for the BeRP ball. The examples are then verified by comparing them to the stochastic sampling method for calculating uncertainty, used in the SAMPLER routine by SCALE. Lastly, theuncertainty in the energy-dependent surface flux leaving the energy-tuning assembly iscalculated. These three examples give confidence that the tool can be used standaloneand in the optimization process of energy-tuning assemblies for source replacement

Odorous House Ants (Tapinoma sessile)

This fact sheet describes odorous house ants (Tapinoma sessile), how to identify them, their biology, and management, including inspections, insecticide application to nests, perimeter barrier application, and baits

A Step Toward Early PC-Based Training That Reduces Risk: The Effects of Practicing an “Instrument Referenced” Skill Pattern on “Visually Referenced” Performance of Beginning Flight Students

A matched pairs design was used to evaluate the effects of instrument referenced skill pattern practice on a Personal Computer-Based Aviation Training Device (PCATD) on beginning flight student performance in the field (N= 28). Approximately three hours of experimental training was administered by a certified flight instructor between students\u27 first and ninth flight hours, with each student completing six skill pattern trials. The treatment group (n = 14) performed better than the control group (n = 13) on every dependent measure, with a mean effect size of .35. Statistical tests on mean differences were inconclusive, but the favorable effect sizes and absence of negative transfer should encourage scientists and practitioners to expand the use of PCATDs to improve learning and safety among beginning flight students

Port stakeholder perceptions of Sandy impacts: a case study of Red Hook, New York

Understanding the impacts of coastal storm hazards on all maritime port system stakeholders (e.g. operators, tenants, clients, workers, communities, governments) is essential to comprehensive climate change resilience planning. While direct damages and indirect impacts are quantifiable through economic data and modeling, qualitative data on the intangible consequences of storms are necessary to explicate interdependencies between stakeholders as well as conditions that substantially affect response and recovery capacities. This case study explores Hurricane Sandy storm impacts using evidence solicited from stakeholder representatives and extracted from contemporaneous and technical accounts of storm impacts on the port system at Red Hook Container Terminal, Brooklyn, New York, USA. Results highlight the wide range of direct damages, indirect costs, and intangible consequences impacting stakeholders across institutional boundaries and requiring coordination for recovery, providing insight into stakeholder relationships and dependencies in the post-disaster response and recovery process that are often not fully accounted for in current vulnerability assessment and response planning methodologies

Improving the Delivered Specific Impulse of Composite Rocket Propellant through Alteration of Chemical Composition: Methodology and Parameters for Characterization of Propellant and Validation of Simulation Software Common to the Amateur Rocketry Community

In this study, two solid composite rocket propellants were designed utilizing ProPEP, a rocket propellant formulation software common in the amateur and hobby rocketry communities. The two propellants were designed to optimize specific impulse relative to a literature propellant designed by 1020 Research Labs. The literature propellant was also tested in order to validate the design of experiment as well as the mixing and testing procedures. All three propellants, which includes the literature propellant RCS-P, and the two novel propellants AKR-P1 and AKR-P2 were characterized with static tests. The results of the static tests provide data on propellant performance and characterization parameters to be used in the design of scalable rocket motors. AKR-P2 delivered a specific impulse of 219 seconds, a 20% improvement compared to the base case literature propellant RCS-P. AKR-P2 also delivered up to 22% more thrust than the other test propellant AKR-P1

A Peptide Core Motif for Binding to Heterotrimeric G Protein α Subunits

Recently, in vitro selection using mRNA display was used to identify a novel peptide sequence that binds with high affinity to G{alpha}i1. The peptide was minimized to a 9-residue sequence (R6A-1) that retains high affinity and specificity for the GDP-bound state of G{alpha}i1 and acts as a guanine nucleotide dissociation inhibitor (GDI). Here we demonstrate that the R6A-1 peptide interacts with G{alpha} subunits representing all four G protein classes, acting as a core motif for G{alpha} interaction. This contrasts with the consensus G protein regulatory(GPR) sequence, a 28-mer peptide GDI derived from the GoLoco (G{alpha}i/0-Loco interaction)/GPR motif that shares no homology with R6A-1 and binds only to G{alpha}i1-3 in this assay. Binding of R6A-1 is generally specific to the GDP-bound state of the G{alpha} subunits and excludes association with G{beta}{gamma}. R6A-G{alpha}i1 complexes are resistant to trypsin digestion and exhibit distinct stability in the presence of Mg2+, suggesting that the R6A and GPR peptides exert their activities using different mechanisms. Studies using G{alpha}i1/G{alpha}s chimeras identify two regions of G{alpha}i1 (residues 1–35 and 57–88) as determinants for strong R6A-Gi{alpha}1 interaction. Residues flanking the R6A-1 peptide confer unique binding properties, indicating that the core motif could be used as a starting point for the development of peptides exhibiting novel activities and/or specificity for particular G protein subclasses or nucleotide-bound states