Round Table Discussions on the Proposed Code of Judicial Conduct

The importance of lawyers and society of the ethics and the selection of judges cannot be minimized. Judges set the tone for lawyers\u27 ethics. Judicial behavior significantly influences the attitude of the lay citizens toward justice and the integrity of his government. And, if the courts are to retain their independence and influence—without either the power of the purse or the sword—our judicial officers must be beyond question in matters of ethics and impartiality. The proposed A.B.A. Code of Judicial Conduct, if widely adopted and enforced, will be a significant step toward this goal

Gas Core Nuclear Rocket Feasibility Project

The next giant leap for mankind will be the human exploration of Mars. Almost certainly within the next thirty years, a human crew will brave the isolation, the radiation, and the lack of gravity to walk on and explore the Red planet. However, because the mission distances and duration will be hundreds of times greater than the lunar missions, a human crew will face much greater obstacles and a higher risk than those experienced during the Apollo program. A single solution to many of these obstacles is to dramatically decrease the mission duration by developing a high performance propulsion system. The gas core nuclear rocket (GCNR) has the potential to be such a system. The gas core concept relies on the use of fluid dynamic forces to create and maintain a vortex. The vortex is composed of a fissile material which will achieve criticality and produce high power levels. By radiatively coupling to the surrounding fluids, extremely high temperatures in the propellant and, thus, high specific impulses can be generated. The ship velocities enabled by such performance may allow a 9 month round trip, manned Mars mission to be considered. Alternatively, one might consider slightly longer missions in ships that are heavily shielded against the intense Galactic Cosmic Ray flux to further reduce the radiation dose to the crew. The current status of the research program at the Los Alamos National Laboratory into the gas core nuclear rocket feasibility will be discussed

The distribution of Pearson residuals in generalized linear models

In general, the distribution of residuals cannot be obtained explicitly. We give an asymptotic formula for the density of Pearson residuals in continuous generalized linear models corrected to order $n^{-1}$, where $n$ is the sample size. We define corrected Pearson residuals for these models that, to this order of approximation, have exactly the same distribution of the true Pearson residuals. Applications for important generalized linear models are provided and simulation results for a gamma model illustrate the usefulness of the corrected Pearson residuals

Biodiesel Production Using Residual Vegetable Oil and Activated by Geopolymer Matrixes with Magnetic Particles

The cooking oil, when reused in frying, undergoes a thermal degradation process that changes its physical and chemical characteristics. After repeated use of the oil, it becomes viscous and increasingly dark, it has high acidity and unpleasant odor, being inconvenient to use for new fried food because it gives unpleasant odor and taste to food and also harmful chemical characteristics to health. When these residues become unusable usually they are dumped into the sewage system and have a negative environmental impact, for example, in rainwater and sanitary sewage systems the oil mixes with the organic matter and obstructs grease boxes and pipes. Therefore, the recycling of residual vegetable oil is necessary and very useful, because it transforms the oil for other applications, for example, in this work the use of porous geopolymer with magnetic particles in the concentrations of 1%, 2%, and 3% were studied for act on the activation of the biodiesel reaction from the used cooking oil. The geopolymers with and without magnetic particles were studied using Fourrier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD). The density, the kinematic viscosity, and yield of the biodiesel formation reaction were investigated. The results, calculated using analysis of variance (ANOVA) with a 95% confidence limit, indicate that all the biodiesel samples analyzed are in accordance with the kinematic viscosity value established by the Agência Nacional do Petróleo, Gás Natural e Biocombustíveis (ANP) but only samples with 0% and 1% magnetic particles have density according to the stipulated parameters

Synthesis and Characterization of Modified Magnetic Nanoparticles for Removal of Dispersed Oil in Water

This paper proposes the synthesis of materials capable of sorption oil dispersed in water. From the production of magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles, more specifically magnetite, inorganic modifications were performed using quartz and silicaalumina, in order to identify their properties and sorption capabilities of oil. The produced materials were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM/EDS), x-ray diffraction (XRD), sorption and magnetic force tests. At the end of the characterizations and tests, it was concluded that the magnetic nanoparticles were successfully modified. Regarding magnetite, the sorption capacity was outstanding, while the modifications had the same sorption capacity. And the statistical calculations obtained by ANOVA and Tukey's method, proved the difference in the sorption of the samples. In addition, it was evidenced that the higher the magnetic force, the greater is the ability to collect the spot/nanoparticle using a magnet

Production of Portland Cement Loaded with Polyaniline and Evaluation of Sulphidric Gas Sorption Capacity

Cements are materials based on clay and limestone. Its origin was about 4500 years ago and it is believed that they were the basis for the construction of the pyramids in Egypt. As time went by, limestone was calcined, giving origin to the Portland Cement most used today. Its applications are diverse, ranging from the construction industry to the production of sustainable materials. In this sense, this work aims to produce composites of cement loaded with polyaniline and exposure to hydrogen sulfide gas to assess the sorption capacity of this contaminant, present mainly in sewage treatment. The composites were analyzed by resistivity analysis, in order to investigate the influence of PAni in the geopolymer matrix and its ability to conduct electrical energy, after H2S sorption and gravimetry, aiming to observe the increase in mass (g) during the sorption process. All tests were performed in triplicate and the mean, standard deviation and confidence limit were calculated to obtain the reliability of the results

Evaluation of H2S Sorption Capacity by Geopolymers Produced in Heterogeneous Medium

Geopolymers are composed of aluminosilicates that, upon activation by alkaline solution, form repeated units, and are classified as inorganic polymers. Geopolymers have gained great prominence due to the obtainment of the raw material, which can be natural or residual, the ease of production and low cost. These materials are widely used in civil construction to replace Portland cement and also in the environmental area for the remediation of toxic compounds. However, there is still little in the literature about the applications of these materials. Thus, this work aimed to use geopolymers for hydrogen sulfide gas sorption and it was possible to verify that they are able to adsorb twice its mass in gas

Evaluation of the Electrical Conductivity of Geopolymers Loaded with Carbon Black

Geopolymers are inorganic polymers, composed of aluminosilicates activated with an alkaline solution. This method gives the material three-dimensional networks that are capable of carrying out ion exchange, as well as facilitating the transfer of electric charge through the matrix, when a conductive charge is added. In this sense, geopolymers loaded with carbon black in concentrations of 5, 10, 15 and 20% by weight were produced and the electrical conductivity capacity was verified. The geopolymers were subjected to X-ray Diffraction and resistivity analyzes. The results showed that the geopolymers loaded with carbon black showed a decrease in resistivity due to the concentration of carbon black in the geopolymeric matrix, indicating that with increasing load, less resistive and more conductive. In addition, all analyzes were performed in triplicates, and the calculations of the mean, standard deviation and confidence limit, indicated that in all syntheses the geopolymers remained with the same efficiency

A comparison of three methods for estimating call densities of migrating bowhead whales using passive acoustic monitoring

TAM thanks partial support by Centro de Estatistica e Aplicações, Universidade de Lisboa (funded by FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal, through the project UID/MAT/00006/2013).Various methods for estimating animal density from visual data, including distance sampling (DS) and spatially explicit capture-recapture (SECR), have recently been adapted for estimating call density using passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) data, e.g., recordings of animal calls. Here we summarize three methods available for passive acoustic density estimation: plot sampling, DS, and SECR. The first two require distances from the sensors to calling animals (which are obtained by triangulating calls matched among sensors), but SECR only requires matching (not localizing) calls among sensors. We compare via simulation what biases can arise when assumptions underlying these methods are violated. We use insights gleaned from the simulation to compare the performance of the methods when applied to a case study: bowhead whale call data collected from arrays of directional acoustic sensors at five sites in the Beaufort Sea during the fall migration 2007–2014. Call detections were manually extracted from the recordings by human observers simultaneously scanning spectrograms of recordings from a given site. The large discrepancies between estimates derived using SECR and the other two methods were likely caused primarily by the manual detection procedure leading to non-independent detections among sensors, while errors in estimated distances between detected calls and sensors also contributed to the observed patterns. Our study is among the first to provide a direct comparison of the three methods applied to PAM data and highlights the importance that all assumptions of an analysis method need to be met for correct inference.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe