An empirical study of argumentation schemes in deliberative dialogue

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Extensive reuse of soda-lime waste glass in fly ash-based geopolymers

The possibility of extensive incorporation of soda-lime waste glass in the synthesis of fly ash-based geopolymers was investigated. Using waste glass as silica supplier avoids the use of water glass solution as chemical activator. The influence of the addition of waste glass on the microstructure and strength of fly ash-based geopolymers was studied through microstructural and mechanical characterization. Leaching analyses were also carried out. The samples were developed changing the SiO2/Al2O3 molar ratio and the molarity of the sodium hydroxide solution used as alkaline activator. The results suggest that increasing the amount of waste glass as well as increasing the molarity of the solution lead to the formation of zeolite crystalline phases and an improvement of the mechanical strength. Leaching results confirmed that the new geopolymers have the capability to immobilize heavy metal ions

National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska (NPR-A) Watershed Hydrology

During a five-year period, which represents the entire project span, the research team performed discharge measurements on seven gaging stations distributed on the National Petroleum Reserve- Alaska (NPR-A), an area of approximately 23 million acres that extends from the north side of the Brooks Range to the Arctic Ocean. Specifically, 225 discharge measurements were taken during that period. In addition, records of air temperature and rainfall, as well as wind speed and wind direction from stations that collected such data were analyzed. The air temperature data indicate that the entire region followed a pronounced warming trend, ending with the 2010/2011 winter, which was the warmest winter recorded at the stations. Rainfall data suggest a trend in increasing precipitation during the summer months from the coastal plain to the foothill area. Unusually dry conditions were experienced over the entire area in 2007 and in 2011. The overall highest mean wind speed was recorded in June at the two stations where wind data were available; the lowest mean wind speed was recorded in December at one station and in March at the other station. Wind roses indicate two main wind directions—roughly from the northeast and southwest—with winds from the northeast predominant.List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ iii List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgments and Disclaimer ................................................................................................. v Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 2 Discharge Measurements ...................................................................................... 3 2.1 Fieldwork ......................................................................................................................... 3 2.2 Data Analysis ................................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 3 Meteorological Data ............................................................................................ 10 3.1 Methodology .................................................................................................................. 11 3.2 Results ............................................................................................................................ 11 3.2.1 Rainfall .................................................................................................................... 11 3.2.2 Air Temperature ...................................................................................................... 15 3.2.3 Wind ........................................................................................................................ 20 CHAPTER 4 Information Technology ...................................................................................... 28 4.1 Aquatic Informatics Aquarius Software ......................................................................... 28 4.2 Telemetry Data Retrieval ............................................................................................... 28 4.3 Near-Real-Time Data Delivery Online .......................................................................... 28 4.4 Information Technology Infrastructure .......................................................................... 30 References ..................................................................................................................................... 31 Appendices .................................................................................................................................... 3

Behaviour Planning: A Toolkit for Diverse Planning

Diverse planning is the problem of generating plans with distinct characteristics. This is valuable for many real-world scenarios, including applications related to plan recognition and business process automation. In this work, we introduce \emph{Behaviour Planning}, a diverse planning toolkit that can characterise and generate diverse plans based on modular diversity models. We present a qualitative framework for describing diversity models, a planning approach for generating plans aligned with any given diversity model, and provide a practical implementation of an SMT-based behaviour planner. We showcase how the qualitative approach offered by Behaviour Planning allows it to overcome various challenges faced by previous approaches. Finally, the experimental evaluation shows the effectiveness of Behaviour Planning in generating diverse plans compared to state-of-the-art approaches

Three-micron spectroscopy of highly reddened field stars

Broad absorption features centered at 3.45 microns and at 3.0-3.0 microns towards a number of late-type supergiants in the vicinity of the galactic center were repeatedly reported. Here, 2.0 to 2.5 and 3.0 to 4.0 micron spectra are presented for field late-type highly reddened (A sub V is approximately 17-27) stars located in different regions of the galactic plane more than 20 deg away from the galactic center direction. The observations, made with the 3.6, 2.2, and 1.0 m ESO telescopes at La Silla, Chile, consists of CVF spectra with resolution lambda/delta lambda is approximately or equal to 100 and IRSPEC spectra with resolution lambda/delta lambda is approximately or equal to 700. In the direction of the most highly reddened stars, definitive detections of the 3.45 and the 3.0 to 3.1 micron absorption features are reported. The 3.45 micron feature was attributed to absorption arising in a vibrational transition resulting from the C-H stretching in organic compounds, while the 3.0 to 3.1 micron broader feature are tentatively attributed to O-H bonds. The observations strongly support that the agent producing the 3.45 micron feature, presumably organic molecules, is an important component of the diffuse interstellar medium and is not characteristic only of the galactic center environment