Scale economies and technological change in Federal Reserve ACH payment processing

An analysis of the contribution of scale economies, technological change, and falling input prices to the absolute reduction in the real processing costs of an ACH transfer over the 1979-94 period.Clearinghouses (Banking)

Inversion algorithms for the microwave remote sensing of soil moisture. Experiments with swept frequency microwaves

Two experiments were performed employing swept frequency microwaves for the purpose of investigating the reflectivity from soil volumes containing both discontinuous and continuous changes in subsurface soil moisture content. Discontinuous moisture profiles were artificially created in the laboratory while continuous moisture profiles were induced into the soil of test plots by the environment of an agricultural field. The reflectivity for both the laboratory and field experiments was measured using bi-static reflectometers operated over the frequency ranges of 1.0 to 2.0 GHz and 4.0 to 8.0 GHz. Reflectivity models that considered the discontinuous and continuous moisture profiles within the soil volume were developed and compared with the results of the experiments. This comparison shows good agreement between the smooth surface models and the measurements. In particular the comparison of the smooth surface multi-layer model for continuous moisture profiles and the yield experiment measurements points out the sensitivity of the specular component of the scattered electromagnetic energy to the movement of moisture in the soil

Code 672 observational science branch computer networks

In general, networking increases productivity due to the speed of transmission, easy access to remote computers, ability to share files, and increased availability of peripherals. Two different networks within the Observational Science Branch are described in detail

On the Optimization of Mixture Resolving Signal Processing Structures

Mixture resolving signal processing optimization with optimum linear detection operators and mixture resolving estimator

NOSS Altimeter Detailed Algorithm specifications

The details of the algorithms and data sets required for satellite radar altimeter data processing are documented in a form suitable for (1) development of the benchmark software and (2) coding the operational software. The algorithms reported in detail are those established for altimeter processing. The algorithms which required some additional development before documenting for production were only scoped. The algorithms are divided into two levels of processing. The first level converts the data to engineering units and applies corrections for instrument variations. The second level provides geophysical measurements derived from altimeter parameters for oceanographic users

Angular distribution of photoelectrons at 584A using polarized radiation

Photoelectron angular distributions for Ar, Xe, N2, O2, CO, CO2, and NH3 were obtained at 584 A by observing the photoelectrons at a fixed angle and simply rotating the plane of polarization of a highly polarized photon source. The radiation from a helium dc glow discharge source was polarized (84%) using a reflection type polarizer

Keys to Success with Alfalfa Balage

Baled silage (or Balage) has many advantages over conventional hay production. Losses during the curing, baling, storage, and feeding phases are each dramatically lower when the forage is conserved as Balage rather than hay. Of course, this comes at an expense. The cost of the wrapper (generally $14,000 – 21,000), plastic wrap (usually$4-6 per ton of DM), and added labor can make this system quite costly. Furthermore, there is an environmental cost for disposal of the plastic. However, Balage enables the alfalfa producer to quickly harvest a crop with more independence from unfavorable weather and to create a more palatable product

Air-Cooled Stack Freeze Tolerance Freeze Failure Modes and Freeze Tolerance Strategies for GenDriveTM Material Handling Application Systems and Stacks Final Scientific Report

Air-cooled stack technology offers the potential for a simpler system architecture (versus liquid-cooled) for applications below 4 kilowatts. The combined cooling and cathode air allows for a reduction in part count and hence a lower cost solution. However, efficient heat rejection challenges escalate as power and ambient temperature increase. For applications in ambient temperatures below freezing, the air-cooled approach has additional challenges associated with not overcooling the fuel cell stack. The focus of this project was freeze tolerance while maintaining all other stack and system requirements. Through this project, Plug Power advanced the state of the art in technology for air-cooled PEM fuel cell stacks and related GenDrive material handling application fuel cell systems. This was accomplished through a collaborative work plan to improve freeze tolerance and mitigate freeze-thaw effect failure modes within innovative material handling equipment fuel cell systems designed for use in freezer forklift applications. Freeze tolerance remains an area where additional research and understanding can help fuel cells to become commercially viable. This project evaluated both stack level and system level solutions to improve fuel cell stack freeze tolerance. At this time, the most cost effective solutions are at the system level. The freeze mitigation strategies developed over the course of this project could be used to drive fuel cell commercialization. The fuel cell system studied in this project was Plug Power's commercially available GenDrive platform providing battery replacement for equipment in the material handling industry. The fuel cell stacks were Ballard's commercially available FCvelocity 9SSL (9SSL) liquid-cooled PEM fuel cell stack and FCvelocity 1020ACS (Mk1020) air-cooled PEM fuel cell stack

Boffin\u27s Books and Darwin\u27s Finches: Victorian Cultures of Collecting

Although wealthy continental virtuosos had passionately and selectively accumulated a variety of natural and artificial objects from the Renaissance onwards, not until the nineteenth century did collecting become a conspicuous national pastime among all classes in Britain. As industry and empire made available many new and exotic goods for acquisition and display, the collection as a cultural form offered the Victorians a popular strategy of self-fashioning that was often represented in the literature of the age as a source of prestige and social legitimation. Through interdisciplinary readings of Victorian fiction, narrative nonfiction, and poetry, my study examines how textual representations of collecting helped to define nation, class, and gender in Britain from the 1830s to the turn of the century and beyond. Combining literary analysis with cultural criticism, including approaches from museum studies, I explain how Victorian writing about collecting, from Charles Dickens\u27s earliest works to fin-de-siècle lepidopteran narratives, participated in the formation of individual and collective identities. During the first half of the nineteenth century, prominent author-collectors asserted their specifically male authority and British dominion abroad through travel narratives about acquiring exotic artifacts for the nation or assembling proprietary collections exhibited back home. Meanwhile, Victorian novels included an array of collectors of all ranks, many of whom seek to enhance their professional or social status through their collections, which are often the products of competition or emulation. However, from mid-century on, a period in which museums proliferated and the British empire grew during the age of the New Imperialism, authors increasingly turned to the figure of the collector to convey anxieties about habits of consumption that threatened personal identity or social stability and a world of objects that were not necessarily under the consumer\u27s control. Thus, even as collecting helped to order knowledge, material culture, and social relations in nineteenth-century Britain, it also posed certain challenges to the social identities and forms of subjectivity the Victorians attempted to forge for themselves, as their collections and texts show

The mount Tawai Peridotite, north Borneo

The Mount Tawai peridotite is a batholith, elongate north-south, situated between the Kinabatangan and Labuk rivers in the North Borneo ultrabasic belt. The surrounding country rocks are Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary sediments and volcanics which strike predominantly E.N.E. They are separated from the peridotite by a fault breccia which contains inclusions of metamorphic rocks. The batholith comprises at least three partially separated tectonic units, the largest of which is the Main Tawai block. Theouter parts of the tectonic units exhibit a crude gneissose foliation and peripheral serpentinization. The batholith is composed mainly of harzburgite with scarce dunite, pyroxenite and gabbro phases. The dunite occurs in lenticular pods which dip steeply westward in the Main Tawai block. Some of the dunite lenses contain thin chromite bands showing evidence of rudimentary gravity stratification. The harzburgite is composed mainly of forsterite and enstatite with only minor endiopside. The alumina content of the enstatite varies from 1.3 to 7.4 per cent and that of the endiopside from 2.9 to 7.2 per cent. The dunite bandscontain forsterite and chrome spinel, the composition of the latter varying from cr(_65.5) AL(_32.2) (Mg(_68.1)) to cr(__32.6) AL(_66 .9) (Mg(_63.8)) on Thayer's (1946) shortened formula. The gabbroic rocks are irregularly distributed within the batholith occurring mainly as tectonic inclusions. Both the ultrabasic and basic rocks are considered to have been derived from the same parent magma. The absence of anorthite from the ultrabasic assemblages is explained by an initial phase of differentiation at very high temperature and pressure which suppressed the precipitation of plagioclase but favoured the introduction of alumina into the pyroxenes. During the initial phase of differentiation only olivine, enstatite, endiopside, and spinel were precipitated, but there must have been frequent but short-lived intervals in which only olivine and spinel were precipitated; these are thought to have accumulated in hollows and channels on the floor of a crystal pile. A systematic increase of alumina in the pyroxenes and spinels of the Main Tawai block has been traced and is attributed to a crystallisation sequence. A gabbroic phase is thought to have been precipitated on top of the ultrabasic crystal pile following a drop in temperature which resulted in the precipitation of plagioclase and the lowering of the Mg/Fe ratio in the pyroxene and olivine. A calculation of the average composition of the rocks of the North Borneo belt is in close agreement with the average mantle composition suggested by Ringwood (1959). This evidence together with the high temperature and pressure conditions needed to explain the ultrabasic assemblages has led to the conclusion that the parent magma of the Mount Tawai complex was derived by fusion of upper mantle material. After or during the final stages of differentiation the gabbroic fraction was injected into the crust creating a pre-heated path up which the hot, already-differentiated peridotite rose as a series of almost crystalline units. During this stage a gneissose folliation developed roughly parallel to the sides of the intrusive units. Thermal metamorphism of the country rocks to garnet amphibolite fades accompanied the process. After cooling beneath the surface the intrusive units were serpentinised and emplaced in their present position by faulting, which also disrupted the thermal metamorphic aureole. Late lime bearing solutions, deposited calc-silicate veins and altered some of the gabbro to rodingite. The final emplacement had profound effects on the drainage system and occurred in late or post Pleistocene