Lower atmospheric temperature profile measurements using a Raman lidar

A Raman lidar system was used to measure the temperature profile of the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. The system consists of a tripled Nd-YAG laser and a 1.5 meter diameter telescope. Two photomultipliers are used at the output of the telescope to allow for measurements at both the laser wavelength and at the Raman shifted wavelength due to atmospheric nitrogen. The signal from the photomultipliers is recorded as photon counts in 1 microsec bins. The results of a number of laser shots are summed together to provide atmospheric returns which have acceptable signal to noise characteristics. Measurements of the Raman nitrogen return were acquired up to an altitude in excess of 20 km. Temperature profiles were retrieved from the attenuation corrected Raman nitrogen return assuming the atmosphere to be in hydrostatic equilibrium and using the ideal gas law. Retrieved temperature profiles are shown compared with independent temperature measurements

The design, construction and optimization of a binder pitch refining unit

Pitches have been important to mankind for hundreds of years. One of the most important pitches used in industry today is binder pitch. Binder pitch is used to make anodes for the aluminum industry. The supply of high quality binder pitch has been steadily decreasing. A process has been developed to produce binder pitch from coal at West Virginia University, but this pitch in this process requires refining.;The focus of this thesis was to design, and construct a bench top wiped film evaporator system to refine that pitch. From the data collected in this thesis, the process was scaled up to a pilot plant sized wiped film evaporator. The research focused on two operating parameters, flow rate into the wiped film evaporator, and the speed of the wiper blades in the wiped film evaporator.;The data indicated that the system was more sensitive to the speed of the wiper blades than the flow rate of material. The best results were obtained with a maximum wiper speed and a minimum flow rate. The operating parameters defined in the bench top system, when applied to the pilot scale unit, resulted in insufficient production to meet contractual obligations. As a direct result of this research, the refining of the pitch was contracted out to Koppers

Mobile lidar system for measurement of water vapor mixing ratio and ozone number density

The Water Vapor Lidar was modified and extended to make differential absorption measurements of ozone. Water vapor measurements make use of a weak molecular scattering process known as Raman scattering. It is characterized by a shift in wavelength of the scattered beam of light relative to the incident one. Some of the energy of the incident photon is converted to vibrational or rotational energy within the molecule leaving the scattered photon shifted to a slightly longer wavelength. When performing water vapor measurements, profiles are acquired of water vapor mixing ratio from near the ground to beyond 7 km every 2 minutes. By forming a color composite image of the individual profiles, the spatial and temporal evolution of water vapor is visible with vertical resolution of 75 to 150m and temporal resolution of 2 minutes. The ozone lidar is intended for use as a cross calibration facility for other stationary ozone lidar systems. The ozone measurement employs the technique known as differential absorption. The backscattered laser radiation from two different wavelengths is measured. Successful measurements of 308 nm returns were made from 80 km with an averaging period of 6 hours. Using these data and a standard atmosphere density curve, an ozone number density profile was made which agrees very well with the standard ozone curve between 20 and 40 km

Family Relationships and Youth Sport: Influence of Siblings and Parents on Youth's Participation, Interests, and Skills

Taking a family systems perspective, the present study investigated how older siblings’ and parents’ (mothers’ and fathers’) interests, skills, and participation in sports predicted younger siblings’ attitudes and behaviors in those same domains. Testing social learning principles, we further examined whether family members’ influence was stronger when they shared warmer relationships and siblings shared the same gender. Participants included mothers, fathers, and adolescent-aged first and second-born siblings from 197 maritally intact families. Families participated in home interviews as well as a series of 7 nightly phone calls during which participants reported on their daily activities. Across dependent variables, results revealed that parents’ and (with one exception) older siblings’ qualities were predictive of younger siblings’ interests, skills, and participation in sports. Inconsistent with hypotheses, however, family members’ influence was not moderated by relational warmth. Discussion highlights the need to examine the socialization processes by which siblings shape each other’s sport-related attitudes and activities

Significance of Autumn and Winter Food Consumption for Reproduction by Southern Beaufort Sea Polar Bears, \u3ci\u3eUrsus Maritimus\u3c/i\u3e

Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in the southern Beaufort Sea experience long annual periods when preferred seal prey are scarce or are unavailable. Consumption of bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) carcasses from native Alaskan subsistence hunting is increasingly common for onshore polar bears, yet the energetic consequences of this consumption remain unclear. We use data on bears captured repeatedly over periods that encompassed autumn and winter, combined with calculations, to show that adult female bears likely consume an average of at least 4 seal equivalents during both autumn and winter periods and that considerable variation in energy intake exists across individual bears. We further show that subsistence-caught whale carcasses provide an upper threshold of \u3e 4000 seal equivalents, which could potentially meet mean consumption needs of ~ 80% of the southern Beaufort Sea bear subpopulation during autumn and winter periods. Finally, we modify an existing model to show that observed mass changes over autumn and winter could substantially alter spring foraging habitat choice by females with cubs and the chance that a female with reduced energy reserves would abort a pregnancy or abandon cubs in favor of increasing her own survival; these behaviors could potentially influence population vital rates. Our study highlights the importance of mass dynamics over the autumn and winter months, points to the need for additional data on foraging and energetics over this period, and indicates that the recent declines in polar bear body condition in some subpopulations could have complex effects on reproduction

Bayesian inference for group-level cortical surface image-on-scalar-regression with Gaussian process priors

In regression-based analyses of group-level neuroimage data researchers typically fit a series of marginal general linear models to image outcomes at each spatially-referenced pixel. Spatial regularization of effects of interest is usually induced indirectly by applying spatial smoothing to the data during preprocessing. While this procedure often works well, resulting inference can be poorly calibrated. Spatial modeling of effects of interest leads to more powerful analyses, however the number of locations in a typical neuroimage can preclude standard computation with explicitly spatial models. Here we contribute a Bayesian spatial regression model for group-level neuroimaging analyses. We induce regularization of spatially varying regression coefficient functions through Gaussian process priors. When combined with a simple nonstationary model for the error process, our prior hierarchy can lead to more data-adaptive smoothing than standard methods. We achieve computational tractability through Vecchia approximation of our prior which, critically, can be constructed for a wide class of spatial correlation functions and results in prior models that retain full spatial rank. We outline several ways to work with our model in practice and compare performance against standard vertex-wise analyses. Finally we illustrate our method in an analysis of cortical surface fMRI task contrast data from a large cohort of children enrolled in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study

Pinch Resonances in a Radio Frequency Driven SQUID Ring-Resonator System

In this paper we present experimental data on the frequency domain response of a SQUID ring (a Josephson weak link enclosed by a thick superconducting ring) coupled to a radio frequency (rf) tank circuit resonator. We show that with the ring weakly hysteretic the resonance lineshape of this coupled system can display opposed fold bifurcations that appear to touch (pinch off). We demonstrate that for appropriate circuit parameters these pinch off lineshapes exist as solutions of the non-linear equations of motion for the system.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, Uploaded as implementing a policy of arXiving old paper

Hydrogen gas and its role in cell signalling

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from CAB International via the DOI in this record. Hydrogen gas (H2) was once thought to be inert in biological systems but it has now become apparent that exposure of a wide range of organisms, including animals and plants, to H2or hydrogen-rich water has beneficial effects. It is involved in plant development, and alleviation of stress and illness, such as reperfusion injury. Here, an overview of how H2interacts with organisms is given