A system using solid ceramic oxygen electrolyte cells to measure oxygen fugacities in gas-mixing systems

Details are given for the construction and operation of a 101.3 kN/sq m (1 atmosphere) redox control system. A solid ceramic oxygen electrolyte cell is used to monitor the oxygen fugacity in the furnace. The system consists of a vertical quench, gas mixing furnace with heads designed for mounting the electrolyte cell and with facilities for inserting and removing the samples. The system also contains the high input impedance electronics necessary for measurements, a simplified version of a gas mixing apparatus, and devices for experiments under controlled rates of change relative to temperature and redox state. The calibration and maintenance of the system are discussed

A high-input impedance differential millivolt meter for use with solid ceramic oxygen electrolyte cells

Design factors are given for a high-input impedance differential millivolt meter designed, built, and tested as an inexpensive solid-state electronic system for use in measuring the electromotive force from solid ceramic oxygen electrolyte cells. A schematic diagram is included

A DOUBLE HURDLE APPROACH TO EVALUATING NON-RESIDENTIAL WILDLIFE WATCHING IN THE UNITED STATES

In 1996, over 62 million U.S. residents participated in wildlife watching and spent in excess of 29 billion dollars in this recreational activity. Wildlife watching can be defined as the observation, study, and enjoyment of natural areas and its wild fauna and flora. Residential wildlife watching takes place within one mile of the participant's residence and is often an incidental or secondary activity. Non-residential wildlife watching refers to recreation taking place at a distance of at least one mile from the participant's residence. In recent years, a sharp decline in the number of wildlife watchers has been noted. Between 1991 and 1996, the number of wildlife watchers decreased by 17 percent. During this time interval, the largest decline in participation was observed in non-residential viewing. The number of non-residential wildlife watchers declined by 21 percent. This trend is damaging to towns and communities, especially rural communities which largely depend on recreation dollars. The mitigation or reversal of this trend hinges upon the identification of factors affecting participation and expenditures on wildlife viewing. The determining role of several socioeconomic attributes in explaining participation and expenditures on nature-related recreation has been widely studied in the leisure and recreation literature. However, most of these past studies have focused on fishing and hunting activities rather than the equally important non-residential wildlife watching. Hence, this study evaluates participation decisions and the extent of the participation in non-residential wildlife watching in the United States. Keywords: wildlife watching, limited dependent variables, double hurdlewildlife watching, limited dependent variables, double hurdle, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Responses of Coccidia-Vaccinated Broilers to Essential Oil Blends Supplementation up to Forty-Nine Days of Age

Coccidiosis control may become a greater problem as the use of growth-promoting antibiotics (GPA) and ionophores declines. Vaccination with live oocysts may turn into a popular alternative to the use of coccidiostats in broilers, although cocci vaccination is frequently linked to temporary lower performance in young flocks. This experiment evaluates the dietary supplementation of 2 specific essential oil (EO) blends (Crina Poultry and Crina Alternate), either as alternatives to GPA and ionophores (BMD + Coban) or as feed additives that help to improve the performance of cocci-vaccinated broilers. Live performance and lesion scores were observed. These 2 specific EO blends differ in their efficacy to promote growth. Chickens that were not cocci vaccinated and were fed Crina Poultry had better feed conversion ratio (FCR) than the unmedicated control treatment in the starter period. The same EO improved FCR in cocci-vaccinated birds in the finisher period in comparison to the negative control group, but those responses were not significantly different from other treatments or significant at 49 d of age. No significant differences were observed in lesion scores at 37 d. Diets supplemented with a GPA-ionophore combination consistently supported the best BW gain and FCR in each period and the entire grow-out period. No significant beneficial or deleterious effects on live performance were observed due to these specific EO blends in cocci-vaccinated broilers

Mining Frequent Graph Patterns with Differential Privacy

Discovering frequent graph patterns in a graph database offers valuable information in a variety of applications. However, if the graph dataset contains sensitive data of individuals such as mobile phone-call graphs and web-click graphs, releasing discovered frequent patterns may present a threat to the privacy of individuals. {\em Differential privacy} has recently emerged as the {\em de facto} standard for private data analysis due to its provable privacy guarantee. In this paper we propose the first differentially private algorithm for mining frequent graph patterns. We first show that previous techniques on differentially private discovery of frequent {\em itemsets} cannot apply in mining frequent graph patterns due to the inherent complexity of handling structural information in graphs. We then address this challenge by proposing a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling based algorithm. Unlike previous work on frequent itemset mining, our techniques do not rely on the output of a non-private mining algorithm. Instead, we observe that both frequent graph pattern mining and the guarantee of differential privacy can be unified into an MCMC sampling framework. In addition, we establish the privacy and utility guarantee of our algorithm and propose an efficient neighboring pattern counting technique as well. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is able to output frequent patterns with good precision

Leveraging legacy codes to distributed problem solving environments: A web service approach

This paper describes techniques used to leverage high performance legacy codes as CORBA components to a distributed problem solving environment. It first briefly introduces the software architecture adopted by the environment. Then it presents a CORBA oriented wrapper generator (COWG) which can be used to automatically wrap high performance legacy codes as CORBA components. Two legacy codes have been wrapped with COWG. One is an MPI-based molecular dynamic simulation (MDS) code, the other is a finite element based computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code for simulating incompressible Navier-Stokes flows. Performance comparisons between runs of the MDS CORBA component and the original MDS legacy code on a cluster of workstations and on a parallel computer are also presented. Wrapped as CORBA components, these legacy codes can be reused in a distributed computing environment. The first case shows that high performance can be maintained with the wrapped MDS component. The second case shows that a Web user can submit a task to the wrapped CFD component through a Web page without knowing the exact implementation of the component. In this way, a user’s desktop computing environment can be extended to a high performance computing environment using a cluster of workstations or a parallel computer

Modulation of the CD8+-T-cell response by CD4+ CD25+ regulatory T cells in patients with Hepatitis B virus infection

CD4+ CD25+ regulatory T cells have been shown to maintain peripheral tolerance against self and foreign antigens. In this study we analyzed the effect of circulating CD4+ CD25+ T cells on CD8+-T-cell responses of patients with chronic and resolved hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. We demonstrated that circulating CD4+ CD25+ T cells modulate the function and expansion of HBV-specific CD8+ cells ex vivo in all patients, regardless of whether they have chronic or resolved HBV infection. The possible role of CD4+ CD25+ T cells in the pathogenesis of chronic HBV infection is not supported by these data. However, these results might have implications for optimizing future immunotherapeutic approaches to HBV treatment

Scaling behavior of quark propagator in full QCD

We study the scaling behavior of the quark propagator on two lattices with similar physical volume in Landau gauge with 2+1 flavors of dynamical quarks in order to test whether we are close to the continuum limit for these lattices. We use configurations generated with an improved staggered (``Asqtad'') action by the MILC collaboration. The calculations are performed on $28^3\times 96$ lattices with lattice spacing $a = 0.09$ fm and on $20^3\times 64$ lattices with lattice spacing $a = 0.12$ fm. We calculate the quark mass function, $M(q^2)$, and the wave-function renormalization function, $Z(q^2)$, for a variety of bare quark masses. Comparing the behavior of these functions on the two sets of lattices we find that both $Z(q^2)$ and $M(q^2)$ show little sensitivity to the ultraviolet cutoff.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Scaling Behavior of the Landau Gauge Overlap Quark Propagator

The properties of the momentum space quark propagator in Landau gauge are examined for the overlap quark action in quenched lattice QCD. Numerical calculations are done on three lattices with different lattice spacings and similar physical volumes to explore the approach of the quark propagator towards the continuum limit. We have calculated the nonperturbative momentum-dependent wavefunction renormalization function $Z(p^2)$ and the nonperturbative mass function $M(p^2)$ for a variety of bare quark masses and extrapolate to the chiral limit. We find the behavior of $Z(p^2)$ and $M(p^2)$ are in good agreement for the two finer lattices in the chiral limit. The quark condensate is also calculated.Comment: 3 pages, Lattice2003(Chiral fermions