How Does Silo Storage Time Affect Pavement Durability in Cold Weather Climates?

One of the most significant problems in asphalt pavements in cold weather climates like New England is thermal cracking. Thermal cracks allow water to penetrate into a pavement, significantly weakening the entire structure which necessitates expensive maintenance and repair. The main goal of this research project was to investigate how heated silo storage time, a process during asphalt production, impacts how likely asphalt pavement is to experience thermal cracking related problems. Asphalt concrete specimens aged for various amounts of time in a storage silo were tested using the Disk-Shaped Compact Tension test, a laboratory test that evaluates asphalt specimens\u27 thermal cracking susceptibility. Although the results were not definitive, the data analysis indicated that silo storage time is having certain negative effects on asphalt’s thermal cracking resistance. Ideally, the results from this research will give transportation agencies and private contractors a better understanding of how production processes impact the performance of asphalt concrete

Industrial Policy as Strategic Trade Policy in a Global Economy

With the introduction of “strategic trade policy” in the 1980’s came two separate theoretical justifications for increased government intervention to promote national industries: first, argued by Brander and Spencer (1985), the government could alter the strategic interaction in oligopolistic competition to shift profits to a domestic firm; second, the government could promote key industries in order to capture the benefits of positive externalities, such as knowledge spillovers. But the creation of the WTO and the regulation of export subsidies soon limited the strategic trade policy options available to governments. This paper examines the case for providing R&D and capital subsidies to domestic firms as a kind of strategic trade policy in the increasingly global economy of the 21st century

[Letter from Charles DeCarlo to Alice Stone Ilchman, March 23, 1989]

Former College president, Charles DeCarlo, offers President Alice Ilchman advice and historical context to inform the current situation during the 1989 sit-in.https://digitalcommons.slc.edu/protest/1036/thumbnail.jp

The Impact of an Intronic Dopamine Receptor Type-2 Single Nucleotide Polymorphism on Growth, Reproduction and Prolactin Gene Expression in Beef Bulls

Prolactin (PRL) is a ~22 kDa peptide hormone reported to regulate over 300 distinct biological functions in vertebrates. Tonic inhibition of prolactin (PRL) by dopamine binding to dopamine receptor-type 2 (DRD2) is well established and changes in PRL serum concentration resulting in detrimental effects to male reproductive physiology have been observed. Release and synthesis of PRL may be altered due to a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) in the DRD2 gene. The objective of these studies were to evaluate associations of a previously identified DRD2 SNP to PRL serum concentrations, growth traits, semen quality, and PRL gene expression in beef bulls. Semen quality, growth traits, and serum PRL concentrations were recorded from bulls exposed to a dopamine agonist over a 4-year study. Testis and epididymis were collected from bulls in Year 1 at the end of a 126 d study. Genotyping was performed on genomic DNA from semen samples by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and Taqman custom SNP genotyping assays. Genotype was not associated with semen quality, serum PRL concentrations, or growth traits; however, treatment of a dopamine agonist lowered serum PRL concentrations. Immunohistochemistry revealed the presence of DRD2 in testis, epididymis and sperm cells. Prolactin protein expression, assessed by western blotting, indicated presence of PRL protein in only anterior pituitary. Pituitaries were collected from a local abattoir with selection of male posterior pituitaries performed by duplex PCR and Southern blotting methods. Genotyping was performed by RFLP for the DRD2 SNP. Slot blot and densitometry analysis for PRL protein expression was performed on a subset of male pituitaries (n = 92). No association between the DRD2 SNP and PRL protein expression in bovine anterior pituitary was observed. Taken together, these data indicate no DRD2 SNP genotypic effect on growth or semen quality. Further, PRL protein expression was similar across genotype in the anterior pituitary, the main source of PRL synthesis and secretion

Review of \u3cem\u3eGhettoside: A True Story of Murder in America\u3c/em\u3e. Jill Leovy. Reviewed by John DeCarlo.

Jill Leovy, Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America. Spiegel & Grau (2015), 386 pages, $28.00 (hardcover)

Smaltimento e recupero di materie prime da batterie al litio

Ogni anno sul mercato Europeo sono immesse 800000 tonnellate di batterie, circa il 25% di queste sono batterie agli ioni di litio. Le caratteristiche delle batterie agli ioni di litio le hanno rese particolarmente adatte per apparecchiature portatili quali, ad esempio, dispositivi di comunicazione e informatici, riproduttori portatili, apparecchiature mediche, dispositivi industriali, applicazioni militari e qualsiasi altro prodotto che richiede una fonte energetica e di alta qualità. Grazie a queste caratteristiche e ad una sempre maggior diffusione di questi dispositivi la divulgazione sui mercati mondiali delle batterie al litio è in continua crescita. Batterie e accumulatori non pongono particolari problemi quando sono in fase di utilizzo o di stoccaggio ma hanno un periodo di vita medio di circa 3 anni;esiste dunque un problema ambientale legato al loro smaltimento. Le batterie al litio contengono infatti materiali tossici, infiammabili ed in parte volatili. I rischi connessi allo smaltimento delle batterie esauste sono dovuti alla diffusione nell’ambiente di tali materiali pericolosi, sia attraverso l’incenerimento,sia attraverso il deposito in discarica. Uno dei problemi per la produzione queste batterie è l’approvvigionamento di litio. Il litio è, infatti, disponibile in natura in quantità limitata e richiede processi di estrazione particolarmente complicati e costosi e il mercato è in mano a pochi produttori. Il recupero delle materie prime da batterie al litio, che verrà poi riutilizzato per la produzione di nuovo materiale catodico, risulta quindi molto vantaggioso sia da un punto di vista economico sia da quello ambientale

They Don't Know Us Here

To be human is to be shaped by memory: what is remembered, what is forgotten, and what lies quietly dormant. But what of the unique mind, for whom this balance is upset? The novella They Don't Know Us Here imagines a place where David Whelan experiences past and present on a continuous plane. Confined to Ward 12 of St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., David's mind soars between life on the ward and memories from before his confinement. But when things change in the present, what is shaken loose in the past? Through looking both inward on David and out to the other men residing on the ward, They Don't Know Us Here explores what happens when unquiet minds are confined to bodies that rest

Generation, Estimation and Tracking of Faces

This thesis describes techniques for the construction of face models for both computer graphics and computer vision applications. It also details model-based computer vision methods for extracting and combining data with the model. Our face models respect the measurements of populations described by face anthropometry studies. In computer graphics, the anthropometric measurements permit the automatic generation of varied geometric models of human faces. This is accomplished by producing a random set of face measurements generated according to anthropometric statistics. A face fitting these measurements is realized using variational modeling. In computer vision, anthropometric data biases face shape estimation towards more plausible individuals. Having such a detailed model encourages the use of model-based techniques—we use a physics-based deformable model framework. We derive and solve a dynamic system which accounts for edges in the image and incorporates optical flow as a motion constraint on the model. Our solution ensures this constraint remains satisfied when edge information is used, which helps prevent tracking drift. This method is extended using the residuals from the optical flow solution. The extracted structure of the model can be improved by determining small changes in the model that reduce this error residual. We present experiments in extracting the shape and motion of a face from image sequences which exhibit the generality of our technique, as well as provide validation