Tri-county pilot study

The author has identified the following significant results. An area inventory was performed for three southeast Texas counties (Montgomery, Walker, and San Jacinto) totaling 0.65 million hectares. The inventory was performed using a two level hierarchy. Level 1 was divided into forestland, rangeland, and other land. Forestland was separated into Level 2 categories: pine, hardwood, and mixed; rangeland was not separated further. Results consisted of area statistics for each county and for the entire study site for pine, hardwood, mixed, rangeland, and other land. Color coded county classification maps were produced for the May data set, and procedures were developed and tested

EmergencyGrid:Planning in Convergence Environments

Government agencies are often responsible for event handling, planning, coordination, and status reporting during emergency response in natural disaster events such as floods, tsunamis and earthquakes. Across such a range of emergency response scenarios, there is a common set of requirements that distributed intelligent computer systems generally address. To support the implementation of these requirements, some researchers are proposing the creation of grids, where final interface and processing nodes perform joint work supported by a network infrastructure. The aim of this project is to extend the concepts of emergency response grids, using a convergence scenario between web and other computational platforms. Our initial work focuses on the Interactive Digital TV platform, where we intend to transform individual TV devices into active final nodes, using a hierarchical planning structure. We describe the architecture of this approach and an initial prototype specification that is being developed to validate some concepts and illustrate the advantages of this convergence planning environment

Quantum Error Correction on Linear Nearest Neighbor Qubit Arrays

A minimal depth quantum circuit implementing 5-qubit quantum error correction in a manner optimized for a linear nearest neighbor architecture is described. The canonical decomposition is used to construct fast and simple gates that incorporate the necessary swap operations. Simulations of the circuit's performance when subjected to discrete and continuous errors are presented. The relationship between the error rate of a physical qubit and that of a logical qubit is investigated with emphasis on determining the concatenated error correction threshold.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Microstructured optical fibres for gas sensing: design fabrication and post-fab processing

Air/silica Microstructured Optical Fibers (MOFs) offer new prospects for fiber based sensor devices. In this paper, two topics of particular significance for gas sensing using air guiding Photonic Bandgap Fibers (PBGFs) are discussed. First, we address the issue of controlling the modal properties of PBGFs and demonstrate a single mode, polarization maintaining air guiding PBGF. Secondly, we present recent improvements of a femtosecond laser machining technique for fabricating fluidic channels in PBGFs, which allowed us to achieve cells with multiple side access channels and low additional loss

Third Annual Report of the Farm Management Service for Farmers in Soil Conservation Demonstration Areas for the year 1937 (April 1937 to March 1938)

Farm Management,

Alkali metal cation interactions with 12-crown-4 in the gas phase: revisited

pre-printQuantitative interactions of alkali metal cations with the cyclic 12-crown-4 polyether ligand (12C4) are studied. Experimentally, Rb+(12C4) and Cs+(12C4) complexes are formed using electrospray ionization and their bond dissociation energies (BDEs) determined using threshold collision-induced dissociation of these complexes with xenon in a guided ion beam tandem mass spectrometer. The energy-dependent cross sections thus obtained are interpreted using an analysis that includes consideration of unimolecular decay rates, internal energy of the reactant ions, and multiple ion-neutral collisions. 0 K BDEs of 151.5 9.7 and 137.0 8.7 kJ/mol, respectively, are determined and exceed those previously measured by 60 and 54 kJ/mol, respectively, consistent with the hypothesis proposed there that excited conformers had been studied. In order to provide comparable thermochemical results for the Na+(12C4) and K+(12C4) systems, the published data for these systems are reinterpreted using the same analysis techniques, which have advanced since the original data were acquired. Revised BDEs for these systems are obtained as 243.9 12.6 and 182.0 17.3 kJ/mol, respectively, which are within experimental uncertainty of the previously reported values. In addition, quantum chemical calculations are conducted at the B3LYP and MP2(full) levels of theory with geometries and zero point energies calculated at the B3LYP level using both HW*/6-311+G(2d,2p) and def2-TZVPPD basis sets. The theoretical results are in reasonable agreement with experiment, with B3LYP/def2-TZVPPD values being in particularly good agreement. Computations also allow the potential energy surfaces for dissociation of the M+(12C4) complexes to be elucidated. These are used to help explain why the previous studies formed excited conformers of Rb+(12C4) and Cs+(12C4) but apparently not of Na+(12C4) and K+(12C4)

Vacuum Photon Splitting in Lorentz-Violating Quantum Electrodynamics

Radiative corrections arising from Lorentz violation in the fermion sector induce a nonzero amplitude for vacuum photon splitting. At one loop, the on-shell amplitude acquires both CPT-even and CPT-odd contributions forbidden in conventional electrodynamics.Comment: 4 pages, minor wording changes, references added, accepted in Physical Review Letter

Prevention of ulcer disease in goldfish by means of vaccination

A vaccine comprising cells of Aeromonas bestiarum grown in tryptic soy broth and atypical A. salmonicida cells produced in iron-limited and iron-supplemented media protected goldfish Carassius auratus when administered by immersion (dosage ≈ 5 × 107 cells/mL for 60 s) followed after 28 d by an oral booster (dosage = 5 × 107 cells/g of feed), which was fed for 7 d so that each fish received about 1 g of vaccine-containing feed. After challenge by intramuscular injection of a virulent culture of atypical A. salmonicida, the relative percent survival (RPS) was more than 90%. The approach was more successful than using a commercial furunculosis vaccine with or without supplementation with A. bestiarum or atypical A. salmonicida cells. Moreover, a smooth derivative of the virulent rough culture of atypical A. salmonicida was less effective as a vaccine candidate, yielding an RPS of only 65%. Low antibody titers of 1:39–1:396 were found in the vaccinated fish. The vaccinated fish had a significantly higher proportion of dead head kidney macrophages (10.9 ± 3.5%; P = 0.0149) than did the controls (6.8 ± 3.1%). However, differences in the number of erythrocytes and leukocytes, the level of phagocytic and lysozyme activities, and the proportion of lymphocytes, monocytes, and polymorphonuclear cells were not statistically significant between the two groups