Modeling energy savings of glazed and unglazed collectors used for space heating, water heating, and space cooling

Glazed and unglazed solar thermal collectors were compared in TRNSYS simulations for a multi-use application of water heating, space heating, and space cooling. The collectors provided space cooling by radiating heat to the night sky. The overall solar fraction achieved by two (7.6 m2) of the glazed collectors was similar to the solar fraction achieved by six (22.8 m2) of the unglazed collectors in the climates of Raleigh, NC, Jacksonville, FL, and Albuquerque, NM. However, the unglazed collectors produced less energy cost savings at these sizes because a greater proportion of their energy was provided as cooling, which was supplied more efficiently by auxiliary equipment. For each type of collector, the greatest solar fraction of space heating and water heating were achieved in Jacksonville, and the greatest solar fraction of space cooling was achieved in Albuquerque. The climate of Raleigh generally produced heating and cooling performances that were in the middle of the range produced by collectors in the three geographic regions. For glazed and unglazed arrays of equal size in Raleigh (15.2 m2), the ratio of the unglazed solar fraction to the glazed solar fraction was 0.26 for space heating, 0.73 for water heating, and 2.71 for space cooling

Amicus Curiae Briefs In The United States Supreme Court

The purpose of this research is to analyze and develop a narrative describing the relationships between amicus curiae briefs submitted to the United States Supreme Court, the opinions of the justices, and the outcome of the case. The Supreme Court cases selected for the statistical analysis come from the Washington University Law School’s “Supreme Court Database” to narrow the results to cases relevant to state issues. Supreme Court cases included in the case study section of this report have unique or special characteristics that set them apart from other cases. Through our research, we gauged the ideological leanings of groups that submitted briefs to the Supreme Court and compared them to the ideologies of Supreme Court justices who wrote the opinions of the respective cases. We concluded that, in most cases, there is evidence that amicus briefs have a significant impact on the outcome of a case and that the ideology of the groups is the same as the justice that is referencing them

Orbital Technique and Analysis of Orbits

This paper describes the compositional technique called Orbital Technique. The content of the paper includes the following: The background and development of Orbital Technique, the compositional process and basics of Orbital Technique, theoretical phenomenon related to the use of Orbital Technique, and the analysis of the orchestral piece Orbits that was composed with the technique. Emphasis is given to outlining the basics of Orbital Technique in order for compositional recreation and the analysis of the piece Orbits

Federal Policies and Local Realities: The Case of Appalachian Senior Programs

National senior service programs have had a long and relatively success-ful history. Emerging at the intersection of federal aging and poverty policy initiatives in the early 1960s, projects such as the Foster Grand-parent Program (FGP) and the Senior Companion Program (SCP) have expanded in size and scope over the last several decades. These two pro-grams were first introduced into northwestern North Carolina in the 1980s. While the experiences of FGP and SCP in the region have broadly mirrored the successes of programs located elsewhere, they have also con-fronted difficulties unique to their local realities that federal policy guidelines are often not sensitive to

The Effect of Polyamines on Vibrio cholerae Virulence Properties

Vibrio cholerae is the causative agent of the severe enteric disease, cholera. To be a virulent strain, the bacterium must be able to synthesize both cholera toxin and toxin-coregulated pilus (TCP). TCP has been shown to mediate microcolony formation, which is believed to aid in the colonization and concentration of V. cholerae within the small intestine. Only a few environmental signals have been shown to regulate V. cholerae virulence gene expression. Polyamines have been implicated in regulating virulence gene expression in other bacteria, yet have not been studied in V. cholerae for their effect on virulence properties. Performing agglutination assays we found that all polyamines tested had a negative effect on autoagglutination in a concentration dependent manner. Putrescine and cadaverine significantly affected the synthesis of the major pilin subunit, TcpA; and interestingly, only putrescine had an effect on the relative abundance of the TCP found on the cell surface. The polyamines did not affect pili bundling; however, they inhibited CTX? transduction by 80%, indicating their ability to affect functionality of TCP. From this data we hypothesize the inhibitory autoagglutination effect is caused by the positively charged amine groups on the polyamines electrostatically disrupting the pili-pili interactions which mediate microcolony formation

Labor Law In Great Britain And France In the 1980’s: The Unintended Effects Of Legal Reforms On Organized Labor

This paper compares two instances where the political use of law, specifically labor legislation, was used to effect broader social change during the early 1980s. The two cases focused on are the Thatcher administration in Great Britain and the Mitter and government in France. These divergent cases are instructive as much for their similarities as for their differences. Though the two governments had opposite intentions in terms of the role that organized labor would play in their respective societies, each relied on extensive labor law reform as a means to achieve their objectives. The eventual outcomes of these two political experiments were also similar: power of organized labor was undermined in both countries, albeit in the one case intentionally and in the other unintentionally. Overall this comparison provides insight into the problematic nature of state projects, particularly when law is used to achieve specific social and political aims

The Trolley Car Company of Mexico City and the Absence of Institutionalized Accounting: 1940-1943

This thesis reveals that during 1940-1943 the Trolley Car Company of Mexico City haphazardly recorded its expenses and revenue and did not adhere to any accounting regulations. Utilizing never before analyzed source material, including company expense reports from 1940, 1941 and 1942, this thesis brings to light a new discussion regarding Mexican industrial development and the Mexican labor movement. Accounting practices, or the lack thereof, not only impacted the company, which can be seen within the reports, but it also impacted labor negotiations and the company’s relationship with the Mexican government

Decadal-Scale Trends in Forest Succession and Climatic Sensitivity in a Red Spruce-Fraser Fir Forest at Roan Mountain, Pisgah and Cherokee National Forests

I used dendrochronological techniques to investigate the temporal stability of a climate signal in relation to successional processes and disturbance events in the heavily disturbed red spruce (Picea rubens Sarg.) and Fraser fir [Abies fraseri (Pursh) Poir.] forest of Roan Mountain, Tennessee and North Carolina. I collected increment cores from all trees within six 0.05 ha plots located in spruce-fir co-dominant stands. I developed a red spruce tree-ring chronology from cores collected in my sampling plots and from trees located elsewhere in the study area. To test the stability of the climate-tree growth relationship, I performed statistical correlation within moving intervals using DendroClim 2002 software. Changes in forest structure coincided with stand-wide disturbance events such as balsam woolly adelgid (Adelges piceae Ratz.) infestation and widespread early twentieth-century logging. I detected shifts in climatic sensitivity during periods of changing forest composition following disturbances. Notably, a significant shift in red spruce temperature sensitivity occurred during the 1940s, coinciding with a period of aggressive logging. Red spruce climatic sensitivity was often sporadic and fluctuating in signal strength, leading to the hypothesis that stand dynamics may play a larger role than climate in limiting spruce tree growth in a frequently disturbed, closed canopy forest

Mosquito chronological age determination using mid-infrared spectroscopy and chemometrics

Determining a mosquito population’s species composition and age is crucial for estimating the risk of pathogen transmission. At present, age-grading methods are chiefly physiologic and classify the mosquitoes in terms of parity (e.g., nulliparous or parous). Less commonly used chronologic methods (e.g., qPCR or near infrared spectroscopy [NIR]) have limited temporal resolution (NIR) or require consumable reagents and technological expertise with molecular methods. The current lack of robust methods to rapidly evaluate a population’s chronologic age limits our ability to assess pathogen transmission risk in the context of vectorial capacity estimations (i.e., daily survivability). Our current research seeks to develop methods of mosquito age determination utilizing mid-infrared spectroscopy and advanced numerical analysis(chemometrics). Infrared (IR) spectroscopy is a type of vibrational spectroscopy that is both sensitive and information rich. Subtle changes in IR spectra correlate with changes in the biochemistry of mosquitoes as they age. It has been shown that mosquito species can be identified using mid infrared spectroscopy and chemometrics. Using mid-infrared spectroscopy and chemometrics, the chronologic age of Aedes triseriatus mosquitoes were predicted using PLSR and ANN models. Aedes triseriatus were successfully reared into groups of different ages with low uncertainty in the age. Aedes triseriatus spectra were used to create a training dataset and fit models for prediction using PLSR and ANN. PLSR and ANN models were used to predict the age of samples using a validation dataset with SEPsv of 4.3 and 3.3 days respectively. Mean spectra for each age group were used to try and discern a specific chemical underpinning for the performance of these models and to explain why mosquito age could be predicted using PLSR and ANN models. Peaks between 1200 – 1000 cm-1 typically associated with chitin were investigated and the second derivative of mean absorbance by age at 1032 cm-1increased linearly with age

It Cannot Be Helped: Racial Stratification in Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas During World War II

Between March 1942 and 1945 the War Relocation Authority (WRA) forced over one hundred and twenty thousand Japanese Americans into internment camps hastily constructed across the country. Small communities outside of the rural towns of McGehee and Denson, Arkansas located in the historically racially charged Delta housed two of these internment camps: WRA Internment Camps Jerome and Rohwer. At these two internment camps Japanese-Americans from the far West entered into Jim Crow era Arkansas and into a hotbed of established racial stratification. This research project examined the modern history of this particular geographic region and placed the liminal status of the Japanese-American internees into perspective through analysis of oral histories, newspaper articles, and statistical data. The established racial hierarchy in Delta shaped the way that the local population treated and perceived the Japanese-American internees and conversely impacted the way that the Japanese-American internees perceived the local population