Evaluation of Raytek infrared pyrometer for continuous propellant temperature measurement

The primary purpose of this evaluation was to determine if the Raytek IR pyrometer that was installed in the 600 gallon propellant mixers could be used to provide a continuous, accurate, reliable measurement of the propellant temperature during mixing. The Raytek infrared sensor is not recommended to be used for controlling propellant temperature nor for inspection buy-off. The first part of the evaluation was to determine the accuracy of the sensor in measuring the propellant temperature. The second part was to determine the reliability of the air purge design in preventing contamination of the IR window

Dissociation of Detection and Discrimination of Pure Tones following Bilateral Lesions of Auditory Cortex

It is well known that damage to the peripheral auditory system causes deficits in tone detection as well as pitch and loudness perception across a wide range of frequencies. However, the extent to which to which the auditory cortex plays a critical role in these basic aspects of spectral processing, especially with regard to speech, music, and environmental sound perception, remains unclear. Recent experiments indicate that primary auditory cortex is necessary for the normally-high perceptual acuity exhibited by humans in pure-tone frequency discrimination. The present study assessed whether the auditory cortex plays a similar role in the intensity domain and contrasted its contribution to sensory versus discriminative aspects of intensity processing. We measured intensity thresholds for pure-tone detection and pure-tone loudness discrimination in a population of healthy adults and a middle-aged man with complete or near-complete lesions of the auditory cortex bilaterally. Detection thresholds in his left and right ears were 16 and 7 dB HL, respectively, within clinically-defined normal limits. In contrast, the intensity threshold for monaural loudness discrimination at 1 kHz was 6.5±2.1 dB in the left ear and 6.5±1.9 dB in the right ear at 40 dB sensation level, well above the means of the control population (left ear: 1.6±0.22 dB; right ear: 1.7±0.19 dB). The results indicate that auditory cortex lowers just-noticeable differences for loudness discrimination by approximately 5 dB but is not necessary for tone detection in quiet. Previous human and Old-world monkey experiments employing lesion-effect, neurophysiology, and neuroimaging methods to investigate the role of auditory cortex in intensity processing are reviewed.United States. National Institutes of Health (DC03328)United States. National Institutes of Health (DC006353)United States. National Institutes of Health (DC00117)United States. National Institutes of Health (T32-DC00038

U.S. Billion-ton Update: Biomass Supply for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry

The Report, Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply (generally referred to as the Billion-Ton Study or 2005 BTS), was an estimate of “potential” biomass within the contiguous United States based on numerous assumptions about current and future inventory and production capacity, availability, and technology. In the 2005 BTS, a strategic analysis was undertaken to determine if U.S. agriculture and forest resources have the capability to potentially produce at least one billion dry tons of biomass annually, in a sustainable manner—enough to displace approximately 30% of the country’s present petroleum consumption. To ensure reasonable confidence in the study results, an effort was made to use relatively conservative assumptions. However, for both agriculture and forestry, the resource potential was not restricted by price. That is, all identified biomass was potentially available, even though some potential feedstock would more than likely be too expensive to actually be economically available. In addition to updating the 2005 study, this report attempts to address a number of its shortcoming

SNAPSHOT USA 2019 : a coordinated national camera trap survey of the United States

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.With the accelerating pace of global change, it is imperative that we obtain rapid inventories of the status and distribution of wildlife for ecological inferences and conservation planning. To address this challenge, we launched the SNAPSHOT USA project, a collaborative survey of terrestrial wildlife populations using camera traps across the United States. For our first annual survey, we compiled data across all 50 states during a 14-week period (17 August - 24 November of 2019). We sampled wildlife at 1509 camera trap sites from 110 camera trap arrays covering 12 different ecoregions across four development zones. This effort resulted in 166,036 unique detections of 83 species of mammals and 17 species of birds. All images were processed through the Smithsonian's eMammal camera trap data repository and included an expert review phase to ensure taxonomic accuracy of data, resulting in each picture being reviewed at least twice. The results represent a timely and standardized camera trap survey of the USA. All of the 2019 survey data are made available herein. We are currently repeating surveys in fall 2020, opening up the opportunity to other institutions and cooperators to expand coverage of all the urban-wild gradients and ecophysiographic regions of the country. Future data will be available as the database is updated at eMammal.si.edu/snapshot-usa, as well as future data paper submissions. These data will be useful for local and macroecological research including the examination of community assembly, effects of environmental and anthropogenic landscape variables, effects of fragmentation and extinction debt dynamics, as well as species-specific population dynamics and conservation action plans. There are no copyright restrictions; please cite this paper when using the data for publication.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

A Roadmap for HEP Software and Computing R&D for the 2020s

Particle physics has an ambitious and broad experimental programme for the coming decades. This programme requires large investments in detector hardware, either to build new facilities and experiments, or to upgrade existing ones. Similarly, it requires commensurate investment in the R&D of software to acquire, manage, process, and analyse the shear amounts of data to be recorded. In planning for the HL-LHC in particular, it is critical that all of the collaborating stakeholders agree on the software goals and priorities, and that the efforts complement each other. In this spirit, this white paper describes the R&D activities required to prepare for this software upgrade.Peer reviewe

Comarison of detection and discrimination thresholds for Case A1+ vs. controls.

<p>Comarison of detection and discrimination thresholds for Case A1+ vs. controls.</p

Summary of human lesion effects on loudness perception.

<p>O = no deficit, + = mildly impaired, ++ = moderately impaired, +++ = severely impaired. The extent of damage to TG is unknown for Jerger et al. <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0044602#pone.0044602-Hodgson1" target="_blank">[24]</a>. The lesions in Jerger et al.’s case <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0044602#pone.0044602-Baran1" target="_blank">[25]</a> extended into TG bilaterally.</p

Case A1+ pure-tone audiogram for left-ear (filled symbols) and right-ear (open symbols) presentation.

<p>Clinically-defined normal limits extend 25 dB above the dotted line, which indicates the average threshold from the ANSI standard.</p

Case A1+ MRI FLAIR sequences.

<p>(<b>A,B</b>) Parasagittal sections through the left and right hemispheres. Left TG is atrophic and right TG is replaced by encephalomalacia (low signal intensity). Ischemic demyelination and retrograde degeneration within adjacent white matter regions appear as areas of high signal intensity. (<b>C</b>) Coronal section through the mid-portion of left and right TG and STG. (<b>D</b>) Horizontal section through left and right TG and STG. See text for image acquisition parameters.</p