Comparing the Point Predictions and Subjective Probability Distributions of Professional Forecasters

We use data from the Survey of Professional Forecasters to compare point forecasts of GDP growth and inflation with the subjective probability distributions held by forecasters. We find that SPF forecasters summarize their underlying distributions in different ways and that their summaries tend to be favorable relative to the central tendency of the underlying distributions. We also find that those forecasters who report favorable point estimates in the current survey tend to do so in subsequent surveys. These findings, plus the inescapable fact that point forecasts reveal nothing about the uncertainty that forecasters feel, suggest that the SPF and similar surveys should not ask for point forecasts. It seems more reasonable to elicit probabilistic expectations and derive measures of central tendency and uncertainty, as we do here.

Fog of War; Cloud of Memory: The Fifty-Third Ohio Volunteer Infantry Shiloh\u27s Story

The Fifty-Third Ohio Volunteer Infantry was created on September 6, 1861. Men throughout the southern counties of Ohio flocked to Jackson, Ohio to join the new regiment. Poor leadership, supply issues, and inexperience immediately plagued the Fifty-Third Ohio. The Ohioans first experienced enemy fire on the morning of April 6, 1862 at the Battle of Shiloh. Throughout the war, the Fifty-Third Ohio fought at many battles including Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and Atlanta. More than any other conflict, the regiment’s first combat experience remained linked to its reputation and honor. During the opening fight at Shiloh, the regiment was ordered to retreat by its commanding officer, Colonel J.J. Appler. However, two companies remained on the line and order was restored to the majority of the regiment through the efforts of Ephraim C. Dawes, James Percy, Wells S. Jones, and others. Even though the regiment remained heavily engaged in the fight, and continued to engage the enemy the following day, it was publicly berated for cowardice by its division commander, General William Tecumseh Sherman. Union leadership’s desire to clear themselves from the accusation of surprise at Shiloh created scapegoats out of regiments like the Fifty-Third Ohio. Due in large part to the concepts of honor and manhood during the Civil War Era, the men of the regiment sought to clear their individual honor and collective reputation from the perceived stain of Shiloh. Newspapers and Union leadership initially derided the regiment for Shiloh. Even after the blame for the early withdraw was attached directly to Appler, the Fifty-Third Ohio was not entirely free from the accusations and innuendos of Shiloh. The regiment’s successful service later in the war was unjustly tainted by the lingering perceptions of its first combat experience at Shiloh. Unfortunately, the reputation of the Fifty-Third Ohio remained frozen in negativity due to the lack of major scholarly interpretations on Shiloh during the first half of the Twentieth Century

Modeling Predictions of the Performance of Tube Bank Heat Exchangers with Phase Change Materials

As decarbonization of the power grid increases with renewable power generation sources, the intermittent nature of power generation also increases. With intermittent sources of power, there is a greater chance of excess power at specified parts of the day. To ensure that all power generated can be used rather than lost, ways to store excess energy need to be investigated. Currently the most prevalent form of energy storage is through electrochemical batteries. Electrochemical batteries however, are expensive and require added infrastructure for deployment. An alternative to electrochemical batteries is thermal energy storage (TES), that can aid in reducing buildings heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) loads on the power grid. TES is commonly conducted by using phase change materials (PCM) which melt or solidify at specified temperatures. By taking advantage of the latent heat energy stored in the PCM, this energy can be used to condition a space later, reducing the peak thermal loads for a building. One way to use PCM for TES is through tube bank heat exchangers, which assembles a bundle of PCM encapsulated tubes in a particular spacing. Once the tube bank is configured, air would then pass over the tube bank exchanging heat with the PCM encapsulated tubes. This project focuses on optimizing the tube bank configuration to ensure the time taken to charge & discharge the TES would allow for the thermal battery to be used daily. Predictions for the heat exchangers performance is made through an analytical model while varying specified conditions including the tube bank spacing, encapsulation methods, the specified PCM used, and the incoming air temperatures. By modifying these conditions in the analytical model, estimations can be made before a physical test bed is produced for validation

Chikungunya Occurrence among a Religious Missions Trip to Haiti in the Summer of 2014 and Implications for Community Health

As global travel becomes more common, the risk of spreading infectious diseases is increasing. Vectors too are spreading and becoming invasive species in environmental niches where they had previously been absent. The potential continues to grow for people to bring back diseases and infect local naive insect populations, which over time will increase the likelihood of the disease transmission occurring locally. This article evaluates the impact of a mission’s trip to Haiti and the return to a region of the United States that just recently became invaded by Aedes aegypti. The attack rate among the missionaries was approximately 20% (n=2), but this brings into question precautions that missionaries and other travelers will want to take upon return from tropical regions with endemic vector borne disease. Providers as well as travel clinics should educate patients regarding their viremic period and the potential to bring back diseases with them. While it would take hundreds of people to be viremic and to be bitten by the naive vector to establish local transmission, the preventative action is minor and would require travelers from endemic areas to continue to apply insect repellant for 7 days after return from an endemic region

Interpersonal violence in peacetime Malawi.

Background: The contribution of interpersonal violence (IPV) to trauma burden varies greatly by region. The high rates of IPV in sub-Saharan Africa are thought to relate in part to the high rates of collective violence. Malawi, a country with no history of internal collective violence, provides an excellent setting to evaluate whether collective violence drives the high rates of IPV in this region. Methods: This is a retrospective review of a prospective trauma registry from 2009 through 2016 at Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe, Malawi. Adult (\u3e16 years) victims of IPV were compared with non-intentional trauma victims. Log binomial regression determined factors associated with increased risk of mortality for victims of IPV. Results: Of 72 488 trauma patients, 25 008 (34.5%) suffered IPV. Victims of IPV were more often male (80.2% vs. 74.8%; p Discussion: Even in a sub-Saharan country that never experienced internal collective violence, IPV injury rates are high. Public health efforts to measure and address alcohol use, and studies to determine the role of mob justice, poverty, and intimate partner violence in IPV, in Malawi are needed. Level of evidence: Level III

The Investigation of Thermal Energy Storage - Heat Pump Integration for Residential Applications

Transitions to a majority renewable energy-based grid to enable decarbonization require a significant increase in energy storage to supplement the intermittent nature of renewables. Buildings consume a substantial portion of electricity on the grid for thermal loads related to Heating Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC). Due to the high cost of battery storage and the synergy with the primarily thermal loads of buildings, thermal energy storage (TES) is well suited to add additional energy storage to the grid at a low cost. This project investigated the implementation and feasibility of thermal storage with heat pumps in renewable energy-powered workspace. Integration was done with heat pumps due to their growing popularity with the electrification of household heating. This synergy is essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with traditional home heating. The project has designed a prototype design and tested a small-scale heat pump-TES system on a fully renewable test bed at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach. A fully designed model was created in CAD based on preliminary heat transfer and heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning calculations for thermal loading and required components. A validation model was completed and tested to verify the feasibility of the integration of thermal energy storage and existing heat pump systems and validates that this can be scaled for various use cases, targeting low-income and small-scale residential applications. This prototype was used to explore engineering challenges of future system configurations, examine component behavior through parametric testing, and evaluate energy savings enabled by adding TES to residential HVAC systems

The Investigation of Thermal Energy Storage - Heat Pump Integration for Residential Applications

Transitions to a majority renewable energy-based grid to enable decarbonization require a significant increase in energy storage to supplement the intermittent nature of renewables. Buildings consume a substantial portion of electricity on the grid for thermal loads related to Heating Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC). Due to the high cost of battery storage and the synergy with the primarily thermal loads of buildings, thermal energy storage (TES) is well suited to add additional energy storage to the grid at a low cost. This project will investigate the implementation of thermal storage with heat pumps in renewable energy-powered workspace. Integration will be done with heat pumps due to their growing popularity with the electrification of household heating. This synergy is essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with traditional home heating. The project will design, prototype, and test a small-scale heat pump-TES system on a fully renewable energy-powered test bed. This initial prototype will be used to explore engineering challenges of potential system configurations, examine component behavior through parametric testing, and evaluate potential energy savings enabled by adding TES to residential HVAC systems. Currently, this project has estimated the thermal loads and determined what hardware will be purchased to integrate the system on a renewable energy test bed. Once the preliminary testing and calculations are complete the project will shift into prototyping and testing of the integrated system, as well as presenting the findings

Polyimide-Foam/Aerogel Composites for Thermal Insulation

Composites of specific types of polymer foams and aerogel particles or blankets have been proposed to obtain thermal insulation performance superior to those of the neat polyimide foams. These composites have potential to also provide enhanced properties for vibration dampening or acoustic attenuation. The specific type of polymer foam is denoted "TEEK-H", signifying a series, denoted H, within a family of polyimide foams that were developed at NASA s Langley Research Center and are collectively denoted TEEK (an acronym of the inventors names). The specific types of aerogels include Nanogel aerogel particles from Cabot Corporation in Billerica, MA. and of Spaceloft aerogel blanket from Aspen Aerogels in Northborough, MA. The composites are inherently flame-retardant and exceptionally thermally stable. There are numerous potential uses for these composites, at temperatures from cryogenic to high temperatures, in diverse applications that include aerospace vehicles, aircraft, ocean vessels, buildings, and industrial process equipment. Some low-temperature applications, for example, include cryogenic storage and transfer or the transport of foods, medicines, and chemicals. Because of thermal cycling, aging, and weathering most polymer foams do not perform well at cryogenic temperatures and will undergo further cracking over time. The TEEK polyimides are among the few exceptions to this pattern, and the proposed composites are intended to have all the desirable properties of TEEK-H foams, plus improved thermal performance along with enhanced vibration or acoustic-attenuation performance. A composite panel as proposed would be fabricated by adding an appropriate amount of TEEK friable balloons into a mold to form a bottom layer. A piece of flexible aerogel blanket material, cut to the desired size and shape, would then be placed on the bottom TEEK layer and sandwiched between another top layer of polyimide friable balloons so that the aerogel blanket would become completely encased in an outer layer of TEEK friable balloons. Optionally, the process could be further repeated to produce multiple aerogel-blanket layers interspersed with and encased by TEEK friable balloons