Thermal response to firefighting activities in residential structure fires: impact of job assignment and suppression tactic

Firefighters’ thermal burden is generally attributed to high heat loads from the fire and metabolic heat generation, which may vary between job assignments and suppression tactic employed. Utilising a full-sized residential structure, firefighters were deployed in six job assignments utilising two attack tactics (1. Water applied from the interior, or 2. Exterior water application before transitioning to the interior). Environmental temperatures decreased after water application, but more rapidly with transitional attack. Local ambient temperatures for inside operation firefighters were higher than other positions (average ~10–30 °C). Rapid elevations in skin temperature were found for all job assignments other than outside command. Neck skin temperatures for inside attack firefighters were ~0.5 °C lower when the transitional tactic was employed. Significantly higher core temperatures were measured for the outside ventilation and overhaul positions than the inside positions (~0.6–0.9 °C). Firefighters working at all fireground positions must be monitored and relieved based on intensity and duration.

Practitioner Summary: Testing was done to characterise the thermal burden experienced by firefighters in different job assignments who responded to controlled residential fires (with typical furnishings) using two tactics. Ambient, skin and core temperatures varied based on job assignment and tactic employed, with rapid elevations in core temperature in many roles.     

Controlling Magnetic and Optical Properties of the van der Waals Crystal CrCl3−xBrx via Mixed Halide Chemistry

Magnetic van der Waals (vdW) materials are the centerpiece of atomically thin devices with spintronic and optoelectronic functions. Exploring new chemistry paths to tune their magnetic and optical properties enables significant progress in fabricating heterostructures and ultracompact devices by mechanical exfoliation. The key parameter to sustain ferromagnetism in 2D is magnetic anisotropy—a tendency of spins to align in a certain crystallographic direction known as easy‐axis. In layered materials, two limits of easy‐axis are in‐plane (XY) and out‐of‐plane (Ising). Light polarization and the helicity of topological states can couple to magnetic anisotropy with promising photoluminescence or spin‐orbitronic functions. Here, a unique experiment is designed to control the easy‐axis, the magnetic transition temperature, and the optical gap simultaneously in a series of CrCl_3?xBr_x crystals between CrCl₃ with XY and CrBr₃ with Ising anisotropy. The easy‐axis is controlled between the two limits by varying spin–orbit coupling with the Br content in CrCl_3?x Br_x. The optical gap, magnetic transition temperature, and interlayer spacing are all tuned linearly with x. This is the first report of controlling exchange anisotropy in a layered crystal and the first unveiling of mixed halide chemistry as a powerful technique to produce functional materials for spintronic devices.     

Model-driven performance prediction of systems of systems

Systems of systems exhibit characteristics that pose difficulty in modelling and predicting their overall performance capabilities, including the presence of operational independence, emergent behaviour, and evolutionary development. When considering systems of systems within the autonomous defence systems context, these aspects become increasingly critical, as constraints on the performance of the final system are typically driven by hard constraints on space, weight and power. System execution modelling languages and tools permit early prediction of the performance of model-driven systems; however, the focus to date has been on understanding the performance of a model rather than determining whether it meets performance requirements, and only subsequently carrying out analysis to reveal the causes of any requirement violations. Moreover, such an analysis is even more difficult when applied to several systems cooperating to achieve a common goal—a system of systems. In this article, we propose an integrated approach to performance prediction of model-driven real-time embedded defence systems and systems of systems. Our architectural prototyping system supports a scenario-driven experimental platform for evaluating model suitability within a set of deployment and real-time performance constraints. We present an overview of our performance prediction system, demonstrating the integration of modelling, execution and performance analysis, and discuss a case study to illustrate our approach.     

A comparison of Carlet's second-order nonlinearity bounds

Carlet provides two bounds on the second-order nonlinearity of Boolean functions. We construct a family of Boolean functions where the first bound (the presumed weaker bound) is tight and the second bound is strictly worse than the first bound. We show that the difference between the two bounds can be made arbitrarily large.     

X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy and Morphology Study on Antiwear Films Derived from ZDDP Under Different Sliding Frequencies

X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy has been used to characterize the chemistry of antiwear (AW) films generated from mineral base oil containing a zinc dialkyl dithiophosphate additive. These films were formed on rubbed steel surfaces with a reciprocating boundary contact using different sliding frequencies. The phosphorus L-edge XANES spectra show that these films have slightly different chemical natures. Longer chain polyphosphates were present on the steel surface prepared at the higher sliding frequencies. The surface morphology of these films was investigated using atomic force microscopy. These images show that the surface morphology of the AW films changes with the sliding frequency. Round and bigger antiwear pads were formed at a lower frequency while higher frequencies resulted in thinner films and flattened surfaces. Nanomechanical properties of these antiwear films were investigated by nanoindentation measurement and the elastic moduli extracted from force–displacement (f–d) curves are similar for all antiwear films, 100 ± 10 GPa.     

Conformational changes after foaming in a protein‐based thermoplastic

Novatein is a biopolymer produced from blood meal and can be foamed for use as a packaging material. The effect of foaming on protein ordered structures such as α‐helices and β‐sheets was investigated using synchrotron Fourier transform infrared (FTIR). Foaming caused a reduction in ordered structures due to an increase in random coils. FTIR also revealed a higher proportion of plasticizer (triethylene glycol, TEG) and β‐sheets toward the surface of enclosed bubbles. Increased TEG will assist foaming with greater plasticization aiding nucleation, while β‐sheets contribute to bubble stabilization. These structural changes occur as foaming takes place close to the degradation temperature of Novatein, and coincide with melting of α‐helices and/or β‐sheets. A more amorphous polymer is therefore produced which is subsequently easier to foam due to its increased elasticity. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018 , 135, 46005.     

Anaerobic biological treatment of phenolic wastewater at 15-18 degrees C

Low-temperature, or psychrophilic (<20 degrees C) anaerobic digestion has been proven feasible for the mineralisation of simple wastewaters. In this study, hybrid expanded granular sludge bed-anaerobic filter (EGSB-AF) bioreactors were used to evaluate the feasibility of psychrophilic digestion for the treatment of phenol-containing wastewater. Efficient chemical oxygen demand and phenol removal were observed at organic and phenol loading rates of 5 kg COD m(-3)d(-1) and 0.4-1.2 kg phenol m(-3)d(-1) (400-1200 mg phenol [l wastewater](-1)), respectively. There was no long-term accumulation of volatile fatty acids in the reactor systems. Methanogenic activity was developed under psychrophilic conditions but anaerobic methane-producing populations remained mesophilic throughout the trial of 415 days.     

Stabilization of an optical microscope to 0.1 nm in three dimensions

Mechanical drift is a long-standing problem in optical microscopy that occurs in all three dimensions. This drift increasingly limits the resolution of advanced surface-coupled, single-molecule experiments. We overcame this drift and achieved atomic-scale stabilization (0.1 nm) of an optical microscope in 3D. This was accomplished by measuring the position of a fiducial mark coupled to the microscope cover slip using back-focal-plane (BFP) detection and correcting for the drift using a piezoelectric stage. Several significant factors contributed to this experimental realization, including (i) dramatically reducing the low frequency noise in BFP detection, (ii) increasing the sensitivity of BFP detection to vertical motion, and (iii) fabricating a regular array of nanometer-sized fiducial marks that were firmly coupled to the cover slip. With these improvements, we achieved short-term (1 s) stabilities of 0.11, 0.10, and 0.09 nm (rms) and long-term (100 s) stabilities of 0.17, 0.12, and 0.35 nm (rms) in x, y, and z, respectively, as measured by an independent detection laser.     

Estimating the residual fatigue lifetimes of impact‐damaged composites using thermoelastic stress analysis

A new experimental method is presented for quantifying impact damage and estimating the remaining fatigue lifetime of impact damaged polymer matrix composite materials. The procedure is demonstrated using composites of glass fiber reinforced polyurethane produced by injection molding and structural reaction injection molding. Thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA) was used to quantify the stress concentration associated with impact‐damage in test samples of each composite. Following impact and TSA imaging, the samples were fatigued to failure over a range of stress amplitudes. The TSA‐derived stress concentration factors were used to determine a modified stress amplitude that collapsed the impact‐fatigue data onto a master stress‐life curve. This approach provides a quantitative measure of impact damage and a practical methodology for estimating the residual fatigue lifetime of impact; damaged composites.     

TBT causes regime shift in shallow lakes

Tributyltin (TBT) is an organotin compound used since the early 1960s as a biocide in boat antifouling paints. Its use has been linked to a host of negative effects in marine ecosystems including malformations and imposex in Mollusca and acute toxicity in many other aquatic animals. Yet, the consequences of TBT use in freshwaters are largely unknown. Here, for the first time we reveal that TBT may have caused hitherto unsuspected damage to freshwater ecosystems. Through an analysis of dated sediment cores collected from a system of recreationally boated, shallow lakes, we show that first evidence of TBT is associated with a dramatic loss of submerged vegetation and associated diverse animal communities. Cause and effect are difficult to unravel in our study. However, we hypothesize that TBT, through reducing populations of grazing organisms in lakes already affected by eutrophication, promoted the replacement of macrophytes by phytoplankton, ultimately leading to a regime shift in the ecosystem. Our findings may have parallels in freshwater ecosystems all over the world.