Analysis of One and Two-Story Single Family Home Fire Dynamics and the Impact of Firefighter Horizontal Ventilation

This paper describes experimental investigations on fire service ventilation practices in modern house geometries. Two houses were constructed inside a large fire facility. The first of two houses constructed was a one-story, 111.5 m², 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom house with 8 total rooms. The second house was a two-story 297.3 m², 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom house with 12 total rooms. The second house featured a modern open floor plan, two-story great room and open foyer. Fifteen experiments were conducted varying the ventilation locations and the number of ventilation openings. Ventilation scenarios included ventilating the front door only, opening the front door and a window near and remote from the seat of the fire, opening a window only and ventilating a higher opening in the two-story house. One scenario in each house was conducted in triplicate to examine repeatability. The results of these experiments examine potential occupant tenability and provide knowledge for the fire service for them to examine their horizontal ventilation standard operating procedures and training content. The fire dynamics resulting from ventilation practices such as ventilation near or remote from the seat of the fire and high versus low in relation to the fire are examined. Several other tactical considerations were developed utilizing the data from these experiments to provide specific examples of changes that can be adopted based on a departments current strategies and tactics. Such tactical considerations and a systems approach to fire service tactics should be investigated further.     

Determination of Caffeine,Myosmine, and Nicotine in Chocolate by Headspace Solid‑Phase Microextraction Coupled with Gas Chromatography‑Tandem Mass Spectrometry

The occurrence of the bioactive components caffeine (xanthine alkaloid), myosmine and nicotine (pyridine alkaloids) in different edibles and plants is well known, but the content of myosmine and nicotine is still ambiguous in milk/dark chocolate. Therefore, a sensitive method for determination of these components was established, a simple separation of the dissolved analytes from the matrix, followed by headspace solid?phase microextraction coupled with gas chromatography‐tandem mass spectrometry (HS?SPME?GC?MS/MS). This is the first approach for simultaneous determination of caffeine, myosmine, and nicotine with a convenient SPME technique. Calibration curves were linear for the xanthine alkaloid (250 to 3000 mg/kg) and the pyridine alkaloids (0.000125 to 0.003000 mg/kg). Residuals of the calibration curves were lower than 15%, hence the limits of detection were set as the lowest points of the calibration curves. The limits of detection calculated from linearity data were for caffeine 216 mg/kg, for myosmine 0.000110 mg/kg, and for nicotine 0.000120 mg/kg. Thirty samples of 5 chocolate brands with varying cocoa contents (30% to 99%) were analyzed in triplicate. Caffeine and nicotine were detected in all samples of chocolate, whereas myosmine was not present in any sample. The caffeine content ranged from 420 to 2780 mg/kg (relative standard deviation 0.1 to 11.5%) and nicotine from 0.000230 to 0.001590 mg/kg (RSD 2.0 to 22.1%).     

Combined biological–chemical (Ozone) treatment of wastewaters containing chloroguaiacols

Biological degradation of chloroguaiacols contained in sulphite pulp chlorine bleaching wastewater was studied in four parallel biological fluidised bed reactor systems—one single aerobic, one single anaerobic and two combined anaerobic–aerobic reactors. At low loading rates, trichloroguaiacols were removed nearly quantitatively. 4,5-Dichloroguaiacol was only partly removed. At high loading rates the anaerobic–aerobic recycle reactor removed individual guaiacols more than the other reactors. Only 4,5,6-trichloroguaiacol was removed best by the anaerobic–aerobic reactors in series. Even mixed culture biofilms adapted during several years of continuous operation did not satisfactorily remove these compounds. Synthetic wastewater, containing chlorinated guaiacols, treated with ozone produced formate and oxalate and quantitatively inorganic chloride. Combined ozonation–biotreatment in two reactors in series as well as in a recycle system allowed complete removal of all individual chlorinated guaiacols (< 1 μmol m^?3 remained). The efficiency of non-purgable organic carbon removal could be increased from ≤0.55 to about 4 mol carbon mol^?1 ozone by combination of ozonation with biotreatment. Simultaneously, the efficiency of removal of chlorinated guaiacols was increased by a factor of 10, which is essential for industrial application.     

A study of relaxation current in high-/spl kappa/ dielectric stacks

Dielectric relaxation currents in SiO/sub 2//Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ and SiO/sub 2//HfO/sub 2/ high-/spl kappa/ dielectric stacks are studied in this paper. We studied the thickness dependence, gate voltage polarity dependence and temperature dependence of the relaxation current in high-/spl kappa/ dielectric stacks. It is found that high-/spl kappa/ dielectric stacks show different characteristics than what is expected based on the dielectric material polarization model. By the drain current variation measurement in n-channel MOSFET, we confirm that electron trapping and detrapping in the high-/spl kappa/ dielectric stacks is the cause of the dielectric relaxation current. From substrate injection experiments, it is also concluded that the relaxation current is mainly due to the traps located near the SiO/sub 2//high-/spl kappa/ interface. As the electron trapping induces a serious threshold voltage shift problem, a low trap density at the SiO/sub 2//high-/spl kappa/ interface is a key requirement for high-/spl kappa/ dielectric stack application and reliability in MOS devices.     

Fractionation of potato juice proteins into acid-soluble and acid-coagulable fractions

Potato juice proteins were fractionated by acidification to pH 3 into acid-coagulable and acid-soluble fractions. Both fractions are heterogeneous. They differ in molecular weight, conformation in solution and composition of amino acids. The acid-coagulable fraction consists of units of molecular weight between 32,000 and 87,000, while the acid-soluble fraction consists of units of molecular weight between 17,000 and 27,000. Circular dichroism measurements show that the acid-coagulable fraction is in helical and beta conformations whilst, for the acid-soluble fraction, a substantial contribution of the random conformation is observed. The acid-coagulable fraction has a higher content of methionine than the acid-soluble fraction. It is shown that this type of fractionation is more meaningful than fractionation in terms of albumins and globulins by solubility in water or dilute salt solutions.     

Using tactics to reformulate formulae for resolution theorem proving

We present a method to optimize formulations of mathematical problems by exploiting the variability of first-order logic. The optimizing transformation is described as logic morphisms, whose operationalizations are tactics. The different behaviour of a resolution theorem prover for the source and target formulations is demonstrated by several examples. Such tactics give a user the possibility to formally manipulate problem formulations.This work was done when both authors were working at the Fachbereich Informatik, Universität des Saarlandes, D-66041 Saarbrücken, Germany, and was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, SFB 314 (D2).     

Film and penetration theories for a first-order reaction in exothermic gas absorption

Film and penetration models for simultaneous heat and mass transfer are developed for the absorption of gas with a first-order chemical reaction in the liquid phase with temperature-dependent solubility and reaction rate coefficient. These two models represent two extreme conditions of interfacial temperature rise and gas solubility and they are compared with some previous models (Allan and Mann, 1979; Asai et al., 1985). The approximate analytical expressions of the penetration model of Asai et al. (1985) are in good agreement with the numerical results of this work. The results reveal that under many practical circumstances the gas-liquid interfacial temperature may be several degrees Kelvin higher than the bulk liquid temperature. The degree of deviation of the enhancement factor from its isothermal value at the bulk liquid temperature depends on the degree of difference of a certain dimensionless activation energy group from zero, which confirms the previous finding of Asai et al. (1985).     

Engineering yeast alcohol dehydrogenase. Replacing Trp54 by Leu broadens substrate specificity

Analysis of a crystal structure of alcohol dehydrogenase (Adh)from horse liver suggests that Trp54 in the homologous yeastalcohol dehydrogenase prevents the yeast enzyme from efficientlycatalysing the oxidation of long-chain primary alcohols withbranching at the 4 position (e.g. 4-methyl-1-pentanol, cinnamylalcohol). This residue has been altered to Leu by site-directedmutagenesis. The alteration yields an enzyme that serves asan effective catalyst for both longer straight-chain primaryalcohols and branched chain alcohols.     

Object relations and social cognition in borderlines, major depressives, and normals: A Thematic Apperception Test analysis.

This study compared reliably diagnosed borderline personality patients (n?=?35) with major depressives (n?=?25) and normals (n?=?30) on 4 dimensions of object relations and social cognition coded from Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) responses: Complexity of Representations of People, Affect–Tone of Relationship Paradigms (malevolent to benevolent), Capacity for Emotional Investment in Relationships, and Understanding of Social Causality. As predicted, borderlines scored significantly lower on all 4 scales than did normals and lower on Affect–Tone and Capacity for Emotional Investment than did nonborderline major depressives. Borderlines also produced more pathological responses than did both groups on every scale, indicating more poorly differentiated representation, grossly illogical attributions, malevolent expectations, and need-gratifying relationship paradigms. The results suggest the importance of distinguishing several interdependent but distinct cognitive–affective dimensions of object relations and the potential utility of assessing object relations and social cognition from TAT responses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Damage visualization and deformation measurement in glass laminates during projectile penetration

Transparent armor consists of glass-polymer laminates in most cases. The formation and propagation of damage in the different glass layers has a strong influence on the ballistic resistance of such laminates. In order to clarify the course of events during projectile penetration, an experimental technique was developed, which allows visualizing the onset and propagation of damage in each single layer of the laminate. A telecentric objective lens was used together with a microsecond video camera that allows recording 100 frames at a maximum rate of I MHz in a backlit photography set-up. With this technique, the damage evolution could be visualized in glass laminates consisting of four glass layers with lateral dimensions 500 mm x 500 mm. Damage evolution was recorded during penetration of 7.62 mm AP projectiles with tungsten carbide core and a total mass of 11.1 g in the impact velocity range from 800 to 880 rn/s. In order to measure the deformation of single glass plates within the laminates, a piece of reflecting tape was attached to the corresponding glass plate, and photonic Doppler velocimetry （PDV） was applied. With the photonic Doppler velocimeter, an infrared laser is used to illuminate an object to be measured and the Doppler-shifted light is superimposed to a reference light beam at the detector. The simultaneous visualization and PDV measurement of the glass deformation allow determining the deformation at the time of the onset of fracture. The analysis of the experimental data was supported by numerical simulations, using the AUTODYN commercial hydro-code.