A fluidized bed retort for oil sands

Fluid bed retorting of oil sands is a viable method of extracting oil from mined oil sands. The process is based on a direct heating concept in which one vessel is utilized for the pyrolysis and vaporization of the bitumen contained in the oil sand and for the burning of the residuals which remain with the sand. Experimental results show that a significantly upgraded liquid hydrocarbon product can be obtained. Oil yields can exceed eighty per cent of the bitumen present in the feed material. The sulfur content of the produced oil is reduced. Gas produced can have a significant heating value and contains sulfur mainly in the form of hydrogen sulfide. Refluxing of the overhead product increases liquid yields and reduces the sulfur content of the oil. Water injection and the use of enriched air has a beneficial effect on the process. Thermal efficiencies in excess of eighty per cent can be achieved without recovering the heat from the expended sand.     

Dufour's gland and its role in secretion of nest cell lining in bees of the genusColletes (Hymenoptera: Colletidae)

The liquid secretion of the Dufour's gland in mated females comprises a mixture of macrocyclic lactones, straight chain mono- and dicarboxylic acids, together with trace amounts of di- and trihydroxy monocarboxylic acids and a series ofn-alkanes. Polymerization of the liquid to form the membranous nest cell lining, which also contains alanine and glutamic acid as major constituents, may be mediated by an enzyme from the thoracic salivary gland and voided via the mouth. The composition and structure of the cell linings are similar to those of Wigglesworth's cuticulin.     

Good Enough is Good Enough: Overcoming Disaster Response Organizations’ Slow Social Media Data Adoption

Organizations that respond to disasters hold unreasonable standards for data arising from technology-enabled citizen contributions. This has strong negative potential for the ability of these responding organizations to incorporate these data into appropriate decision points. We argue that the landscape of the use of social media data in crisis response is varied, with pockets of use and acceptance among organizations. In this paper we present findings from interviews conducted with representatives from large international disaster response organizations concerning their use of social media data in crisis response. We found that emergency responders already operate with less than reliable, or “good enough,” information in offline practice, and that social media data are useful to responders, but only in specific crisis situations. Also, responders do use social media, but only within their known community and extended network. This shows that trust first begins with people and not data. Lastly, we demonstrate the barriers used by responding organizations have gone beyond discussions of trustworthiness and data quality to that of more operational issues.     

Structural characterization of vulcanizates. Part VI. The 2-mercaptobenzothiazole-accelerated natural rubber–sulfur system

The crosslinking efficiency of sulfur in the vulcanization of natural rubber in the presence of 2-mercaptobenzothiazole, zinc oxide, and lauric acid has been determined as a function of cure time, cure temperature, and lauric acid concentration. With a low concentration of lauric acid structurally complex networks are formed, which contain 11–19 combined sulfur atoms per chemical crosslink present. The complexity increases with time of vulcanization. With a high lauric acid concentration much simpler networks are formed, which become progressively more simple as reaction proceeds (6 network-combined sulfur atoms per chemical crosslink, decreasing to 2.4 with time). Increasing the cure temperature from 100 to 140°C. reduces the efficiency of crosslinking in both cases. The changes in efficiency are attributed to the influences of the reaction variables (in particular, the concentration of rubber-soluble complexes of the zinc laurate with zinc benzothiazolyl mercaptide) on the structure and subsequent reactions of initially formed polysulfidic crosslinks.     

Development of an operational fitness test for the Royal Air Force

Since 2002, the Royal Air Force (RAF) has been working towards developing role-related physical tests for use as an operational fitness test (OFT). The purpose of this study was to establish reliability of the OFT (comprising four tests), investigate gym-based tests as predictors of performance and establish performance standards. Fifty-eight RAF personnel performed the OFT on three occasions. A separate cohort carried out fitness and anthropometric tests before performing the OFT, by way of establishing performance predictors. Documented evidence and views of an expert panel were used to determine OFT standards. Reliability ranged from moderate to good for three tests, with one test (Dig) showing poor reliability. The 95% limits of agreement for the prediction models ranged from good to poor (6.7-34.2%). The prediction models were not sufficiently accurate to estimate confidently OFT performance, but could be used as a guide to quantify likely outcome and training needs.     

Efficient application identification and the temporal and spatial stability of classification schema

Motivated by the importance of accurate identification for a range of applications, this paper compares and contrasts the effective and efficient classification of network-based applications using behavioral observations of network-traffic and those using deep-packet inspection.Importantly, throughout our work we are able to make comparison with data possessing an accurate, independently determined ground-truth that describes the actual applications causing the network-traffic observed.In a unique study in both the spatial-domain: comparing across different network-locations and in the temporal-domain: comparing across a number of years of data, we illustrate the decay in classification accuracy across a range of application–classification mechanisms. Further, we document the accuracy of spatial classification without training data possessing spatial diversity.Finally, we illustrate the classification of UDP traffic. We use the same classification approach for both stateful flows (TCP) and stateless flows based upon UDP. Importantly, we demonstrate high levels of accuracy: greater than 92% for the worst circumstance regardless of the application.     

Mixed-reality environment for frictional parameters identification in servo-pneumatic system

This paper outlines a method to identify the friction parameters for servo-pneumatic systems using a mixed-reality environment. To acquire system friction parameters accurately can be extremely difficult once the servo-system has been assembled because of its highly nonlinear nature, which causes a great difficulty in servo-pneumatic system modelling and control. In this research, a mixed-reality environment has been employed to determine the friction parameters effectively and efficiently through online identification. Traditionally, friction parameters identification can be performed manually or automatically using traditional optimization methods or modern ones such as neural networks. The advantages of the proposed method are the high accuracy in the estimated parameters, its simplicity and its speed. An experimental case study has been conducted and the results showed the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Viral interleukin 10 (IL-10), the human herpes virus 4 cellular IL-10 homologue, induces local anergy to allogeneic and syngeneic tumors

After the cloning of murine cytokine synthesis inhibitory factor, it was recognized that a homologous open reading frame was encoded within the Epstein-Barr virus (human herpes virus 4). This viral protein has now been termed viral interleukin 10 (vIL-10) to reflect its protein sequence homology to "cellular" IL-10 (cIL-10, either murine or human IL-10). It is now widely accepted that vIL-10 shares many functions with cIL-10, principally, the ability to enhance survival of newly infected B cells and to diminish the production of IFN-gamma and IL-2 during ongoing immune reactions. The immunomodulatory effect of locally secreted vIL-10 and murine IL-10 (mIL-10) was examined in tumor models using CL8-1 (a BL6 melanoma cell line transfected with the H-2Kb class I gene) in syngeneic animals. Although parental BL6 tumor cells grow in immunocompetent syngeneic hosts, CL8-1 are rejected. To achieve local secretion of vIL-10, we generated vIL-10 retroviral vectors. While nontransduced CL8-1 cells (1 x 10(4)) failed to grow when injected intradermally in C57BL/6 mice, CL8-1 cells (1 x 10(4)) transduced with vIL-10 formed palpable tumors and eventually killed 80% of injected animals. Suppression of tumor rejection was also noted when CL8-1 tumors with or without vIL-10 transfection were admixed with syngeneic vIL-10-transfected fibroblasts and inoculated. Since the in vitro proliferation of the tumor was not altered after transduction with the vIL-10 gene and injection of vIL-10-transduced CL8-1 does not affect the rejection of nontransduced CL8-1 inoculated at a distant site, local vIL-10 secretion appears to suppress the process of immune rejection of the target cells in a dose-dependent manner. Similar results were observed for the H-2b MCA105 sarcoma tumor model in allogeneic BALB/c mice (H-2d). Although all animals that received nontransfected MCA105 rapidly rejected these tumors, MCA105 sarcomas transfected with vIL-10 remained palpable for up to 37 d. The local immunosuppressive effect of gene-delivered vIL-10 could be neutralized by anti-human IL-10 monoclonal antibody or could be reversed by the systemic administration of IL-2 or IL-12. In marked contrast, mIL-10 transfection of CL8-1 significantly suppressed tumor growth and frequently led to the rejection of tumor. Similar results were obtained for the murine tumor cell lines MCA102.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)