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Two Stage Decontamination of Agricultural Equipment Using Power Washing Followed by Disinfectant Treatments
Get PDF Foreign agricultural pests can become problematic to the environment, economy, animal, plant, and human health if widely transported on contaminated equipment or vehicles. Two equipment decontamination studies were conducted using a mobile power washer and disinfectant treatments. The first study factors were: steel and fabric surfaces, power washing conditions, disinfectants, and disinfectant adjuvants. The second study factors were: relative humidity conditions, disinfectant type, disinfectant additive, and number of repeat disinfectant applications. Efficacy for the power washing and disinfectant treatments was based on log10 reduction of Bacillus subtilis spores attached to the two surface types. Power washing increased log10 reduction of spores by 3 to 4 log, when washing was followed by disinfectant treatments. The optimal decontamination treatment in the first study was power washing for 30 seconds at a distance of 10 cm, using a commercial chlorine dioxide formulation (Electro-Biocide) with Reign (1%) that resulted in a 4.7 log10 reduction of B. subtilis spores on steel washers. In the second study the optimal treatment was power washing for 10 seconds at a nozzle distance of 20 cm with a commercial disinfectant (Easy Decon DF-200) mixed with 20% glycerol resulting in a 5.1 log10 reduction of B. subtilis spores on wool fabric samples
Evaluation of Ardabil City Carrying Capacity Using DPSIR Method and ELECTRE Model
Get PDF In the modern view, argument about urban carrying capacity and spaces utilized due to urban development throughout the world has been considered. The increase in size and number of the cities, human activities such as land use change, high consumption of resources and emission of pollutants have left negative impacts on the function and structure of the urban ecosystems and have caused many problems for the circulation of materials and energy. The present study, by applied method and with the aim of studying carrying capacity of Ardebil City using the components of driving force, pressure, state, impact and response with multi-criteria decision model ELECTRE to prioritize the four- Regions districts of the Ardabil City by effective indicators in the form of 5 components discussed in the DPSIR method has been done. Collected information first, classified and categorized by DPSIR method, then by the means of utilizing Expert Choice weighted and ultimately by the implementation of ELECTRE model, the four- Regions districts of Ardabil City in terms of the presented indicators were prioritized. The results obtained from DPSIR method showed that, among the four- Regions districts of Ardabil City, driving force coefficient and then responding with 0/40 and 0/35 ratio have the greatest impact on the carrying capacity of the region. Also, the results of the prioritization of the ELECTRE model exhibit that regions 2 and 3 use the maximum capacity of the area according to the components used in DPSIR, and regions 1 and 4 are in the next priority
Geodynamics and Nature of the Conrad Boundary by Results of the Deep Electromagnetic Soundings and the Superdeep Drilling
Get PDF Continental Earth’s crust is subdivided into two parts – upper, brittle crust (namely geological) and low, ductile crust (namely physical). This idea has been investigated by many researchers on the base of seismical data, laboratory study of rock specimens at high thermo dynamic conditions and on the base of theoretical speculations [1, 2, 3]. In this presentation this idea is investigated on the base of the deep soundings with powerful controlled sources such as MHD-generator “Khibiny”, industrial power transmitting lines (experiment “FENICS”) and with taking into account results of superdeep drilling on Fennoscandian shield. The summary analysis of the obtained data allows to draw a conclusion that the upper part of continental crystalline earth's crust has a thickness of the order of 10-12 km. Its principal peculiarities are: the sharp horizontal heterogeneity of electrical properties, a wide range of variations of electrical resistivity from 10 till 104 Ohm∙m, a high porosity, brittleness, and a presence of fluids (meteoric waters) that penetrate from the day time surface to the depths of up to 5-10 km. Upper crust is the most actively involved in geological processes. The low crust belongs to the depth interval from 10–12 to 35–45 km (up to the Moho boundary). It is remarkable by horizontal homogeneity of electrical properties and high electrical resistivity in the range of 105–106 Ohm∙m, by the low porosity and increased ductility. Electrical conductivity of the low crust is mostly determined by influence of planetary physical–chemical parameters (pressure, temperature, and viscosity), phase transitions of substances depending on geodynamic peculiarities of evolution for different segments of the Earth crust. As an area of physical processes influence, the low crust is nearer by its origin to the upper mantle then to the geological Earth crust. The low and upper parts of the Earth crust are subdivided between each other by the boundary of the sharp increase of electrical resistivity at the depth around 10-12 km (so called Boundary of impermeability for DC currents, BIP zone). At the same depth the sharp increase of rocks solidity, viscosity has been met in the Kola superdeep hole. This transition zone between the upper and lower crust is related with hypothetic Conrad boundary predicted by seismic data by the stepwise increase of longitudinal waves from 6 to 6.5 km/s
Energy Use Intensities for Asset Rating of Hellenic Non-Residential Buildings
Get PDF This work present the results from an in-depth analysis of data from about 120,000 energy performance certificates in order to gain a better understanding of the energy use and carbon emissions of non-residential (NR) buildings in Greece. The analysis is performed for all different building uses, construction periods and Hellenic climate zones. This is a first step for generating new knowledge about the NR building stock in Greece and deriving compatible energy asset metrics that can be used for assessing NR buildings independent from their operation and occupancy. The mean (median in parenthesis) primary energy use intensity is 539.5 (442.6) kWh/m2 and emissions reach 170.0 (141.4) kgCO2/m2. The derived energy baselines reveal that indoor sports halls/swimming pools are the most energy intensive facilities, while schools have the lowest energy use, due to their operational patterns. Lighting is the most energy consuming service, followed by cooling, space heating and a very low domestic hot water use
Identification of Environmental Cues and Decision-Making Strategies of Residential Burglars
Get PDF In this study, as a preliminary study for a development of a residential burglars' target selection model, previous studies on residential burglars' target selection were reviewed and analyzed in terms of methods and purposes of research, and the implications for future research were suggested by integrating the results of the review. Firstly, it seems that the experimental research method has many advantages for developing the target selection model at the house level compared to using crime data and conducting interviews or questionnaires. Secondly, virtual reality can be used as an effective tool in the experiment, since it allows researchers to construct the experimental environment without any constraint and enables participants to be completely immersed. Thirdly, although researchers in the field of architecture tend to mainly focus on deriving environmental cues that influence the decision of the burglar, decision-making strategies used by burglars when selecting targets should also be identified to develop a comprehensive model of burglars' target selection. Finally, considering the cognitive process of residential burglar, several research questions can be derived (i.e. ‘What environmental cues do burglars consider when evaluating each environmental attribute?’, ‘What decision-making strategy do burglars use to evaluate each environmental attribute?’, and ‘What decision-making strategy do burglars use to make a decision on whether or not to commit burglary?’)
Microwave Weed and Soil Treatment in Agricultural Systems
Get PDF Weeds are the major hindrance in crop production, costing approximately AU$4 billion annually in Australian gain production systems, in 2006. Herbicide resistance is also becoming a global issue; therefore, there is a growing need for alternative weed control methods. Several thermal and non-thermal methods are possible. The thermal method of microwave weed management has been explored for some time. This paper provides a brief summary of the research associated with this technique
Spatial Behavior of the Steady State Vibrations in a Dual-Phase-Lag Rigid Conductor
Get PDF This paper studies the spatial behavior of the steady state vibrations in a cylinder made of a dual-phase-lag anisotropic rigid conductor material. We analyze the influence of the lagging model upon the spatial behavior of the amplitude of vibration along the axis of the cylinder, providing the explicit expressions of the decay rate and of the corresponding critical frequency in terms of the coefficients of the considered constitutive equation (or delay times). In fact, for the amplitude of the harmonic vibrations we obtain some exponential decay estimates of Saint-Venant type, provided the frequency of vibration is lower than a critical value. This gives information on the thermal penetration depth of the steady state vibrations describing the heat affected zone. Illustrative examples are given for the class of lagging behavior models that are thermodynamically compatible
Investigating Relationships between Engineering Properties of Various Rock Types
Get PDF In the literature on rock mechanics several authors have proposed different constants and empirical equations for the physical and mechanical properties of various rock types. This is because researchers usually base their results on the limited number of test samples and/or lithological units. The research presented here has been primarily performed to solve this variation problem. It makes sense to have a general expression for all types of rocks. To accomplish this, a considerable amount of data comprising 4,991 datasets was collected through an extensive literature review. The results were statistically analyzed to determine the range, mean, standard deviation for each investigated rock property. The physical and mechanical properties of the rocks were also plotted against each other in order to estimate one property from the other. The correlation coefficients and best-fit equations were determined by the least squares curve fit method. Usually good correlations were found between index tests, and physico-mechanical properties. At the end, various regression equations are proposed particularly applicable to the whole rock types
An Evaluation of Correlations for Predicting Pressure Drop of Air-Water Flow in Narrow Rectangular Duct
Get PDF Aiming at developing a more common method for predicting two-phase flow pressure drop for small channels, experiments on frictional pressure drop of air-water flow in a vertical narrow rectangular duct with a cross-section of 40 mm by 1.6 mm were conducted at atmospheric pressure. The mass flow rates of air and water covered the ranges from 0.03 to 12.5 kg/h and from 19 to 903 kg/h, respectively. It was found that the two-phase flow can be divided into three regions according to the liquid only Reynolds number, by which a modified Chisholm two-phase multiplier was proposed for predicting frictional pressure drop. Some leading correlations for predicting two-phase flow pressure drop were compared with the new correlation against current experimental data, the latter had and a mean deviation of 7.2%, showing a better agreement with the experimental results
Matrix Transforms of Summability Domains of Zweier Method
Get PDFLet Z1/2 be the Zweier method, and B and M matrices with real or complex entries. In the present paper, we find necessary and sufficient conditions for M to be transform from the summability domain of Z1/2 into the summability domain of B if B is lower triangular. For an infinite matrix B, we consider only sufficient conditions