2007 Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Selected Iowa Source Categories

The Department’s 2007 Greenhouse Gas Inventory is a refinement of previous statewide inventories. It is a bottom-up inventory of two sectors – fossil fuel combustion at federally-recognized major sources of air pollution and fossil fuel combustion and ethanol fermentation at dry mill ethanol plants. This is the first bottomup greenhouse gas inventory conducted for Iowa and the first bottom-up greenhouse gas inventory of ethanol plants in the nation that the Department is aware of. In a bottom-up inventory, facility-specific activity data is used to calculate emissions. In a top-down inventory, aggregate activity data is used to calculate emissions. For example, this bottom-up inventory calculates greenhouse gas emissions from the fossil fuel combustion at each individual facility instead of using the total amount of fossil fuel combusted state-wide, which would be a top-down inventory method. The advantage to a bottom-up inventory is that the calculations are more accurate than a top-down inventory. However, because the two methods differ, the results from a bottom-up inventory are not directly comparable to a top-down inventory.

Letter health consultation : Air emissions from American Packaging Corporation, Story City, Iowa (2009)

A health consultation is a verbal or written response from ATSDR or ATSDR’s Cooperative Agreement Partners to a specific request for information about health risks related to a specific site, a chemical release, or the presence of hazardous material. In order to prevent or mitigate exposures, a consultation may lead to specific actions, such as restricting use of or replacing water supplies; intensifying environmental sampling; restricting site access; or removing the contaminated material. In addition, consultations may recommend additional public health actions, such as conducting health surveillance activities to evaluate exposure or trends in adverse health outcomes; conducting biological indicators of exposure studies to assess exposure; and providing health education for health care providers and community members. This concludes the health consultation process for this site, unless additional information is obtained by ATSDR or ATSDR’s Cooperative Agreement Partner which, in the Agency’s opinion, indicates a need to revise or append the conclusions previously issued.

Letter health consultation : Manganese emissions from Amsted Rail Company, Inc. (Griffin Wheel Facility) Keokuk, Iowa (2010)

This letter has been prepared as a consultation to evaluate human health impacts from manganese emissions from the Amsted Rail Company, Inc. (Griffin Wheel) facility located in Keokuk, Iowa. We understand your concern and the concern of the Keokuk community, and want you to know that the Iowa Department of Public Health’s priority is to ensure that you have the best information possible to safeguard the health of the citizens of Keokuk. That information is included in the following discussion.

2008 Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Selected Iowa Source Categories

This report is the second inventory of point source-specific greenhouse gas emissions conducted by the Department of Natural Resources, covering more industrial sectors and greenhouse gas pollutants than the previous year. This report is required by Iowa Code 455B.851 to be submitted annually to the Iowa General Assembly and the Governor,

2009 Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Selected Iowa Source Categories

This objective report is the third inventory of point source-specific greenhouse gas emissions conducted by the Department of Natural Resources. This report is required by Iowa Code 455B.851

U.S. Universities’ Net Returns from Patenting and Licensing: A Quantile Regression Analysis, September 2006

In line with the rights and incentives provided by the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, U.S. universities have increased their involvement in patenting and licensing activities through their own technology transfer offices. Only a few U.S. universities are obtaining large returns, however, whereas others are continuing with these activities despite negligible or negative returns. We assess the U.S. universities’ potential to generate returns from licensing activities by modeling and estimating quantiles of the distribution of net licensing returns conditional on some of their structural characteristics. We find limited prospects for public universities without a medical school everywhere in their distribution. Other groups of universities (private, and public with a medical school) can expect significant but still fairly modest returns only beyond the 0.9th quantile. These findings call into question the appropriateness of the revenue-generating motive for the aggressive rate of patenting and licensing by U.S. universities.

Evaluation of In-Use Fuel Economy and On-Board Emissions for Hybrid and Regular CyRide Transit Buses, October 2012

The objective of this project was to evaluate the in-use fuel economy and emission differences between hybrid-electric and conventional transit buses for the Ames, Iowa transit authority, CyRide. These CyRide buses were deployed in the fall of 2010. Fuel economy was compared for the hybrid and control buses. Several older bus types were also available and were included in the analysis. Hybrid buses had the highest fuel economy for all time periods for all bus types. Hybrid buses had a fuel economy that was 11.8 percent higher than control buses overall, 12.2 percent higher than buses with model years 2007 and newer, 23.4 percent higher than model years 2004 through 2006, 10.2 percent higher than model years 1998 through 2003, 38.1 percent higher than model years 1994 through 1997, 36.8 percent higher than model years 1991 through 1993, and 36.8 percent higher for model years pre-1991. On-road emissions were also compared for three of the hybrid buses and two control buses using a portable emissions monitor. On-average, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hybrid carbon emissions were much higher for the control buses than for the hybrid buses. However, on average nitrogen oxide emissions were higher for the hybrid buses.

Comparison of Roadway Roughness Derived from LIDAR and SFM 3D Point Clouds, HR-3001, 2015

This report describes a short-term study undertaken to investigate the potential for using dense three-dimensional (3D) point clouds generated from light detection and ranging (LIDAR) and photogrammetry to assess roadway roughness. Spatially continuous roughness maps have potential for the identification of localized roughness features, which would be a significant improvement over traditional profiling methods. This report specifically illustrates the use of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and photogrammetry using a process known as structure from motion (SFM) to acquire point clouds and illustrates the use of these point clouds in evaluating road roughness. Five roadway sections were chosen for scanning and testing: three gravel road sections, one portland cement concrete (PCC) section, and one asphalt concrete (AC) section. To compare clouds obtained from terrestrial laser scanning and photogrammetry, the coordinates of the clouds for the same section on the same date were matched using open source computer code. The research indicates that the technologies described are very promising for evaluating road roughness. The major advantage of both technologies is the large amount of data collected, which allows the evaluation of the full surface. Additional research is needed to further develop the use of dense 3D point clouds for roadway assessment.