Volume of natural gas within gas-hydrate and free-gas occurrences in ODP Leg 164 sites

Leg 164 of the Ocean Drilling Program was designed to investigate the occurrence of gas hydrate in the sedimentary section beneath the Blake Ridge on the southeastern continental margin of North America. Sites 994, 995, and 997 were drilled on the Blake Ridge to refine our understanding of the in situ characteristics of natural gas hydrate. Because gas hydrate is unstable at surface pressure and temperature conditions, a major emphasis was placed on the downhole logging program to determine the in situ physical properties of the gas hydrate-bearing sediments. Downhole logging tool strings deployed on Leg 164 included the Schlumberger quad-combination tool (NGT, LSS/SDT, DIT, CNT-G, HLDT), the Formation MicroScanner (FMS), and the Geochemical Combination Tool (GST). Electrical resistivity (DIT) and acoustic transit-time (LSS/SDT) downhole logs from Sites 994, 995, and 997 indicate the presence of gas hydrate in the depth interval between 185 and 450 mbsf on the Blake Ridge. Electrical resistivity log calculations suggest that the gas hydrate-bearing sedimentary section on the Blake Ridge may contain between 2 and 11 percent bulk volume (vol%) gas hydrate. We have determined that the log-inferred gas hydrates and underlying free-gas accumulations on the Blake Ridge may contain as much as 57 trillion m**3 of gas.

The effects of long (C20/22) and short (C18) chain omega-3 fatty acids on keel bone fractures, bone biomechanics, behavior, and egg production in free-range laying hens.

Keel fractures in the laying hen are the most critical animal welfare issue facing the egg production industry, particularly with the increased use of extensive systems in response to the 2012 EU directive banning conventional battery cages. The current study is aimed at assessing the effects of 2 omega-3 (n3) enhanced diets on bone health, production endpoints, and behavior in free-range laying hens. Data was collected from 2 experiments over 2 laying cycles, each of which compared a (n3) supplemented diet with a control diet. Experiment 1 employed a diet supplemented with a 60:40 fish oil-linseed mixture (n3:n6 to 1.35) compared with a control diet (n3:n6 to 0.11), whereas the n3 diet in Experiment 2 was supplemented with a 40:60 fish oil-linseed (n3:n6 to 0.77) compared to the control diet (n3:n6 to 0.11). The n3 enhanced diet of Experiment 1 had a higher n3:n6 ratio, and a greater proportion of n3 in the long chain (C20/22) form (0.41 LC:SC) than that of Experiment 2 (0.12 LC:SC). Although dietary treatment was successful in reducing the frequency of fractures by approximately 27% in Experiment 2, data from Experiment 1 indicated the diet actually induced a greater likelihood of fracture (odds ratio: 1.2) and had substantial production detriment. Reduced keel breakage during Experiment 2 could be related to changes in bone health as n3-supplemented birds demonstrated greater load at failure of the keel, and tibiae and humeri that were more flexible. These results support previous findings that n3-supplemented diets can reduce fracture likely by increasing bone strength, and that this can be achieved without detriment to production. However, our findings suggest diets with excessive quantities of n3, or very high levels of C20/22, may experience health and production detriments. Further research is needed to optimize the quantity and type of n3 in terms of bone health and production variables and investigate the potential associated mechanisms.

Measuring fixed costs for firms' use of a free trade agreement : threshold regression approach

In this paper, by employing the threshold regression method, we estimate the average tariff equivalent of fixed costs for the use of a free trade agreement (FTA) among all existing FTAs in the world. It is estimated to be 3.2%. This global estimate serves as a reference rate in the evaluation of each FTA’s fixed costs.

How do free trade agreements reduce tariff rates and non-tariff barriers?

This paper empirically investigates how far free trade agreements (FTAs) successfully lower tariff rates and non-tariff barriers (NTBs) for manufacturing industries by employing the bilateral tariff and NTB data in a time series for countries around the world. We find that FTAs under GATT Article XXIV and the Enabling Clause contribute to reducing tariff rates by 2.1% points and 1.5% points, respectively. In the case of NTBs, their respective impacts are 6.6% points and 5.7% points. Membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) does not contribute greatly to reducing tariff rates but does play a significant role in reducing NTBs. These results provide important implications for the literature on numerical assessments of FTAs.

Ordered gan/ingan nanorods arrays grown by molecular beam epitaxy for phosphor-free white light emission

The basics of the self-assembled growth of GaN nanorods on Si(111) are reviewed. Morphology differences and optical properties are compared to those of GaN layers grown directly on Si(111). The effects of the growth temperature on the In incorporation in self-assembled InGaN nanorods grown on Si(111) is described. In addition, the inclusion of InGaN quantum disk structures into selfassembled GaN nanorods show clear confinement effects as a function of the quantum disk thickness. In order to overcome the properties dispersion and the intrinsic inhomogeneous nature of the self-assembled growth, the selective area growth of GaN nanorods on both, c-plane and a-plane GaN on sapphire templates, is addressed, with special emphasis on optical quality and morphology differences. The analysis of the optical emission from a single InGaN quantum disk is shown for both polar and non-polar nanorod orientations

MIA - a free and open source software for gray scale medical image analysis

Background Gray scale images make the bulk of data in bio-medical image analysis, and hence, the main focus of many image processing tasks lies in the processing of these monochrome images. With ever improving acquisition devices, spatial and temporal image resolution increases, and data sets become very large. Various image processing frameworks exists that make the development of new algorithms easy by using high level programming languages or visual programming. These frameworks are also accessable to researchers that have no background or little in software development because they take care of otherwise complex tasks. Specifically, the management of working memory is taken care of automatically, usually at the price of requiring more it. As a result, processing large data sets with these tools becomes increasingly difficult on work station class computers. One alternative to using these high level processing tools is the development of new algorithms in a languages like C++, that gives the developer full control over how memory is handled, but the resulting workflow for the prototyping of new algorithms is rather time intensive, and also not appropriate for a researcher with little or no knowledge in software development. Another alternative is in using command line tools that run image processing tasks, use the hard disk to store intermediate results, and provide automation by using shell scripts. Although not as convenient as, e.g. visual programming, this approach is still accessable to researchers without a background in computer science. However, only few tools exist that provide this kind of processing interface, they are usually quite task specific, and don’t provide an clear approach when one wants to shape a new command line tool from a prototype shell script. Results The proposed framework, MIA, provides a combination of command line tools, plug-ins, and libraries that make it possible to run image processing tasks interactively in a command shell and to prototype by using the according shell scripting language. Since the hard disk becomes the temporal storage memory management is usually a non-issue in the prototyping phase. By using string-based descriptions for filters, optimizers, and the likes, the transition from shell scripts to full fledged programs implemented in C++ is also made easy. In addition, its design based on atomic plug-ins and single tasks command line tools makes it easy to extend MIA, usually without the requirement to touch or recompile existing code. Conclusion In this article, we describe the general design of MIA, a general purpouse framework for gray scale image processing. We demonstrated the applicability of the software with example applications from three different research scenarios, namely motion compensation in myocardial perfusion imaging, the processing of high resolution image data that arises in virtual anthropology, and retrospective analysis of treatment outcome in orthognathic surgery. With MIA prototyping algorithms by using shell scripts that combine small, single-task command line tools is a viable alternative to the use of high level languages, an approach that is especially useful when large data sets need to be processed.