On the modelling of fire atmosphere/sprinkler spray interacting using an Euler-Lagrange framework

An Euler-Lagrange particle tracking model, developed for simulating fire atmosphere/sprinkler spray interactions, is described. Full details of the model along with the approximations made and restrictions applying are presented. Errors commonly found in previous formulations of the source terms used in this two-phase approach are described and corrected. In order to demonstrate the capabilities of the model it is applied to the simulation of a fire in a long corridor containing a sprinkler. The simulation presented is three-dimensional and transient and considers mass, momentum and energy transfer between the gaseous atmosphere and injected liquid droplets.

Large-scale Roll Out of Online Prospective Measurement of Mood Symptoms in Affective Disorders

Background and Aims: True Colours is an online prospective mood-monitoring system developed at the University of Oxford to assist local patients and clinicians with monitoring course of illness in bipolar disorder. We report our initial experiences of using True Colours for research purposes in the Bipolar Disorder Research Network (BDRN; www.bdrn.org), a large research network of individuals with mood disorders spread throughout the UK. Methods: After initial piloting to ensure the practicality/acceptability of using True Colours within BDRN, we invited all BDRN participants (n = 7000) to participate in weekly True Colours ratings via three postal invitations sent over an 8-month period. Results: Following the three postal invitations, 915 individuals have so far expressed an interest in joining True Colours, and, of these, 662 (72.3%) have registered. 32 of those who registered for True Colours (5%) have so far asked to leave the system. Positive feedback from participants has focused around the ease of use and convenience of True Colours and potential clinical utility of the graphical representation of weekly mood scores. Conclusions: We have demonstrated that large-scale prospective mood monitoring for research purposes using a contemporary online approach is feasible. Challenges have included: (i) variation in participants’ technological ability; (ii) management of requests for clinical advice based on mood scores within a research setting; and, (iii) resources required to provide access and on-going support for participants using True Colours. We continue to expand recruitment to True Colours within BDRN, and plan to trial email invitations in the next phase of recruitment.

Affective Instability, Childhood Trauma and Major Affective Disorders

Background and Aims Affective instability (AI), childhood trauma, and mental illness are linked, but evidence in affective disorders is limited, despite both AI and childhood trauma being associated with poorer outcomes. Aims were to compare AI levels in bipolar disorder I (BPI) and II (BPII), and major depressive disorder recurrent (MDDR), and to examine the association of AI and childhood trauma within each diagnostic group. Methods AI, measured using the Affective Lability Scale (ALS), was compared between people with DSM-IV BPI (n = 923), BPII (n = 363) and MDDR (n = 207) accounting for confounders and current mood. Regression modelling was used to examine the association between AI and childhood traumas in each diagnostic group. Results ALS scores in descending order were BPII, BPI, MDDR, and differences between groups were significant (p < 0.05). Within the BPI group any childhood abuse (p = 0.021), childhood physical abuse (p = 0.003) and the death of a close friend in childhood (p = 0.002) were significantly associated with higher ALS score but no association was found between childhood trauma and AI in BPII and MDDR. Conclusions AI is an important dimension in bipolar disorder independent of current mood state. There is a strong link between childhood traumatic events and AI levels in BPI and this may be one way in which exposure and disorder are linked. Clinical interventions targeting AI in people who have suffered significant childhood trauma could potentially change the clinical course of bipolar disorder.

Affective Labour and Neoliberal Fantasies: The Gendered and Moral Economy of School Choice in England.

This is the accepted manuscript of chapter 13 in, Vandenbeld Giles, M. (Ed.), 2014, Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism, Demeter Press. For further details and how to order the title, please see: http://demeterpress.org/books/mothering-in-the-age-of-neoliberalism/

A New Formulation of the Spectral Energy Budget of the Atmosphere, with Application to Two High-Resolution General Circulation Models

International audience

Modified atmosphere packaging effects on the postharvest quality of papaya fruit

Export of Fijian papaya (Carica papaya) fruit to destinations such as New Zealand has increased significantly over the last several years. Shipment by sea rather than air is the preferred method, given the capacity for larger volumes and reductions in cost. Long shipping times, however, can compromise fruit quality, although the use of modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) may provide a viable solution for extending fruit storage life. In a collaborative ACIAR project, Australian and Fijian researchers investigated the potential of using MAP to extend storage life of a Fijian papaya ('Fiji Red') fruit based on simulated sea transport conditions. Fruit were packed in one of three MAP environments within cartons, consisting of either a (1) Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) bag with 10 g of KMnO4, (2) Polyamide Film (PF) bag with macro-perforations or (3) without a bag (control fruit). Fruit were held for 1, 2 or 3 weeks at 10°C before being unpacked, ripened and assessed for quality. On day 6 after outturn, fruit with the highest overall quality were those held in LDPE bags. LDPE fruit generally coloured up faster at outturn than PF or control fruit, had less overall moisture loss and scored high in flavour. Headspace carbon dioxide and oxygen concentrations within the LDPE bags were also near recommended levels for maintaining optimum storage-life quality. The LDPE bag provided the most suitable conditions for long term storage of fresh papaya fruit and is therefore the recommended MAP type for use with sea freight export out of Fiji.

The transport of nitric oxide in the upper atmosphere by planetary waves and the zonal mean circulation

U of I Only

FluxEngine: A flexible processing system for calculating atmosphere-ocean carbon dioxide gas fluxes and climatologies

The air-sea flux of greenhouse gases (e.g. carbon dioxide, CO2) is a critical part of the climate system and a major factor in the biogeochemical development of the oceans. More accurate and higher resolution calculations of these gas fluxes are required if we are to fully understand and predict our future climate. Satellite Earth observation is able to provide large spatial scale datasets that can be used to study gas fluxes. However, the large storage requirements needed to host such data can restrict its use by the scientific community. Fortunately, the development of cloud-computing can provide a solution. Here we describe an open source air-sea CO2 flux processing toolbox called the ‘FluxEngine’, designed for use on a cloud-computing infrastructure. The toolbox allows users to easily generate global and regional air-sea CO2 flux data from model, in situ and Earth observation data, and its air-sea gas flux calculation is user configurable. Its current installation on the Nephalae cloud allows users to easily exploit more than 8 terabytes of climate-quality Earth observation data for the derivation of gas fluxes. The resultant NetCDF data output files contain >20 data layers containing the various stages of the flux calculation along with process indicator layers to aid interpretation of the data. This paper describes the toolbox design, the verification of the air-sea CO2 flux calculations, demonstrates the use of the tools for studying global and shelf-sea air-sea fluxes and describes future developments.

Low spatial frequency filtering modulates early brain processing of affective complex pictures

Recent research on affective processing has suggested that low spatial frequency information of fearful faces provide rapid emotional cues to the amygdala, whereas high spatial frequencies convey fine-grained information to the fusiform gyrus, regardless of emotional expression. In the present experiment, we examined the effects of low (LSF, <15 cycles/image width) and high spatial frequency filtering (HSF, >25 cycles/image width) on brain processing of complex pictures depicting pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral scenes. Event-related potentials (ERP), percentage of recognized stimuli and response times were recorded in 19 healthy volunteers. Behavioral results indicated faster reaction times in response to unpleasant LSF than to unpleasant HSF pictures. Unpleasant LSF pictures and pleasant unfiltered pictures also elicited significant enhancements of P1 amplitudes at occipital electrodes as compared to neutral LSF and unfiltered pictures, respectively; whereas no significant effects of affective modulation were found for HSF pictures. Moreover, mean ERP amplitudes in the time between 200 and 500ms post-stimulus were significantly greater for affective (pleasant and unpleasant) than for neutral unfiltered pictures; whereas no significant affective modulation was found for HSF or LSF pictures at those latencies. The fact that affective LSF pictures elicited an enhancement of brain responses at early, but not at later latencies, suggests the existence of a rapid and preattentive neural mechanism for the processing of motivationally relevant stimuli, which could be driven by LSF cues. Our findings confirm thus previous results showing differences on brain processing of affective LSF and HSF faces, and extend these results to more complex and social affective pictures.

The impact of CLIL: affective factors, content-related vocabulary & gender differences

[EN] The experiment discussed in this paper is a direct replication of Finkbeiner (2005) and an indirect replication of Jiang and Forster (2001) and Witzel and Forster (2012). The paper explores the use of episodic memory in L2 vocabulary processing. By administering an L1 episodic recognition task with L2 masked translation primes, reduced reaction times would suggest L2 vocabulary storage in episodic memory. The methodology follows Finkbeiner (2005), who argued that a blank screen introduced after the prime in Jiang Forster (2001) led to a ghosting effect, compromising the imperceptibility of the prime. The results here mostly corroborate Finkbeiner (2005) with no significant priming effects. While Finkbeiner discusses his findings in terms of the dissociability of episodic and semantic memory, and discounts Jiang and Forster’s (2001) results to participants’ strategic responding, I add a layer of analysis based on declarative and procedural constituents. From this perspective, Jiang and Forster (2001) and Witzel and Forster’s (2012) results can be seen as possible episodic memory activation, and Finkbeiner’s (2005) and my lack of priming effects might be due to the sole activation of procedural neural networks. Priming effects are found in concrete and abstract words but require verification through further experimentation.

Inertial dissipation method applied to derive turbulent fluxed over the ocean during the Surface of the Ocean, Fluxes and Interactions with the Atmosphere Atlantic Stratocumulus Transition Experiment (SOFIA/ASTEX) and Structure des Echanges Mer-Atmosphere, Proprietes des Heterogeneites Oceaniques: Recherche Experimentale (SEMAPHORE) experiments with low to moderate wind speed

The transfer coefficients for momentum and heat have been determined for 10 m neutral wind speeds (U-10n) between 0 and 12 m/s using data from the Surface of the Ocean, Fluxes and Interactions with the Atmosphere (SOFIA) and Structure des Echanges Mer-Atmosphere, Proprietes des Heterogeneites Oceaniques: Recherche Experimentale (SEMAPHORE) experiments. The inertial dissipation method was applied to wind and pseudo virtual temperature spectra from a sonic anemometer, mounted on a platform (ship) which was moving through the turbulence held. Under unstable conditions the assumptions concerning the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) budget appeared incorrect. Using a bulk estimate for the stability parameter, Z/L (where Z is the height and L is the Obukhov length), this resulted in anomalously low drag coefficients compared to neutral conditions. Determining Z/L iteratively, a low rate of convergence was achieved. It was concluded that the divergence of the turbulent transport of TKE was not negligible under unstable conditions. By minimizing the dependence of the calculated neutral drag coefficient on stability, this term was estimated at about -0.65Z/L. The resulting turbulent fluxes were then in close agreement with other studies at moderate wind speed. The drag and exchange coefficients for low wind speeds were found to be C-en x 10(3) = 2.79U(10n)(-1) + 0.66 (U-10n < 5.2 m/s), C-en x 10(3) = C-hn x 10(3) = 1.2 (U-10n greater than or equal to 5.2 m/s), and C-dn x 10(3) = 11.7U(10n)(-2) + 0.668 (U-10n < 5.5 m/s), which imply a rapid increase of the coefficient values as the wind decreased within the smooth flow regime. The frozen turbulence hypothesis and the assumptions of isotropy and an inertial subrange were found to remain valid at these low wind speeds for these shipboard measurements. Incorporation of a free convection parameterization had little effect.

A variable atmosphere hypersonic wind tunnel for similitude studies

Mode of access: Internet.

Nitrogen vs argon: what is the most effective atmosphere for shelf-life extension of buckler sorrel leaves?

Buckler sorrel (Rumex induratus Boiss. & Reut.) is an underutilized leafy vegetable with peculiar sensory properties and potential as a gourmet food. In the food industry, different packaging methods have been used for shelf-life extension, but it is important to know how the quality of minimally processed vegetable is affected by these treatments. Recently, nitrogen and argon have been used for food packaging. Nitrogen is low soluble in water and other food constituents and does not support the growth of aerobic microbes. In turn, argon is biochemically active and appears to interfere with enzymatic oxygen receptor sites. In this study, modified atmospheres enriched with nitrogen and argon were evaluated for shelf-life extension of buckler sorrel leaves. Wild samples were gathered in Bragança, Portugal, considering local consumers’ sites and criteria. Healthy and undamaged leaves were selected, rinsed in tap water, and a portion was immediately analyzed (non-stored control). The remaining fresh material was packaged in polyethylene bags under nitrogen- and argon-enriched atmospheres and a conventional control atmosphere (air). All packaged samples were stored at 4 ºC for 12 days and then analyzed. The headspace gas composition was monitored during storage. Different quality attributes were evaluated, including visual (colour), nutritional (macronutrients, individual sugars and fatty acids) and bioactive (hydrophilic and lipophilic molecules and antioxidant properties) parameters. Different statistical tools were used; the one-way analysis of variance (ANO VA) was applied for analyse the differences among treatments and a linear discriminant analysis (LDA ) was used to evaluate the effects on the overall postharvest quality. The argon-enriched atmosphere better prevent the samples yellowing. The proximate composition did not change significantly during storage. Samples in control atmosphere revealed higher protein and ash contents and lower levels of lipids. The non-stored control samples presented the higher amounts of fructose, glucose and trehalose. The storage time increased the palmitic acid levels and decreased the content in α-linolenic and linoleic acids. The γ- e δ-tocopherols were higher after the 12 days of cold storage. Probably, the synthesis of these lipophilic compounds was a plant strategy to fight against the abiotic stress induced by storage. Higher levels of total phenolics and flavonoids and increased reducing power and β-carotene bleaching inhibition capacity were also found in the stored control samples. Once again, this result may be attributed to the intrinsic plant-protection mechanisms. Overall, the argon atmosphere was more suitable for quality preservation and shelf-life extension of buckler sorrel.