The Thomson scattering diagnostic on the Madison Symmetric Torus (MST) records excessive levels of stray Nd:YAG laser light. Stray light saturates the 1064 nm spectral channel in all polychromators, which prevents absolute electron density measurements via Rayleigh scattering calibration. Furthermore, stray light contaminates adjacent spectral channels for r/a ≥ 0.75, which renders the diagnost...

Shallow groundwater is heavily contaminated with arsenic in Bangladesh. The results of a total of 77 samples in two studied upazilas Daudkandi and Begumganj showed elevated levels of arsenic contents in tube well water (range: 0.29-0.71 ppm, n = 6), soils (range: 5.64-29.47 ppm DW, n =16), human scalp hair, (range: 2.41-14.91 ppm DW, n = 8), kachu (range: 0.11-3.89 ppm FW, n = 5), water spinach...

The living ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) of trans-cyclooctene (tCO) was investigated. ROMP of tCO in the presence of PPh(3) in THF leads to the formation of narrowly dispersed polycyclooctene (PCO). The presence of PPh(3) as an additive and the use of THF as a solvent were demonstrated to be necessary to suppress competing secondary metathesis processes in the ROMP of tCO. Under...

In the context of metric perturbation theory for non-spinning black holes, extreme mass ratio binary (EMRB) systems are described by distributionally forced master wave equations. Numerical solution of a master wave equation as an initial boundary value problem requires initial data. However, because the correct initial data for generic-orbit systems is unknown, specification of trivial initial...

background: in the past few decades, indoor air pollution (iap) has become a primary concern to the point. it is increasingly believed to be of equal or greater importance to human health compared to ambient air. however, due to the lack of comprehensive indices for the integrated assessment of indoor air quality (iaq), we aimed to develop a novel, fuzzy-based indoor air quality index (fiaqi) t...

Signal level quantization, a fundamental component in digital sampling of continuous signals such as DPCM, or in near-lossless predictive-coding based compression schemes of digital data such as JPEG-LS, often produces visible banding artifacts in regions where the input signals are very smooth. Traditional techniques for dealing with this issue include dithering, where the encoder contaminates...

Four insects species have emerged as important pests of alfalfa in the Western United States during the past decade. Cowpea aphid has long been a resident insect of the Western United States, but became a significant alfalfa pest during the past two years. The silverleaf whitefly has been a serious pest of alfalfa since 1991. Silverleaf whitefly reduces hay yield and contaminates alfalfa hay wi...

There are ongoing events where aircraft engine lubricant containing tricresyl phosphates (TCPs) contaminates aircraft cabins. Some individuals have experienced tremors or other neurological symptoms that may last for many months following exposures. Mass spectrometric (MS) protocols are being developed to determine the percentage of "biomarker proteins" that are modified by such exposures, spec...

Santowhite, a commercial antioxidant used in the manufacture of polypropylene, contaminates 12-ml polyallomer tubes to the extent of 0.2-0.3 mg/tube. It is distributed through the plastic and appears as a microscopic dust on the tubes' surfaces. In the preparation of polysomes from rat liver by standard methods, approximately 15% of the antioxidant in previously water-washed tubes was removed b...

Heavy metal pollution of soils is of great concern. The presence of the toxic metal species above critical concentration not only harmfully affects human health but also the environment. Among existing strategies to remediate metal contaminates in soils, phytoremediation approach using metal accumulating plants is much convincing in terms of metal removal efficiency, but it has many limitations...