The use of the National Research Council of Canada's Falcon 20 research aircraft as a terrestrial analogue space environment (TASE) for space surgery research: Challenges and suggested solutions

Emergency surgery will be needed to prevent death if humans are used to explore beyond low earth's orbit. Laparoscopic surgery (LS) is envisioned as a less invasive option for space, but will induce further stresses and complicate logistical requirements. Thus, further study into the technology and physiology of LS in weightlessness is required. We recently utilized the National Research Council of Canada's Flight Research Laboratory's Falcon 20 aircraft as a terrestrial analogue space environment (TASE) for space surgery research. The Falcon 20 had never been used for this purpose nor had the involved teams collaborated previously. There were many process challenges including the lack of antecedent surgical studies on this aircraft, a requirement for multiple disciplines who were unfamiliar and geographically distant from each other, flight performance limitations with the Falcon 20, complex animal care requirements, requirements for prototypical in-flight life-support surgical suites, financial limitations, and a need to use non-flight hardened technologies. Stepwise suggested solutions to these challenges are outlined as guidelines for future investigators intending similar research. Overall, the Falcon 20 TASE, backed by the flight resources, especially the design and fabrication capabilities of the NRC-FRL, provide investigators with a versatile and responsive opportunity to pursue research into advanced medical techniques that will be needed to save lives during space exploration.     

Energy- and flux-budget (EFB) turbulence closure model for stably stratified flows. Part I: steady-state,homogeneous regimes

We propose a new turbulence closure model based on the budget equations for the key second moments: turbulent kinetic and potential energies: TKE and TPE (comprising the turbulent total energy: TTE = TKE + TPE) and vertical turbulent fluxes of momentum and buoyancy (proportional to potential temperature). Besides the concept of TTE, we take into account the non-gradient correction to the traditional buoyancy flux formulation. The proposed model permits the existence of turbulence at any gradient Richardson number, Ri. Instead of the critical value of Richardson number separating—as is usually assumed—the turbulent and the laminar regimes, the suggested model reveals a transitional interval, , which separates two regimes of essentially different nature but both turbulent: strong turbulence at ; and weak turbulence, capable of transporting momentum but much less efficient in transporting heat, at . Predictions from this model are consistent with available data from atmospheric and laboratory experiments, direct numerical simulation and large-eddy simulation.     

岩体应力应变曲线转型的孔压效应与降雨滑坡的机制分析

从宏观与微观机制方面探讨了孔隙水压力对岩体脆－延性转变的影响。定义了一个峰后破坏割线模量Epost来表征孔隙水压力对岩体应力应变曲线转型的效应,并结合突变理论得到的斜坡失稳的刚度判据,进一步分析了孔隙水压力对应力应变曲线峰后斜率的影响,随孔隙水压力的增加,峰后曲线斜率变陡,峰后刚度增大,即材料的均匀性、脆性增大与刚度比k减小。因此在系统内部条件不变时,刚度比k=1时就存在一个临界孔隙水压力pwcritical,即降雨等涨落因素引起滑面介质中的孔隙水压力大于这个临界值时斜坡就易于发生突变失稳。从而深化认识了降雨等外部涨落因素对斜坡系统失稳的重要触发作用。     

Rethinking the nature of urban environmental politics: Security, subjectivity, and the non-human

The growing field of urban political ecology (UPE) has greatly advanced understandings of the socio-ecological transformations through which urban economies and environments are produced. However, this field has thus far failed to fully consider subjective (and subject-forming) dimensions of urban environmental struggle. I argue that this can be overcome through bringing urban political ecology into conversation with both post-structural political ecology and critical geopolitics. Bridging these literatures focuses attention on practices of socio-ecological exclusion and attachment through which environmental subjectivities are formed. This argument is drawn out through a case study of the politics of local economic development and conservation within the watershed of the Big Darby Creek near Columbus, Ohio. This struggle was driven by a preservationist movement that coalesced around a shared understanding of socio-ecological hybridity as a source of metaphysical insecurity. Hybridity appears here as a site of political and ethical struggle over social and ecological exclusions produced in the pursuit of security. This case study demonstrates a paradox of environmental politics: the non-human is at once a site of constituent possibilities for identity and subjectivity as well as forces which seek to foreclose this radical openness. Recognizing the paradoxical nature of environmental struggle allows for a more complex and nuanced account of the multifarious forces that shape the formation of environmental subjectivities.     

Determination of the critical failure surface for slope stability analysis using ant colony optimization

Slope stability analysis of any natural or artificial slope aims at determining the factor of safety of the slip surface that possesses the lowest factor of safety. In this study, an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm is developed to solve this factor-of-safety minimization problem. Factors of safety of slip surfaces are found by using the Morgenstern–Price method, which satisfies both force and moment equilibrium. Nonlinear equations from the Morgenstern–Price method are solved numerically by the Newton–Raphson method. In the proposed ACO algorithm, the initiation point and the shape of the slip surface are treated as the search variables. The proposed heuristic algorithm represents slip surfaces as piecewise-linear curves and solves for the optimal curve yielding the minimum factor of safety. To demonstrate its applicability and to investigate the validity and effectiveness of the algorithm, four examples with varying complexity are presented. The obtained results are compared with the available literature and are found to be in agreement.     

Seeding nature, ceding culture: Redefining the boundaries of the marine commons through spatial management and GIS

The oceans are not only being transformed through privatization as management moves towards market mechanisms, the oceans are also being “zoned”, with zoning increasingly proposed as the ideal conduit for weighting different uses of the ocean. This is concomitant with a move towards ecosystem-based management that also partakes in a policy environment imbued with the commodification of nature, in which environmental services are ranked and valued according to neoliberal percepts. Crucial to these projects are the utilization of GIS technologies. This paper considers these zones of preservation and sites of conflict through an ethnographic case study of the scallop fisheries of New England, examining conflicts between harvesters, different projects to map the fishery, and ongoing efforts to reseed scallop beds. The paper explores how participants themselves articulate the changing practices of fishing and farming, redefining boundaries of nature and culture. While reseeding projects, for example, arguably participate in the market logic of neoliberalism, at the same time they may resist and redefine the terms, as communities see themselves sowing the seeds of their own sustainability and changing the terms of what counts, literally, as nature.     

Evaluation of state indices in predicting the cyclic and monotonic strength of sands with different fines contents

State parameter, ψ, has been widely used to combine the influence of void ratio, e, and stress level, p′, on the soils behavior. Stress ratio, R_s, and modified state parameter, ψ_m, have also been proposed for the same purpose. This paper aims to evaluate and compare the different state indices in combining the effect of fines content, density and stress level for five different types of sands, by processing a large number of previously published experimental data. The use of the recently established concept of equivalent interparticle void ratio, e^⁎, in definition of the state indices is also evaluated. The results indicate that the influence of fines presence, in addition to the e and p′, on the behavior is favorably reflected by the state indices. Unique correlations were derived between the cyclic or monotonic strength and each of the state indices, independent of the fines content. The correlations, for all the different types of soils, fell into limited types of common formulations. ψ and R_s worked generally better than ψ_m, whether defined in terms of e or e^⁎. The extension of straight part of critical state line was found to be an appropriate reference line for calculating R_s used in conjunction with e or e^⁎.     

The influence of drill cuttings on physical characteristics of phytodetritus

Sinking of aggregated phytoplankton cells is a crucial mechanism for transporting carbon to the seafloor and benthic ecosystem, with such aggregates often scavenging particulate material from the water column as they sink. In the vicinity of drilling rigs used by the oil and gas industry, the concentration of particulate matter in the water column may at times be enriched as a result of the discharge of ‘drill cuttings’ - drilling waste material. This investigation exposed laboratory produced phytoplankton aggregates to drill cuttings of various composition (those containing no hydrocarbons from reservoir rocks and those with a <1% hydrocarbon content) and assessed the change in aggregate size, settling rate and resuspension behavior of these using resuspension chambers and settling cylinders. Results indicate that both settling velocity and seabed stress required to resuspend the aggregates are greater in aggregates exposed to drill cuttings, with these increases most significant in aggregates exposed to hydrocarbon containing drill cuttings.     

1966～1976华北大震高潮回顾性预测——纪念唐山大震34周年

1966～1976年华北的邢台大震、渤海大震以及唐山大震皆可由以29 a为周期的三性分布求出其发震年份.至于发震地区可由"静中动判据"求出是唐山地区和渤海莱州湾地区.邢台大震的位置可由立交模式来推求.1966～1976年这次大震高潮后由三性分布后延推知在2016～2017年华北可能会再次发生7级以上大震.     

Multiphysics implementation of advanced soil mechanics models

Using multiphysics computer codes has become a useful tool to solve systems of partial differential equations. However, these codes do not always allow for the free introduction of implicitly defined state functions when automatic differentiation is used to compute the iteration matrix. This makes it considerably more difficult to solve geomechanical problems using non-linear constitutive models. This paper proposes a method for overcoming this difficulty based on multiphysics capabilities. The implementation of the well-known Barcelona basic model is described to illustrate the application of the method. For this purpose, without including formulation details addressed by other authors, the fundamentals of its implementation in a finite element code are described. Examples that demonstrate the scope of the proposed methodology are also presented.