Black Cylinder Research Articles

Optimized distribution of black cylinder ceramic magnet with dual effects of magnetic field and thermal energy storage to enhance the productivity of conical solar distillers

Optimized distribution of black cylinder ceramic magnet with dual effects of magnetic field and thermal energy storage to enhance the productivity of conical solar distillers

Биоэнергетическая оценка производства семян баклажан

Abstract. The aim of work is to determine the bioenergy efficiency of eggplant seed production depending on the variety. Research methodology. In conducting this work we consider the costs: for live labor from growing seedlings to obtaining the finished product; for electricity; energy costs agricultural units and transport. The fruits of eggplant varieties of VNIIOOB - branch of FGBNU "PAFSC RAS" Panthera, Astrakom, Black cylinder, Matrosik in compare with the control variety Albatross were used. The work on cultivation was carried out according to technology generally accepted for Astrakhan region. Research results. The results of the work can be concluded: the highest yield of seeds was noted in the variety Matrosik 712.4 kg/ha, which is 1.1 times higher than the control; in other varieties it is lower than the control by 199.0-281.2 kg/ha. The yield energy efficiency ranged from 100 083.45 MJ/ha (variety Panthera) to 144335.23 MJ/ha (variety Albatross), other varieties occupied an intermediate position. Total yield energy inputs ranged from 32 836.2 MJ/ha to 51 312.1 MJ/ha, with an energy efficiency coefficient of 2.8–3.0 units. The energy efficiency coefficient of seed production at was 1.42–1.67 units. Scientific novelty. For the first time the bioenergetic estimation of eggplant seeds produced by the VNIIOOB, the minimum costs depending on the variety were found that is important for providing the agricultural producers with pure sort seeds of high quality produced in our country. It determined that bioenergetic technology of growing, harvesting and separating seeds are properly selected varieties with high standard yields and good seed yields.

Multimodal influences on learning walks in desert ants (Cataglyphis fortis)

Ants are excellent navigators using multimodal information for navigation. To accurately localise the nest at the end of a foraging journey, visual cues, wind direction and also olfactory cues need to be learnt. Learning walks are performed at the start of an ant’s foraging career or when the appearance of the nest surrounding has changed. We investigated here whether the structure of such learning walks in the desert ant Cataglyphis fortis takes into account wind direction in conjunction with the learning of new visual information. Ants learnt to travel back and forth between their nest and a feeder, and we then introduced a black cylinder near their nest to induce learning walks in regular foragers. By doing this across days with different wind directions, we were able to probe how ants balance different sensory modalities. We found that (1) the ants’ outwards headings are influenced by the wind direction with their routes deflected such that they will arrive downwind of their target, (2) a novel object along the route induces learning walks in experienced ants and (3) the structure of learning walks is shaped by the wind direction rather than the position of the visual cue.

Meet Alexa, your new lab assistant

Imagine working on a multistep reaction that requires you to add reagents in a specific sequence and with precise timing. Standing at the hood, reagents measured and ready to go, you begin the carefully orchestrated procedure, when suddenly your mind draws a blank. Which reagent do you add next? You could take off your gloves and look up the protocol in your lab notebook, but with each precious second that passes, the reaction is more likely to fail. Then you remember your lab assistant—a black cylinder sitting on a shelf across the lab. “Alexa, ask Helix for the protocol for the coupling reaction,” you say. A ring on top of the cylinder glows blue as Alexa rattles off the correct order of addition. Crisis averted. This is just one scenario in which software developer James Rhodes imagines scientists would benefit from his voice-enabled laboratory assistant called Helix. Rhodes designed Helix

The Internet of Things 2.0: when things start to listen

Alexa, are you pretty? Are you clever? What's six times eight? Will it rain today? She doesn't chuckle when she replies to my eight-year old's incessant queries. Her answers are professional and to the point. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I try my best. Six multiplied by eight is 48. It probably won't rain in London today. Then she gives us the weather. And the traffic update. And the morning news. And she plays some jazz. Echo is a sleek black cylinder from Amazon, and, with its diminutive cousin Echo Dot and their voice command platform `Alexa', represents a renewed push towards the reality of the `smart' home - converting all the buzz about the Internet of Things into a useful form.

Color and gloss evaluation in decorative stain applied to cases of Pinus radiata wood treated with copper azole micronized Type C

Six treatments (one control and five decoration coatings) were applied to radiata pine wood treated with micronized copper azole for outdoor use at a rate of 3,08 kg/m3 retention. One decoration coating was applied prior to impregnation, prestain and two decoration coatings were applied in a mixture with the micronized copper azole preservative Black Cylinder and Red Cylinder. The following two varnishes were tested: a water-based varnish and a solvent-based varnish. Additionally, untreated radiata pine specimens were tested as a reference. The changes in the gloss and color of these five decorative coatings were evaluated after undergoing natural aging tests for three months and accelerated aging trials during exposure to ultra-violet radiation of 340 nm for 500 hours. In the accelerated aging trials treatments, changes in gloss and color showed the lowest variations in treatment trials prestain and Black Cylinder and the highest variations in treatment trial Red Cylinder. In the aging tests trials, changes in gloss and color showed the lowest variations in treatment trials prestain and Black Cylinder. The costs of each decorative coating were assessed in terms of performance according to timber volume coated. The lowest cost of the three decoration treatments was prestain, with a value of 16 US$/m3, followed by Black Cylinder with a value of 24 US$/m3. Compared with the alternative siding products available in the market, such as fiber cement and vinyl siding, colored wood treated with prestain is competitive with vinyl siding, with 58% lower costs than fiber-cement.

The Teardown: Amazon Echo digital personal assistant

E-COMMERCE GIANT Amazon is taking a more cautious approach to its latest consumer electronics launch after last year's misfire with the Fire Phone. That has already forced the company to take a $170m write-down in its accounts. The Amazon Echo is the company's new voicerecognition- based personal assistant and remote music player. For now, the sleek black cylinder is only available in the US and by invitation - the invitations themselves mostly going out to members of Amazon's Prime service which offers express delivery and all-you-can-eat streaming media.

Kinetic Diffusion Equation in a One-Dimensional Cylindrical Geometry

The neutron transport equation can be expressed in the form of the elementary diffusion equation. The kinetic equation in this form is defined as the kinetic diffusion equation. A derivation of the kinetic diffusion equation in a one-dimensional cylindrical geometry with arbitrary scattering anisotropy and an external source is presented. The principle for obtaining a numerical solution of the equation defined as the kinetic diffusion method is expounded. The physical meaning of the parameters in the equation is illustrated for the example of the numerical determination of the effective boundary condition on the surface of a black cylinder.

Nest-mark orientation versus vector navigation in desert ants

Foraging ants and bees use path-integration vectors and landmark cues for navigation. When in particular experimental paradigms the two types of information--vector-based and landmark-based information--are made to compete with each other, the insect may weight either source more heavily depending on the navigational context and the animal's motivational state. Here we studied the effects of a displaced nest mark on the homing performances of Cataglyphis ants. Foragers were trained to shuttle between the nest, which was marked by a black cylinder (the beacon), and an artificial feeder. Trained ants were captured at the feeder and transferred to a distant test field, where they experienced the nest mark at various positions relative to their home vector. When the beacon was positioned to one side of the point of release, the ants slightly drifted towards the beacon right at the start of their inbound run, but thereafter resumed their home-vector courses. When the nest mark appeared to one side further down the homing course, the ants set off in the home-vector direction, but then gradually drifted towards the beacon. The distance, at which this occurred, and the ants' drift from the home-vector course were very similar across test conditions. During the final search for the nest, landmark information dominated the ants' path integrator. The results clearly show that nest-mark memories are effective during the entire vector-based homeward course, but that they are either only partly activated or partly used unless the state of the ants' path integrator is close to zero.

The Effects of Radiation Shield and Laser Heating on the Soot Formation and Oxidation of Diffusion Flame

The effects of radiation heat transfer on the soot formation and oxidation process in laminar diffusion flames have been studied experimentally using a “radiation shield” for an ethylene flame and a laser heating technique for propylene flames. The soot volume fraction of ethylene diffusion flames was measured for two different radiation boundary conditions. One is the “radiation shield” boundary condition (AL), established by placing the flame inside a highly polished aluminum cylinder, and the other is the fully absorbing radiation boundary condition (BB), obtained with a “black body cylinder enclosure”. The soot formation and oxidation processes are enhanced under the “radiation shield” boundary condition. A second set of experiments was conducted for propylene diffusion flames around the sooting conditions. A non-sooting flame can be converted to a sooting flame when a laser light heats up a flame at a height of 7mm above the burner (HAB), where soot particles are formed. On the contrary, a sooting flame can be changed to a non-sooting flame when the flame is heated with a laser light at 13mm HAB, where soot particles are oxidized. In this study, the absorbed amounts of radiation energy, the soot volume fraction, and the increased soot temperatures were measured.

Operant behavior can be triggered by the position of the rat relative to objects rotating on an inaccessible platform.

The present study describes a task testing the ability of rats to trigger operant behavior by their relative spatial position to inaccessible rotating objects. Rats were placed in a Skinner box with a transparent front wall through which they could observe one or two adjacent objects fixed on a slowly rotating arena (d = 1 m) surrounded by an immobile black cylinder. The direction of arena rotation was alternated at a sequence of different time intervals. Rats were reinforced for the first bar-press that was emitted when a radius separating the two adjacent objects or dividing a single object into two halves (pointing radius) entered a 60 degrees sector of its circular trajectory defined with respect to the stationary Skinner box (reward sector). Well trained rats emitted 62.1 +/- 3.6% of responses in a 60 degrees sector preceding the reward sector and in the first 30 degrees of the reward sector. Response rate increased only when the pointing radius was approaching the reward sector, regardless of the time elapsed from the last reward. In the extinction session, when no reward was delivered, rats responded during the whole passage of the pointing radius through the former reward sector and spontaneously decreased responding after the pointing radius left this area. This finding suggests that rats perceived the reward sector as a continuous single region. The same results were obtained when the Skinner box with the rat was orbiting around the immobile scene. It is concluded that rats can recognize and anticipate their position relative to movable objects.

The influence of beacon-aiming on the routes of wood ants.

Many insects have an innate propensity to approach conspicuous objects. We explore how such beacon aiming determines the shape of a wood ant's habitual route. We find that a single large black cylinder within an arena biases the route taken by ants as they run from a start position at one end of the arena to reach a feeder at the other. Ants learn a stable route with the first segment of their trajectory aimed at the cylinder, which becomes an intermediate goal on the way to the feeder. When in occasional tests the cylinder is removed or displaced, ants head for the usual site of the cylinder. They also aim for the same site when the cylinder is removed and the ant's normal start position is changed. This behaviour suggests that visual features of the arena are learnt from the vantage point of the cylinder and that this stored snapshot guides the ant to that site. Ants thus reinforce their ability to reach the cylinder by learning other visual features in their surroundings that can also steer them to its location. The use of beacon aiming in fixing routes has several benefits. Because the same path will be traversed on every trial, beacon aiming facilitates the acquisition of routes. Beacon aiming also increases the robustness of learnt routes: ants straying from the route will be attracted to the closest beacon and so regain their habitual paths.

Statistical Entropy of Black Cylinder

By using the method of quantum statistics, we directly derive the partition function of bosonic and fermionic fields in black cylinder. Then via the improved brick-wall method, membrane model, we obtain that if we choose the proper parameter, the entropy of black cylinder is proportional to the area of the horizon. In our result, the stripped term and the divergent logarithmic term in the original brick-wall method no longer exist. In the whole process, we do not take any approximation. We offer a new simple and direct way of calculating the entropy of different complicated black holes.

On the Nature of Opaque Cylindrical Regions Formed at Fibre Break Sites in a Fragmentation Test

When a single-fibre composite test is performed to obtain information about the interfacial adhesion in a composite, a gradual strain increase often causes an opaque (black) cylinder to nucleate at, and grow from, the fibre failure sites. The nature of the opaque cylinder is difficult to ascertain using optical microscopy. This is the subject of the present note. To study the inside of the opaque cylinder we use several experimental methods based on imaging the failed region: optical microscopy, laser Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Mechanical models, including FEM analysis and analytic equations based on the shear-lag approach, are used to discuss the experimental work. The nature and growth mechanism of the opaque cylinder are of importance in defining the parameters and/or contributions that appear in both the force balance and the energy balance schemes.

Evaluation of traps of six different designs to capture pine sawyer beetles (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae)

Summary1 Sawyer beetles (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) and metallic wood‐boring beetles (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) attack recently killed or felled trees. They are attracted to potential hosts by volatiles and possibly by visual cues. We examined traps of six different designs to determine the role of silhouette and shape in the capture of pine sawyer beetles, Monochamus L.2 Traps with a round black cylinder, a single vane (clear or black), or cross vanes (clear or black) all mounted above a pan were compared to an open pan. Each pan contained soapy water to retain insects.3 Traps with a black silhouette were significantly more effective in capturing male and female Monochamus scutellatus (Say) than traps with or without clear vanes. For both sexes of M. mutator LeConte, pan traps were as effective as traps with a black silhouette. Silhouette was not important for the capture of male and female M. notatus (Drury). Trap catches for the six trap types were not significantly different for male Buprestis maculativentris Say.4 A pan trap with a black silhouette is recommended for general use in capturing wood‐boring cerambycids and buprestids.

Comparison of Traps for Monitoring Plum Curculio Adults (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) in Apple Orchards

Effectiveness of four types of odor-baited or unbaited traps for monitoring overwintered adult plum curculios, Conotrachelus nenuphar (Herbst), on perimeter apple trees in Massachusetts orchards was compared. Black wooden pyramid traps placed on the ground next to apple tree trunks captured more adults than black plastic cylinder traps placed vertically on limbs within apple tree canopies, squares of clear Plexiglas placed vertically next to apple tree canopies to intercept incoming adults on the sticky-coated outward-facing surface, or “Circle” traps comprised of aluminum screen and fastened to limbs within apple tree canopies (which captured no adults). In no comparison did any of these traps baited with a combination of synthetic aggregation pheromone (grandisoic acid) and synthetic host volatiles (limonene and ethyl isovalerate) capture more adults than unbaited traps. None of the three types of baited or unbaited traps evaluated in commercial orchards (pyramid, cylinder or Circle) yielded captures of adults whose amounts or phenologies reflected amounts or phenologies of ovipositional injuries to fruit caused by plum curculio, although in unmanaged orchards amounts of capture by baited and unbaited pyramid and clear Plexiglas traps did reflect amounts of fruit injury. The only situation where odor bait enhanced trap effectiveness involved clear Plexiglas traps placed next to woods nearby an unmanaged orchard, where baited traps facing woods caught about 10× more immigrating overwintered adults than did unbaited traps. We conclude that odor-baited clear Plexiglas traps placed near woods can be useful for monitoring the beginning, peak and ending of overwintering adult immigration, but a more attractive blend of odor components is needed for effective monitoring by traps of any type placed near, beneath or within canopies of apple trees.

Small-scale field trial of a sensing device for detecting peridomestic populations of Triatoma infestans (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) in northwestern Argentina.

Two prototypes of sensing devices for detecting peridomestic populations of Triatoma infestans Klug were tested in paired trials with bamboo canes in Amamá and nearby rural villages under triatomine surveillance. In infested peridomestic structures housing domestic animals, 1-2 pairs of numbered devices were placed per test site, left for 3-9 nights, and inspected for evidence of infestation. Prototype A was a black plastic cylinder 19 cm high and 10 cm diameter, with a screw cap on the top, 2 openings in the bottom, and a removable central structure made of resistant plastic coated with leather. Prototype B had square leather pieces rolled into cylinders instead of the central structure. Prototype A was significantly more sensitive than the bamboo cane with pleated paper inside in 13 test sites in which 20 pairs were tried. In a smaller series involving 7 pairs, prototype B also detected infestations more frequently than the cane. Triatomine feces were the signs most frequently recorded by both prototypes, whereas the bamboo canes recorded no feces. Ten T. infestans and 1 Triatoma guasayana Wygodzinsky & Avalos were collected from the prototypes placed on the ground or walls, not beneath the thatched roofs of the animal shelters, whereas only 3 T. infestans were collected from the canes. This study describes an effective sensing device for detecting T. infestans populations in outdoor animal shelters and provides quantitative field data on its performance.

The performance of a box-type solar cooker with auxiliary heating

In Bangladesh it is very difficult to use solar cookers during the months when the days are generally cloudy and at times solar cooking becomes impossible. To overcome such problems for a box-type solar cooker, we have used an auxiliary source of energy inside it. This is done with the help of a built-in heating coil inside the cooker or a retrofit electric bulb in a black painted cylinder. It is found that the use of auxiliary sources allows cooking on most cloudy days.

Making learning easy: the acquisition of visual information during the orientation flights of social wasps

The flights of individual wasps (Vespula) were recorded as they approached a small feeder on the ground that was marked by a black cylinder ca 15 cm away. Two navigational strategies are used in these approaches. Initially, the wasp aims at the cylinder, treating it as a beacon and fixating it with frontal retina. In the last stage of the flight, the wasp assumes a preferred orientation so that the cylinder takes up a constant, more peripheral retinal position as the wasp nears the feeder. Path guidance by image-matching is likely to be limited to this final segment of the return. Wasps could gain the information needed for these distinct navigational strategies during the learning flights that they perform on their initial departures from the feeder. They fly away from the feeder in a series of arcs while turning at a mean angular velocity of 226°/s. The cylinder tends to be viewed with frontal retina during the arcs suggesting that the information required for aiming at the cylinder is acquired then. For image matching, the appearance of the cylinder needs to be learnt when the wasp is in the orientation that it adopts close to the feeder on its return flight. Wasps tend to assume this orientation during learning flights while they face the feeder. Such inspections of the feeder occur at the ends of arcs when a wasp's turning velocity is low.

Strain differences in mouse response to odours of predators

Sexually mature male mice of three different strains (CD-1 outbred, CBA, and C57BI/6J inbred) were exposed in an arena to a small black cylinder (35 mm film container), filled with faeces of either a mouse predator (red fox, Vulpes vulpes) or a non-predator (rabbit, Oryctolagus cuniculus) during a 3 min test. Control animals were given an empty container. Locomotor activity and behavioural responses in the arena were scored. Hot-plate response (50 ± 0.5°C) was measured 15 min before and immediately after exposure to the odour. Responses to predators were found to be strain-specific. In CD-1 and C57 mice, latency of approach to the small cylinder increased while contacts with it decreased upon fox odour exposure. In CBA mice, fox odour caused an increase of defensive burying and sniffing, and a decrease of rearing. Odour exposure did not affect grooming, digging, or wall rearing in any of the strains. Hot-plate analgesia was also unaffected. The observed strain differences in the defensive response, interpreted as evolutionary adaptive anti-predatory strategies, seem to confirm the suggested origin of the two inbred strains used.