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The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of research and development in maintaining public health. Facing unprecedented challenges, the scientific community developed antiviral drugs, virucides, and vaccines to combat the infection within the past two years. However, an ever-increasing list of highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 variants (gamma, delta, omicron, and now ba.2 stealth) has exacerbated the problem: again raising the issues of infection prevention strategies and the efficacy of personal protective equipment (PPE). Against this backdrop, we report an antimicrobial fabric for PPE applications. We have fabricated a nanofibrous silk-PEO material using electrospinning followed by zinc oxide thin film deposition by employing the atomic layer deposition technique. The composite fabric has shown 85% more antibacterial activity than the control fabric and was found to possess substantial superoxide dismutase–mimetic activity. The composite was further subjected to antiviral testing using two different respiratory tract viruses: coronavirus (OC43: enveloped) and rhinovirus (RV14: non-enveloped). We report a 95% reduction in infectious virus for both OC43 and RV14 from an initial load of ∼1 × 10 5 (sample size: 6 mm dia. disk), after 1 h of white light illumination. Furthermore, with 2 h of illumination, ∼99% reduction in viral infectivity was observed for RV14. High activity in a relatively small area of fabric (3.5 × 10 3 viral units per mm 2 ) makes this antiviral fabric ideal for application in masks/PPE, with an enhanced ability to prevent antimicrobial infection overall. 

In 2019/2020, Australia experienced its largest wildfire season on record. Smoke covered hundreds of square kilometers across the southeastern coast and reached the site of the 2020 COALA (Characterizing Organics and Aerosol Loading over Australia) field campaign in New South Wales. Using a subset of nighttime observations made by a proton-transfer-reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometer (PTR-ToF-MS), we calculate emission ratios (ERs) and factors (EFs) for 21 volatile organic compounds (VOCs). We restrict our analysis to VOCs with sufficiently high lifetimes to be minimally impacted by oxidation over the ~8 h between when the smoke was emitted and when it arrived at the field site. We use oxidized VOC to VOC ratios to assess the total amount of radical oxidation: maleic anhydride/furan to assess OH oxidation, and (cis-2-butenediol + furanone)/furan to assess NO3 oxidation. We compare ERs calculated from the freshest portion of the plume to ERs calculated using the entire nighttime period. Finding good agreement between the two, we are able to extend our analysis to VOCs measured in more chemically aged portions of the plume. Our analysis provides ERs and EFs for 9 compounds not previously reported for temperate forests in Australia: acrolein, pentanones/methylbutanal, methyl propanoate, methyl methacrylate, propene, maleic anhydride, benzaldehyde, methyl guaiacol, and methylbenzoic acid. We compare our results with two studies in similar Australian biomes, and two studies focused on US temperate forests. We find mixed agreement for EFs presented from previous studies of Australian wildfires, and generally good agreement with studies focused on fires in the Western US. This suggests that comprehensive field measurements of biomass burning VOC emissions in other regions may be applicable to Australian temperate forests. 

The objective of this paper is to outline the details of a recently-funded National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) project that aims to educate and enable the current and future manufacturing workforce to operate in an Industry 4.0 environment. Additionally, the startup procedures involved, the major ongoing activities during year-one, and preliminary impressions and lessons learned will be elaborated as well. Industry 4.0 refers to the ongoing reformation of advanced manufacturing (Operation Technologies - OT) enabled by advances in automation/data (Information Technologies - IT). Cyber-enabled smart manufacturing is a multidisciplinary approach that integrates the manufacturing process, its monitoring/control, data science, cyber-physical systems, and cloud computing to drive manufacturing operations. This is further propelled by the dissolution of boundaries separating IT and OT, presenting optimization opportunities not just at a machine-level, but at the plant/enterprise-levels. This so-called fourth industrial revolution is rapidly percolating the discrete and continuous manufacturing industry. It is therefore critical for the current and future US workforce to be cognizant and capable of such interdisciplinary domain knowledge and skills. To meet this workforce need, this project will develop curricula, personnel and communities in cyber-enabled smart manufacturing. The key project components will include: (i) Curriculum Road-Mapping and Implementation – one that integrates IT and OT to broaden the educational experience and employability via road-mapping workshops, and then to develop/implement curricula, (ii) Interdisciplinary Learning Experiences – through collaborative special-projects courses, industry internships and research experiences, (iii) Pathways to Industry 4.0 Careers – to streamline career pathways to enter Industry 4.0 careers, and to pursue further education, and (iv) Faculty Development – continuous improvement via professional development workshops and faculty development leaves. It is expected that this project will help define and chart-out the capabilities demanded from the next-generation workforce to fulfill the call of Industry 4.0, and the curricular ingredients necessary to train and empower them. This will help create an empowered workforce well-suited for Industry 4.0 careers in cyber-enabled smart manufacturing. The collaborative research team’s experience so far in starting up and establishing the project has further shed light on some of the essentials and practicalities needed for achieving the grand vision of enabling the manufacturing workforce for the future. Altogether, the experience and lessons learned during the year-one implementation has provided a better perception of what is needed for imparting a broader impact through this project. 

The objective of this paper is to outline the details of a recently-funded National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) project that aims to educate and enable the current and future manufacturing workforce to operate in an Industry 4.0 environment. Additionally, the startup procedures involved, the major ongoing activities during year-one, and preliminary impressions and lessons learned will be elaborated as well. Industry 4.0 refers to the ongoing reformation of advanced manufacturing (Operation Technologies - OT) enabled by advances in automation/data (Information Technologies - IT). Cyber-enabled smart manufacturing is a multidisciplinary approach that integrates the manufacturing process, its monitoring/control, data science, cyber-physical systems, and cloud computing to drive manufacturing operations. This is further propelled by the dissolution of boundaries separating IT and OT, presenting optimization opportunities not just at a machine-level, but at the plant/enterprise-levels. This so-called fourth industrial revolution is rapidly percolating the discrete and continuous manufacturing industry. It is therefore critical for the current and future US workforce to be cognizant and capable of such interdisciplinary domain knowledge and skills. To meet this workforce need, this project will develop curricula, personnel and communities in cyber-enabled smart manufacturing. The key project components will include: (i) Curriculum Road-Mapping and Implementation – one that integrates IT and OT to broaden the educational experience and employability via road-mapping workshops, and then to develop/implement curricula, (ii) Interdisciplinary Learning Experiences – through collaborative special-projects courses, industry internships and research experiences, (iii) Pathways to Industry 4.0 Careers – to streamline career pathways to enter Industry 4.0 careers, and to pursue further education, and (iv) Faculty Development – continuous improvement via professional development workshops and faculty development leaves. It is expected that this project will help define and chart-out the capabilities demanded from the next-generation workforce to fulfill the call of Industry 4.0, and the curricular ingredients necessary to train and empower them. This will help create an empowered workforce well-suited for Industry 4.0 careers in cyber-enabled smart manufacturing. The collaborative research team’s experience so far in starting up and establishing the project has further shed light on some of the essentials and practicalities needed for achieving the grand vision of enabling the manufacturing workforce for the future. Altogether, the experience and lessons learned during the year-one implementation has provided a better perception of what is needed for imparting a broader impact through this project. 

Resin uptake plays a critical role in the stiffness‐to‐weight ratio of wind turbine blades in which sandwich composites are used extensively. This work examines the flexural properties of nominally half‐inch thick sandwich composites made with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) foam cores (H60 and H80; PSC and GPC) at several resin uptakes. We found that the specific flexural strength and modulus for the H80 GPC sandwich composites increase from 82.04 to 90.70 kN · m/kg and 6.03 to 7.13 MN · m/kg, respectively, with 11.0% resin uptake reduction, which stands out among the four core sandwich composites. Considering reaching a high stiffness‐to‐weight ratio while preventing resin starvation, 32% to 38% and 40% to 45% resin uptakes are adequate ranges for the H80 PSC and GPC sandwich composites, respectively. The H60 GPC sandwich composites have lower debonding toughness than H60 PSC due to stress concentration in the smooth side skin‐core interphase region. The ailure mode of the sandwich composites depends on the core stiffness and surface texture. The H60 GPC sandwich composites exhibit core shearing and bottom skin‐core debonding failure, while the H80 GPC and PSC sandwich composites show top skin cracking and core crushing failure. The findings indicate that an appropriate range of resin uptake exists for each type of core sandwich composite, and that within the range, a low‐resin uptake leads to lighter blades and thus lower cyclic gravitational loads, beneficial for long blades.

 

We present Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (Fermi-GBM) and Swift Burst Alert Telescope (Swift-BAT) searches for gamma-ray/X-ray counterparts to gravitational-wave (GW) candidate events identified during the third observing run of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. Using Fermi-GBM onboard triggers and subthreshold gamma-ray burst (GRB) candidates found in the Fermi-GBM ground analyses, the Targeted Search and the Untargeted Search, we investigate whether there are any coincident GRBs associated with the GWs. We also search the Swift-BAT rate data around the GW times to determine whether a GRB counterpart is present. No counterparts are found. Using both the Fermi-GBM Targeted Search and the Swift-BAT search, we calculate flux upper limits and present joint upper limits on the gamma-ray luminosity of each GW. Given these limits, we constrain theoretical models for the emission of gamma rays from binary black hole mergers.