Simon Stevin, sometimes called Stevinus, was a Flemish mathematician and military engineer. He made various contributions in many areas of science and engineering, both theoretical and practical, he translated various mathematical terms into Dutch, making it one of the few European languages in which the word for mathematics, was not a loanword from Greek but a calque via Latin. He replaced the word chemie, the Latin calque for chemistry, by scheikunde. Little is known with certainty about Stevin's life and what we know is inferred from other recorded facts; the exact birth date and the date and place of his death are uncertain. It is assumed he was born in Bruges since he enrolled at Leiden University under the name Simon Stevinus Brugensis, his name is written as Stevin, but some documents regarding his father use the spelling Stevijn. This is a normal spelling shift in 16th-century Dutch. Simon's mother, Cathelijne was the daughter of a wealthy family from Ypres, her father Hubert was a poorter of Bruges.
Cathelijne married Joost Sayon, involved in the carpet and silk trade and a member of the schuttersgilde Sint-Sebastiaan. Through her marriage Cathelijne became a member of a family of Calvinists and Simon was brought up in the Calvinist faith, it is believed that Stevin grew up in a affluent environment and enjoyed a good education. He was educated at a Latin school in his hometown. Stevin left Bruges in 1571 without a particular destination. Stevin was most a Calvinist since a Catholic would not have risen to the position of trust he occupied with Maurice, Prince of Orange, it is assumed that he left Bruges to escape the religious persecution of Protestants by the Spanish rulers. Based on references in his work "Wisconstighe Ghedaechtenissen", it has been inferred that he must have moved first to Antwerp where he began his career as a merchant's clerk; some biographers mention that he travelled to Prussia, Denmark and Sweden and other parts of Northern Europe, between 1571 and 1577. It is possible.
In 1577 Simon Stevin returned to Bruges and was appointed city clerk by the aldermen of Bruges, a function he occupied from 1577-1581. He worked in the office of Jan de Brune of the castellany of Bruges. Why he had returned to Bruges in 1577 is not clear, it may have been related to the political events of that period. Bruges was the scene of intense religious conflict. Catholics and Calvinists alternately controlled the government of the city, they opposed each other but would collaborate in order to counteract the dictates of King Philip II of Spain. In 1576 a certain level of official religious tolerance was decreed; this could explain why Stevin returned to Bruges in 1577. The Calvinists seized power in many Flemish cities and incarcerated Catholic clerics and secular governors supportive of the Spanish rulers. Between 1578 and 1584 Bruges was ruled by Calvinists. In 1581 Stevin moved to Leiden where he attended the Latin school. On 16 February 1583 he enrolled, under the name Simon Stevinus Brugensis, at Leiden University, founded by William the Silent in 1575.
Here he befriended William the Count of Nassau. Stevin is listed in the University's registers until 1590 and never graduated. Following William the Silent's assassination and Prince Maurice's assumption of his father's office, Stevin became the principal advisor and tutor of Prince Maurice. Prince Maurice asked his advice on many occasions, made him a public officer – at first director of the so-called "waterstaet" from 1592, quartermaster-general of the army of the States-General. Prince Maurice asked Stevin to found an engineering school within the University of Leiden. Stevin moved to The Hague where he bought a house in 1612, he had four children. It is known that he left a widow with two children at his death in Leiden or The Hague in 1620. Stevin is responsible for many inventions, he was a pioneer of the development and the practical application of science such as mathematics and applied science like hydraulic engineering and surveying. He was thought to have invented the decimal fractions until the middle of the 20th century, but researchers discovered that decimal fractions were introduced by the medieval Islamic scholar al-Uqlidisi in a book written in 952.
Moreover, a systematic development of decimal fractions was given well before Stevin in the book Miftah al-Hisab written in 1427 by Al-Kashi. His contemporaries were most struck by his invention of a so-called land yacht, a carriage with sails, of which a model was preserved in Scheveningen until 1802; the carriage itself had been lost long before. Around the year 1600 Stevin, with Prince Maurice of Orange and twenty-six others, used the carriage on the beach between Scheveningen and Petten; the carriage was propelled by the force of wind and acquired a speed which exceeded that of horses. Stevin's work in the waterstaet involved improvements to the sluices and spillways to control flooding, exercises in hydraulic engineering. Windmills were in use to pump the water out but in Van de Molens, he suggested improvements including ideas that t
Philip Grierson, FBA was a British historian and numismatist, emeritus professor of numismatics at Cambridge University and a fellow of Gonville and Caius College for over seventy years. During his long and prolific academic career, he built the world's foremost representative collection of medieval coins, wrote extensively on the subject, brought it to much wider attention in the historical community and filled important curatorial and teaching posts in Cambridge and Washington DC. Grierson was born in Dublin to Roberta Ellen Jane Grierson, he had Janet Grierson and Aileen Grierson. His father was a land surveyor and member of the Irish Land Commission who, after losing his job in 1906, ran a small farm at Clondalkin, near Dublin. There he gained a reputation for financial acumen, was appointed to the boards of a number of companies. Grierson's father built up an important collection of freshwater snails, which now resides at the Ulster Museum in Belfast. Grierson was educated at Marlborough College.
As a result, he was admitted to read medicine at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1929. He switched to history, was to remain with the latter subject for the rest of his life. However, his early interest in the sciences left him with a sound knowledge of the methods and principles of metallurgy, mathematics and much more besides that would prove valuable in years. Grierson's performance as a student was exceptional. Graduating with a double first, he took the Lightfoot Scholarship from the university and won the Schuldham Plate, his college's highest academic accolade for students, he began graduate studies in 1932 on the subject of Carolingian history, his first publications were to be on the ecclesiastical history of the early Middle Ages. After being offered a fellowship in 1934, he saw no need to submit his PhD research, only received an honorary PhD from the university in 1971. Grierson went on to hold a number of important posts in college: he was college librarian 1944–1969, President 1966–1976.
He remained an active member of the fellowship until the last, was present at the interview for the master sworn in shortly after his own death. Grierson’s teaching responsibilities lay with the faculty of history, which appointed him assistant lecturer in 1938 and full lecturer in 1945, he became reader in numismatics in 1959, professor of numismatics in 1971. He came to share and lead teaching on the general introduction to European history, running through the history of continental Europe from the fifth to the fifteenth century. At various times he was director of the Royal Historical Society, president of the Royal Numismatic Society, Ford lecturer at Oxford, fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a fellow of the British Academy, he was awarded the medal of the Royal Numismatic Society in 1958. It was pure chance. A visit to the family home at Christmas 1944 or shortly thereafter produced a bronze Byzantine coin from one of his father's desk drawers, it was identified as an issue in the name of the emperor Phocas, inspired Grierson to visit Spink's in London.
There, he expressed no intention of becoming a serious collector, wished only to purchase £5 of coins to serve as illustrative material in his lectures. These good intentions did not last, by the end of the next year he had 1,500 coins, 3,500 by the end of 1946, his collection was to include over 20,000 specimens, worth several million pounds as a whole. It is the finest representative collection for medieval Europe in the world. Although it resided in the Fitzwilliam Museum for many years, his collection only passed to the museum upon his death, was retained in his own name so as to facilitate the selling of old specimens and the purchase of superior ones. Grierson was never wealthy, only built the collection by spending most of his modest inheritance and two-thirds of his annual income as an academic on coins, it helped that he started collecting at a time when the London numismatic dealers were awash with material from the enormous collection of Lord Grantley. Wartime and post-war conditions meant that these coins were available at a fraction of their pre-war price, with heavy restrictions on the activities of foreign purchasers.
Grierson was a careful buyer, but could be willing to spend significant amounts for particular coins, such as his famous and exceptionally rare portrait denier of Charlemagne. Appointments to additional positions helped further his collection. In 1982, Grierson arranged funding to begin a project aimed at publishing his collection. Medieval European Coinage was envisaged as twelve volumes of definitive catalogue and text on the coinage of different parts of Europe; the first volume appeared in 1986, discussed the coinage of all of western Europe up to the tenth century. It remains the standard study of the period. Grierson's growing interest in numismatics soon brought him into contact with the coin room at the Fitzwilliam Museum, he was appointed Honorary Keeper of Coins and Medals in 1949, served as a syndic of the museum until 1958. Under his influence, the department of coins and medals in the Fitzwilliam became one of the most active and productive research departments in the museum, it contains a room named in his honour.
He remained an daily visitor to the coin room, adding new specimens to his collecti
Alex Price is a British actor who has appeared in various television programmes including Being Human and Doctor Who. He starred in feature-length films, such as A Horse with No Name, in a variety of short films. Since 2013, he plays one of the main characters in the television series Father Brown. Price was praised by critics for his performance of Proteus in the television series Penny Dreadful, he has appeared in a vast number of stage productions like Is Everyone OK?, The Duchess of Malfi, Birdland. In 2016, he was cast as Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Alex Price has a younger sister, is married and has a son
Hurt Park is a small park in downtown Atlanta in the triangle between Edgewood Avenue, Courtland Street, Gilmer Street. It is named after banker, real estate, streetcar developer Joel Hurt; when Hurt Park opened in 1940, it was the first public park in downtown Atlanta since the 1860s and represented one of the great achievements of Mayor William B. Hartsfield's first administration; the park was part of a 1937–1942 "transformation of aging Municipal Auditorium and the surrounding area into a civic center that befitted Atlanta's rising status as a convention center". The park and its fountain were funded in part by the Woodruff Foundation and were designed by the noted landscape architect William C. Pauley; the park was one of downtown Atlanta's principal attractions during the 1950s. The park contains the "Fountain of Light", which used to light the water in different patterns and colors: An electric fountain with seventy-eight bulbs from one hundred watts to fifteen hundred, it plays for twenty minutes at a time, giving numerous changes of pattern and color before it repeats its rainbow symphony.
It was built at a cost of seventeen hundred dollars, designed by Atlanta sculptor Julian Harris and presented to the city through the Emily and Ernest Woodruff Foundation. The fountain without the light show; the park is included as one of the stops for the Atlanta Streetcar, which became operational around late 2014. Historic photos of Hurt Park on Atlanta Time Machine site
Supersonic gas separation is a technology to remove one or several gaseous components out of a mixed gas. The process condensates the target components by cooling the gas through expansion in a Laval nozzle and separates the condensates from the dried gas through an integrated cyclonic gas/liquid separator; the separator is only using a part of the field pressure as energy and has technical and commercial advantages when compared to used conventional technologies. Raw natural gas out of a well is not a salable product but a mix of various hydro-carbonic gases with other gases and solid contaminants; this raw gas needs gas conditioning to get it ready for pipeline transport and processing in a gas processing plant to separate it into its components. Some of the common processing steps are dehydration, LPG extraction, dew-pointing. Technologies used to achieve these steps are adsorption, absorption and low temperature systems achieved by refrigeration or expansion through a Joule Thomson Valve or a Turboexpander.
If such expansion is done through the Supersonic Gas Separator instead mechanical and operational advantages can be gained as detailed below. A supersonic gas separator consists of several consecutive sections in tubular form designed as flanged pieces of pipe; the feed gas first enters a section with an arrangement of static blades or wings, which induce a fast swirl in the gas. Thereafter the gas stream flows through a Laval nozzle, where it accelerates to supersonic speeds and undergoes a deep pressure drop to about 30% of feed pressure; this is a near isentropic process and the corresponding temperature reduction leads to condensation of target components of the mixed feed gas, which form a fine mist. The droplets agglomerate to larger drops, the swirl of the gas causes cyclonic separation; the dry gas continues forward, while the liquid phase together with some slip gas is separated by a concentric divider and exits the device as a separate stream. The final section are diffusers for both streams, where the gas is slowed down and about 80% of the feed pressure is recovered.
This section might include another set of static devices to undo the swirling motion. The supersonic separator requires a certain process scheme, which includes further auxiliary equipment and forms a skid or processing block; the typical basic scheme for supersonic separation is an arrangement where the feed gas is pre-cooled in a heat exchanger by the dry stream of the separator unit. The liquid phase from the supersonic separator goes into a 2-phase or 3-phase separator, where the slip gas is separated from water and/or from liquid hydrocarbons; the gaseous phase of this secondary separator joins the dry gas of the supersonic separator, the liquids go for transport, storage or further processing and the water for treatment and disposal. Depending on the task at hand other schemes are possible; those variations are much part of the supersonic gas separation process to achieve thermodynamic efficiency and several of them are protected by patents. The supersonic gas separator recovers part of the pressure drop needed for cooling and as such has a higher efficiency than a JT valve in all conditions of operation.
The supersonic gas separator can in many cases have a 10–20% higher efficiency than a turboexpander. The supersonic separator has a smaller footprint and a lower weight than a turboexpander or contactor columns; this is of particular advantage for FPSOs and crowded installations. It needs a lower capital investment and lower operating expenditure as it is static. Little maintenance is required and no amounts of chemicals; the fact that no operational or maintenance personnel is required might enable unmanning of manned platforms with the associated large savings in capital and operational expenditure. The fields of application commercially developed until today on an industrial scale are: dehydration dewpointing LPG extractionApplications in the development stage for near term commercialization are: CO2 and H2S bulk removal There are several patents on supersonic gas separation, relating to features of the device as well as methods; the technology has been researched and proven in laboratory installations since about 1998, special HYSYS modules have been developed as well as 3D gas computer modeling.
The supersonic gas separation technology has meanwhile moved into industrial applications for dehydration as well as for LPG extraction. Consultancy and equipment for supersonic gas separation are being offered by ENGO Engineering Ltd. under the brand "3S". They are provided by Twister BV, a Dutch firm affiliated with Royal Dutch Shell, under the brand "Twister Supersonic Separator"
Sarah Jean Rockey is the inaugural Executive Director of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, where she funds innovative agricultural research efforts through private/public partnerships. Prior to this position, Rockey was Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the United States National Institutes of Health, overseeing research administration for the largest research program in the world. Rockey is the third of four children of Lee Cady Rockey, she moved as a child as her father was transferred through his job at General Electric. When she was ten, her family settled in Lake Lucerne in Ohio, she graduated from Kenston High School in 1976, attended Bowling Green State University for two years and transferred to the Ohio State University where she received three degrees, a BS in Zoology and a Masters and Ph. D. in Entomology. After graduation she held a postdoctoral position at the Department of Entomology, University of Wisconsin. Rockey's career in research and grants administration began in 1986 at the U.
S. Department of Agriculture, Cooperative State Research and Extension Service where she held a variety of positions prior to appointment as the head of the Competitive Grants Program and the agency's Chief Information Officer in 2002, she moved to NIH in 2005 to apply her skills in research administration to the large biomedical research portfolio. She oversaw many complex initiatives while at NIH and gave special attention to workforce issues, as promoting the next generation of scientists has been a linchpin of her career. Rockey is considered a global leader in research administration and has used her various positions to further the application of science to real world problems. While at NIH, Rockey used this position to advocate for greater transparency in NIH administration, establishing the blog "Rock Talk" as a platform for communicating with the community of biomedical researchers receiving NIH extramural funding and with the general public; the Rock Talk blog was pioneering for the Federal government, as one of the first blogs to accept public comments and was the subject of a feature in Nature magazine.
Rockey has published commentary on scientific career development and, with NIH Director Francis Collins, on managing financial conflicts of interest in scientific research. Rockey retired from Federal public service after 30 years and returned to her roots in agriculture when she was appointed as the first Executive Director for the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research. FFAR funds innovation to advance agriculture through public-private research partnerships. Rockey is considered one of the central voices globally for promoting agricultural sciences as a way to improve people's lives and works with Congress, Federal agencies, other significant organizations on ag science funding and policy issues. Rockey served for five years as the Vice-President of the Human Frontiers of Science Program, international research program located in Strasbourg, France. Known for her skill in public speaking and entertaining presentations, Rockey has given hundreds of talks on various topics during the course of her career and has been featured on radio and television.
Rockey has 13 research publications and numerous other public commentaries, editorials, or focus pieces. Joseph F. Carrabino Award, National Council of University Research Administrators 2014 “For Significant Contribution to Research Administration” Presidential Rank Award. Fellow of the Entomological Society of America