Theoretical investigation of intrinsic point defects and the oxygen migration behavior in rare earth hafnates

In this work, the composition-dependent point defect types and formation energies of RE₂Hf₂O₇ (RE = La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Pm, Sm, Eu and Gd) as well as the oxygen diffusion behavior are systematically investigated by first-principles calculations. The possible defect reactions and dominant defect complexes under stoichiometric and non-stoichiometric conditions are revealed. It is found that O Frenkel pairs are the predominant defect in stoichiometric pyrochlore hafnates. Hf-RE cation anti-site defects, accompanied by RE vacancies and/or oxygen interstitials, are stable in the non-stoichiometric case of HfO₂ excess. On the other hand, RE-Hf anti-site defects together with oxygen vacancies and/or RE interstitials are preferable in the case of RE₂O₃ excess. The energy barriers for the migration along the V_O48f - V_O48f pathway of pyrochlore hafnates were calculated to be between 0.81 eV and 0.89 eV. Based on these results, a defect engineering strategy is proposed and the pyrochlore hafnates investigated here are predicted to exhibit potential oxygen ionic conductivity.     

Emergency egress for the elderly in care home fire situations

Practitioners are continuing to develop egress modelling software for the design of the built environment. These models require data about human behaviour and factors for calibration, validation and verification. This study aims to address the specific data and knowledge gap: emergency egress of the elderly. Such data are difficult to collect given privacy and consent concerns, with strong relationships generally being required between residences and researchers. Through the observation of nine fire drills at six Canadian long-term care (LTC) and retirement homes, specific evacuation actions and behaviour were observed for 37 staff members and information about the evacuation of 56 residents was collected. These drills demonstrated that emergency egress in LTC and retirement homes is highly staff dependent with 72% of residents recorded requiring full assistance at all stages of movement in evacuation, and that the type of announced/unannounced drill and level of resident care will affect the type of data collected. The development of travel speed and pre-movement is discussed subject to limitation with qualitative behavioural insights of residents that were observed. This study provides valuable methodological discussion on how to conduct behavioural studies in similar highly restricted research environments. Specific attention is given to understanding the considerations that must be made when using fire drills as data sources, and the impact that these can have on using such data for modelling. This study may inform the initial setup and programming of evacuation models from an actions and behavioural perspectives of staff members and residents.     

Validation of performance of real-time kinematic PPP. A possible tool for deformation monitoring

Structural failures (bridge or building collapses) and geohazards (landslides, ground subsidence or earthquakes) are worldwide problems that often lead to significant economic and loss of life. Monitoring the deformation of both natural phenomena and man-made structures is a major key to assessing structural dynamic responses. Actually, this monitoring process is under real-time demand for developing warning and alert systems.One of the most used techniques for real-time deformation monitoring is the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) real-time procedure, where the relative positioning approach, using a well-known reference station, has been applied.This study was conducted to evaluate the actual quality of the real-time kinematic Precise Point Positioning (PPP) GNSS solution for deformation monitoring, where it can be concluded that a promise tool is under development and should be taken into account on actual and near future real-time deformation monitoring studies and applications.     

Thermal and transport properties of as-grown Ni-rich TiNi shape memory alloys

Electrical resistivity, Seebeck coefficient, specific heat and thermal conductivity measurements on the Ti_50−xNi_50+x (x = 0.0–1.6 at.%) shape memory alloys are performed to investigate their thermal and transport properties. In this study, anomalous features are observed in both cooling and heating cycles in all measured physical properties of the slightly Ni-rich TiNi alloys (x ≤ 1.0), corresponds to the transformation between the B19′ martensite and B2 austenite phases. Besides, the transition temperature is found to decrease gradually with increasing Ni content, and the driving force for the transition is also found to diminish slowly with the addition of excess Ni, as revealed by specific heat measurements. While the signature of martensitic transformation vanishes for the Ni-rich TiNi alloys with x ≥ 1.3, the characteristics of strain glass transition start to appear. The Seebeck coefficients of these TiNi alloys were found to be positive, suggesting the hole-type carriers dominate the thermoelectric transport. From the high-temperature Seebeck coefficients, the estimated value of Fermi energy ranges from ∼1.5 eV (Ti_48.4Ni_51.6) to ∼2.1 eV (Ti₅₀Ni₅₀), indicating the metallic nature of these alloys. In addition, the thermal conductivity of the slightly Ni-rich TiNi alloys with x ≤ 1.0 shows a distinct anomalous feature at the B19′ → B2 transition, likely due to the variation in lattice thermal conductivity.     

Engineering egress data considering pedestrians with reduced mobility

To quantify the evacuation process, evacuation practitioners use engineering egress data describing the occupant movement characteristics. These data are typically based to young and fit populations. However, the movement abilities of occupants who might be involved in evacuations are becoming more variable—with the building populations of today typically including increasing numbers of individuals: with impairments or who are otherwise elderly or generally less mobile. Thus, there will be an increasing proportion of building occupants with reduced ability to egress. For safe evacuation, there is therefore a need to provide valid engineering egress data considering pedestrians with disabilities. Gwynne and Boyce recently compiled a series of data sets related to the evacuation process to support practitioner activities in the chapter Engineering Data in the SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering. This paper supplements these data sets by providing information on and presenting data obtained from additional research related to the premovement and horizontal movement of participants with physical‐, cognitive‐, or age‐related disabilities. The aim is to provide an overview of currently available data sets related to, and key factors affecting the egress performance of, mixed ability populations which could be used to guide fire safety engineering decisions in the context of building design.     

Apparent power-law distributions in animal movements can arise from intraspecific interactions

Lévy flights have gained prominence for analysis of animal movement. In a Lévy flight, step-lengths are drawn from a heavy-tailed distribution such as a power law (PL), and a large number of empirical demonstrations have been published. Others, however, have suggested that animal movement is ill fit by PL distributions or contend a state-switching process better explains apparent Lévy flight movement patterns. We used a mix of direct behavioural observations and GPS tracking to understand step-length patterns in females of two related butterflies. We initially found movement in one species (Euphydryas editha taylori) was best fit by a bounded PL, evidence of a Lévy flight, while the other (Euphydryas phaeton) was best fit by an exponential distribution. Subsequent analyses introduced additional candidate models and used behavioural observations to sort steps based on intraspecific interactions (interactions were rare in E. phaeton but common in E. e. taylori). These analyses showed a mixed-exponential is favoured over the bounded PL for E. e. taylori and that when step-lengths were sorted into states based on the influence of harassing conspecific males, both states were best fit by simple exponential distributions. The direct behavioural observations allowed us to infer the underlying behavioural mechanism is a state-switching process driven by intraspecific interactions rather than a Lévy flight.     

摩擦换向抽油机悬点运动分析计算

摩擦换向抽油机采用开关磁阻电动机或变频调速电动机,其特点是可以频繁双向旋转,带动摩擦轮正反转,实现光杆的上行下行。该抽油机运动特点与游梁式抽油机运动特点有较大区别,文章分析了摩擦换向抽油机的运动特点,给出了该机悬点位移、速度、加速度的计算方法。     

A call admission and rate control scheme for multimedia support over IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs

Quality of service (QoS) support for multimedia services in the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN is an important issue for such WLANs to become a viable wireless access to the Internet. In this paper, we endeavor to propose a practical scheme to achieve this goal without changing the channel access mechanism. To this end, a novel call admission and rate control (CARC) scheme is proposed. The key idea of this scheme is to regulate the arriving traffic of the WLAN such that the network can work at an optimal point. We first show that the channel busyness ratio is a good indicator of the network status in the sense that it is easy to obtain and can accurately and timely represent channel utilization. Then we propose two algorithms based on the channel busyness ratio. The call admission control algorithm is used to regulate the admission of real-time or streaming traffic and the rate control algorithm to control the transmission rate of best effort traffic. As a result, the real-time or streaming traffic is supported with statistical QoS guarantees and the best effort traffic can fully utilize the residual channel capacity left by the real-time and streaming traffic. In addition, the rate control algorithm itself provides a solution that could be used above the media access mechanism to approach the maximal theoretical channel utilization. A comprehensive simulation study in ns-2 has verified the performance of our proposed CARC scheme, showing that the original 802.11 DCF protocol can statically support strict QoS requirements, such as those required by voice over IP or streaming video, and at the same time, achieve a high channel utilization. Hongqiang Zhai received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in July 1999 and January 2002 respectively. He worked as a research intern in Bell Labs Research China from June 2001 to December 2001, and in Microsoft Research Asia from January 2002 to July 2002. Currently he is pursuing the PhD degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida. He is a student member of IEEE. Xiang Chen received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electrical engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, in 1997 and 2000, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville, in 2005. He is currently a Senior Research Engineer at Motorola Labs, Arlington Heights, IL. His research interests include resource management, medium access control, and quality of service (QoS) in wireless networks. He is a Member of Tau Beta Pi and a student member of IEEE. Yuguang Fang received a Ph.D degree in Systems and Control Engineering from Case Western Reserve University in January 1994, and a Ph.D degree in Electrical Engineering from Boston University in May 1997. From June 1997 to July 1998, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas. From July 1998 to May 2000, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology. In May 2000, he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Florida where he got the early promotion with tenure in August 2003 and has been an Associate Professor since then. He has published over one hundred (100) papers in refereed professional journals and conferences. He received the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Award in 2001 and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in 2002. He is currently serving as an Editor for many journals including IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, and ACM Wireless Networks. He is also actively participating in conference organization such as the Program Vice-Chair for IEEE INFOCOM’2005, Program Co-Chair for the Global Internet and Next Generation Networks Symposium in IEEE Globecom’2004 and the Program Vice Chair for 2000 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC’2000).     

停棒子系统与控制棒组操作范围监测试验

本文叙述了反应堆保护系统停棒与汽轮机降功率子系统的系统功能、保护参数和秦山核电站控制棒组插入监测器的设计与参数选择,确定了控制棒提升上极限值和在不同工况下棒插入低位、低-低位整定值,并在热态零功率条件下加以验证。试验证明参数选择是合理的,为功率运行阶段提供了数据。     

光纤通信在市内接入网的应用

先说明市内接入网的单位用户和住家用户两大类使用通信和电视、交互型和分配型业务的要求不相同，相应地对光纤传输的应用须作不同的考虑，文中认为；光纤从市内交换局直连办公大楼是合乎现实需要的，而对于居民住家，宜选用光纤连至路边或光纤与同轴结合和适当利用无源光网络等方案，俟将来时机成熟才实行光纤连至每一家，文末有概括总结，说明接入网不同于长途网，接入网的光纤系统可以使用常规单模光纤，工作于波长1．3μm，而光放大器和波分多路系统不是普遍需要，但光电子集成在光端机中是必要的。