Innovative Ozone/Oxygen Reactive Flotation for Paper Deinking

To improve paper recycling, the potential of an innovative deinking process using a reactive ozone/oxygen gas mixture instead of air was studied on two recovered paper furnishes (offset print and newsprint/magazine mixture). Using suitable O₃ concentrations, ink removal, following first-order kinetics, increased and losses dropped leading to better selectivity than using air alone. The ozone benefits in term of selectivity depended on temperature and paper furnishes and reached 100% for newsprint/magazine furnish at ambient temperature. Finally deinking effluent COD was significantly reduced and the ozone-based flotation allowed the reduction of the alkaline chemistry used before flotation.     

Restoring the single lower incisor implant with esthetics, antirotation, and retrievability

The long-term success of restoring the lower incisor implant is partially dependent on retrievability of all components down to the implant. Because this implant is usually placed vertically or buccally in the bone, the ability to achieve esthetics without seeing the screw access hole becomes critical. The emergence profile of the crown overlying the implant fixture ultimately dictates the esthetics. The single crown can also become loose during function and, therefore, antirotation of the abutment is imperative. The Octa-Hex Implant Restoration System presents an alternative method of achieving gingival seal with a titanium-alloy connector to the implant, emergence profile with a custom-fabricated casting on this connector, antirotation from intimate contact with implant indexing, and retrievability by a fixation screw and cementation. With the lower incisor, this system offers retrievability without the screw access hole affecting esthetics.     

Some good news about some bad practices.

Investigated 68 American Psychological Association members' perceptions of the frequency, wrongness, and recommended sanctions for the unethical research practices of plagiarism and data fabrication through surveys that contained 2 scenarios, one depicting plagiarism and the other data fabrication by a psychologist, and questions regarding the psychologist's behavior. Results show that Ss believed that researchers infrequently engage in these behaviors and that adjudication procedures would be recommended when the behaviors did occur; action was recommended more often for plagiarism than for data fabrication. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the Sampling Distribution of the Mode and Its Use with Standard Times

The mode - the most likely value—of the distribution of task times is proposed as the definition of the standard time in certain nonmanufacturing applications. Three objectives of the use of time standards are discussed: personnel motivation and control, short-term work scheduling, and medium-range manpower planning. While the mean is the appropriate measure for the second and third, the mode may be preferable for the first. The sampling distributions of two estimators of the mode of the gamma distribution are investigated. A definition based on the maximum likelihood estimators of the distributional parameters is relatively easy to implement and has a much smaller sampling variance than the Pearson mode.     

A heap-based implementation of the programming language Pascal

The implementation of Pascal known as Pascal ‘P’ was modified so that activation records for blocks (procedures and functions) were no longer allocated on a stack, but were instead allocated on a heap. This was done partly to test the feasibility of using Pascal ‘P’ for experimenting with extensions to Pascal, and partly to assess the efficiency of implementing Pascal procedures and functions in this way. The necessary changes to Pascal ‘P’ are described; where alternative strategies were possible, these are outlined and the reasons for the final choice given. The heap management algorithms used are presented and, in particular, their behaviour when managing the activation records of Pascal programs which do not involve dynamic variables is explained. Quantitative comparisons are made between Pascal ‘P’ and the version with heap-allocated activation records, to assess their relative efficiencies; these comparisons indicate that the modified system uses more storage, but it gives rise to only slightly longer execution times. Alternative heap management algorithms are discussed. Finally, some advantages of heap-allocated activation records are presented.     

A survey of studies contrasting the quality of group performance and individual performance, 1920-1957.

Research contrasting the quality of group performance with individual performance in each of the following general topic areas has been examined in this paper: judgment, learning, social facilitation, problem solving, memory, size of group, problem solving in more realistic situations, and productivity. Recent theoretical and methodological considerations as well as discussions of group types are included. Research weakness and theoretical problems are discussed. 74 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Model predictive control with robust feasibility

This paper presents a new model predictive control (MPC) method that provides robust feasibility with tractable, real-time computation. The method optimizes the closed-loop system dynamics, which involves models of the process (with parametric uncertainty) and controller at each step in the prediction horizon. Such problems are often formulated as a multi-stage stochastic program that suffers from the curse of dimensionality. This paper presents an alternative formulation that yields a bilevel stochastic optimization problem that is transformed by a series of reformulation steps into a tractable problem such that it can be solved through a limited number of second order cone programming sub-problems. The method addresses robust feasibility, manipulated saturation, state and output soft constraints, exogenous and endogenous uncertainty, and uncertainty in the state estimation in an integrated manner. Case study results demonstrate the advantages of the proposed robust MPC over nominal MPC and several other robust MPC formulations.     

Spectral reflectance of coral reef bottom-types worldwide and implications for coral reef remote sensing

Coral reef benthic communities are mosaics of individual bottom-types that are distinguished by their taxonomic composition and functional roles in the ecosystem. Knowledge of community structure is essential to understanding many reef processes. To develop techniques for identification and mapping of reef bottom-types using remote sensing, we measured 13,100 in situ optical reflectance spectra (400-700 nm, 1-nm intervals) of 12 basic reef bottom-types in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans: fleshy (1) brown, (2) green, and (3) red algae; non-fleshy (4) encrusting calcareous and (5) turf algae; (6) bleached, (7) blue, and (8) brown hermatypic coral; (9) soft/gorgonian coral; (10) seagrass; (11) terrigenous mud; and (12) carbonate sand. Each bottom-type exhibits characteristic spectral reflectance features that are conservative across biogeographic regions. Most notable are the brightness of carbonate sand and local extrema near 570 nm in blue (minimum) and brown (maximum) corals. Classification function analyses for the 12 bottom-types achieve mean accuracies of 83%, 76%, and 71% for full-spectrum data (301-wavelength), 52-wavelength, and 14-wavelength subsets, respectively. The distinguishing spectral features for the 12 bottom-types exist in well-defined, narrow (10-20 nm) wavelength ranges and are ubiquitous throughout the world. We reason that spectral reflectance features arise primarily as a result of spectral absorption processes. Radiative transfer modeling shows that in typically clear coral reef waters, dark substrates such as corals have a depth-of-detection limit on the order of 10-20 m. Our results provide the foundation for design of a sensor with the purpose of assessing the global status of coral reefs.     

Capabilities of remote sensors to classify coral, algae, and sand as pure and mixed spectra

We investigate the abilities of seven remote sensors to classify coral, algae, and carbonate sand based on 10,632 reflectance spectra measured in situ on reefs around the world. Discriminant and classification analyses demonstrate that full-resolution (1 nm) spectra provide very good spectral separation of the bottom-types. We assess the spectral capabilities of the sensors by applying to the in situ spectra the spectral responses of two airborne hyperspectral sensors (AAHIS and AVIRIS), three satellite broadband multispectral sensors (Ikonos, Landsat-ETM+ and SPOT-HRV), and two hypothetical satellite narrowband multispectral sensors (Proto and CRESPO). Classification analyses of the simulated sensor-specific spectra produce overall classification accuracy rates of 98%, 98%, 93%, 91%, 64%, 58%, and 50% for AAHIS, AVIRIS, Proto, CRESPO, Ikonos, Landsat-ETM+, and SPOT-HRV, respectively. Analyses of linearly mixed sensor-specific spectra reveal that the hyperspectral and narrowband multispectral sensors have the ability to discriminate between coral and algae across many levels of mixing, while the broadband multispectral sensors do not. Applying the results of the general mixing analyses to a specific spatial organization of coral, algae, and sand indicates that the hyperspectral sensors accurately estimate areal cover of the bottom-types regardless of pixel resolution. The narrowband multispectral sensors overestimate coral cover by 11-15%, while the broadband sensors underestimate algae cover by 7-29% and overestimate coral cover by 24-103%. We conclude that currently available satellite sensors are inadequate for assessment of global coral reef status, but that it is both necessary and possible to design a sensor system suited to the task.     

Determination of the Thermal Diffusivity of a Zr/PbCrO4 Pyrotechnical Mixture and of the arrhenius parameters of the ignition reaction in presence of an oxidizing atmosphere

An experimental device with main features closely related to those of Cook-Off type⁽¹⁾ devices has been developed to attain the specific study requirements. The tested product is a pyrotechnical compound containing zirconium and lead chromate in the proportion of 60% Zr and 40% PbCrO₄. An iterative calculation method has been developed to determine thermal diffusivity without any reaction and to evaluate the Arrhenius kinetic parameters of the product ignition reaction. The Zr/PbCrO₄ compounds appear as cylindrical tablets dia. 14 mm and 11.7 mm high. From room temperature to about 100°C, thermal diffusivity ranges between 3.2 and 3.9. 10⁷ m²/s. The ignition reaction kinetic parameters in an oxidizing atmosphere are as follows: Ea = 47 kJ/mol and Z = 10 · s⁻¹. With the results from thermal analysis, we demonstrate that initiation can be attributed to the oxygen contained in air, which diffuses into the product porosities. Lead chromate behaves as an inert substance throughout the ignition phase.