UPGRADING OF SUGAR CANE BAGASSE BY THERMAL PROCESSES. 4. COAL CO-PROCESSING USING SUGAR CANE BAGASSE OIL AS SOLVENT

In the present work, coal co-processing with sugar cane bagasse oil was studied for the first time. Sugar cane bagasse was chosen due to its great offer, since it is a residue in the process of a large project named PROALCOOL aiming the producing ethanolfrom sugarcane. In addition, the liquefaction of sugar cane bagasse with monoethanolamine was already developed in our laboratory showing good results. Four coal samples were studied. The yields of the total conversion and the oil productions were obtained in order to evaluate the efficiency of the liquefaction process studied.     

Agens Faber: Toward a Theory of Artefacts for MAS

Human intelligence has evolved along with the use of more and more sophisticated tools, allowing Homo Faber (from Homo Habilis to Homo Sapiens Sapiens) to cope with environment changes, as well as to adapt the environment to his needs. Analogously, in this seminal paper we introduce the notion of Agens Faber, conveying the idea that agent intelligence should not be considered as separated by the agent ability to perceive and affect the environment—and so, that agent intelligence is strictly related to the artefacts that enable, mediate and govern any agent (intelligent) activity.

Along this line, we first discuss the notion of artefact for MAS in general, then we try to devise out the admissible / required / desirable features of an artefact for MAS. We elaborate on the many sorts of possible relations between agents and artefacts, focusing in particular on the issue of the rational exploitation of artefacts, and also rough out a possible taxonomy of artefacts for MAS.     

Adaptive Radar Detection of Distributed Targets in Homogeneous and Partially Homogeneous Noise Plus Subspace Interference

This paper addresses adaptive radar detection of distributed targets in noise plus interference assumed to belong to a known or unknown subspace of the observables. At the design stage we resort to either the GLRT or the so-called two-step GLRT-based design procedure and assume that a set of noise-only data is available (the so-called secondary data). Detection algorithms have been derived modeling noise vectors, corresponding to different range cells, as independent, zero-mean, complex normal ones, sharing either the same covariance matrix (homogeneous environment) or the same covariance matrix up to possibly different (mean) power levels between primary data, i.e., range cells under test, and secondary ones (partially homogeneous environment). The performance assessment has been conducted by Monte Carlo simulation, also in comparison to previously proposed detection algorithms, and confirms the effectiveness of the newly proposed ones     

UPGRADING OF SUGAR CANE BAGASSE BY THERMAL PROCESSES. 5. CHARACTERIZATION OF THE OILS OBTAINED FROM COAL CO-PROCESSING WITH SUGARCANE BAGASSE OIL

In the present work, the chemical characterization of the oils obtained from liquefaction of different coals with sugar cane bagasse oil and also from the liquefaction of coal with monoethanolamine are presented. Characterization of the oil samples was done with the add of spectroscopic and chromatographic techniques, including UV-vis, FTIR, NMR, preparative liquid chromatography (PLC) and high resolution gas chromatography (HRGC).     

Psychotherapeutic techniques with treatment-resistant adolescents.

Psychotherapy with adolescent clients (ACs) is difficult for at least 2 reasons: ACs frequently do not trust adults and ACs are often poorly motivated for treatment. Consequently there may be significant problems eliciting the cooperation needed to implement successfully various psychotherapeutic treatment techniques (PTTs) with ACs in general, and treatment-resistant ACs in particular. Several PTTs designed to capture ACs' attention, further the psychotherapeutic alliance, and facilitate cooperation are presented. PTTs include siding with the AC, teaching strategic skills, exploring moral dilemmas, wagering on cognitions and behaviors, and alternative communication strategies. Case illustrations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of PTTs. It is recommended that psychotherapists consistently review the quality of their relationship with ACs to facilitate successful implementation of PTTs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Uncertainty in health risk analysis

This paper discuss several quantitative issues that arise in the analysis of health risks, beginning with principles such as de minimis and zero-risk. The paper also provides a probabilistic definition of risk in terms of hazard, context, consequence, magnitude, and uncertainty. The example relies on this definition to investigate, through sensitivity analysis, the effect that uncertainty has on the results obtained. The results, from a case study based on waterborne total arsenic, show that the choice of dose—response functions causes more uncertainty than any other component of risk analysis. Chemical carcinogenesis provides the basis for discussing inability to know as well as uncertainty. The conclusion is that risk analysis keeps uncertainty and inability to know separate; through this function, it provides a much needed method to present information to decision makers and the public.     

Thoracoscopic pleural tent

Lung volume reduction has been performed in patients with advanced emphysema to relieve dyspnea and improve exercise tolerance. Median sternotomy and video-assisted thoracoscopy have been proposed as equally adequate approaches; however, prolonged postoperative air leakage is the most prevalent complication in all series. For this reason, on the basis of the experience achieved with the median sternotomy approach, buttressing of the suture line with different materials and techniques for space reduction have been proposed. We describe a technique to create a pleural tent after thoracoscopic volume reduction. The thoracoscopic creation of a pleural tent is feasible and results in a duration of postoperative air leaks and hospital stays similar to that achieved with stapler line buttressing.     

Co-ordinated economic and advance dispatch procedures

The paper deals with the problem of improving co-ordination between the online economic dispatch (ED) function and the very short-term advance dispatch (AD). Both procedures are formulated as optimal dispatching problems, but while a static model is used for the ED function, a dynamic model is employed in AD. The need to account for ramp-rate limits of thermal power generation even in the ED phase is satisfied by adding suitable penalty terms to the objective function of the classical ED problem. These penalties are proportional to the Lagrange multipliers associated with ramp-rate limits that are active at the AD solution. An efficient updating procedure is used to correct the penalization by taking the load forecast errors into account. The proposed co-ordination procedure can provide the snapshot ED with the long range perspective of AD without resorting to heuristic approaches. The procedure is validated by extensive testing carried out both on a small CIGRE test case and on a medium-large scale network representative of the Italian EHV system. Moreover, test results show that the CPU time requirements of the modified ED procedure are still suited to online applications     

Influence of oxygen contamination on the surface tension of liquid tin

The surface tension of liquid tin has been measured by the sessile-drop technique as a function of temperature, in the range 232 T (°C) 800 and under different atmospheres. It is shown that oxygen strongly affects the surface tension values and that, under nominally very clean conditions, a considerable scatter of experimental results occurs. This scatter can be explained by taking into account kinetic factors, especially those related to the gaseous fluxes around the molten drop. By this procedure, a number of experimental results can be singled out, which corresponds to clean surface conditions. On the basis of these results, the following expression for surface tension politherm is proposed: (mN m^–1 = 581-0.13) (t-232).