Boron removal by titanium addition in solidification refining of silicon with Si-Al melt

In order to effectively remove B from Si for its use in solar cells, a process involving B removal by solidification refining of Si using a Si-Al melt with Ti addition was investigated. For clarifying the effect of Ti addition on B removal from the Si-Al melt, TiB₂ solubilities in Si-64.6 at. pct Al melt at 1173 K and Si-60.0 at. pct Al melt at 1273 K were determined by measuring the equilibrium concentrations of B and Ti in the presence of TiB₂ precipitates. The small solubilities of TiB₂ in the Si-Al melt indicate the effective removal of B from the Si-Al melt by Ti addition. Further, solidification experiments of Si-Al alloys containing B by Ti addition were performed, and the effect of Ti addition on the solidification refining of Si with the Si-Al melt was successfully confirmed.     

An explanation of disproportionate growth using linear 3-dimensional informetrics and its relation with the fractal dimension

Summary We study new and existing data sets which show that growth rates of sources usually are different from growth rates of items. Examples: references in publications grow with a rate that is different (usually higher) from the growth rate of the publications themselves; article growth rates are different from journal growth rates and so on. In this paper we interpret this phenomenon of “disproportionate growth' in terms of Naranan's growth model and in terms of the self-similar fractal dimension of such an information system, which follows from Naranan's growth model. The main part of the paper is devoted to explain disproportionate growth. We show that the “simple' 2-dimensional informetrics models of source-item relations are not able to explain this but we also show that linear 3-dimensional informetrics (i.e. adding a new source set) is capable to model disproportionate growth. Formulae of such different growth rates are presented using Lotkaian informetrics and new and existing data sets are presented and interpreted in terms of the used linear 3-dimensional model.     

激光辐照对不同饵料微藻生长的影响

利用Nd:YAG激光(波长1.06μm,功率5W,照射时间0.5-3min)和Ar 激光(波长:488nm,功率70mw,照射时间5-20min)分别照射角毛藻和叉鞭金藻,辐照后进行细胞增殖和生长速率的测定。实验结果表明:照射剂量为1min的Nd:YAG激光及剂量为5min的Ar 激光对叉鞭金藻有较明显的促长效果,这两种激光处理组的细胞增殖量在辐照后的两天内较对照组分别高42.9%和48.1%,但这种促长效果随时间的推移逐渐消失。不同剂量的两种激光辐照角毛藻后,在延滞期均出现生长抑制现象,但进入指数生长期或传代培养后,剂量为1min的Nd:YAG激光及剂量为10min的Ar 激光对角毛藻有明显的促长效果,其中在指数生长期1min剂量的Nd:YAG激光处理可促长27.0%,传代培养后10min的Ar 激光处理组生长速率提高达51.2%。本文对不同激光及不同激光参数条件下,两种饵料藻的耐受性及生长特性的差异也进行分析探讨。本实验结果不仅证实了已有研究的推论,还展示出激光技术在饵料藻种选育中的应用前景。     

Thermodynamic properties of 1-nutyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride (C<Subscript>4</Subscript>mim[Cl]) ionic liquid

Thermodynamic properties of 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride (C₄mim[Cl]) ionic liquid were determined using thermogravimetric (TG) differential thermal analysis (DTA). A new method called DTA mass-difference baseline, was used to measure the heat capacity and enthalpy change of phase transformation of ionic liquid from DTA curves. Based on this, the changes in standard enthalpy, entropy, and Gibbs energy were determined. The results show that standard enthalpy and entropy changes of C₄mim[Cl] increase nonlinearly with increasing temperature, while the standard Gibbs energy change decreases nonlinearly with increasing temperature within the temperature range studied (298–453 K). The standard enthalpy of melting and enthalpy of vaporization were determined to be 0.93 and 11.07 kJ/mol, respectively.     

Advances in speech transcription at IBM under the DARPA EARS program

This paper describes the technical and system building advances made in IBM's speech recognition technology over the course of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Effective Affordable Reusable Speech-to-Text (EARS) program. At a technical level, these advances include the development of a new form of feature-based minimum phone error training (fMPE), the use of large-scale discriminatively trained full-covariance Gaussian models, the use of septaphone acoustic context in static decoding graphs, and improvements in basic decoding algorithms. At a system building level, the advances include a system architecture based on cross-adaptation and the incorporation of 2100 h of training data in every system component. We present results on English conversational telephony test data from the 2003 and 2004 NIST evaluations. The combination of technical advances and an order of magnitude more training data in 2004 reduced the error rate on the 2003 test set by approximately 21% relative-from 20.4% to 16.1%-over the most accurate system in the 2003 evaluation and produced the most accurate results on the 2004 test sets in every speed category.     

Effect of web-browsing interfaces in web-based instruction: a quantitative study

Two major problems were identified in reviewing current research in Web-based instruction: 1) assessment of irrelevant learning outcome variables and 2) weak methodological design in conducting quantitative research. This quantitative study was designed to investigate whether different types of Web-browsing interface in Web-based instruction influence students' learning achievement of varied educational objectives. The studied interfaces were 1) browser scroll, 2) frame-based, and 3) pop-up-window interfaces. This study also investigated a potential interaction between the interface and students' prior knowledge, since prior knowledge had long been considered an important learning variable for acquiring new information. A total of 137 undergraduate students participated in the study. A statistical multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to analyze collected data. Results showed significant main effects of independent variables in all criterion tests except for the treatment effect on a comprehension knowledge test.     

Application of Differential Evolution for Irrigation Planning: An Indian Case Study

The present paper demonstrates the applicability of population based search optimization method, namely, Differential Evolution (DE) to a case study of Mahi Bajaj Sagar Project (MBSP), India. Ten different strategies of DE are employed to assess the ability of DE for solving higher dimensional problems as an alternative methodology for irrigation planning. The parameters considered in DE are population size, crossover constant and weighting factor. Linear Programming (LP) is utilized as a comparative approach to assess the ability of DE. Comparison of results of LP and the 10 DE strategies for the given parameters indicated that both the results are comparable even for high dimensional problems. Extensive sensitivity analysis studies, performed for 3,600 combinations of above parameters for the 10 DE strategies suggested that DE/rand-to-best/1/bin strategy is the best strategy giving maximum benefits taking minimum CPU time. It is concluded that DE can be utilized for efficient planning of any irrigation system with suitable modifications.     

实施取水定额管理的几个关键问题探讨

通过对全国23个省级单位出台的用水定额标准进行分析，指出目前定额管理存在6个主要问题：一是概念模糊，二是制定方法不统一、不规范，三是定额标准体系不完善，四是可操作性较差，五是计量系统不完善，六是缺乏取水定额管理信息化平台。提出应采用“取水定额”这一表述，并提出了取水定额的体系，包括基础计量体系、定额制定体系、信息链体系、定期更新体系4部分。明确了取水定额管理体系建设主要内容应包括：法律法规体系、定额制定体系、水价管理体系、信息通道体系。     

Lake-Level Change and Water Balance Analysis at Lake Qinghai,West China during Recent Decades

Lake Qinghai, the largest saline lake with an area of 4,260 km² (2000) and average depth of 21 m (1985) in West China, has experienced severe decline in water level in recent decades. This study aimed to investigate water balance of the lake and identify the causes for the decline in lake level. There was a 3.35-m decline in water level with an average decreasing rate of 8.0 cm year⁻¹ between 1959 and 2000. The lake water balance showed that mean annual precipitation between 1959 and 2000 over the lake was 357 ± 10 mm, evaporation was 924 ± 10 mm, surface runoff water inflow was 348 ± 21 mm, groundwater inflow was 138 mm ± 9 and the change in lake level was −80 ± 31 mm. The variation of lake level was highly positively correlated to surface runoff and precipitation and negatively to evaporation, the correlation coefficients were 0.89, 0.81 and −0.66, respectively. Water consumption by human activities accounts for 1% of the evaporation loss of the lake, implying that water consumption by human activities has little effect on lake level decline. Most dramatic decline in lake level occurred in the warm and dry years, and moderate decline in the cold and dry years, and relatively slight decline in the warm and wet years, therefore, the trend of cold/warm and dry climate in recent decades may be the main reasons for the decline in lake level.