Alternatives for improving energy security in Cape Verde

The lack of consensus on the meaning of energy security and how it should be measured hinders the evaluation of alternatives for improving the Cape Verdean energy sector. The objective of the paper is to develop an energy security index adjusted to the country's context. The methods used are the multi-criteria analysis and the Delphi survey. Different alternatives to improve energy security are assessed: electrically interconnect Cape Verde's islands, increase the share of renewable energy, and a combination of the previous alternatives. The results of our analysis indicate that increasing renewable energy is the optimal alternative for Cape Verde.     

DP980高强钢连续退火后的组织与性能

研究了不同工艺参数对980 MPa级连续退火双相钢组织及力学性能的影响,利用光学显微镜、透射电镜(TEM)以及拉伸试验对双相钢的微观组织和力学性能进行测试及分析。结果表明:DP980钢的退火组织主要由铁素体、马氏体岛和少量的贝氏体组成,马氏体岛附近的位错密度较高。随着均热温度的升高,DP980钢的抗拉强度呈现先降低后升高的趋势,屈服强度与抗拉强度的趋势一致,伸长率先升高后降低。随着过时效温度的升高,DP980钢的抗拉强度和屈服强度降低,降低幅度较小,伸长率上升,但变化不明显,说明通过调整过时效温度来调控其力学性能的作用较小。     

Optimal shift partitioning of pharmacies

The pharmacy service requires that some pharmacies are always available and shifts have to be organized: a shift corresponds to a subset of pharmacies that must be open 24 hours a day on a particular week. Under the requirement that each pharmacy belongs to exactly one shift and the assumption that users minimize the distance to the closest open pharmacy during each shift, we want to determine a partition of the pharmacies into a given number of shifts, such that the total distance covered by users is minimized. It may be also required that shift cardinalities are balanced. We discuss different versions and the related computational complexity, showing that the problem is NP-hard in general. A set packing formulation is presented and solved by branch-and-price, together with a fast solution technique based on a tabu search. They have been applied to real and random instances showing that (i) the set packing formulation is very tight and often exhibits no integrality gap; (ii) the branch-and-price solves problems of practical relevance to optimality in a reasonable amount of time (order of minutes); (iii) the tabu search finds optimal or near-optimal solutions in order of seconds.     

Temperature cycling and its effect on mechanical behaviours of highporosity chalks

Temperature history can have a significant effect on the strength of water-saturated chalk.In this study,hydrostatic stress cycles are applied to understand the mechanical response of chalk samples exposed to temperature cycling between each stress cycle,compared to the samples tested at a constant temperature.The total accumulated strain during a stress cycle and the irreversible strain are reported.Chalk samples from Kansas(USA)and Mons(Belgium),with different degrees of induration(i.e.amount of contact cementation),were used.The samples were saturated with equilibrated water(polar)and nonpolar Isopar H oil to quantify water weakening.All samples tested during 10 stress cycles with varying temperature(i.e.temperature cycled in between each stress cycle)accumulated more strain than those tested at constant temperatures.All the stress cycles were performed at 30℃.The two chalk types behaved similarly when saturated with Isopar H oil,but differently when saturated with water.When saturated with water,the stronger Kansas chalk accumulated more total strain and more irreversible strain within each stress cycle than the weaker Mons chalk.     

对分布式数据库发展方向的分析

本文对分布式数据库的设计方法、分割与分配技术作了一些探讨，并就分布式数据库的发展方向进行了初步分析。     

Performance evaluation of a water/silicone oil two‐phase partitioning bioreactor using Rhodococcus erythropolis T902.1 to remove volatile organic compounds from gaseous effluents

BACKGROUND: In the framework of biological processes used for waste gas treatment, the impact of the inoculum size on the start‐up performance needs to be better evaluated. Moreover, only a few studies have investigated the behaviour of elimination capacity and biomass viability in a two‐phase partitioning bioreactor (TPPB) used for waste gas treatment. Lastly, the impact of ethanol as a co‐substrate remains misunderstood. RESULTS: Firstly, no benefit of inoculation with a high cellular density (>1.5 g L^?1) was observed in terms of start‐up performance. Secondly, the TPPB was monitored for 38 days to characterise its behaviour under several operational conditions. The removal efficiency remained above 63% for an inlet concentration of 7 g isopropylbenzene (IPB) m^?3 and at some time points reached 92% during an intermittent loading phase (10 h day^?1), corresponding to a mean elimination capacity of 4 × 10^?3 g L^?1 min^?1 (240 g m^?3 h^?1) for a mean IPB inlet load of 6.19 × 10^?3 g L^?1 min^?1 (390 g m^?3 h^?1). Under continuous IPB loading, the performance of the TPPB declined, but the period of biomass acclimatisation to this operational condition was shorter than 5 days. The biomass grew to approximately 10 g L^?1 but the cellular viability changed greatly during the experiment, suggesting an endorespiration phenomenon in the bioreactor. It was also shown that simultaneous degradation of IPB and ethanol occurred, suggesting that ethanol improves the biodegradation process without causing oxygen depletion. CONCLUSION: A water/silicone oil TPPB with ethanol as co‐substrate allowed the removal of a high inlet load of IPB during an experiment lasting 38 days. Copyright © 2008 Society of Chemical Industry     

High training set size reduction by space partitioning and prototype abstraction

Instance-based learning methods like the nearest neighbour classifier generally suffer from the indiscriminate storage of all training instances, resulting in large memory requirements and slow execution speed. In this paper, new training set size reduction methods based on prototype generation and space partitioning are proposed. Experimental results show that the new algorithms achieve a very high reduction rate with still an important classification accuracy.     

Context-gated knowledge partitioning in categorization.

According to the knowledge partitioning framework, people sometimes master complex tasks by creating multiple independent parcels of partial knowledge. Research has shown that knowledge parcels may contain mutually contradictory information, and that each parcel may be used without regard to knowledge that is demonstrably present in other parcels. This article reports 4 experiments that investigated knowledge partitioning in categorization. When component boundaries of a complex categorization were identified by a context cue, a significant proportion of participants learned partial and independent categorization strategies that were chosen on the basis of context. For those participants, a strategy used in one context was unaffected by knowledge demonstrably present in other contexts, suggesting that knowledge partitioning in categorization can be complete. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

SOTER支持下海南岛土壤侵蚀模拟与影响因子分析

基于SOTER数据库,利用USLE方程对海南岛土壤的现实和潜在侵蚀量进行了定量估算,结果表明海南岛92.82%的面积土壤侵蚀量在500t/km2·a以下,侵蚀主要发生在中坡度坡地和高坡度丘陵区;而由于其所处的特殊气候区,潜在侵蚀量巨大,中度以上侵蚀面积达到全岛的90.67%。酸性常湿雏形土、铝质湿润雏形土和铁质湿润雏形土相对侵蚀程度大,粉砂岩、泥岩地区最容易发生侵蚀。