Continuous precipitation of calcium sulfate dihydrate from waste sulfuric acid and lime

Precipitation of calcium sulfate dihydrate, gypsum, from (i) a pure sulfuric acid/lime suspension and (ii) a waste sulfuric acid/lime suspension in a continuous pilot plant in the temperature range from 40 °C to 80 °C was studied. It was observed that in the case of waste sulfuric acid with a high content of Mg²⁺ and Fe²⁺ ions, several hours after the beginning of the precipitation, partial dissolution of the product and modification of the crystals from needle‐ and plate‐like to agglomerated structures occurred. It is suggested that the secondary changes occur due to the increased concentration of Mg²⁺ and Fe²⁺ ions in the reactor. Below 60 °C, and above 70 °C plate‐like and needle‐like single crystals respectively were formed. The mean size (d₅₀) of the crystals was found to increase with increasing temperature and decrease with the initial concentration of lime. Gypsum produced between 70 °C and 80 °C is suitable for further processing for construction plaster. In a precipitation process with pure sulfuric acid only single perfect needle‐like crystals occurred. Copyright © 2005 Society of Chemical Industry     

Fast Recognition of Fibonacci Cubes

Fibonacci cubes are induced subgraphs of hypercubes based on Fibonacci strings. They were introduced to represent interconnection networks as an alternative to the hypercube networks. We derive a characterization of Fibonacci cubes founded on the concept of resonance graphs. The characterization is the basis for an algorithm which recognizes these graphs in O(mlog n) time. A. Vesel supported by the Ministry of Science of Slovenia under the grant 0101-P-297.     

A variable gap penalty function and feature weights for protein 3-D structure comparisons

We have developed a variable gap penalty function for use inthe comparison program COMPARER which aligns protein sequenceson the basis of their 3-D structures. For deletions and insertions,components are a function of structural features of individualamino acid residues (e.g. secondary structure and accessibility).We have also obtained relative weights for different featuresused in the comparison by examining the equivalent residuesin weight matrices and in alignments for pairs of 3-D structureswhere the equivalences are relatively unambiguous. We have usedthe new parameters and the varible gap penalty function in COMPARERto align protein structures in the Brookhaven Data Bank. Thevariable gap penalty function is useful especially in avoidinggaps in secondary structure elements and the new feature weightsgive improved alignments. The alignments for both azurins andplastocyanins and N- and C-terminal lobes for aspartic proteinasesare discussed     

Using Discriminative Dimensionality Reduction to Visualize Classifiers

Neural Processing Letters - Albeit automated classifiers offer a standard tool in many application areas, there exists hardly a generic possibility to directly inspect their behavior, which goes...     

Workflows for Heliophysics

In this paper we describe how we have introduced workflows into the working practices of a community for whom the concept of workflows is very new, namely the heliophysics community. Heliophysics is a branch of astrophysics which studies the Sun and the interactions between the Sun and the planets, by tracking solar events as they travel throughout the Solar system. Heliophysics produces two major challenges for workflow technology. Firstly it is a systems science where research is currently developed by many different communities who need reliable data models and metadata to be able to work together. Thus it has major challenges in the semantics of workflows. Secondly, the problem of time is critical in heliophysics; the workflows must take account of the propagation of events outwards from the sun. They have to address the four dimensional nature of space and time in terms of the indexing of data. We discuss how we have built an environment for Heliophysics workflows building on and extending the Taverna workflow system and utilising the myExperiment site for sharing workflows. We also describe how we have integrated the workflows into the existing practices of the communities involved in Heliophysics by developing a web portal which can hide the technical details from the users, who can concentrate on the data from their scientific point of view rather than on the methods used to integrate and process the data. This work has been developed in the EU Framework 7 project HELIO, and is being disseminated to the worldwide Heliophysics community, since Heliophysics requires integration of effort on a global scale.     

Relational generative topographic mapping

The generative topographic mapping (GTM) has been proposed as a statistical model to represent high-dimensional data by a distribution induced by a sparse lattice of points in a low-dimensional latent space, such that visualization, compression, and data inspection become possible. The formulation in terms of a generative statistical model has the benefit that relevant parameters of the model can be determined automatically based on an expectation maximization scheme. Further, the model offers a large flexibility such as a direct out-of-sample extension and the possibility to obtain different degrees of granularity of the visualization without the need of additional training. Original GTM is restricted to Euclidean data points in a given Euclidean vector space. Often, data are not explicitly embedded in a Euclidean vector space, rather pairwise dissimilarities of data can be computed, i.e. the relations between data points are given rather than the data vectors themselves. We propose a method which extends the GTM to relational data and which allows us to achieve a sparse representation of data characterized by pairwise dissimilarities, in latent space. The method, relational GTM, is demonstrated on several benchmarks.     

Workload characterization of JVM languages

Originally developed with a single language in mind, the JVM is now targeted by numerous programming languages—its automatic memory management, just‐in‐time compilation, and adaptive optimizations—making it an attractive execution platform. However, the garbage collector, the just‐in‐time compiler, and other optimizations and heuristics were designed primarily with the performance of Java programs in mind. Consequently, many of the languages targeting the JVM, and especially the dynamically typed languages, are suffering from performance problems that cannot be simply solved at the JVM side. In this article, we aim to contribute to the understanding of the character of the workloads imposed on the JVM by both dynamically typed and statically typed JVM languages. To this end, we introduce a new set of dynamic metrics for workload characterization, along with an easy‐to‐use toolchain to collect the metrics. We apply the toolchain to applications written in six JVM languages (Java, Scala, Clojure, Jython, JRuby, and JavaScript) and discuss the findings. Given the recently identified importance of inlining for the performance of Scala programs, we also analyze the inlining behavior of the HotSpot JVM when executing bytecode originating from different JVM languages. As a result, we identify several traits in the non‐Java workloads that represent potential opportunities for optimization. © 2015 The Authors. Software: Practice and Experience Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

Interoperability requirements for automated manufacturing systems in construction

Multi-disciplinary software interoperability in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operations industry is becoming a new and widely adopted business culture. Technical advances in interoperability architectures, frameworks, methods and standards during the last decade resulted in higher maturity of product and process models. Mature models, in effect, enable data exchange by an increasing number of software applications in the industry. This establishes trust in data exchange and results in the lower cost impact of inefficient interoperability. The negative cost impact increases with advancing life-cycle phase, from planning and design phase to construction phase and to operation and maintenance phase. Interoperability in the planning and design phase is most mature and well published, while interoperability in the construction phase and for automated manufacturing is less researched. This paper reviews state-of-the art automated manufacturing systems in construction and researches interoperability requirements for automated construction in context of the entire building lifecycle. Our research is based on experimental free-form clay building, designed with embedded simple HVAC components, and manufactured with additive layer technology. Conclusions provide valuable results for interoperability research and practice in construction projects with automated manufacturing systems in place.