Economic geology value of oil shale deposits: Ethiopia (Tigray) and Jordan

Oil shale is an organic-rich, fine-grained sedimentary rock, containing kerogen, from which liquid hydrocarbons (called shale oil) can be produced. The oil shale deposits in the Tigray region are found in the northern parts of Ethiopia, Eastern Africa. They are of Upper Paleozoic in age, existing as remnants of the Cretaceous erosion period, underlain by tillites and overlain by sandstones. They were formed during the glacial retreat followed by marine deposition of shales in a basin created by the enormous load of the glaciers. The Ethiopian-Tigray oil shale deposits cover an area extending over approximately 30 km², with an average mineable bed-thickness of 55 m, showing on the upper part inter-beds and laminations of shaley limestones. The oil shale resources in this region are estimated to be approximately 4 billion tonnes. The exploitation of the Ethiopian-Tigray oil shale deposits is an excellent alternative to fulfill the fuel and other petroleum products’ demand of Ethiopia. This study sheds light on the oil shale resources in the Ethiopian region of Tigray, as they are fairly investigated, regarding their geological characterization, and future strategies for their exploration and exploitation potential. In addition, the oil shale deposits in Jordan are also moderately investigated, as Jordan is considered a promising country for shale oil, taking into account that Jordan has no other hydrocarbon resources (such as crude oil and natural gas), unlike many other countries in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, as MENA sets on “seas” of oil and natural gas. Furthermore, oil shale in the USA is also briefly investigated, as the USA is being the world’s largest country of oil shale resources and reserves. Also, some other issues related to the oil shale industry are investigated, such as economics, extraction technologies of shale oil, and the environmental impacts.     

Graph-based video fingerprinting using double optimal projection

A double optimal projection method that involves projections for intra-cluster and inter-cluster dimensionality reduction are proposed for video fingerprinting. The video is initially set as a graph with frames as its vertices in a high-dimensional space. A similarity measure that can compute the weights of the edges is then proposed. Subsequently, the video frames are partitioned into different clusters based on the graph model. Double optimal projection is used to explore the optimal mapping points in a low-dimensional space to reduce the video dimensions. The statistics and geometrical fingerprints are generated to determine whether a query video is copied from one of the videos in the database. During matching, the video can be roughly matched by utilizing the statistics fingerprint. Further matching is thereafter performed in the corresponding group using geometrical fingerprints. Experimental results show the good performance of the proposed video fingerprinting method in robustness and discrimination.     

A comparison of pivot selection techniques for permutation-based indexing

Recently, permutation based indexes have attracted interest in the area of similarity search. The basic idea of permutation based indexes is that data objects are represented as appropriately generated permutations of a set of pivots (or reference objects). Similarity queries are executed by searching for data objects whose permutation representation is similar to that of the query, following the assumption that similar objects are represented by similar permutations of the pivots. In the context of permutation-based indexing, most authors propose to select pivots randomly from the data set, given that traditional pivot selection techniques do not reveal better performance. However, to the best of our knowledge, no rigorous comparison has been performed yet. In this paper we compare five pivot selection techniques on three permutation-based similarity access methods. Among those, we propose a novel technique specifically designed for permutations. Two significant observations emerge from our tests. First, random selection is always outperformed by at least one of the tested techniques. Second, there is no technique that is universally the best for all permutation-based access methods; rather different techniques are optimal for different methods. This indicates that the pivot selection technique should be considered as an integrating and relevant part of any permutation-based access method.     

Towards efficient device-to-device multicast content delivery with social awareness

Frequent content retrieval leads to significant energy consumption in cellular networks. Thereby, device-to-device (D2D) communication is used for proximal content delivery. Be aware that social friends may have common content interests, D2D content delivery is further improved by considering social network. However, how to implement efficient D2D multicast with the aid of social relationship needs further consideration. In this paper, with a proposed architecture on combined networks, the cooperation range of content sharing is investigated for D2D multicast to minimize the average energy consumption of serving a content request. Based on combined networks, a cooperation group formation scheme is proposed. Simulation results verify our analyzes and the advantage of proposed scheme.     

Fe含量对热挤压再生铝合金组织和性能的影响

采用光学显微镜、扫描电镜、万能拉伸机、显微硬度计等手段研究了不同Fe含量对热挤压再生铝合金组织和性能的影响,并探讨富Fe相形态演变机制。结果表明,Fe含量的增加有利于抑制再生铝晶粒尺寸的长大。随着Fe含量增加,晶粒尺寸逐渐减小,减小幅度达25%。热挤压后再生铝中富Fe相发生了折断和破碎,并沿着挤压方向呈带状分布。随着Fe含量增加,富Fe相的面积分数和平均长度均逐渐提高,当Fe含量分别为0.10%~1.24%时,面积分数和平均长度增长最快;而富Fe相的圆整度则随Fe含量的增加稍有降低。同时,再生铝的抗拉强度、屈服强度和伸长率均随着Fe含量的增加呈现逐渐降低的趋势,最大降低幅度分别为10.4%、23.2%和46.0%,而显微硬度则逐渐提高,最大提高幅度为21.7%。断口形貌也由纯韧性断裂转变为混合型断裂模式。     

压铸雷达用高精度波导管的研制

针对雷达用高精度波导管的特点,采用压铸和拼装工艺,生产出满足技术要求的波导管零件。通过分析波导管的工艺难点,开展了YL113合金的气体含量控制、压铸工艺优化以及配套工装装配工艺研究。结果表明,通过惰性气体精炼和真空除气处理,可有效降低合金熔体内氢含量,保证合金内部品质;通过浇道设计和压铸工艺优化,保证了喇叭、十字筋铸件的尺寸精度,且铸件屈服强度高于270MPa,伸长率高于2%;采用退火、自然时效处理以及装配工装,有效保证了波导管的装配尺寸精度,产品合格率达91%。     

贵州省望谟县耕地土壤重金属含量特征及影响因素

伴随社会经济快速发展，土壤重金属污染越来越成为人们关注的环境问题。为有效预防土壤重金属污染，以贵州省望谟县耕地表层土壤为研究对象，应用经典统计分析、相关性分析等方法，研究重金属元素含量特征及其影响因素。研究结果表明，该地区耕地土壤重金属元素Cd、Cr、Hg、Ni含量较高，均高于全国背景值，其含量主要受成土母质影响，在泥盆系、石炭系、二叠系的碳酸盐岩分布区平均含量较高，在陆源碎屑岩分布区含量普遍较低。该研究结果为该县耕地种植规划和农产品结构调整等提供了依据。     

Muzzling social media: The adverse effects of moderating stakeholder conversations online

Many organizations struggle to meaningfully engage with their stakeholders on political, societal and environmental topics via social media. Often such discourses unravel into splintered and negative conversations, raising the question whether organizations can and should exercise some level of control and ‘steering’ in these conversations and, if so, how stakeholders would react to such ‘top down’ moderation. Existing studies lack empirical insights into the impacts of different levels of moderation in social media conversations on stakeholder attitudes. Two experimental studies were developed to test the effect of different levels of organizational moderation on stakeholder attitudes towards organizations. We show that increased levels of moderation negatively affect attitudes towards an organization, satisfaction with an organization's performance, and trust in the organization. Increased moderation also significantly undermines beliefs in the commitment of the organization to its stakeholders and control mutuality. This paper extends recent qualitative attempts to build new theory around stakeholder dialogues on social media by testing the effects of varying levels of moderation in such dialogues.