Enhancing urban infrastructure investment planning practices for a changing climate.

Climate change raises many concerns for urban water management because of the effects on all aspects of the hydrological cycle. Urban water infrastructure has traditionally been designed using historical observations and assuming stationary climatic conditions. The capability of this infrastructure, whether for storm-water drainage, or water supply, may be over- or under-designed for future climatic conditions. In particular, changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events will have the most acute effect on storm-water drainage systems. Therefore, it is necessary to take future climatic conditions into consideration in engineering designs in order to enhance water infrastructure investment planning practices in a long time horizon. This paper provides the initial results of a study that is examining ways to enhance urban infrastructure investment planning practices against changes in hydrologic regimes for a changing climate. Design storms and intensity-duration-frequency curves that are used in the engineering design of storm-water drainage systems are developed under future climatic conditions by empirically adjusting the general circulation model output, and using the Gumbel distribution and the Chicago method. Simulations are then performed on an existing storm-water drainage system from NE Calgary to investigate the resiliency of the system under climate change.     

Cholesterol‐imprinted polymer receptor prepared by a hybrid imprinting method

A novel cholesterol‐imprinted polymer (CMIP‐H) was prepared by a hybrid method of covalent imprinting and non‐covalent imprinting. This approach involves the copolymerization of a template‐containing monomer, cholesteryl 2‐hydroxyethyl methacrylate carbonate, and a cross‐linker, followed by hydrolysis to afford a flexible guest‐binding site accompanied with the easy and efficient removal of a ‘sacrificial spacer’. The effect of solvent on the binding capacity of CMIP‐H towards cholesterol was studied, indicating that a good binding capacity towards cholesterol could be achieved in a less‐polar solvent. The binding experiments of CMIP‐H towards a series of structural analogues of cholesterol, including cholesterol acetate, progesterone and stigmasterol, were carried out in hexane. The results showed that CMIP‐H almost did not bind cholesterol acetate at all because the hydrogen‐bonding site is blocked. It exhibited a similar binding towards both cholesterol and stigmasterol, but much higher binding towards progesterone. Copyright © 2005 Society of Chemical Industry     

Cost Effective VLSI Architectures for Full-Search Block-Matching Motion Estimation Algorithm

In this paper, we present efficient VLSI architectures for full-search block-matching motion estimation (BMME) algorithm. Given a search range, we partition it into sub-search arrays called tiles. By fully exploiting data dependency within a tile, efficient VLSI architectures can be obtained. Using the proposed VLSI architectures, all the block-matchings in a tile can be processed in parallel. All the tiles within a search range can be processed serially or concurrently depending on various requirements. With the consideration of processing speed, hardware cost, and I/O bandwidth, the optimal tile size for a specific video application is analyzed. By partitioning a search range into tiles with appropriate size, flexible VLSI designs with different throughput can be obtained. In this way, cost effective VLSI designs for a wide range of video applications, from H.261 to HDTV, can be achieved.     

A light intensity function suitable for multimode fiber-opticsensors

Intensity distribution functions on the image plane are derived under the assumption that a multimode optic fiber is illuminated by a light source which can be approximated by infinite uniangular beams carrying equal power. The application of the theory to a Lambertian source is discussed. Experimental results, based on the observation of the light intensity distribution imaged on an opaque screen and collected by a digital camera, are presented. The theoretical and experimental data are compared to verify that the intensity function is an accurate model for describing the realistic approach to sensor design. The limitations of the uniangular and uniform intensity distribution models are discussed on the basis of theoretical and experimental results     

TEM study of PLZT ceramics

The microscopic structures of PLZT(7.9/70/30 and x/65/35, x = 7 or 8) ceramics were studied by means of transmission electron microscopy. The presence of micro-regions in PLZTs was first verfied.     

α-Fe_2O_3(SO_4~(2-),Sn)气敏电阻的温度响应特性

在气敏温度区域内研究了α-Fe_2O_3(SO_4~(2-),Sn)材料的电阻-温度特性,认为表面结构的变化导致温度特性出现峰值并呈现气敏性。可利用空气中电阻温度特性提供的信息改性或发现新的气敏材料。     

空间三重奏

设计的确是一项非常有趣的工作，就如同一位导演运用出色的技巧掌控有限的预算，为观众呈现令人回味的剧情，逼真的音效和异彩纷呈的视觉映像，这无疑是三个紧密相扣的环。