Effect of pre‐treatments based on UV photocatalysis and photo‐oxidation on toluene biofiltration performance

BACKGROUND: The integration of UV photocatalysis and biofiltration seems to be a promising combination of technologies for the removal of hydrophobic and poorly biodegradable air pollutants. The influence of pre‐treatments based on UV_{254 nm} photocatalysis and photo‐oxidation on the biofiltration of toluene as a target compound was evaluated in a controlled long‐term experimental study using different system configurations: a standalone biofilter, a combined UV photocatalytic reactor‐biofilter, and a combined UV photo‐oxidation reactor (without catalyst)‐biofilter. RESULTS: Under the operational conditions used (residence time of 2.7 s and toluene concentrations 600–1200 mg C m^?3), relatively low removal efficiencies (6–3%) were reached in the photocatalytic reactor and no degradation of toluene was found when the photo‐oxidation reactor was operated without catalyst. A noticeable improvement in the performance of the biofilter combined with a photocatalytic reactor was observed, and the elimination capacity of the biological process increased by more than 12 g C h^?1 m^?3 at the inlet loads studied of 50–100 g C h^?1 m^?3. No positive effect on toluene removal was observed for the combination of UV photoreactor and biofilter. CONCLUSIONS: Biofilter pre‐treatment based on UV_{254 nm} photocatalysis showed promising results for the removal of hydrophobic and recalcitrant air pollutants, providing synergistic improvement in the removal of toluene. Copyright © 2011 Society of Chemical Industry     

NETmix®, a new type of static mixer: Modeling,simulation, macromixing,and micromixing characterization

NETmix® is a new technology for static mixing based on a network of chambers connected by channels. The NETmix® model is the basis of a flow simulator coupled with chemical reaction used to characterize macro and micromixing in structured porous media. The chambers are modeled as perfectly mixing zones and the channels as plug flow perfect segregation zones. A segregation parameter is introduced as the ratio between the channels volume and the whole network volume. Different kinetics and reactants injection schemes can be implemented. Results show that the number of rows in the flow direction and the segregation parameter control both macro and micromixing, but the degree of micromixing is also controlled by the reactants injection scheme. The NETmix® model enables the systematic study of micromixing and macromixing for different network structures and reaction schemes, enabling the design of network structures to ensure the desired yield and selectivity. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2009     

Maneuver prediction for road vehicles based on a novel neuro-fuzzy dynamic architecture

Collision avoidance systems for road vehicles may benefit from timely predictions of vehicle maneuvers. This article presents a novel approach for the prediction of maneuvers that copes with noisy measurements and is based on a supervised version of a dynamic FasArt method (SdFasArt). Additionally, the use of size-dependent scatter matrices to compute the activation of the neurons makes the algorithm more adaptable to different data distributions. The results obtained in real tests confirm the goodness of the method.     

Adaptive Turbo Coded Modulation for Shallow Underwater Acoustic Communications

In this paper the performance of a wireless communications system over shallow underwater acoustic channels is investigated when adaptive modulation and coding techniques with receiver diversity are used. It is assumed that the communication system experiences Ricean shadowed fading. We obtain the analytical figures of the proposed rate-adaptive transmission schemes, emphasizing in the spectral efficiency and the average bit error rate. These analytical expressions are compared to Monte-Carlo simulations corroborating the analytical results.     

Cooking methods of Brassica rapa affect the preservation of glucosinolates,phenolics and vitamin C

Cooking Brassica vegetables as a domestic processing method has a great impact on health-promoting bioactive compounds: glucosinolates (GLS), flavonoids, hydroxycinnamic acids, and vitamin C. In Galicia (NorthWestern Spain), one of the most consumed horticultural crops is Brassica rapa, by using the leaves (turnip greens) and the young sprouting shoots (turnip tops) in different culinary preparations. In order to determine the effect of cooking, on turnip greens and turnip tops, bioactive GLS, flavonoids, hydroxycinnamic acids and vitamin C were analysed and simultaneously determined. The level of retention of each individual compound after cooking procedures was evaluated in the edible organs, and also in the cooking water, in order to compare their composition to a fresh uncooked control. Steaming, conventional boiling, and high-pressure cooking, traditional processing methods of this kind of vegetables, were the three domestic processing methods used in this work. Results showed that total GLS and phenolics were significantly affected by the cooking procedure and the loss rate varied among individual compounds. Steaming was the method that better preserved GLS and phenolic compounds. Conventional boiling and high-pressure cooking methods presented similar rate of losses of total GLS content (64%) and total phenolic content (more than 70%). Degradation among glucosinolate classes, aliphatic or indolic, was similar. The total flavonoids lost in turnip greens were 64% and 67% for conventional boiling and high-pressure, respectively. The main losses were caused by leaching into the cooking water. The concentration of vitamin C suffered a drastic loss in the process of sample handling and after cooking. Despite the fact that any cooking procedure affected negatively the nutritional composition of the turnip greens and tops, our results showed high retentions of individual compounds in steaming, and the lowest retentions were obtained in the traditional high-pressure cooking. High retention of health-promoting compounds in the cooking water should be considered for increasing the intake of properties of B. rapa.     

Performance evaluation of nonsynchronized initial random access for mobile broadband systems

In this paper, a comparative analysis of the performance of the nonsynchronized initial random access channel in Mobile WiMAX and E-UTRA systems under different conditions (fast fading, multiuser interference) is carried out. The analysis is focused on the correlation properties of the code sequences used in each case. We evaluate their ability to provide low values for false alarm and erroneous detection probabilities (detecting a sequence that has not been transmitted) at the same time as guaranteeing low nondetection probabilities of the effectively transmitted sequences. Results show the promising performance of the E-UTRA scheme, even in high mobility scenarios, where the Doppler effect requires additional considerations to guarantee the correct system operation.     

Historiography of psychology in Spain: The last decade.

History of Psychology has been an extremely active field for many years in Spain. Both the great expansion of psychological studies and the inclusion of history as a compulsory subject in the psychology curriculum are crucial factors helping to understand the current state of affairs. The aim of this paper is to provide a survey of the work done in this area over the last decade, covering research, teaching, and institutional developments. The study includes consideration of aspects such as main research lines, major theoretical and methodological trends, teaching materials, relevant archives and exhibits, and significant websites. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A review of instance selection methods

In supervised learning, a training set providing previously known information is used to classify new instances. Commonly, several instances are stored in the training set but some of them are not useful for classifying therefore it is possible to get acceptable classification rates ignoring non useful cases; this process is known as instance selection. Through instance selection the training set is reduced which allows reducing runtimes in the classification and/or training stages of classifiers. This work is focused on presenting a survey of the main instance selection methods reported in the literature.     

Effects of competing environmental variables and signage on route-choices in simulated everyday and emergency wayfinding situations

This study examined the relative influence of environmental variables (corridor width and brightness) and signage (directional and exit signs), when presented in competition, on participants' route-choices in two situational variables (everyday vs. emergency), during indoor wayfinding in virtual environments. A virtual reality-based methodology was used. Thus, participants attempted to find a room (everyday situation) in a virtual hotel, followed by a fire-related emergency egress (emergency situation). Different behaviours were observed. In the everyday situation, for no-signs condition, participants choose mostly the wider and brighter corridors, suggesting a heavy reliance on the environmental affordances. Conversely, for signs condition, participants mostly complied with signage, suggesting a greater reliance on the signs rather than on the environmental cues. During emergency, without signage, reliance on environmental affordances seems to be affected by the intersection type. In the sign condition, the reliance on environmental affordances that started strong decreases along the egress route.