Biodiversity relationships in urban and suburban parks in Flanders

Urban and suburban parks can play an important role in the conservation of biodiversity, especially in a strongly urbanised region like Flanders (Belgium). A previously developed method for monitoring biodiversity was applied to 15 parks in Flanders. This method took both habitat and species diversity into account and resulted in 13 biodiversity indicators. The results show that urban and suburban parks can have a high species richness, especially if they consist of different more or less semi-natural habitats. The relationships between the biodiversity indicators and the ecological factors affecting the biodiversity were examined using multivariate analyses and correlation techniques. Park area was the main factor explaining the variation in biodiversity indicators, so larger parks could contribute more to the conservation of biodiversity than small ones. A biodiversity score based on habitat diversity and species richness was proposed to summarise and evaluate the biodiversity. This score is not correlated with the park area and is therefore considered as a reliable indicator for comparing biodiversity in parks of different area.     

Priority pollutants in wastewater and combined sewer overflow

Implementation of the European Water Framework Directive and its affiliated directives requires Member States to improve their understanding of priority pollutants (PPs) in urban areas and obviously within wastewater systems. As a direct consequence, this study is intended to furnish data on both PP occurrence and the significance of concentrations in wastewater during dry and wet periods within combined sewers. Various sampling sites within the Paris combined sewer network were selected; for each sample, a total of 66 determinants, including metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), pesticides, organotins, volatile organic compounds, chlorobenzenes, phthalates and alkylphenols, were analysed. A broad range of PPs was observed in wastewater during dry as well as wet weather periods. Of the 66 elements investigated, 33 and 40 priority substances could be observed in raw sewage and wet weather effluent, respectively. As expected, a majority of metals were present in all samples, reflecting their ubiquitous nature. For both periods, chlorobenzenes and most of the pesticides always remained below the limit of quantification, while the majority of other organic pollutants assessed were identified within the microg l(-1) range. As highlighted by the larger number of substances detected in wet weather samples and the significance of their concentrations, runoff via atmospheric inputs and/or surface leaching was found to induce a wider range of PPs (n=40) and lead to higher concentrations of certain metals, PAHs, pesticides and other individual compounds. The data generated during this survey, which constitutes one of the first studies conducted in Europe to report concentrations for a variety of priority substances in wastewater within combined sewers, may be used in the future to identify PPs of potential significance for dry and wet weather periods and targeted for further investigation.     

Development of a conceptual model for the selection of intelligent building systems

With the availability of a myriad of intelligent building components or products in the market, the decision to choose between them becomes significant and crucial in the configuration of building alternative. This results in placing the decision makers in the selection ‘dilemma’. This paper presents the development of a conceptual model for the selection of intelligent building systems which aims at assisting the decision makers to select the most appropriate combination of intelligent building components. The paper commences by reviewing the literature on intelligent building research. A survey is conducted to examine the criticality of selection attributes. Findings of this survey enrich the field of intelligent building research in at least two ways. Firstly, it widens the understanding of the factors, as well as their degree of importance, in affecting the selection of intelligent building systems and components. Second, the identified selection attributes form a conceptual framework which can be used to guide the selection of intelligent building components.     

Interactive volume rendering of real-time three-dimensional ultrasound images

Real-time, three-dimensional (RT3D) ultrasound allows video frame rate volumetric imaging. The ability to acquire full three-dimensional (3-D) image data in real-time is particularly helpful for applications such as cardiac imaging, which require visualization of complex and dynamic 3-D anatomy. Volume rendering provides a method for intuitive graphical display of the 3-D image data, but capturing the RT3D echo data and performing the necessary processing to generate a volumetric image in real time poses a significant technical challenge. We present a data capture and rendering implementation that uses off-the-shelf components to real-time volume render RT3D ultrasound images. Our approach allowed live, interactive volume rendering of RT3D ultrasound scans.     

The strategic design and development of ERP and RTMS

One of the crucial requirements of global manufacturing strategy is the ability to optimise the use of information technology. This paper describes a process to implement manufacturing strategies that are consistent with a particular company's overall business strategies and results with conceptual system architecture. A methodology is proposed and used to identify and implement an integrated manufacturing strategy which consists of two major horizons: Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) and a Real-Time Monitoring system (RTMS). RTMS, which can provide up-to-date information for the planning and scheduling of manufacturing orders, monitoring quality, improving communication and increasing productivity, is implemented and is integrated with an ERP system. The architecture of the ERP system is designed for a global manufacturing environment. The implementation was designed with a Distributed Object-Oriented Technology (DOOT) which increases the system scalability, configurability, flexibility and interoperability. The ERP is designed to support real-time data collection and processing for all required production and inventory analysis with a flexible architecture which can meet the distributed business requirements.     

Evaluation of Risk Factors Leading to Cost Overrun in Delivery of Highway Construction Projects

Accurate owner budget estimates are critical to the initial decision-to-build process for highway construction projects. However, transportation projects have historically experienced significant construction cost overruns from the time the decision to build has been taken by the owner. This paper addresses the problem of why highway projects overrun their predicted costs. It identifies the owner risk variables that contribute to significant cost overrun and then uses factor analysis, expert elicitation, and the nominal group technique to establish groups of importance ranked owner risks. Stepwise multivariate regression analysis is also used to investigate any correlation of the percentage of cost overrun with risks, together with attributes such as highway project type, indexed cost, geographic location, and project delivery method. The research results indicate a correlation between the reciprocal of project budget size and percentage cost overrun. This can be useful for owners in determining more realistic decision-to-build highway budget estimates by taking into account the economies of scale associated with larger projects.     

TQM and brand-building by Chinese original brand manufacturers: impact on business performance

To gain competitive advantage, original brand manufacturers (OBMs) need to understand how operations and marketing cooperate to achieve performance. Doing so can guide OBMs to make appropriate actions to develop their operational and marketing capability, and foster collaboration between the two functions. Using data collected from 560 Chinese OBMs, the authors investigated the joint impact of total quality management (TQM) initiated by operations and brand-building undertaken by marketing on product quality, brand performance and customer satisfaction and loyalty. The results revealed that the two efforts interact and generate gains that individual efforts cannot realize. Not only their interaction generates additional value to product quality, the results also broadly substantiated the authors’ hypothesis that TQM and brand-building take different paths to affect customer satisfaction and loyalty. In total, although brand-building, as matter of inputs, may impose stronger influences on the performances, OBMs should not neglect TQM, as investing in both is critical to the firm’s long-term success.     

Large-scale and uniform preparation of pure-phase wurtzite GaAs NWs on non-crystalline substrates

One of the challenges to prepare high-performance and uniform III-V semiconductor nanowires (NWs) is to control the crystal structure in large-scale. A mixed crystal phase is usually observed due to the small surface energy difference between the cubic zincblende (ZB) and hexagonal wurtzite (WZ) structures, especially on non-crystalline substrates. Here, utilizing Au film as thin as 0.1 nm as the catalyst, we successfully demonstrate the large-scale synthesis of pure-phase WZ GaAs NWs on amorphous SiO₂/Si substrates. The obtained NWs are smooth, uniform with a high aspect ratio, and have a narrow diameter distribution of 9.5 ± 1.4 nm. The WZ structure is verified by crystallographic investigations, and the corresponding electronic bandgap is also determined to be approximately 1.62 eV by the reflectance measurement. The formation mechanism of WZ NWs is mainly attributed to the ultra-small NW diameter and the very narrow diameter distribution associated, where the WZ phase is more thermodynamically stable compared to the ZB structure. After configured as NW field-effect-transistors, a high I_ON/I_OFF ratio of 10⁴ − 10⁵ is obtained, operating in the enhancement device mode. The preparation technology and good uniform performance here have illustrated a great promise for the large-scale synthesis of pure phase NWs for electronic and optical applications.     

HYDROCARBON LOADS FROM STREET CLEANING PRACTICES: COMPARISON WITH DRY AND WET WEATHER FLOWS IN A PARISIAN COMBINED SEWER SYSTEM

Abstract

So far, little attention has been given to the effect of the street cleaning waters (SCW) load on the sewer systems during dry-weather periods. However, the knowledge of this pollution is needed to better understand the contribution of SCW to dry weather flow (DWF) pollution within combined sewers. Therefore, hydrocarbon loads conveyed by SCW were analyzed for two different sites of the Paris agglomeration. Median n-alkane, Unresolved Complex Mixture (UCM) and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAH) concentrations have been estimated at 19, 628 and 1.4 μ g · l^{? 1}for the Marais catchment (or 4th district), and at 8, 249, and 2.1 μ g · l^{? 1}for the 13th district, respectively. The observed contamination was mainly attributed to road traffic. Moreover, a comparison between SCW and street runoff showed that street cleaning removes a higher PAH stock than street runoff. In addition, SCW hydrocarbon fluxes evaluated at 5.4, 178 and 0.4 g · d^{? 1}for n-alkanes, UCM and PAH, respectively, were compared to the hydrocarbon fluxes of the DWF pollutant load at the combined sewer outlet of the Marais catchment. Hydrocarbon loads conveyed by SCW into Paris combined sewers appeared to be a minor source of DWF pollution for n-alkane and UCM, but represented a significant source for PAHs.