Technology Evaluation of Hydrogen Light-Duty Vehicles

This study analyzed candidate hydrogen-fueled vehicles for near and long-term use associated with their efficiency, performance, and emissions. Various types of hydrogen-fueled vehicles were assessed using Argonne National Laboratory's Powertrain System Analysis Toolkit vehicle simulation model. These include hythane- and hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines (ICEs), hydrogen-fueled hybrid electric propulsion, and direct hydrogen fuel cells. Vehicle sizes and configurations, consistent with the available component models/data, were simulated to compare efficiency and emissions with baseline conventional vehicles. The simulations provided salient information on the vehicle characteristics, performance, and efficiency, as functions of operating conditions on standard driving cycles. It was found that substantial gains in fuel economy can be achieved through hybridization both for conventional and fuel cell vehicles. When hybridized, hydrogen ICE configurations achieve similar fuel economy to gasoline counterparts. The results also confirm that ICE hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) achieve higher fuel economy than fuel cell configurations and comparable results with fuel cell HEV. Comparison of efficiency results for various driving cycles further indicates that cycles with low power demand are most suited for hybrid operations.     

Sludge Production and Settleability in Biofilm-Activated Sludge Process

The sludge production and settleability have been estimated experimentally in a completely mixed biofilm-activated sludge reactor (hybrid reactor). A steady-state hybrid reactor was run at different stages of suspended biomass concentration (X) under constant values of influent substrate concentration (So) and hydraulic retention time (HRT). The values of X were gradually decreased in these stages until the system completely washed out of the suspended biomass and converted to pure biofilm reactor. As a result, the role of biofilm in the treatment gradually increased with an increase in the effluent substrate concentration (S). The experiment was supported by a mathematical expression for describing the sludge yield in the system under the previous conditions. The experimental and theoretical studies in the present work reveal that there is a critical phase of the hybrid system at which the system produces a high rate of excess sludge. That critical phase is found at a specific ratio between the suspended and the attached growth. Avoiding that critical phase enables the sludge production in the hybrid reactor to be reduced and optimized. Further, the minimum sludge production was found when the biofilm is theoretically inactive for chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal (S相似文献   

Evaluating drought response of Southern Cape Indigenous Forests,South Africa,using MODIS data

Indigenous forests in South Africa cover less than 0.5% of the total land area but are a valued resource under threat from fragmentation, fires, exploitation, and climate change. The largest indigenous forest complex is located along the southern coast of the Western Cape Province. This complex is made up of sub-forests distinguished by different structural and edaphoclimatic attributes. It has been hypothesized that these sub-forests exhibit different resistance to stressors, such as drought. A time series of MODIS 250 m enhanced vegetation index (EVI) data were used to characterize the foliage condition of the three distinctive sub-forests before, during, and after a severe drought in 2009. The goal was to determine how these sub-forests responded to this disturbance. EVI anomalies for the drought and post-drought periods were calculated using annual median EVI values, since removal of outliers based on quality control flags that accompany the MODIS products or noise-filtering techniques proved to be ineffective. Results of the study indicated that pre-drought foliage density EVI was not controlled by differences in water availability, but may have been due to other edaphoclimatic or structural attributes. Maximum foliage loss occurred one year after the driest year, indicating the cumulative effects of drought stress on forest production and retention of foliage. The hypothesized stress resistance capacity of the three sub-forests was found to correspond to their rate of post-drought recovery. There is a need to tie these satellite observations of forest drought response to ground observations of forest condition, growth, and specific site attributes.     

Penicillin as a supplement in resolving the localized acute apical abscess

PROBLEM: Antibiotics are often prescribed indiscriminately to treat endodontic emergencies. OBJECTIVES: This study examined (1) the effect of penicillin supplementation on reduction of symptoms and (2) the course of recovery of localized acute apical abscess after emergency treatment. STUDY DESIGN: Patients with pulp necrosis and periapical pain and/or localized swelling were considered. Those eligible did not have any signs of spreading infections. Patients received appropriate local treatment, and a double-blind protocol was used to randomly assign them to one of three groups: penicillin VK group, placebo group, or neither medication group. All received ibuprofen 600 mg four times daily for 24 hours. Patients entered their pre- and postoperative pain and swelling experience on a visual analog scale for up to 72 hours. RESULTS: Resolution was fairly rapid in most patients. Statistical analysis of the scores of 32 respondents revealed no significant differences (at p < 0.05) between the three groups in course of recovery or symptoms at any time period. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with localized periapical pain or swelling generally recovered quickly with local treatment. The data did not show a demonstrable benefit from penicillin supplementation.     

Kinetics of the acute-phase reaction in rats after tumor transplantation

Transplantation of Yoshida sarcoma (solid type) and Zajdela ascites hepatoma tumors in rats induces a biphasic change in the concentration of the following five acute-phase proteins: alpha-1-acid glycoprotein; alpha-1-antitrypsin; haptoglobin; hemopexin; and ceruloplasmin. These proteins and other plasma proteins were quantitated by two-dimensional immunoelectrophoresis relative to normal serum concentrations. The elevation of most of these acute-phase proteins was greater in the second phase, during which serum levels increased continuously as the tumor burden increased until the animals died. The increase in haptoglobin concentration during the second phase was much higher in rats bearing Yoshida sarcoma than in rats bearing Zajdela tumors. Rats receiving irradiated tumor cells showed neither tumor growth nor second-phase protein changes. Significant increases in uptake of 3H-amino acids by isolated perfused livers of tumor-bearing rats provided evidence for an increase in the hepatic synthesis rates of the acute-phase proteins. Removal of the solid tumor resulted in a gradual decrease of acute-phase protein concentrations with concomitant increase in serum albumin concentration. These alterations in serum acute-phase proteins during tumor growth and after removal of the tumor may make their use attractive as biological markers of the response of the tumor-bearing animal to its tumor.     

Passivity and passivity breakdown of zinc anode in alkaline medium

The electrochemical behaviour of zinc in NaOH solutions has been investigated by using potentiodynamic technique and complemented by X-ray analysis. The E/i curves exhibit active, passive and transpassive regions prior to oxygen evolution. The active region displays two anodic peaks. The passivity is due to the Formation of a compact Zn(OH)₂ film on the anode surface. The transpassive region is assigned to the electroformation of ZnO₂. The reverse sweep shows an activation anodic peak and one catholic peak prior to hydrogen evolution. The influence of increasing additives of NaCl, NaBr and Nal on the anodic behaviour of zinc in NaOH solutions has been studied. The halides stimulate the active dissolution of zinc and tend to break down the passive film, leading to pitting corrosion. The aggressiveness of the halide anions towards the stability of the passive film decreases in the order: I^? > Br^? > Cl^?. The susceptibility of zinc anode to pitting corrosion enhances with increasing the halide ion concentration but decreases with increasing both the alkali concentration and the sweep rate.     

Mélangeur équilibré dans la bande de 26,5 à 40 GHz en technologie de la ligne à ailettes

The fin line technique has been used in a balanced 27.25–29.75 GHz mixer with a 3.75 GHz intermediate frequency. The performance of essential mixer circuits elements is presented. The mixer has an available conversion loss of 5.8 ± 0.8 dB. The mixer is tunable by variable shorts.     

Rayonnement parasite des terminaisons court-circuitées en ligne microfente et en guide d’onde coplanaire

An integral equations technique solved by the moment method associated with simple one-port model is used to analyse parasitic radiation of short circuit terminations of slotlines and coplanar waveguides. This parasitic effect is represented by a frequency-dependent normalized resistance. Theoretical results are compared to experimental ones for substrates with several dielectric constants.     

Synthesis and characterization of high strength polyimide/silicon nitride nanocomposites with enhanced thermal and hydrophobic properties

Polyimide (PI) composite films were synthesized incorporating amino modified silicon nitride (Si3N4) nanoparticles into PI matrix via in situ polymerization technique. The mechanical and thermal perfor-mances as well as the hydrophobic properties of the as prepared composite films were investigated with respect to the dosage of the filler in the PI matrix. According to Thermogravimetric (TGA) analysis, mean-ingful improvements were achieved in T5 (5％weight loss temperature) and T10 (10％weight loss temper-ature) up to 54.1 ℃ and 52.4 ℃, respectively when amino functionalized nano-Si3N4 particles were introduced into the PI matrix. The differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) results revealed that the glass transition temperature (Tg) of the composites was considerably enhanced up to 49.7 ℃ when amino func-tionalized Si3N4 nanoparticles were incorporated in the PI matrix. Compared to the neat PI, the PI/Si3N4 nanocomposites exhibited very high improvement in the tensile strength as well as Young's modulus up to 105.4％ and 138.3％, respectively. Compared to the neat PI, the composites demonstrated highly decreased water absorption behavior which showed about 68.1％ enhancement as the content of the nanoparticles was increased to 10 wt％. The SEM (Scanning electron microscope) images confirmed that the enhanced thermal, mechanical and water proof properties are essentially attributed to the improved compatibility of the filler with the matrix and hence, enhanced distribution inside the matrix because of the amino groups on the surface of Si3N4 nanoparticles obtained from surface functionalization.