Hydrogen limitation--a method for controlling the performance of membrane biofilm reactor for autotrophic denitrification of wastewater.

Hydrogen-driven denitrification using the fiber membrane biofilm reactor (MBfR) was evaluated for consistent operation in tertiary wastewater treatment. The possibility of controlling the process rates, as well as biofilm parameters by supplying limited amounts of electron donor (hydrogen), was tested. Limiting the hydrogen supply proved to be efficient in controlling the biofilm growth and performance of the MBfR. Denitrification rates remained unchanged for both synthetic wastewater (SWW) and real municipal wastewater (MWW) effluent as well through the fluctuations in the substrate (NO3-N) concentration. The average denitrification rates were 0.50 (+/- 0.02) g NO3-N per day per m2 for SWW and 0.59 (+/- 0.04) g NO3-N per day per m2 for MWW. Biofilm density rather than thickness was the determining factor in substrate diffusion and biofilm sloughing, ultimately determining operating stability. Limited hydrogen supply assured constant volatile solids (VS) concentration in the biofilm. It was determined that VS/TS ratio higher than 0.25 assured stable biofilm operation. Decrease of VS/TS ratio below 0.25 led to shearing of the nonbiological outer layers of the biofilm. The values of chemical oxygen demand (COD), volatile suspended solids (VSS) and total suspended solids (TSS) in the final effluent were stable and well below wastewater effluent guidelines. Substitutions of bicarbonate with gaseous carbon dioxide as the carbon source did not affect denitrification rates despite lower than optimum pH conditions.     

Microstructure and properties of MoSi2–MoB and MoSi2–Mo5Si3 molybdenum silicides

MoSi₂-based intermetallics containing different volume fractions of MoB or Mo₅Si₃ were fabricated by hot-pressing MoSi₂, MoB, and Mo₅Si₃ powders in vacuum. Both classes of alloys contained approximately 5 vol.% of dispersed silica phase. Additions of MoB or Mo₅Si₃ caused the average grain size to decrease. The decrease in the grain size was typically accompanied by an increase in flexure strength, a decrease in the room temperature fracture toughness, and a decrease in the hot strength (compressive creep strength) measured around 1200 °C, except when the Mo₅Si₃ effectively became the major phase. Oxidation measurements on the two classes of alloys were carried out in air. Both classes of alloys were protected from oxidation by an in-situ adherent scale that formed on exposure to high temperature. The scale, although not analyzed in detail, is commonly recognized in MoSi₂ containing materials as consisting mostly of SiO₂. The MoB containing materials showed an increase in the scale thickness and the cyclic oxidation rate at 1400 °C when compared with pure MoSi₂. However, in contrast with the pure MoSi₂ material, oxidation at 1400 °C began with a weight loss followed by a weight gain and the formation of the protective silica layer. The Mo₅Si₃ containing materials experienced substantial initial weight losses followed by regions of small weight changes. Overall, the MoB and Mo₅Si₃ additions to MoSi₂ tended to be detrimental for the mechanical and oxidative properties.     

Iterative method for the design of DFT filter Bank

Multirate adaptive filters have numerous advantages such as low computational load, fast convergence, and parallelism in the adaptation. Drawbacks when using multirate processing are mainly related to aliasing and reconstruction effects. These effects can be minimized by introducing appropriate problem formulation and employing sophisticated optimization techniques. In this paper, we propose a formulation for the design of a filter bank which controls the distortion level for each frequency component directly and minimizes the inband aliasing and the residual aliasing between different subbands. The advantage of this problem formulation is that the distortion level can be weighted for each frequency depending on the particular practical application. A new iterative algorithm is proposed to optimize simultaneously over both the analysis and the synthesis filter banks. This algorithm is shown to have a unique solution for each iteration. For a fixed distortion level, the proposed algorithm yields a significant reduction in both the inband aliasing and the residual aliasing levels compared to existing methods applied to the numerical examples.     

An efficient TDMA start-up and restart synchronization approach for distributed embedded systems

A desired attribute in safety-critical embedded real-time systems is a system time and event synchronization capability on which predictable communication can be established. Focusing on bus-based communication protocols, we present a novel, efficient, and low-cost start-up and restart synchronization approach for TDMA environments. This approach utilizes information about a node's message length that forms a unique sequence to achieve synchronization such that communication overhead can be avoided. We present a fault-tolerant initial synchronization protocol with a bounded start-up time. The protocol avoids start-up collisions by deterministically postponing retries after a collision. We also present a resynchronization strategy that incorporates recovering nodes into synchronization.     

Vortex Dynamics in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 Single Crystal with Low Density Columnar Defects Studied by Magnetic Force Microscope

We have studied vortex dynamics in Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O₈ single crystal with low density columnar defects by using a magnetic force microscope. Single crystal Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O₈ sample was irradiated by 1.3 GeV uranium ion to form artificial pinning centers along the crystalline c-axis. The irradiation dose corresponded to a matching field of 20 gauss. The radius of an individual vortex is approximately 140 nm, which is close to the penetration depth of this material. Magnetic force microscope (MFM) images show that intrinsic crystalline defects such as stacking fault dislocations are very effective pinning centers for vortices in addition to the pinning centers due to ion bombardment. By counting the number of vortex, we found that the flux trapped at each pinning center is a single flux quantum. At higher magnetic field, the vortex structure showed an Abrikosov lattice disturbed only by immobile vortices located at pinning centers. When increasing or decreasing the external magnetic field, the spatial distribution of vortices showed a Bean model like behavior.     

Growth of GaAs on polycrystalline silicon-on-insulator

The growth of GaAs on polycrystalline silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates by metal organic vapor phase epitaxy using a two-step growth process was studied in this work. We have compared the variation of the growth temperature and the thickness of the initial GaAs epilayer in the structures grown on polycrystalline SOI to ones grown on SOI and epi-Si. Structural properties were studied using high-resolution X-ray diffraction (XRD). The growth temperature had a strong effect on the FWHM of the (0 0 4) XRD curve in structures grown on SOI and epi-Si. In the case of polycrystalline SOI the effect was not as strong. Optical properties of the samples in which the optically active layer consisted of self-organized In_0.5Ga_0.5As quantum dots were investigated by photoluminescence measurements. The photoluminescence intensity from structures grown on polycrystalline SOI was comparable to that from structures grown on SOI and epi-Si.     

Ethernet-based passive optical local-area networks for fiber-to-the-desk application

We introduce optical local-area network (LAN) architectures based on multimode optical fiber and components, short wavelength lasers and detectors, and the widely used fast Ethernet protocol. These architectures are designed to lower the costs associated with passive optical LAN implementation. Further reduction in overall cost is achieved through decreased network downtime, lower maintenance cost, extended geometrical spans, and larger headroom for future capacity increase. These optically transparent networks represent a novel approach for implementing fiber-to-the-desk.     

Phase regression approach for estimating the parameters of a noisy multifrequency signal

A novel approach for estimating the parameters of a multifrequency signal from discrete samples corrupted by additive noise is presented. An established mathematical model indicates that noise influence on the discrete phase and amplitude spectra is equivalent to additive phase and amplitude noise, respectively. On this basis, a simple algorithm is proposed to estimate the frequency and phase of each sinusoid component by linear regression on the phase spectra of segmented signal blocks, while an amplitude estimator is directly derived from the spectrum of the window function. The circular nature of the phase spectrum is thoroughly explored. Also, an algorithmic scheme is presented. The derived variances of the estimators show that for a noisy signal this approach provides superior accuracy over the traditional approaches. Simulations and engineering application confirm the validity of the presented method.     

A push mechanism for GPRS supporting private IP addresses

The General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) provides a packet switched data service for mobile users. However, the existing GPRS specification does not provide the push mechanism and it is difficult to support GPRS services such as call termination (incoming call) for wireless voice over IP (VoIP). Based on the short message service, this paper proposes a push mechanism for GPRS supporting private IP addresses. Our approach does not need to modify the existing GPRS structure.