On the alleged superiority of probabilistic representation ofuncertainty

The author identifies some points of his agreement or disagreement with the position taken by Laviolette and Seaman (1994) in their debate paper. In particular, the author argues that some statements regarding the superiority of probabilistic representation of uncertainty, which are made by Laviolette and Seaman in their paper, are untenable     

The crystallization of diabase glass

The crystallization behaviour of diabase glass at elevated temperatures was studied in samples prepared by melting the diabase rock. DTA and X-ray analyses revealed the crystallization of diopside (CaO · MgO · 2SiO₂) at 865 C and anorthite (CaO · Al₂O₃ · 2SiO₂) at 1060 C. Further, the kinetics of crystallization of diopside were studied. The phenomenological Johnson-Mehl-Avrami equation was used and the exponentn=3/2 determined from the dependency of the volume fraction of the crystal phase (diopside) on time. The activation energy of crystallization of diabase glass 248 kJ mol^–1 was estimated on the basis of DTA measurements carried out at different heating rates and found to be in good agreement with literature data for similar glass.     

Multi-objective evolutionary algorithm using problem-specific genetic operators for community detection in networks

Automatic network clustering is an important method for mining the meaningful communities of complex networks. Uncovered communities help to understand the potential system structure and functionality. Many algorithms that use multiple optimization criteria and optimize a population of solutions are difficult to apply to real systems because they suffer a long optimization process. In this paper, in order to accelerate the optimization process and to uncover multiple significant community structures more effectively, a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm is proposed and evaluated using problem-specific genetic mutation and group crossover, and problem-specific initialization. Since crossover operators mainly contribute to performance of genetic algorithms, more problem-specific group crossover operators are introduced and evaluated for intelligent evolution of population. The experiments on both artificial and real-world networks demonstrate that the proposed evolutionary algorithm with problem-specific genetic operations has effective performance on discovering the community structure of networks.

     

Comparative Study of Reactive Dyes Oxidation by H2O2/UV,H2O2/UV/Fe2+ and H2O2/UV/Fe° Processes

The decolorization and mineralization of two reactive dyes C.I. Reactive Blue 4 (RB 4) and C.I. Reactive Blue 268 (RB 268) were studied using various advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) such as H₂O₂/UV, H₂O₂/UV/Fe²⁺, and the H₂O₂/UV/Fe°. All processes were performed within a laboratory-scale photo-reactor setup. The experimental results were assessed in terms of absorbance (A) and total organic carbon (TOC) reduction. The main degradation products were identified by high resolution gas chromatography/high resolution mass spectrometry analyses. The results of our study demonstrated that the additions of moderate concentrations of H₂O₂ and Fe catalyst during the AOPs evidently increased the decolorization efficiencies within the first few minutes of the processing time (5–10 min) for both tested dyes, and prolonged irradiation does not necessarily significantly improve decolorization. On contrary, TOC removal rate increased with the processing time and with the addition of the catalyst from 40–50% up to 70–80% at defined experimental conditions. All the tested AOPs were very successful methods for RB 268 decolorization, having very complex structure and much higher molecular weight compared to the dye RB 4. This is important from both economic and ecological points of view.     

Evaluation of MALDI-TOF/MS Technology in Olive Oil Adulteration

Adulteration of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) by addition of other vegetable oils or lower-grade olive oils is a common problem of the oil market worldwide. Therefore, we developed a fast protocol for detection of EVOO adulteration by mass spectrometry fingerprinting of triacylglycerol (TAG) profiles based on MALDI-TOF/MS. For that purpose, EVOO TAG profiles were compared with those of edible sunflower oil and olive oil composed of refined olive oil and virgin olive oils. Adulteration of EVOO was simulated by addition of sunflower and mixture of refined olive oil and virgin olive oils at 1, 10 and 20% w/w. Results of mass spectrometry TAG profiling were compared with routinely assessed K values for identification of adulteration. MALDI-TOF/MS technology coupled with statistical analysis was proven as useful for detection of adulteration in EVOO at a rate down to 1%. In contrast, standard spectrophotometric methods failed to identify minor adulterations. In addition, the ability of MALDI-TOF/MS in detection of adulteration was tested on EVOO samples from different geographical regions. Results demonstrated that MALDI-TOF/MS technology coupled with statistical analysis is able to distinguish adulterated oils from other EVOO.     

Multicriteria analysis of safety climate measurements at workplaces in production industries in Serbia

This paper presents the results of measuring certain safety climate indicators in Serbian production companies. As a result of these investigations, which have already been conducted by this group of authors, a 21-item questionnaire was developed in 2010. In this research, we developed a methodological framework to measure the safety climate in Serbian companies. The investigation was carried out in companies that were engaged in different industrial sectors. The aim was to determine the initial degree of developing the safety climate in every industrial sector, i.e. to compare and rank them. The following demographic factors were used for this purpose: types of industry, the number of employees in the company, the position in the organizational structure of the firm, age groups, employees with a different length of work experience, employees' gender, those who have or have not been involved in an occupational accident and the level of employees' education. Our analysis defined the significance of every demographic subgroup based on the results obtained by measuring the safety climate in all organizations. However, taking into consideration a large number of subgroups, the starting hypotheses were proposed only for the two most important ones: the type of organization does have an influence on safety climate indicators – hypothesis H₁ and the position of the employee in the firm does have important influence on safety climate indicators – hypothesis H₂. Both hypotheses were confirmed on the base of the results of further analyses.     

Fuzzy relational equations in general framework

The aim of this paper is to provide a survey of issues regarding the problem of solving generalized fuzzy relational equations that are defined within a recently introduced framework of sup-preserving aggregation structures. Generalized fuzzy relational equations subsume the previously studied types of fuzzy relational equations, that is those based on either sup-t-norm or inf-residuum classes of compositions.     

Response Time of a Pressure Measurement System with a Connecting Tube

Abstract

A connecting tube between the measured object and the pressure sensing element is a common component part of pressure measurement systems. Dynamic characteristics of the resulting fluid oscillator may significantly influence the magnitudes of dynamic measurement errors. This paper presents an experimental analysis of dynamic characteristics of connecting tubes of different lengths and diameters. Inlet step pressure changes were generated by a system of two loudspeakers, and pressure responses were measured by a piezoelectric measurement system. Using the measured responses, the characteristic natural frequencies and damping of the system under discussion were determined. The results were further employed to estimate the response settling time, which is required to sufficiently reduce dynamic measurement errors.     

Possibility of improvement of potentiodynamic method for monitoring corrosion rate of steel reinforcement in concrete

Quantitative data on corroding steel reinforcement in reinforced concrete structures are undoubtedly very useful for evaluation of their service life and timely repairs. The method of electrode potential measurement is a convenient and simple test for this purpose, but it provides no quantitative data on corrosion rate and only information regarding active or passive state of steel reinforcement can be obtained. We show here the possibility of obtaining quantitative data on degree of corrosion of steel reinforcement by a potentiodynamic method. The developed method is based on experimentally estimated mathematical relation between the results of potentiodynamic method and degree of corrosion of steel reinforcement. It is possible to calculate the degree of corrosion of steel reinforcement using this mathematical relation and the measured values of current density by the potentiodynamic method.