Description of the Inter-laboratory Comparison Programme in the New Zealand dairy industry

The Inter-laboratory Comparison Programme (ILCP) is a quality assurance system administered by the Dairy Division of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries to monitor the performance of agency certified laboratories (ACLs). The programme works on a monthly basis during the milk producing season and is co-ordinated from the National Dairy Laboratory (NDL). Samples are despatched to Regional Dairy Labora-tories (RDL) and to the ACLs 2 weeks later. The RDL results are used to calculate an official mean. The ACL results are sent to the RDL where they are scrutinized immediately; hence, a rapid feedback on the ACL performance is possible. The NDL despatches a detailed statistical evaluation of results of ACLs and RDLs. The pro-gramme has increased from seven products in 1977 to eleven in 1984. Microbiological and chemical analyses are performed. A bacterial identification scheme to monitor E. coli and S. aureus was included in 1982. A scoring system (0 poor-10 good) which includes a weighting for specific tests and which is measured against an 'official' score has been introduced into a report which is distributed to all participants. The data generated by the programme are used by both ACLs and RDLs to check their analytical performance and quality control. Data are used by Dairy Division, as a national compilation of results issued by it which serves to highlight problem analyses, season trends and analytical limits.     

Characterization of indoor air pollution

This is a review paper addressing the current state-of-the-art. Concerns that motivate studies of the indoor environment are reviewed in the introduction. The source and typical diurnal variations of the concentration of several air contaminants are discussed in the section on characterization. A dynamic model is described in the section on indoor air quality modeling. Indoor air pollution control techniques are addressed in the last section.     

Vectored transmission for digital subscriber line systems

This paper describes the "vectored" transmission technique for digital subscriber line (DSL) systems, which utilizes user coordination at the central office or optical network unit. This method exploits the colocation of the downstream transmitters and of the upstream receivers, in order to achieve far-end crosstalk (FEXT) cancellation and perform multiuser transmission optimization. The performance improvements are particularly pronounced in environments with strong FEXT such as in very high-speed DSL. Discrete multitone is employed for each user with additional constraints on the cyclic prefix length and with the assumption of block-synchronized transmission and reception for downstream and upstream transmission correspondingly. Within each tone, upstream crosstalk is removed by multiple-input-multiple-output decision feedback at the receiving side, while downstream crosstalk is eliminated by analogous preprocessing at the transmitting side. Additionally, the issue of transmission energy allocation in frequency and among users is addressed. Assuming frequency-division duplexing, the corresponding optimization problem is formulated and solved via convex programming both for a fixed upstream-downstream band plan and for a dynamically programmable band plan. The case of power backoff as a means to reduce the impact of crosstalk on alien systems is also treated. Interestingly, the performance of the proposed methods is shown to be very close to known information theory bounds     

NEIGHBORHOOD APPROACHES TO URBAN CAPACITY BUILDING

The authors argue that the solution of urban problems requires resources and powers far beyond those available to most local governments. Only through partnerships of all relevant actors—public officials, businessmen and neighborhood residents—can such issues be dealt with. Yet, partnerships are neither simple nor inevitable. They require hard work and usually the development of the capacities of all involved. Such capacity building for partnerships is on three levels: the development of the individual capacity to play partnership roles; the creation of interactive partnerships operating as local problem solvers; and the fostering of inter-partnership networks. Neighborhoods are seen as the building blocks of cities, serving as a locality of scale upon which the citizen can base his concerns and actions and within which partnerships can operate effectively. Specific recommendations are made, utilizing this policy context to build capacity for partnerships at the neighborhood level, particularly with regard to the Intergovernmental Personnel Act.     

Orientation in uniaxially stretched plasticized atactic polystyrene

Summary Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and birefringence measurements have been used to study the changes in molecular orientation which occur on drawing of plasticized as compared to pure polystyrene (PS) at a temperature T=Tg+Cte. No influence of plasticizers on orientation can be detected whatever the interactions between small molecules and PS chains are. Comparison with previous results obtained on PS-poly(vinylmethyl ether) compatible blends confirms the importance of the macromolecular nature of the second component to enhance the friction coefficient leading to higher level of chain orientation.     

Memory and hypnosis: Implications for the use of forensic hypnosis.

I review arguments regarding hypnosis in forensic investigations, offer procedures of a nonhypnotic nature to enhance memory recall, and suggest guidelines for hypnosis in criminal cases. The effects of hypnosis on memory, as well as the concomitant dangers regarding those effects, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Long distance fiber-optic transmission of C-band microwave signals to and from a satellite antenna

We demonstrate here the use of high-speed semiconductor lasers and detectors with low loss optical fiber for the transmission of the 500-MHz C-band microwave signal spectrum to and from a satellite antenna. The optical system has low attenuation and large band, width, so the microwave signals can be transmitted directly at the microwave frequency (4 or 6 GHz) over 20 km of fiber without regeneration or qualization. The optical system introduces ≈ 1 dB or less of degradation for both low spectral density QPSK signals and high spectral density FM video signals present in typical satellite transmission systems. For the video signals, the signal to noise after AM conversion was reduced from 56 to 55 dB. The microwave drive level to the laser must be significantly larger (typically > -10 dBm) than the intensity noise of the laser, yet small enough (typically < 10 dBm) to reduce the intermodulation distortion signals to an acceptable level. The laser bias current must be several times threshold so that the resonance frequency is beyond the frequency band of interest (4-6 GHz in this case). A flat modulation response is then obtained, and the intensity noise and intermodulation levels are low.