Emission of trace toxic metals during pulverized fuel combustion of Czech coals

A study of the trace elements emission (As, Se, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Zn, Hg, Tl, Pb, Ni, Sn, Sb, V, Mn and Fe) from pulverized coal combustion has been made at six heating and power stations situated in the Czech Republic. The amount of chlorine in coal has considerable influence on volatilization of some elements such as Zn, Cu, Pb, Hg and Tl, which is explained by the formation of thermodynamically stable compounds of these elements with chlorine. Generally, the affinities for Cl follows the order Tl > Cu > Zn > Pb > Co > Mn > Sn > Hg. The experimental data indicates enrichment of some of the trace toxic elements in the emissions (Cu, Zn, As, Se, Cd, Sn, Sb, Hg and Pb) and good agreement was obtained by thermodynamic equilibrium calculations with a few exceptions. In the case of Fe, Mn, Co, Cr and Sn calculated values are overestimated in the bottom ash and there are zero predicted amounts of these elements in the fly ash. In comparison, the results from experiments show up to 80% of these elements retained in fly ash. This implies that there exist additional steps leading to the enrichment by Fe, Mn, Co, Cr and Sn of small particles. Such mechanisms could include the ejection during devolatilization of small inorganic particles from the coal of bottom ash particles, or disintegration of the char containing these metals to small particles of fly ash. On the other hand, there are slightly overestimated or similar values of relative enrichment factors for As, V, Cu, Cd, Sb, Tl and Pb in the fly ashes and zero predicted values for bottom ashes. Our experimental results show about 5% or less of these elements are retained in bottom ashes, so they probably remain in the bottom ash inside unburned parts of coal. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Etching behavior of CVD zinc selenide in inorganic acid solutions

Chemical interaction between polished surfaces of polycrystalline zinc selenide and inorganic acid solutions of various concentrations has been studied.     

High-temperature oxidation of intermetallics formed by group IV transition metals with chromium

We have studied the oxidation resistance of chromium intermetallics: TiCr₂, HfCr₂, and ZrCr₂, in the temperature interval 873–1473 K with isothermal holding of the specimens for up to 20 h. We have shown that the intermetallics TiCr₂ and HfCr₂ are oxidized 2–3 times more slowly than pure titanium and hafnium, but more than 1–2 orders of magnitude faster than chromium at T≤1273 K and 4–6 times faster at 1473 K. In this temperature interval, the intermetallic ZrCr₂ is rapidly oxidized at an increasing rate as the heating temperature rises. The scaling resistance of intermetallics of Group IV d metals with chromium is determined by formation of scales in which the major role is played by the oxides TiO₂, HfO₂, and ZrO₂, with weak protective properties.     

Express Method for Estimation of Tensile Strength and Crack Resistance of Brittle Media

The procedure is proposed for estimating the crack resistance and tensile strength of rocks by the results of experiments on disk samples with holes. The gradient approach to the strength problem is employed in processing the experimental data.     

The complexity of economic equilibria for house allocation markets

We prove NP-completeness of deciding the existence of an economic equilibrium in so-called house allocation markets. House allocation markets are markets with indivisible goods in which every agent holds exactly one copy of some good.     

An intrinsic observer for a class of Lagrangian systems

We propose a new design method of asymptotic observers for a class of nonlinear mechanical systems: Lagrangian systems with configuration (position) measurements. Our main contribution is to introduce a state (position and velocity) observer that is invariant under any changes of the configuration coordinates. The observer dynamics equations, as the Euler-Lagrange equations, are intrinsic. The design method uses the Riemannian structure defined by the kinetic energy on the configuration manifold. The local convergence is proved by showing that the Jacobian of the observer dynamics is negative definite (contraction) for a particular metric defined on the state-space, a metric derived from the kinetic energy and the observer gains. From a practical point of view, such intrinsic observers can be approximated, when the estimated configuration is close to the true one, by an explicit set of differential equations involving the Riemannian curvature tensor. These equations can be automatically generated via symbolic differentiations of the metric and potential up to order two. Numerical simulations for the ball and beam system, an example where the scalar curvature is always negative, show the effectiveness of such approximation when the measured positions are noisy or include high frequency neglected dynamics.     

An exploratory study of adolescent's perceptions of the Web

Abstract The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the influence of two individual characteristics (Web experience and academic focus) of adolescents on the Web perception, using off-line questionnaires (a Lickert response scale) constituted on the basis of a series of interviews. Questions concerned: perceptions about the nature of information found in the Web; 'strategies' of access to the interesting Internet sites and the reliability of different information resources (libraries, television, Web, etc.). Results lead to the assumption that adolescents with high Web experience became more critical, less confident and less enthusiastic than adolescents with low Web experience and that, in some dimensions, perceptions of literature students are different to those of science students. Even if some interesting results were obtained, further research is needed to explore users' perceptions related to individuals' characteristics and to determine the generalisability of the influences identified in this exploratory study.     

Robust State Feedback Control Through Actuators With Generalized Sector Nonlinearities And Saturation

In control systems, actuators often have nonlinear characteristics that can not be neglected. For linear systems driven by actuators satisfying the generalized sector condition, a robust state feedback controller synthesis method is proposed to achieve the ultimate boundedness control. The method is based on the linear matrix inequality approach and is easy to apply. As an important special case of the generalized sector condition, the saturation characteristic of actuators is discussed separately, and non‐conservative results are obtained.     

Customer service providers' attitudes relating to customer service and customer satisfaction in the customer-server exchange.

The authors proposed and tested a model describing the relationship between customer service providers' perceptions and attitudes toward their service-related duties and their customers' perceptions of satisfaction with their service experiences. Results indicated that the perception of having standards for service delivery in an organization is strongly related to line-level employees' perceptions of support from coworkers and supervisors. Perceived support from coworker, was significantly related to service providers' customer orientation, whereas perceived support from supervisors showed a weaker relationship to a customer orientation. Ultimately, service providers' customer orientation was strongly related to customers' satisfaction with service. Finally, a set of post hoc analyses indicated that coworker and supervisory support explained a greater proportion of incremental variance in the model than did perceived organizational support alone. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)