Effect of alloy element contents on caustic stress corrosion cracking of several stainless steels

The stress corrosion cracking behavior in caustic solutions (200 g/l sodium hydroxide, 10 g/l sodium chloride) of three austenitic (18Cr-10Ni-2.5Mo, 20Cr-25Ni-4.5Mo, 27Cr-31Ni-3.5Mo) and three duplex (23Cr-4Ni, 22Cr-5Ni-3Mo, 25Cr-7Ni-4Mo-N) stainless steels was examined. U-bend and Slow Strain Rate (SSR) tests were performed at 200–250°C. The negative influence of nickel in the lower range content for the 18Cr-10Ni-2.5Mo and 20Cr-25Ni-4.5Mo has been shown; when the nickel content is significantly increased (>30%), as in the case of the steel 27Cr-31Ni-3.5Mo, an increase of SCC resistance has been detected. The negative effect of molybdenum, mainly on the behaviour of duplex stainless steels, has also been evidenced. The duplex stainless steels show better caustic SCC resistance than austenitic stainless steels type 18Cr-10Ni-2.5Mo and 20Cr-25Ni-4.5Mo. The best behaviour has been found for the less-alloyed steel 23Cr-4Ni.     

What makes propositional abduction tractable

Abduction is a fundamental form of nonmonotonic reasoning that aims at finding explanations for observed manifestations. This process underlies many applications, from car configuration to medical diagnosis. We study here the computational complexity of deciding whether an explanation exists in the case when the application domain is described by a propositional knowledge base. Building on previous results, we classify the complexity for local restrictions on the knowledge base and under various restrictions on hypotheses and manifestations. In comparison to the many previous studies on the complexity of abduction we are able to give a much more detailed picture for the complexity of the basic problem of deciding the existence of an explanation. It turns out that depending on the restrictions, the problem in this framework is always polynomial-time solvable, NP-complete, coNP-complete, or -complete.

Based on these results, we give an a posteriori justification of what makes propositional abduction hard even for some classes of knowledge bases which allow for efficient satisfiability testing and deduction. This justification is very simple and intuitive, but it reveals that no nontrivial class of abduction problems is tractable. Indeed, tractability essentially requires that the language for knowledge bases is unable to express both causal links and conflicts between hypotheses. This generalizes a similar observation by Bylander et al. for set-covering abduction.     

A high-order integral algorithm for highly singular PDE solutions in Lipschitz domains

We present a new algorithm, based on integral equation formulations, for the solution of constant-coefficient elliptic partial differential equations (PDE) in closed two-dimensional domains with non-smooth boundaries; we focus on cases in which the integral-equation solutions as well as physically meaningful quantities (such as, stresses, electric/magnetic fields, etc.) tend to infinity at singular boundary points (corners). While, for simplicity, we restrict our discussion to integral equations associated with the Neumann problem for the Laplace equation, the proposed methodology applies to integral equations arising from other types of PDEs, including the Helmholtz, Maxwell, and linear elasticity equations. Our numerical results demonstrate excellent convergence as discretizations are refined, even around singular points at which solutions tend to infinity. We demonstrate the efficacy of this algorithm through applications to solution of Neumann problems for the Laplace operator over a variety of domains—including domains containing extremely sharp concave and convex corners, with angles as small as π/100 and as large as 199π/100.     

Visualization, Digital Content, and Simulation

This article by Bruno Feijó explores high-quality digital-content production in emerging and developing countries, Brazil in particular, for many sophisticated visualization and simulation applications.     

The continuity principle in psychological research: An introduction to robust statistics.

Examines the importance of robust statistics in psychological research and suggests that the classical estimates of means, variances, and correlations are sensitive to small departures from the normal curve. Statisticians have urged caution in the use of classical statistics and have proposed a variety of alternatives that are robust with respect to departures from normality. Common sources of nonnormality in psychological data cleaning and robust estimation are examined. Robust estimation using M-estimators is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Severe accidental hypothermia successfully treated by warmed peritoneal lavage

A case of severe accidental hypothermia (core temperature 20 degrees C) in an elderly woman successfully treated by warmed lavage of peritoneal cavity is reported. The various available rewarming techniques and some observations about the differential diagnosis between the severe hypothermic patient with cardiac arrest and the hypothermic dead person are briefly reviewed on the basis of current literature.     

Detection of Minor Crystalline Phases in Alumina Ceramics Using Synchrotron Radiation Diffraction

The use of synchrotron radiation diffraction (SRD) in con-junction with conventional laboratory X-ray diffraction (XRD) for analyzing the phase assemblage of selected alu-mina-based ceramics is described. This paper outlines the benefits of synchrotron powder diffraction in resolving mi-norand impurity phases in various alumina ceramics. Laboratory XRD is shown to provide only cursory details of minor crystalline phases which are strikingly evident and clearly defined from application of SRD analysis. The po-tential of SRD techniques to characterize low-level crystal-line phases and as a check for "phase purity" in ceramic systems is considered.     

A Test of Linearity for Functional Autoregressive Models

We propose a new test for linearity in time series. We consider an asymptotically stationary functional AR( p ) model on ℜ ^d of the form
X _n = f ( X _{n −1}, ..., X _{n − p} ) + ξ _n ( n ∈ N).
The testing procedure is based on a suitably normalized sum of quadratic deviations between two different estimates of the function f evaluated at q distinct points of ℜ ^dp . The estimators are f^ _n , a recursive version of the non-parametric kernel estimator of f , and  _n , a least squares estimator well suited to the linear case. The main result states that the test statistic has a χ² limit distribution under the null hypothesis. A similar result is derived under the alternative hypothesis for the test statistic corrupted by a non-linear term. Our simulations indicate that our asymptotic results hold for moderate sample sizes when the testing procedure is used carefully     

Production of low methoxyl pectin using immobilized pectinmethylesterase silica from acerola (Malpighia glabra L.)

The aim of this work was to develop an efficient reactor for the production of low methoxyl pectin, using pectinmethylesterase (PME, EC 3.1.1.11) from acerola immobilized on silica. The immobilized enzyme was used in up to 50 successive bioconversion runs at 50 °C with an efficiency loss of less than 20%. The fixed‐bed reactor (6.0 × 1.5 cm) was prepared using PME immobilized in glutaraldehyde‐activated silica operated at 50 °C with an optimum flow rate of 10 mL h^?1. The bioconversion yield was shown to strongly depend on the nature of the enzymatic preparation. An efficiency of 44% was achieved when concentrated PME was used, compared with only 30% with purified PME, both after an 8‐h run. The process described could provide the basis for the development of a commercial‐scale process. Copyright © 2006 Society of Chemical Industry