A review of the emission of VOCs from polymeric materials used in buildings

Building and furnishing materials and consumers products are important sources of formaldehyde and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the indoor environment. The emission from materials is usually continuous and may last for many years in a building. The available evidence indicates that VOCs can cause adverse health effects to the building occupants and may contribute to symptoms of ‘Sick Building Syndrome’.

Control of VOC emission should increasingly become an important consideration for the design and manufacture of polymeric materials used in buildings. The EC Construction Products Directive ‘Essential Requirements’ set a framework for limiting the use of materials that could pose a health risk to building occupants. Furthermore, the on-going development of voluntary labelling schemes and data bases of material emissions that could be used by building designers, should further strengthen the demand for ‘low VOC emitting’ products.

This paper reviews available information about the emission of VOCs from polymeric building materials, the level of emissions in the indoor environment and the requirements for testing of the materials.     

Spectroscopic sensor techniques applicable to real-time biodiesel determination

The term biodiesel refers to the Fatty Acid Alkyl Esters (FAAE) derived from vegetable, animal or waste oil feedstocks. This alternative fuel is increasingly becoming a significant part of the transport sector with over 10 million tonnes sold in the EU in 2007. Currently a small amount of biodiesel (presently 3.5% in the UK) is present in diesel fuel but this could rise to up to 30% in the medium term. As biodiesel is not one chemical compound but an amalgamation of different FAAE, the physical properties of the diesel fuel are not only dependent on the amount of biodiesel in the diesel fuel (blend level) but also on the fatty acid profile of the biodiesel. In this paper we report on an initial study to assess a range of current techniques which could be used in the future as a basis to determine blend level in unknown samples of diesel and gain further information on the fatty acid profile of the biodiesel in the blend. The three techniques applied were FT-IR spectroscopy, refractive index and UV-Vis spectroscopy.     

安全仪表系统的网络安全考虑：最先还是最后？

对于完整的控制和安全系统，建立强大的防护体系是否是一项可以确保安全仪表系统商业连续性的必要投资？     

Method for quantifying volumetric lesion change in interval liver CT examinations

We propose a method of using a relatively low degree of freedom (DOF) warping to accurately measure the interval change of lesions having homogeneous contrast. The setting presented here presupposes the use of interval computed tomography (CT) liver exams. After a 3 x 24 DOF warping of the later examination to match the liver's pose in the earlier exam of the interval pair is performed, the lesion's volume change is estimated using the computed difference volume of the two data sets via a novel method that counts partial volume contributions and is insensitive to slight misregistration. A mathematically generated phantom is used to quantify accuracy in the presence of noise. We also quantify the accuracy of our CT liver registrations using microcoils implanted for chemotherapy. A probabilistic liver atlas is used to support automatic masking and liver-focused registration.     

Converting a Protease Assay to a Caliper® Format LabChip System

The push for higher throughput screening coupled with the desire to use smaller volumes of material has sparked the development of new technologies. Caliper Technologies, Corp. (Mountain View, CA) has designed a microfluidics chip with unique properties yet to be fully exploited. The translation from a traditional plate-based assay to a microfluidic chip format has provided insights into assay development, screening data requirements, and the technology itself. Running a screen with this new technology presented challenges in throughput, signal acquisition from slow-conversion enzymes, the provision for a negative control, the translation of a time series into a single data point per compound, reagent adhesion in the channels, and fluid property mismatches. Overcoming these obstacles has resulted in a simple, robust system with significant savings in reagent use. Measures to improve throughput and generalize the system will be discussed.     

Improving inter-destination synchronization in hierarchical reliable multicast

In hierarchical reliable multicast schemes, the number of repair proxies and their locations influence inter-destination synchronization. The inter-destination synchronization in multicast environments means the adjustment of the output timing among destinations over the Internet. Improving the inter-destination synchronization is beneficial to collaborative applications such as multi-conference system and multi-playing online game. In this paper, we propose a scheme to find the optimal locations of repair proxies that can improve inter-destination synchronization maximally in heterogeneous network environments. The simulation results show that if repair proxies are placed by the proposed scheme, delivery delay fairness of inter-destination can be improved by 0.05 maximally. In addition, we perform t-Test on the simulation results in order to verify that our optimal placement improves synchronization.     

Evaluation of harassment of migrating double-crested cormorants to limit depredation on selected sport fisheries in Michigan

Diverse management techniques have been used to mitigate conflicts between humans and double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) including harassment methods supplemented by lethal take. In this study we evaluated impacts of programs to harass spring migrating cormorants on the walleye (Sander vitreus) fishery in Brevoort Lake and the yellow perch (Perca flavescens) and walleye fisheries at Drummond Island. Cormorant foraging declined significantly (p < 0.05) at both locations subsequent to initiation of harassment programs. Overall harassment deterred 90% of cormorant foraging attempts while taking less than 6% lethally on average at each site. Yellow perch were a predominate prey item in number and biomass at both locations. Walleye made up a small proportion of the diet at both locations. However, both walleye and yellow perch abundance increased significantly (p < 0.05) at Drummond Island. Walleye abundance at age 3 increased to record levels in 2008 following 3 years of cormorant management at Brevoort Lake. The estimated cormorant consumption of age-1 walleye in the absence of management at Brevoort Lake during 2005 would account for 55% of the record 2006 age-1 walleye population. These results support the hypothesis that cormorant predation on spawning aggregations of sportfish was a significant mortality factor and cormorant management reduced sportfish mortality and increased abundance at both locations. Continuation of harassment programs and fishery assessments will determine whether improvement of targeted sport fisheries through control of spring migrating cormorants is sustainable.     

An uncertainty quantification method for nanomaterial prediction models

This paper presents a new method for quantifying uncertainty in the predictions of a nanomaterial computational model to account for variability in the constituent nanostructure properties and characterization measurements. The stiffness of a buckypaper–polymer composite is predicted using a micromechanics model. The model requires from the user as inputs the nanostructure properties, including the diameter, length, and curvature distribution of the carbon nanotubes which shows large variability. The current characterization techniques used to describe these dimensions are subject to considerable measurement error. We propose a constrained nonlinear programming approach for quantification of raw material variability and its impact on the property prediction of buckypaper–polymer composites. The uncertainty quantification method is useful for decision making to predict probability that the quality characteristic of the final part will satisfy design constraints. A case study based on data from a real buckypaper manufacturing process was used to illustrate the approach. It is shown that modeling the correlation between nanostructure properties using a multivariate distribution rather than independent univariate distributions is important to accurately quantify the effect of these properties on the final-part property.