A Shortcut Method for Estimating the HETP of Structured Packed Distillation Columns at Elevated Pressure

A shortcut model is developed for predicting the HETP of a structured packed distillation column operating at elevated pressure. The proposed model incorporates the geometrical parameters of the packing, physical properties of the vapor and liquid phases, and the hydrodynamics of the two‐phase flow. The proposed model is tested and validated by comparing the predicted results with the present experimental data and some published HETP data. The results show that the proposed model can predict the experimental data with a deviation smaller than 20 %.     

一种新型背面接触式H~+-ISFET

简要地介绍了氢离子敏场效应晶体管(H~+-ISFET)的基本结构和工作原理,提出了一种新型背面接触式H~+-ISFET。对该结构在版图、工艺设计中的有关问题,进行了探讨。最后指出:它在pH值的测量中有较好的实用价值。     

Miniaturized Hexagonal Stepped-Impedance Resonators and Their Applications to Filters

Miniaturized hexagonal stepped-impedance resonators and their applications to bandpass filters are presented. Based on the odd- and even-mode equivalent circuits, the resonance characteristics of these resonators are investigated. A series of circuit configurations, including the third-order Chebyshev, trisection, and fifth-order cascaded trisection filters, are constructed by the proposed resonators. These filters are very compact and have good stopband responses. Measured results validate the analysis and theoretical prediction with good agreement.     

A branch-and-price algorithm to solve the molten iron allocation problem in iron and steel industry

The molten iron allocation problem (MIAP) is to allocate molten iron from blast furnaces to steel-making furnaces. The allocation needs to observe the release times of the molten iron defined by the draining plan of the blast furnaces and the transport time between the iron-making and steel-making stages. Time window constraints for processing the molten iron must be satisfied to avoid freezing. The objective is to find a schedule with minimum total weighted completion time. This objective reflects the practical consideration of improving steel-making efficiency and reducing operation cost caused by the need for reheating. Such a problem can be viewed as a parallel machine scheduling problem with time windows which is known to be NP-hard. In this paper, we first formulate the molten iron allocation problem as an integer programming model and then reformulate it as a set partitioning model by applying the Dantzig–Wolfe decomposition. We solve the problem using a column generation-based branch-and-price algorithm. Since the subproblem of column generation is still NP-hard, we propose a state-space relaxation-based dynamic programming algorithm for the subproblem. Computational experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is capable of solving problems with up to 100 jobs to optimality within a reasonable computation time.     

Integration of batching and scheduling for hot rolling production in the steel industry

This paper investigates the hot rolling production scheduling problem in the steel industry and proposes a new mixed integer programming model for this problem based on the monolithic modeling strategy that integrates batching and scheduling. Using this strategy, the new model can simultaneously schedule multiple turns and simultaneously determine the production timetable of these turns in a global optimal view. A long-term tabu search heuristic using frequency-based memory is developed to obtain near-optimal solutions for this problem. Three kinds of speed-up strategies are developed to accelerate the search procedure of the proposed tabu search. A practical scheduling system combining the proposed mathematical model and the tabu search heuristic has been developed and tested on instances collected from practical production data. The experimental results show that the proposed mathematical model and the tabu search heuristic outperform both the current manual scheduling method and the traditional serial method.     

Child abuse in Hong Kong revisited after 15 years: characteristics of victims and abusers

The purpose of this paper was to examine the characteristics of the victims and abusers of child abuse cases on the Child Protection Registry in Hong Kong as of March 1995 and to compare findings with a similar community report of child abuse in Hong Kong conducted approximately 15 years earlier. As of March 31, 1995, there were 457 active cases of child abuse or suspected child abuse (44% male and 56% female) on the computerized Child Protection Registry. Fifty percent of the victims were grade school age children between 7-12, and 62.4% suffered physical abuse. The abusers or suspected abusers were 52% male and 48% female with nearly half (49%) in their thirties. The majority of abusers were married/cohabiting (75%) with only a grade school education (60%). As compared to 1979, there was an increase of sexual child abuse cases, female victims of child abuse, and an increase in male abusers or suspected abusers.     

Ranking with uncertain labels and its applications

The techniques for image analysis and classification generally consider the image sample labels fixed and without uncertainties. The rank regression problem studied in this paper is based on the training samples with uncertain labels, which often is the case for the manual estimated image labels. A core ranking model is designed first as the bilinear fusing of multiple candidate kernels. Then, the parameters for feature selection and kernel selection are learned simultaneously by maximum a posteriori for given samples and uncertain labels. The provable convergency Expectation Maximization (EM) method is used for inferring these parameters in an iterative manner. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is finally validated by the extensive experiments on age ranking task and human tracking task. The popular FG-NET and the large scale Yamaha aging database are used for the age estimation experiments, and our algorithm outperforms those state-of-the-art algorithms ever reported by other interrelated literatures significantly. The experiment result of human tracking task also validates its advantage over conventional linear regression algorithm. A short version of this paper appeared in ICME07.     

Modeling and design optimization of switched reluctance machine byboundary element analysis and simulation

Nonlinear boundary element analysis provides a more accurate and detailing tool for the design of switched reluctance machines than conventional equivalent-circuit methods. Design optimization through more detailed analysis and simulation can reduce development and prototyping costs and time to market. Firstly, magnetic field modeling of an industrial switched reluctance machine by the boundary element method is reported in this paper. Secondly, performance prediction and dynamic simulation of motor and control design are presented. Thirdly, magnetic forces that cause noise and vibration are studied, to include the effects of motor and control design variations on noise in the design process. Testing of such a motor in the NEMA 215-Frame size is carried out to verify the accuracy of modeling and simulation