Water quality and transparency characteristics during the Planktothrix abundance period in shallow Lake Kasumigaura,Japan

Cyanobacterial blooms in lakes cause serious environmental problems on a global scale. Planktothrix (a filamentous cyanobacterium) blooms occurred during winter and spring from 2007 to 2011 in Lake Kasumigaura, a eutrophic lake located in Japan. This study analysed water quality during the period of Planktothrix abundance (2007–2010) at the centre of Lake Kasumigaura and compared it to that in the succeeding period, which did not have Planktothrix blooms (2012–2015). The average phytoplankton biovolume during the abundance period was larger than that in the succeeding period, which would contribute to the high chemical oxygen demand (COD_Mn; annual average of 9.7 mg/L) in the abundance period, compared to the succeeding period (7.6 mg/L). The total phosphorus concentration peaked in spring and summer in the abundance period, but only in summer in the succeeding period, whereas the seasonal variation in total nitrogen concentration between the two periods was relatively small. The annual average transparency (Secchi disc depth) increased before the abundance period due to a decrease in fixed suspended solid, which is comprised mainly of inorganic matter. It is likely that the change in irradiance conditions affected the occurrence of Planktothrix blooms.     

Mechanical properties of molybdenum neutron-irradiated at a high temperature

Molybdenum specimens prepared by two processes, powder-metallurgy (PM) and electron-beam melting (EB), were irradiated to a fast neutron fluence of 2.74 × 10²⁴n/m² (E_n? 1 MeV) at about 600°C (873 K), and their mechanical properties were studied in detail. It was shown that the degree of irradiation embrittlement in EB-Mo was smaller than that in PM-Mo, which might be caused by stronger grain-boundaries and probably smaller irradiation-hardening in the former. From the relation between the recovery of ductility and microstructural changes in post-irradiation annealed PM-Mo at 800 (1073 K), 1000 (1273 K) and 1200°C (1473 K), it was concluded that the recovery resulted from a decrease of irradiation hardening due to a rearrangement and a disappearance of depleted-zones, dislocation-loops and voids in order with increasing annealing temperature. An anomalous mode of fracture was observed in as-irradiated specimens, which consisted of inhomogeneous deformation, then brittle fracture not at the center but at the root of the deformation neck. This mode was observed in a narrow temperature range near the DBTT. A possible mechanism is discussed.     

Multicolorings of Series-Parallel Graphs

Let G be a graph, and let each vertex v of G have a positive integer weight ω(v). A multicoloring of G is to assign each vertex v a set of ω(v) colors so that any pair of adjacent vertices receive disjoint sets of colors. This paper presents an algorithm to find a multicoloring of a given series-parallel graph G with the minimum number of colors in time O(n W), where n is the number of vertices and W is the maximum weight of vertices in G.     

An adaptive antenna array under directional constraint

The concept of the adaptive system working on the principle of minimizing the output power under the constrained response to specified directions is introduced. Theoretical analysis and computer simulation experiments on this directional constraint system are also presented. By comparison with the computer experiment, the differential equation approach is shown to be useful to predict the behavior of the system. The effect of error in setting the constraint direction is investigated, and it is demonstrated that the system is not very sensitive to such error. This margin can be made even greater by adopting the double directional constraints system. This system is also analyzed theoretically and experimented by computer simulation. History of output power components during adaptation is shown, which enables the comprehension of the behavior of the system.     

Polynomial Approximations Describing Rate of Dyeing from a Finite Bath

Three polynomial approximations to Wilson's equation were derived by means of Hastings's method. One of them is an approximation to Crank's equation with 3–figure accuracy and it approximates to Wilson's epuation very closely for high values of fractional equilibrium exhaustion (E), E > 0. 95. Two other polynomials approximate to Wilson's equation very well in the ranges 0. 95 > EX). 76 and 0. 76 > E > 0. 30 respectively. The polynomials derived here only include up to second order terms, so that by using the equations which are obtained by solving the polynomials for diffusion coefficient (D), D can easily be calculated from experimental dye uptake data. By using the polynomial approximation, the changes in rate–of–dyeing of a non–ionic dye on a nylon 6 fibre by addition of a dispersing agent were calculated. Results of the experiment agreed well with the calculated.     

Memory‐based IMC tuning of PID controllers for nonlinear systems

This paper describes a new memory‐based proportional, integral, derivative (PID) controller design. These PID parameters are tuned by the IMC‐PID method, which is derived from the relationship between the internal model control (IMC) and PID control. The IMC‐PID has a user‐specified parameter that greatly influences the control performance. The authors have already proposed a system identification scheme based on the memory‐based approach. In this paper, a new controller design scheme is discussed, whose system parameters and the corresponding suitable user‐specified parameter are simultaneously computed. Finally, the behavior of the newly proposed control scheme is examined in a simulation example. © 2006 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

A generation method of artificial fluctuation data of wind power output considering smoothing effect

To use realistic wind power fluctuation data is important in simulating frequency change of power systems. It is well known that the smoothing effect must be taken into account when generating the artificial wind power output. Therefore, this paper proposed a new method to generate fluctuation waveform considering smoothing effect based on random number to fulfill the correlation among multiple sites and autoregression model. The effectiveness of the proposed method was tested by using practical wind speed data measured in Tohoku district.     

Pollution control of actual flue gas using pulsed power at a thermal power plant

There are several important environmental problems in the world. One of them is acid rain caused by combustion flue gases from thermal power plants, factories, and automobiles. Different kinds of gas discharges, such as surface discharge, dc and ac corona discharge, silent discharge, and electron beam controlled discharge, have been studied for the removal of NO_x and SO₂ from flue gases. The recent development of repetitive pulsed power generators gives the pulsed steamer corona discharges a chance of success in the removal of NO_x and SO₂. In this paper, the experimental results of NO_x and SO₂ removal by a repetitive pulse power generator are described. The actual flue gas at a thermal power plant was used. It is shown that about 90% of the NO was removed at a flow rate of 0.8 liters/min and a repetition rate of 7 pps. © 2001 Scripta Technica, Electr Eng Jpn, 134(4): 28–35, 2001