Current and future water issues in the Oldman River Basin of Alberta, Canada.

Long-term trends in alpine and prairie snow pack accumulation and melt are affecting streamflow within the Oldman River Basin in southern Alberta, Canada. Unchecked rural and urban development also has contributed to changes in water quality, including enhanced microbial populations and increased waterborne pathogen occurrence. In this study we look at changing environment within the Oldman River Basin and its impact on water quality and quantity. The cumulative effects include a decline in net water supplies, and declining quality resulting in increased risk of disease. Our data indicates that decreases in the rate of flow of water can result in sedimentation of bacterial contaminants within the water column. Water for ecosystems, urban consumption, recreation and distribution through irrigation is often drawn from waterholding facilities such as dams and weirs, and concern must be expressed over the potential for contaminate build-up and disproportionate potential of these structures to pose a risk to human and animal health. With disruption of natural flow rates for water resulting from environmental change such as global warming and/or human intervention, increased attention needs to be paid to use of best management practices to protect source water supplies.     

Undergraduate software engineering education: the mark of a discipline

Undergraduate software engineering education is now well established in many countries, and many of these degree programs have received formal accreditation by the relevant country's professional body for computing. SE 2004 represents an enormous effort by numerous individuals across the discipline. Its quality has been clearly recognized by the sponsoring organizations. The developmental team confidently looks forward to the volume's use and to your participation in future evaluations and in the next phase of development. The volume provides usable results for those in emerging economies who wish to enter the software engineering community, and we know that individual project members and the participating national bodies are ready to assist.     

A process-dependent real-time controller for sequencing batch reactor plants: results of full-scale operation.

This paper presents results of a research project, in which a process-dependent real-time control (RTC) strategy for a sequencing batch reactor plant was realised in full-scale. The cycle controller is based on NH4 analysers, NO3 probes, TSS probes and sludge level probes. With this new RTC strategy it was possible to increase the treatment capacity by 50%. By implementation of the new controller the TN, TP and NH4-N treatment efficiency could be improved significantly, too. The treatment efficiency concerning COD is comparable.     

Novel tiO2 nanocatalysts for wastewater purification: tapping energy from the sun.

Water treatment using TiO2 semiconductor as a durable heterogeneous photocatalyst has been the focus of environmentalists in recent years. Currently, we developed an inexpensive and highly efficient approach for synthesizing nitrogen-doped TiO2 with lower band-gap energy that can respond to visible light. Doping on the molecular scale led to an enhanced nitrogen concentration of up to 21.8%. Reflectance measurements showed the synthesized N-doped TiO2 nanoparticles are catalytically active with the absorbance that extends into the visible region up to 600 nm. The water purification potential of this new class of compound was evaluated by studying the photodegradation of Acid Orange 7 (AO7) and E. coli. Experiments were conducted to compare the photocatalytic activities of N-doped TiO2 nanocatalysts and commercially available Degussa P25 power under identical solar light exposure. N-doped TiO2 demonstrated superior photocatalytic activities in both chemical compound degradation and bactericidal reactions. The result of this study shows the potential of applying new generations of catalyst for wastewater purification and disinfection.     

A logical approach to program analysis

This paper describesMicroScope, a framework for developing analysis tools for Lisp programs. MicroScope uses a knowledge-intensive approach for program representation and analysis. The analysis tools share a common object oriented program database, and a common Prolog inference engine. The use of Prolog and a declarative representation for programs permits sharing of information, and provides high bandwidth communication between diverse analysis tools. It also supports program specification and debugging activities in the same framework. Extensions to Prolog to support analysis are described, and two tools, theCritic and theExpector, are presented.This work supported in part by Hewlett-Packard Company, the National Science foundation Under Grant Number MCS81-21750 and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under contract number DAAK11-84-K-0017.     

Formaldehyde content of milk in goats fed formaldehyde-treated soybean oil-meal

Formaldehyde is used in ruminant feeding for different purposes including the protection of dietary proteins from ruminal degradation. The formaldehyde content of milk of goats fed various levels of formaldehyde-treated soybean oil-meal has been determined by using a sensitive HPLC method. Results showed a significant linear correlation between ingested formaldehyde and formaldehyde concentration in milk. About 0.02% of ingested formaldehyde was excreted in milk, as free formaldehyde.     

Use of electrochemical oxidation process as post-treatment for the effluents of a UASB reactor treating cellulose pulp mill wastewater.

The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of the electrochemical oxidation process as a post-treatment for the effluents of a bench-scale UASB reactor treating simulated wastewater from an unbleached pulp plant. The oxidation process was performed using a single compartment cell with two plates as electrodes. The anode was made of Ti/Ru0.3Ti0.7O2 and the cathode of stainless steel. The following variables were evaluated: current density (75, 150 and 225 mA cm(-2)) and recirculation flow rate in the electrochemical cell (0.22, 0.45 and 0.90 L h(-1)). The increase in current density from 75 to 225 mA cm(-2) did not increased the color removal efficiency for the tested flow rates, 0.22, 0.45 and 0.90 L h(-1), however the energy consumption increased significantly. The results indicated the technical feasibility of the electrochemical treatment as post-treatment for UASB reactors treating wastewaters from pulp and paper plants.