Towards a generalized physicochemical framework

Process models used for activated sludge, anaerobic digestion and in general wastewater treatment plant process design and optimization have traditionally focused on important biokinetic conversions. There is a growing realization that abiotic processes occurring in the wastewater (i.e. 'solvent') have a fundamental effect on plant performance. These processes include weak acid-base reactions (ionization), spontaneous or chemical dose-induced precipitate formation and chemical redox conversions, which influence pH, gas transfer, and directly or indirectly the biokinetic processes themselves. There is a large amount of fundamental information available (from chemical and other disciplines), which, due to its complexity and its diverse sources (originating from many different water and process environments), cannot be readily used in wastewater process design as yet. This position paper outlines the need, the methods, available knowledge and the fundamental approaches that would help to focus the effort of research groups to develop a physicochemical framework specifically in support of whole-plant process modeling. The findings are that, in general, existing models such as produced by the International Water Association for biological processes are limited by omission of key corrections such as non-ideal acid-base behavior, as well as major processes (e.g., ion precipitation). While the underlying chemistry is well understood, its applicability to wastewater applications is less well known. This justifies important further research, with both experimental and model development activities to clarify an approach to modeling of physicochemical processes.     

Improved Adhesion of Waterborne Polyurethanes by Hybridizations

Aqueous polyurethane dispersions based on isophorone diisocyanate (IPDI), poly (tetramethylene adipate) glycol (PTAd), and dimethylolproprionic acid (DMPA) were synthesized by a prepolymer mixing process. Effects of the molecular weight of PTAd and types of hybridizations, viz. blending, semi-interpenetrating polymer network (IPN), and full IPNs with polybutylacrylate have been determined. It was found that thermal, mechanical, and adhesion properties of the polyurethane dispersions increased with increasing molecular weight of polyols.

Regarding the effects of hybridization, full IPNs gave the greatest tensile strength and elongation at break with a fast drying rate, whereas semi-IPNs gave the greatest initial as well as final adhesion, implying that a certain degree of chain mobility would augment the penetrations of adhesive molecules into the soft polyurethane foam substrates.     

最小二乘法拟合大气激光雷达回波信号估算消光系数边界值

报道了一种使用最小二乘法拟合大气激光雷达回波信号,计算消光系数边界值的算法。对于无云层天气条件,利用最小二乘法对回波信号全程拟合获得大气消光系数边界值,在有云层天气下,先将激光雷达信号在大气中的传输光路分解为云层区和非云层区,忽略回波信号中的云层信息,并假设在非云层区大气近似均匀,利用最小二乘法拟合获得大气消光系数边界值。最后利用消光系数边界值求解激光雷达方程,反演获得大气消光系数,实际计算证明,用此算法可获得与实际更为接近的大气消光系数反演结果。     

An adaptive parallel genetic algorithm system for i‐Computing environment

Many real‐world optimization problems in the scientific and engineering fields can be solved by genetic algorithms (GAs) but it still requires a long execution time for complex problems. At the same time, there are many under‐utilized workstations on the Internet. In this paper, we present a self‐adaptive parallel GA system named APGAIN, which utilizes the spare power of the heterogeneous workstations on the Internet to solve complex optimization problems. In order to maintain a balance between exploitation and exploration, we have devised a novel probabilistic rule‐driven adaptive model (PRDAM) to adapt the GA parameters automatically. APGAIN is implemented on an Internet Computing system called DJM. In the implementation, we discover that DJM's original load balancing strategy is insufficient. Hence the strategy is extended with the job migration capability. The performance of the system is evaluated by solving the traveling salesman problem with data from a public database. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spreadsheet quality assurance: a literature review

Spreadsheets are very common for information processing to support decision making by both professional developers and non-technical end users. Moreover, business intelligence and artificial intelligence are increasingly popular in the industry nowadays, where spreadsheets have been used as, or integrated into, intelligent or expert systems in various application domains. However, it has been repeatedly reported that faults often exist in operational spreadsheets, which could severely compromise the quality of conclusions and decisions based on the spreadsheets. With a view to systematically examining this problem via survey of existing work, we have conducted a comprehensive literature review on the quality issues and related techniques of spreadsheets over a 35.5-year period (from January 1987 to June 2022) for target journals and a 10.5-year period (from January 2012 to June 2022) for target conferences. Among other findings, two major ones are: (a) Spreadsheet quality is best addressed throughout the whole spreadsheet life cycle, rather than just focusing on a few specific stages of the life cycle. (b) Relatively more studies focus on spreadsheet testing and debugging (related to fault detection and removal) when compared with spreadsheet specification, modeling, and design (related to development). As prevention is better than cure, more research should be performed on the early stages of the spreadsheet life cycle. Enlightened by our comprehensive review, we have identified the major research gaps as well as highlighted key research directions for future work in the area.