Synthesis of Si3N4 with Emphasis on Si-S-N Chemistry

Industrial production of Si₃N₄ from SiCI₄, is increasing. An element rivaling CI in abundance and cheapness with potentially suitable chemistry for this application is sulfur. Thus, Si–S–N chemistry was investigated to determine its usefulness in producing Si₃N₄. Bifunctionality in S, as opposed to mono-functionality in CI, may allow special routes via polymers to become important.     

Knowledge-based understanding of radiology text

A data acquisition tool which will extract pertinent diagnostic information from radiology reports has been designed and implemented. Pertinent diagnostic information is defined as that clinical data which is used by the HELP medical expert system. The program uses a memory-based semantic parsing technique to 'understand' the text. Moreover, the memory structures and lexicon necessary to perform this action are automatically generated from the diagnostic knowledge base by using a special purpose compiler. The result is a system where data extraction from free text is directed by an expert system whose goal is diagnosis.     

The 1987-8 Taulbee Survey report

This report describes the results of a survey completed in December 1988 on the production and employment of PhDs and faculty in PhD-granting computer science/engineering departments during the 1987-8 academic year. All 127 computer science (CS) departments (115 US and 12 Canadian) participated. In addition, 34 departments offering the PhD in computer engineering (CE) were included. Throughout the report. CE statistics are reported separately so that comparisons with previous years can be made for CS. The intent is to merge all statistics for CS and CE after several years     

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.     

Social environmental selection as a mediator of gender, ethnic, and personality effects on college student drinking.

Structural equation modeling was used to test the mediational role of social environmental selection on alcohol use in cross-sectional samples of 447 students from a rural state university and 421 students from an urban private university. Results showed that male gender, White ethnicity, and sensation seeking were uniquely associated with greater alcohol use. Mediational analyses indicated that socioenvironmental factors (i.e., Greek involvement, friends' approval of drinking/getting drunk) were positively associated with alcohol use and significantly accounted for parts of the effects of ethnicity and sensation seeking, but not gender, on alcohol use. Results suggest that White students and those high on sensation seeking may drink more heavily in college, in part because they select social environments in which alcohol use is encouraged. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hydrogen degradation of steels in gas mains after long periods of operation

We study the degradation of the mechanical and corrosion properties of 17G1S steel in gas mains as a result of operation for 28–40 yr. We reveal the simultaneous decrease in its strength and hardness, on the one hand, and impact toughness and crack resistance, on the other hand. The indicated parameters prove to be most sensitive to the in-service degradation of the metal. The degradation of steel leads to the increase in the strain-hardening coefficient and the appearance of the yield plateau in the tensile stress-strain diagram and causes the appearance of sensitivity to hydrogen embrittlement increasing in the process of operation. We analyze the role of absorbed hydrogen affecting the mechanism of strain aging and responsible for the appearance of defects. It is shown that the polarization resistance can be used not only for monitoring of the corrosion state of gas pipelines but also for the prediction of changes in their mechanical properties in the process of operation. __________ Translated from Fizyko-Khimichna Mekhanika Materialiv, Vol. 43, No. 5, pp. 97–104, September–October, 2007.     

A remark on the converging-input converging-state property

Suppose that an equilibrium is asymptotically stable when external inputs vanish. Then, every bounded trajectory which corresponds to a control which approaches zero and which lies in the domain of attraction of the unforced system, must also converge to the equilibrium. This "well-known" but hard-to-cite fact is proved and slightly generalized here.     

Combined time and wavelength multiplexing technique of optical fiber grating sensor arrays using commercial OTDR equipment

The use of a commercial optical time domain reflectometry device for simultaneous wavelength and time domain multiplexing of fiber-optic Bragg grating sensors is proposed and demonstrated. The realization of such systems provides an inexpensive way of interrogating several hundreds of sensors in a single fiber. Strain resolution of 30 /spl mu/m/m over a strain measuring range of 0.5% was obtained.     

Limitations on the uses of multimedia exposure measurements for multipathway exposure assessment--Part II: Effects of missing data and imprecision.

Multimedia data from two probability-based exposure studies were investigated in terms of how missing data and measurement-error imprecision affected estimation of population parameters and associations. Missing data resulted mainly from individuals'refusing to participate in certain measurement activities, rather than from field or laboratory problems; it suggests that future studies should focus on methods for maximizing participation rates. Measurement error variances computed from duplicate-sample data were small relative to the inherent variation in the populations; consequently, adjustments in nonparametric percentile estimates to account for measurement imprecision were small. Methods of adjustment based on lognormality assumptions, however, appeared to perform poorly.