Evaluation of capital cost data. part 7: Liquid waste disposal with emphasis on physical treatment

Capital cost correlations are given for oil-water separators, equalization basins, primary clarifiers, clarifiers and clarifier mechanisms, reverse osmosis unit, ultrafiltration units, gravity filters and miroscreens. Data are included for raw sewage, intermediate and recirculation pumping stations and for preliminary treatment (or bar screens, grit removal, overflow and bypass chamber and Parshall flume), for grit removal, comminution and gas stripping. The correlations are accurate to ± 30%, expressed in Canadian dollars and adjusted to a Marshall and Swift value of 1000. Details as to what components are included in the cost are given. Data are given for the labour and material costs to create a working process module. For inflation indices, a critique of the Engineering News Record, EPA small city, Marshall and Swift, Chemical Engineering and Southam inflation indices suggested that the Marshall and Swift index is most appropriate for the construction and process equipment studied here. Concerning the currency exchange, for the equipment and processes in this study, equipment costs the same whether expressed directly in US or Canadian dollars. To put the current data into perspective, several hundred sources of cost data were analyzed. The major correlations are compared, on a consistent basis, with current data.     

Target differentiation with simple infrared sensors using statistical pattern recognition techniques

This study compares the performances of various statistical pattern recognition techniques for the differentiation of commonly encountered features in indoor environments, possibly with different surface properties, using simple infrared (IR) sensors. The intensity measurements obtained from such sensors are highly dependent on the location, geometry, and surface properties of the reflecting feature in a way that cannot be represented by a simple analytical relationship, therefore complicating the differentiation process. We construct feature vectors based on the parameters of angular IR intensity scans from different targets to determine their geometry and/or surface type. Mixture of normals classifier with three components correctly differentiates three types of geometries with different surface properties, resulting in the best performance (100%) in geometry differentiation. Parametric differentiation correctly identifies six different surface types of the same planar geometry, resulting in the best surface differentiation rate (100%). However, this rate is not maintained with the inclusion of more surfaces. The results indicate that the geometrical properties of the targets are more distinctive than their surface properties, and surface recognition is the limiting factor in differentiation. The results demonstrate that simple IR sensors, when coupled with appropriate processing and recognition techniques, can be used to extract substantially more information than such devices are commonly employed for.     

High-Performance Multilayer Capacitor Dielectrics from Chemically Prepared Powders

Advantages of chemically prepared powders for electronic ceramics have been demonstrated for a number of multilayer capacitor (MLC) dielectrics. A cost-efficient precipitation process was developed to produce undoped or doped crystalline barium titanate powder with a narrow particle size distribution close to 0.5 μm. More complex compositions, e.g., barium-neodymium titanate, were amorphous as precipitated but could be crystallized by calcination below 1000°C. Additional compositional modifications, to adjust electrical properties or to lower sintering temperature, were accomplished by doping the surface of the powder particles using a solution coating process. Exceptional fired densities and electrical performance were obtained.     

On finding optimal and near-optimal lineal spanning trees

The search for good lineal, or depth-first, spanning trees is an important aspect in the implementation of a wide assortment of graph algorithms. We consider the complexity of findingoptimal lineal spanning trees under various notions of optimality. In particular, we show that several natural problems, such as constructing a shortest or a tallest lineal tree, are NP-hard. We also address the issue of polynomial-time, near-optimization strategies for these difficult problems, showing that efficient absolute approximation algorithms cannot exist unlessP = NP.     

Citations do not solve problems.

D. T. Cambell and D. W. Fiske (1959) made the now-obvious statement that measures of the same variable made by different methods should agree (converge) and certainly should agree better than measures of different variables made by those several methods. Almost everyone accepted that statement, yet the multitrait–multimethod matrices published today show little or no improvement over the published examples cited in 1959. The article raised the conceptual problem of how a variable and its measurement should be linked and the methodological problem of clarifying the nature of methods and their effects. Given these unresolved problems, it is perhaps not surprising that the question of the appropriate statistical analysis of these matrices has also no consensual answer. Perhaps methods and traits or contents are so thoroughly intertwined that their interaction cannot be adequately analyzed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Digital Recording System for Body Temperature Telemetry from Small Animals

A relatively simple instrumentation system is described which samples and records the body temperatures from up to twelve experimental animals over long periods of time. Body temperatures are sensed by temperature-sensitive FM transmitters implanted in the peritoneal cavities. The emitted signals are received by antennas, amplified, and sequentially gated into a frequency counter for counting; the resulting digital numbers are recorded in binarycoded decimal (BCD) format on punched paper tape. Samples can be spaced at intervals of from 1 to 60 minutes, and sampling can be continued over long periods of many months. This system eliminates the need for analog-to-digital conversion and allows rapid and direct transmission of the raw data to the digital computer for processing and analysis.     

Tensile Stress Relaxation of Alumina at High Temperature

The development of a tensile testing methodology for ceramics which enables a stress vs strain-rate response to be measured at high temperature is described. The test involves a carefully controled stress relaxation test at constant total strain using an experimental procedure and phenomenological analysis previously developed for metallic materials. It is demonstrated here with preliminary tests on alumina at 1050° and 1150°C. This offers, with further development, the possibility of establishing design stresses associated with low strain-rate behavior for structural applications. The results demonstrate that data covering four decades of strain rate may be generated in tests lasting a few hours. The inelastic strain consists of substantial anelastic recoverable strain in addition to a permanent creep strain.     

Bulk and interfacial physical properties of aqueous solutions of sodium lauryl sulphate and lauryl alcohol with air and benzene system: Part I: Aqueous solutions of sodium lauryl sulphate

Experimental measurements were made of the pH, density, bulk viscosity and electrical conductivity of aqueous solutions of sodium lauryl sulphate for a wide range of concentrations at 25°C. Also, the time-dependent interfacial tension data of this system with mutually saturated benzene phases are reported. Comparison of these data with literature values shows fair agreement in the majority of the cases and further reveals the lack of data in the earlier investigations below the critical micelle concentration of sodium lauryl sulphate in water. A detailed compilation of the data, reported in the literature since 1937, of the pH, density, bulk viscosity, electrical conductivity, surface tension, interfacial tension with benzene, surface excess concentration, surface shear viscosity, diffusivity and critical micelle concentration of the sodium lauryl sulphate system is given. The importance of this anionic surfactant system together with the various factors which influence the physical properties is examined.     

A Non-Line-of-Sight mitigation localization algorithm for sensor networks using clustering analysis

Non-Line-of-Sight propagation of wireless signal has an impact on measured distances in range-based localization and will bias the final localization results. A new localization algorithm is proposed in this paper to mitigate Non-Line-of-Sight errors when there are more than enough anchor nodes deployed around the node to be located. This algorithm utilizes multi-round clustering analysis to filter the pre-located estimators which derive from all possible subsets of measured distances. In each round, the method density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise is adopted. Simulations show that the proposed algorithm can effectively improve localization accuracy not only when the measured distances with Non-Line-of-Sight error are minor but also under the condition that all of them suffer random Non-Line-of-Sight error.