Brief group psychoeducation for bulimia nervosa: Assessing the clinical significance of change.

41 women with bulimia nervosa completed a brief intervention that was designed to promote symptom management. Cutoff scores for the determination of reliable and clinically significant change were calculated for several psychometric instruments that are commonly used as outcome measures in the field of eating disorders. Using these statistical procedures to assess therapeutic change, this study documents the diversity of outcomes that individuals reported following their participation in the intervention. As expected, there was a differential reporting of clinically significant change in favor of specific eating psychopathology relative to personality features and associated psychopathology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Computing eigenvalue bounds for iterative subspace matrix methods

A procedure is presented for the computation of bounds to eigenvalues of the generalized hermitian eigenvalue problem and to the standard hermitian eigenvalue problem. This procedure is applicable to iterative subspace eigenvalue methods and to both outer and inner eigenvalues. The Ritz values and their corresponding residual norms, all of which are computable quantities, are needed by the procedure. Knowledge of the exact eigenvalues is not needed by the procedure, but it must be known that the computed Ritz values are isolated from exact eigenvalues outside of the Ritz spectrum and that there are no skipped eigenvalues within the Ritz spectrum range. A multipass refinement procedure is described to compute the bounds for each Ritz value. This procedure requires O(m) effort where m is the subspace dimension for each pass.     

Low complexity estimation of carrier and sampling frequency offsets in burst‐mode OFDM systems

We study communications under slowly varying channels, and consider three cases of knowledge of the channel impulse response (CIR): full knowledge, no knowledge, and partial knowledge of the CIR. By partial knowledge, we refer to knowing only either the CIR magnitudes or the CIR phases. It is known that obtaining the exact joint maximum‐likelihood estimate (MLE) of the CFO and the SFO requires a two‐dimensional search. Here, we present a new estimation method which uses the Taylor expansion of the MLE cost function, combined with the best linear unbiased estimator, to obtain a method which does not require such a search. The computational complexity of the new method is evaluated. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the new method approaches the corresponding Cramér‐Rao bound for a wide range of signal‐to‐noise ratios, and has superior performance compared to all other existing methods for approximating the solution for the joint MLE, while maintaining a low computational complexity. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mercury speciation in gypsums produced from flue gas desulfurization by temperature programmed decomposition

Temperature programmed decomposition was used to identify mercury (Hg) species in gypsum samples produced from flue gas desulfurization in two Spanish power stations (A and B). As stricter emission control/reduction policies, particularly those focusing on Hg, are being implemented, wet flue gas desulfurization (FGD) technologies used for the removal of SO₂ can result in the co-removal of highly-soluble oxidized Hg. The amount of Hg retained in FGD products may increase in the future if these units are optimized for co-capture. For this reason, it is important to identify the mercury species in FGD products not only to determine the potential risk when the wastes are finally disposed of, but also to understand the behaviour of mercury during combustion and therefore to improve the technologies for mercury removal. Different mercury species were identified in the gypsum samples. In power station A, HgS were the most probable Hg species, whereas in power station B the main compound was Hg halogenated compounds.     

LED产业知识产权问题的思考

随着LED产业迅速发展,使其中埋藏着专利危机,随时威胁着企业利润,文章说明了如何利用专利转危为机,并列举了可能采取的应对策略。     

Influence of agronomic management of legume crops on soil accumulation with nitrate

Nitrate is known to accumulate under legume crops. The effects of legume crop, inoculation, row width, sowing rate, sowing date, and intra-cropping with wheat, on the amount and soil distribution of mineral N, residual soil water, crop biomass and crop N were studied at Wagga Wagga in south-east Australia. After removal of most of the above-ground plant material, the treatment effects on the biomass, N content, grain yield and grain N of wheat, established in the following season, were also measured. In a later experiment at Wagga, the recovery of 15N applied to the mid-row of lupin crops established at three row widths was estimated at crop maturity. At Condobolin, row width effects on the soil distribution of mineral N, biomass, N accumulation and N fixation of crop legumes and cereals, were determined. At physiological maturity, at Wagga Wagga, very little nitrate was left beneath cereals. Significantly more was left under legume crops, mostly below 30 cm of soil depth, and it was distributed differently depending on crop, inoculation, and sampling location. More nitrate was left under pea and faba than under lupin, and in response to inoculation. Mixing wheat with narrow-leaf lupin did not prevent nitrate accumulation in soil. For most of the legumes more nitrate was left in the mid-row than in the in-row; and more nitrate was left at the mid-row of lupin crops sown with wider rows. The additional nitrate left with wider rows increased the growth, N content, grain yield and protein of wheat established in the following season. 15N labelled nitrate applied mid-row was used less effectively by lupin as row width increased, in a dry season. At Condobolin, lupin established with wide rows used less soil nitrate than with narrower rows but maintained crop N by increased N fixation. In contrast, field pea maintained N demand by increasing nitrate uptake at intermediate row spacing. The study shows that the amount of nitrate accumulated in soil during legume cropping is susceptible to agronomic management, particularly crop selection, row width and inoculation; and that variation in the amount of this nitrate may carry forward to impact wheat production in the follow-on season.     

Use of genetic algorithms to develop an adaptive fuzzy logic controller for a cooling coil

An adaptive approach to control a water valve for a cooling coil, called an adaptive fuzzy logic controller (AFLC), is developed and validated in this study. The AFLC calculates the error between the supply air temperature and the supply air temperature set point for air in an air handling unit (AHU) of a heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) system and continues to improve the fuzzy controller parameters to minimize the error. The AFLC uses genetic algorithms (GAs) to improve the fuzzy rule matrix and fuzzy membership functions for the AHU in HVAC systems. In this paper, the application of genetic algorithms for developing the AFLC is presented. After a brief background on fuzzy logic controllers and GA theory, the use of GAs is explained. Three methods of modifying the fuzzy rule matrix using the GAs are presented along with simulation and real-time experimental results. Experimental results indicate that GAs can be successfully applied to modify an AFLC rule matrix to achieve a better controller.     

Carbonation of calcium-containing mineral and industrial by-products

The use of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and calcium-containing by-products from industrial activities is receiving increasing interest as a route to valuable carbonate materials while reducing CO₂ emissions and saving natural resources. In this work, wet-chemical experimental data was assessed, which involved the carbonation of three types of materials in aqueous solutions, namely, 1) wollastonite, a calcium silicate mineral, 2) steelmaking slag, a by-product of steel production, and 3) paper bottom ash (PBA) from waste paper incineration. Aims were to achieve either a high carbonation degree and/or a pure carbonate product with potential commercial value. Producing a pure precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) material that may find use in paper industry products puts strong requirements on purity and brightness. The parameters investigated were particle size, CO₂ pressure, temperature, solid/liquid ratio, and the use of additives that affect the solubilities of CO₂ and/or calcium carbonate. Temperatures and pressures were varied up to 180°C and 4 MPa. Data obtained with the wollastinite mineral allowed for a comparison between natural resources and the industrial by-product materials, the latter typically being more reactive. With respect to temperature and pressure trends reported by others were largely confirmed, with temperatures above 150°C introducing thermodynamic limitations depending on CO₂ pressure. The influence of additives showed some promise, although costs may make recycling and reuse of additives a necessity for a large-scale process. When using steelmaking slag, magnetic separation may remove some iron-containing material from the process (although this is far from perfect), while the addition of bicarbonate supported the removal of phosphorous, aside from improving calcium extraction. The experiments with paper bottom ash (PBA) gave new data, showing that its reactivity resembles that of steelmaking slag, while its composition results in relatively pure carbonate product. Also, with PBA no additives were needed to achieve this.     

Removal of particle-associated bacteriophages by dual-media filtration at different filter cycle stages and impacts on subsequent UV disinfection

This bench-scale study investigated the passage of particle-associated bacteriophage through a dual-media (anthracite-sand) filter over a complete filter cycle and the effect on subsequent ultraviolet (UV) disinfection. Two model viruses, bacteriophages MS2 and T4, were considered. The water matrix was de-chlorinated tap water with either kaolin or Aldrich humic acid (AHA) added and coagulated with alum to form floc before filtration. The turbidity of the influent flocculated water was 6.4+/-1.5 NTU. Influent and filter effluent turbidity and particle counts were measured as well as headloss across the filter media. Filter effluent samples were collected for phage enumeration during three filter cycle stages: (i) filter ripening; (ii) stable operation; and (iii) end of filter cycle. Stable filter operation was defined according to a filter effluent turbidity goal of <0.3 NTU. Influent and filter effluent samples were subsequently exposed to UV light (254 nm) at 40 mJ/cm(2) using a low pressure UV collimated beam. The study found statistically significant differences (alpha=0.05) in the quantity of particle-associated phage present in the filter effluent during the three stages of filtration. There was reduced UV disinfection efficiency due to the presence of particle-associated phage in the filter effluent in trials with bacteriophage MS2 and humic acid floc. Unfiltered influent water samples also resulted in reduced UV inactivation of phage relative to particle-free control conditions for both phages. Trends in filter effluent turbidity corresponded with breakthrough of particle-associated phage in the filter effluent. The results therefore suggest that maintenance of optimum filtration conditions upstream of UV disinfection is a critical barrier to particle-associated viruses.