Indoor Air Quality: Exploring Policy Options to Reduce Human Exposures

Deciding between the different policy approaches available for reducing human exposures to indoor pollutants is an exceptionally complex task. These options can range from waiting until more definitive information is available to enacting regulatory standards, with many variations in between. This paper presents some of the factors policy-makers must consider in establishing indoor air quality policies, and the role researchers should play in ensuring that indoor air policies are based on the best available scientific information.     

Issues in nonlinear stochastic grey box identification

Grey box identification refers to the practice of identifying dynamical systems in model structures exploiting partial prior information. This contribution reviews a method for stochastic grey box identification and surveys experiences and lessons of applying it to a number of industrial processes. Issues to be addressed include advantages and costs of introducing stochastics into the model, the question of what contribution must be expected from the model designer as opposed to what can be formalized in computer algorithms, and an outlook on future plans to resolve present shortcomings.     

Modified atmosphere packaging of a mixed prepared vegetable salad dish

The aim of this study was to design a modified atmosphere package for a mixed vegetable salad consisting of 75 g of cut carrot, 55 g of cut cucumber, 20 g of sliced garlic and 50 g of whole green pepper. Respiration data of all the components were combined with film permeability data to predict package atmospheres and design optimal packages for experimental testing for improved shelf-life of the produce. The optimal package avoided minimum O₂ and maximum CO₂ tolerance limits, and chilling injury temperatures for any component. A pouch form package made of 27 mm low density polyethylene developed a modified atmosphere of 2.0–2.1% O₂ and 5.5–5.7% CO₂, which was beneficial for all components and provided better quality retention than other test packages.     

Final Drying of Whole Milk Powder in Vibrated-Fluidized Beds

Vibro-fluidized beds are widely used in drying sticky powders and agglomerated materials as milk powder. Using a vibro-fluidized laboratory scale dryer, this work is aiming at analyzing preliminarily the effect of its operational variables on the drying kinetics and characteristics of whole milk powder. The full-factorial design technique with three replications at the central point has been employed to generate data and correlations to quantify the effect of inlet air temperature, air flow rate, and vibration bed amplitude on the drying curves and the milk powder properties related to its faster reconstitution in water (as tapped density, Hausner cohesion ratio, agglomerate size distribution, and internal pore concentration). Results obtained are analyzed and discussed to identify the adequate operation condition for final drying whole milk powder in vibro-fluidized beds, assuring a high product quality.     

SPECTRAL DENSITY ESTIMATION FROM NONLINEARLY OBSERVED DATA

Abstract. The estimation of the spectral density function of a stationary Gaussian process at the input of an instantaneous nonlinearity is considered when the nonlinearity is known and a finite set of observations of the output process is given. A class of spectral estimates is considered and their quadratic-mean consistency is established; precise asymptotic expressions for their bias and covariance are derived and their asymptotic normality is obtained.     

Approximate channel identification via δ‐signed correlation

A method of approximate channel identification is proposed that is based on a simplification of the correlation estimator. Despite the numerical simplification (no multiplications or additions are required, only comparisons and an accumulator), the performance of the proposed estimator is not significantly worse than that of the standard correlation estimator. A free (user selectable) parameter moves ‘smoothly’ from a situation with small sum‐squared channel estimation error but hard‐to‐identify channel peaks, to one with a larger sum‐squared estimation error but easy‐to‐identify channel peaks. The proposed estimator is shown to be biased and its behaviour is analysed in a number of situations. Applications of the proposed estimator to sparsity detection, symbol timing recovery and to the initialization of blind equalizers are suggested. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Phosphorus Inputs to Lake Simcoe from 1990 to 2003: Declines in Tributary Loads and Observations on Lake Water Quality

Total phosphorus (TP) inputs to Lake Simcoe have led to hypolimnetic dissolved oxygen (DO) depletion and loss of cold water fish habitat. Since 1990, efforts have been made to reduce the total TP input to the lake below a defined target of 75 t/year, which was predicted to lead to reductions in spring TP concentration and improvements in end-of-summer hypolimnetic DO concentrations. The total TP load to the lake during the most recent period of record (1998/99-2003/04) ranged from 53 to 76 t/yr and averaged 67 t/yr, compared to an average of 114 t/yr estimated between 1990/91 and 1997/98 (range 85-157 t/yr). Reductions in TP loads from the catchment via tributary discharge (∼26 t) accounted for the majority of the decrease in total load between the two time periods. Total P concentrations decreased significantly in four out of six long-term monitored tributaries; however, concentrations in all six tributaries remain above the level recommended to avoid nuisance plant growth (30 μg/L). Although TP loads to the lake are currently below the target 75 t/yr, excessive growths of filamentous algae and macrophytes continue to be a problem in the nearshore zone. End-of-summer minimum hypolimnetic DO concentrations (average 4.3 mg/L, 1998/99-2003/04) remain substantially below the level (7 mg/L) that is considered protective of lake trout. Efforts to reduce TP loads to the lake therefore need to continue.     

Hardware and software architecture for power quality analysis

This paper presents a novel concept for power quality hardware and software architecture. Software tools related to detection, classification and characterization of power quality events can be integrated into a Distribution Control Center in which the interconnection between different subsystems is being carried out through the Internet allowing flexibility to the system. This system is implemented using wavelet analysis applied in all proposed algorithms. Different power quality events are taken as examples to illustrate the capabilities of the proposed method. The obtained results reveal that the proposed architecture is feasible to be implemented as an integral part of a control center system.The proposed system has the property of fast and accurate detection and classification of any power quality disturbance event and introduces a new PQ index determination that allows characterizing any type of disturbance including the non-periodic signals.     

换填法建筑地基处理的工程实录

结合某工程的地基处理，对换填法的应用作了较详细的阐述。