Effect of temperature on corrosion and semiconducting properties of oxide films formed on M5 zirconium alloy

Nuclear fuel cladding for pressurised water reactors is commonly manufactured with zirconium alloys. The M5 alloy is a relatively new cladding material for in-reactor used with enhanced performance compared to traditional zircaloys. In this work, the influence of temperature on the corrosion resistance and semiconducting properties of the passive film formed on the M5 alloy in a borate buffer solution has been evaluated. The electrochemical behaviour of the zirconium alloy was assessed by potentiodynamic polarisation tests, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and Mott–Schottky plots. The results indicated that the corrosion resistance of the M5 alloy decreased with temperature due to the formation of a less stable and more defective passive film. The Mott–Schottky approach used in combination with polarisation tests and impedance measurements was effective to reveal the protective state of the passive film on the M5 alloy.     

In the eye of the beholder: Perceived, actual, and peer-rated similarity in personality, communication, and friendship intensity during the acquaintanceship process.

The authors examined associations of perceived similarity, actual similarity, and peer-rated similarity in personality with friendship intensity during the acquaintanceship process in a naturalistic setting. Self- and peer-rated personality data were gathered from undergraduates (mean age = 18.9) at 5 time points during the first year of university using a round-robin design. Whereas perceived similarity and peer-rated similarity in personality were concurrently associated with more friendship intensity for just-acquainted individuals, actual similarity in personality was not. Further, bidirectional cross-lagged associations between perceived similarity and friendship intensity were found. Peer-rated similarity was also associated with increases in friendship intensity, and this association was mediated by communication frequency. These results indicate that specific types of similarity in personality are differentially associated with friendship intensity during early phases of acquaintanceship in a real-life setting. Further, insight was provided in the direction of causality between similarity and attraction: Perceived and peer-rated similarity seem to breed friendship intensity, whereas friendship intensity seems to breed perceived similarity only. Finally, peers’ expectations seem to affect individuals’ communicative behaviors, which in turn affect friendship formation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Defining a complex intervention: The development of demarcation criteria for “meditation”.

The authors used a 5-round Delphi study with a panel of 7 experts in meditation research to achieve agreement on a set of criteria for a working definition of “meditation” for use in a comprehensive systematic review of the therapeutic use of meditation. Participants agreed that essential to a meditation practice is its use of (a) a defined technique, (b) logic relaxation, and (c) a self-induced state. Participants also agreed that a meditation practice may (d) involve a state of psychophysical relaxation somewhere in the process; (e) use a self-focus skill or anchor; (f) involve an altered state/mode of consciousness, mystic experience, enlightenment or suspension of logical thought processes; (g) be embedded in a religious/spiritual/philosophical context; or (h) involve an experience of mental silence. The results of this study provide insight into the challenges faced by researchers who want to demarcate meditative practices from nonmeditative practices, and they describe an approach to this problem that may prove useful for researchers trying to operationalize meditation in the context of comparative research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factors affecting decision makers' preference for unshared information.

Two experiments examined solicitation of information in a group structured as a judge–advisor system (JAS) with 1 group member designated as the decision maker and the other 2 members as advisors. The decision maker solicited information from 2 advisors. One advisor's information was shared in common with the decision maker, and the other's information was predominantly unshared. In 2 experiments, decision makers asked for more information from the advisor with unshared information and rated this advisor's information as more important and influential than the advisor with only redundant, shared information. When decision makers were not limited in the amount of information they could ask for, decision makers significantly increased requests for information from the advisor with shared information but not the advisor with unshared information. Experiment 2 found that whether or not an advisor agreed with the decision maker did not affect decision makers' preference for the advisor with unshared information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Higher order methods for burnup calculations with Bateman solutions

A group of methods for burnup calculations solves the changes in material compositions by evaluating an explicit solution to the Bateman equations with constant microscopic reaction rates. This requires predicting representative averages for the one-group cross-sections and flux during each step, which is usually done using zeroth and first order predictions for their time development in a predictor–corrector calculation. In this paper we present the results of using linear, rather than constant, extrapolation on the predictor and quadratic, rather than linear, interpolation on the corrector. Both of these are done by using data from the previous step, and thus do not affect the stepwise running time.     

Validity of the WISC–IV Spanish for a clinically referred sample of Hispanic children.

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) is the most commonly used intelligence test for children. Five years ago, a Spanish version of the WISC–IV was published (WISC-IV Spanish; Wechsler, 2005), but a limited amount of published information is available regarding its utility when assessing clinical samples. The current study included 107 children who were Spanish speaking and of Puerto Rican descent that had been administered the WISC–IV Spanish. They were subdivided into a clinical sample of 35 children with diagnoses of various forms of brain dysfunction (primarily learning disability, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and epilepsy) and a comparison group made up of 72 normal children who were part of the WISC–IV Spanish version standardization sample. Comparisons between these groups and the standardization sample were performed for the WISC–IV Spanish index and subtest scores. Results indicated that the clinical sample performed worse than the comparison samples on the Working Memory and Processing Speed Indexes, although findings varied to some extent depending on whether the clinical group was compared with the normal comparison group or the standardization sample. These findings provide support for the criterion validity of the WISC–IV Spanish when it is used to assess a clinically referred sample with brain dysfunction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Building the nodal nuclear data dependences in a many-dimensional state-variable space

We present new methods for building the polynomial-regression based nodal nuclear data models. The data models can reflect dependences on a large number of state variables, and they can consider various history effects. Suitable multivariate polynomials that approximate the nodal data dependences are identified efficiently in an iterative manner. The history effects are analysed using a new sampling scheme for lattice calculations where the traditional base burnup and branch calculations are replaced by a large number of diverse burnup histories. The total number of lattice calculations is controlled so that the data models are built to a required accuracy.     

Abrasion predictions for Francis turbines based on liquid–solid two-phase fluid simulations

The runner blades and guide vanes of Francis turbines are worn by sediment in the flow. However, there are few studies about abrasion of the runner blade and guide vane for normal turbine operating conditions. This study investigated the relation between the wear rates on the surfaces of the runner blade and guide vane and the sediment concentration, and analyzed the distribution of the wear rates for normal turbine operating condition. An Eulerian–Lagrangian Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) procedure was used to simulate steady liquid–solid two-phase flow for various operating conditions. The Finnie model was then used to predict the abrasion. The conditions leading to abrasion in the inner flow passage components of a Francis turbine are clarified through analysis of the abrasion conditions for the runner blades and guide vanes. Field tests and simulations show that the relative wear rate on the runner blades and guide vanes increases with increasing sediment concentration, and the maximum wear on the runner blades occurs in a small opening region with the maximum increasing as the head increases. The maximum wear on the guide vanes occurs at the maximum output and the relative wear rate on the runner blades is much greater than that on the guide vanes. There is no good data, so the relative wear rates on the runner blades and the guide vanes can only be obtained numerically. Thus actual wear rates cannot be given and are beyond the scope of this paper. This paper shows the abrasion characteristics on the runner blades and guide vanes with sediment flow and provides reference data for predicting the abrasion conditions in the flow passage components of a Francis turbine.     

Optimization of Combined Microwave–Hot Air Roasting of Malt Based on Energy Consumption and Neo-Formed Contaminants Content

ABSTRACT: To produce specialty malt, malts were roasted by combined microwave–hot air at various specific microwave powers (SP = 2.5 to 3 W/g), microwave heating times (t_mw = 3.3 to 3.5 min), oven temperatures (T_oven = 180 to 220 °C), and oven heating times (t_oven = 60 to 150 min). The response variables, color, energy consumption by microwave (E_mw) and oven (E_oven), total energy consumption (E_tot), quantity of neo-formed contaminants (NFCs), which include hydroxymethylfurfural, furfural, furan, and acrylamide were determined. Response surface methodology (RSM) was performed to analyze and predict the optimum conditions for the specialty malt. Production using combined microwave–hot air roasting process based on minimum energy consumption and level of NFCs. At 95% confident level, SP, T_oven, and t_oven were the most influencing effects with regard to E_tot, whereas t_mw did not affect E_tot. T_oven and t_oven significantly affected malt color. Only T_oven significantly influenced the NFCs content. The optimum parameters were: SP = 2.68 W/g for 3.44 min, T_oven = 206 °C for 136 min for coffee malt, SP = 2.5 W/g for 3.48 min, T_oven = 214 °C for 136 min for chocolate malt, and SP = 2.5 W/g for 3.48 min, T_oven = 211 °C for 150 min for black malt. Comparing with conventional process, combined microwave–hot air reduced E_tot by approximately 40%, 26%, and 26% for coffee, chocolate, and black malts, respectively, and reduced HMF, furfural, furan, and acrylamide contents by 40%, 18%, 23%, and 95%, respectively, for black malt. Practical Application: An important goal for research institutions and the brewery industry is to produce colored malt by combining microwave and hot air roasting, while saving energy, getting desirable color, and avoiding the formation of carcinogenic and toxic neo-formed contaminants (NFCs). Therefore, one objective of this study was to compare energy consumption and content of NFCs during roasting of malt by hot air-only and combined microwave–hot air processes as well as to determine the effect of specific power, microwave processing time, oven temperature, and oven processing time during combined microwave–hot air roasting. Another objective was to predict the optimum conditions for the production of coffee, chocolate, and black malts.     

An edge-based platform for dynamic Smart City applications

A Smart City is a cyber–physical system improving urban behavior and capabilities by providing ICT-based functionalities. An infrastructure for Smart City has to be geographically and functionally extensible, as it requires both to grow up with the physical environment and to meet the increasing in needs and demands of city users/inhabitants. In this paper, we propose iSapiens, an IoT-based platform for the development of general cyber–physical systems suitable for the design and implementation of smart city services and applications. As distinguishing features, the iSapiens platform implements the edge computing paradigm through both the exploitation of the agent metaphor and a distributed network of computing nodes directly scattered in the urban environment. The platform promotes the dynamic deployment of new computing nodes as well as software agents for addressing geographical and functional extensibility. iSapiens provides a set of abstractions suitable to hide the heterogeneity of the physical sensing/actuator devices embedded in the system, and to support the development of complex applications. The paper also furnishes a set of methodological guidelines exploitable for the design and implementation of smart city applications by properly using iSapiens. As a significant case study, the design and implementation of a real Smart Street in the city of Cosenza (Italy) are shown, which provides decentralized urban intelligence services to citizens.