Calcium addition in straw gasification

The present work focuses on the influence of calcium addition in gasification. The inorganic-organic element interaction as well as the detailed inorganic-inorganic elements interaction has been studied. The effect of calcium addition as calcium sugar/molasses solutions to straw significantly affected the ash chemistry and the ash sintering tendency but much less the char reactivity. Thermo balance test are made and high-temperature X-ray diffraction measurements are performed, the experimental results indicate that with calcium addition major inorganic-inorganic reactions take place very late in the char conversion process. Comprehensive global equilibrium calculations predicted important characteristics of the inorganic ash residue. Equilibrium calculations predict the formation of liquid salt if sufficient amounts of Ca are added and according to experiments as well as calculations calcium binds silicon primarily as calcium silicates and less as potassium calcium silicates.     

KHATT: An open Arabic offline handwritten text database

A comprehensive Arabic handwritten text database is an essential resource for Arabic handwritten text recognition research. This is especially true due to the lack of such database for Arabic handwritten text. In this paper, we report our comprehensive Arabic offline Handwritten Text database (KHATT) consisting of 1000 handwritten forms written by 1000 distinct writers from different countries. The forms were scanned at 200, 300, and 600 dpi resolutions. The database contains 2000 randomly selected paragraphs from 46 sources, 2000 minimal text paragraph covering all the shapes of Arabic characters, and optionally written paragraphs on open subjects. The 2000 random text paragraphs consist of 9327 lines. The database forms were randomly divided into 70%, 15%, and 15% sets for training, testing, and verification, respectively. This enables researchers to use the database and compare their results. A formal verification procedure is implemented to align the handwritten text with its ground truth at the form, paragraph and line levels. The verified ground truth database contains meta-data describing the written text at the page, paragraph, and line levels in text and XML formats. Tools to extract paragraphs from pages and segment paragraphs into lines are developed. In addition we are presenting our experimental results on the database using two classifiers, viz. Hidden Markov Models (HMM) and our novel syntactic classifier.     

Optimizing counter-terror operations: Should one fight fire with “fire” or “water”?

This paper deals dynamically with the question of how recruitment to terror organizations is influenced by counter-terror operations. This is done within an optimal control model, where the key state is the (relative) number of terrorists and the key controls are two types of counter-terror tactics, one (“water”) that does not and one (“fire”) that does provoke recruitment of new terrorists. The model is nonlinear and does not admit analytical solutions, but an efficient numerical implementation of Pontryagin's minimum principle allows for solution with base case parameters and considerable sensitivity analysis. Generally, this model yields two different steady states, one where the terror organization is nearly eradicated and one with a high number of terrorists. Whereas water strategies are used at almost any time, it can be optimal not to use fire strategies if the number of terrorists is below a certain threshold.     

Markov models for offline handwriting recognition: a survey

Since their first inception more than half a century ago, automatic reading systems have evolved substantially, thereby showing impressive performance on machine-printed text. The recognition of handwriting can, however, still be considered an open research problem due to its substantial variation in appearance. With the introduction of Markovian models to the field, a promising modeling and recognition paradigm was established for automatic offline handwriting recognition. However, so far, no standard procedures for building Markov-model-based recognizers could be established though trends toward unified approaches can be identified. It is therefore the goal of this survey to provide a comprehensive overview of the application of Markov models in the research field of offline handwriting recognition, covering both the widely used hidden Markov models and the less complex Markov-chain or n-gram models. First, we will introduce the typical architecture of a Markov-model-based offline handwriting recognition system and make the reader familiar with the essential theoretical concepts behind Markovian models. Then, we will give a thorough review of the solutions proposed in the literature for the open problems how to apply Markov-model-based approaches to automatic offline handwriting recognition.     

A non-autonomous optimal control model of renewable energy production under the aspect of fluctuating supply and learning by doing

Given the constantly raising world-wide energy demand and the accompanying increase in greenhouse gas emissions that pushes the progression of climate change, the possibly most important task in future is to find a carbon-low energy supply that finds the right balance between sustainability and energy security. For renewable energy generation, however, especially the second aspect turns out to be difficult as the supply of renewable sources underlies strong volatility. Further on, investment costs for new technologies are so high that competitiveness with conventional energy forms is hard to achieve. To address this issue, we analyze in this paper a non-autonomous optimal control model considering the optimal composition of a portfolio that consists of fossil and renewable energy and which is used to cover the energy demand of a small country. While fossil energy is assumed to be constantly available, the supply of the renewable resource fluctuates seasonally. We further on include learning effects for the renewable energy technology, which will underline the importance of considering the whole life span of such a technology for long-term energy planning decisions.     

Seroprevalence of antibodies to Bartonella henselae in patients with cat scratch disease and in healthy controls: evaluation and comparison of two commercial serological tests

As the National Library of Medicine expands access to its products and services by making them available on the Internet, more accurate information about current and future access in medical libraries is needed. The National Network Office of the National Library of Medicine conducted a survey of all network member libraries to determine the extent of connectivity and the barriers preventing 100% connectivity. Respondents called a toll-free number and, using interactive voice technology, answered questions concerning Internet access in their library. Seventy-eight percent of the network member libraries responded. Four percent of academic libraries, 27% of hospital libraries, and 10% of "other" libraries reported that they were not connected. Computer cost, lack of in-house expertise, and lack of management support were the highest ranked barriers to connecting. The National Library of Medicine and the Regional Medical Libraries will use information from this survey to develop strategies to help all member libraries achieve full connectivity.