On the suitability of agricultural by-products for the manufacture of granular activated carbon

An investigation of several agricultural by-products revealed that their suitability for activated carbon production is not determined by general material-specific features (elemental composition) but by type-specific features. A coarse-cellular structure (as in wood), which is indicated by porosities of the raw materials higher than 35% is disadvantageous. A specific change in the properties of cokes (porosity, density, hardness) is possible by varying the conditions of pyrolysis. By rapid heating in the pyrolysis step, for instance, macroporous residues are produced. Temperature and burnoff have the greatest influence on the quality of the activated carbon during the activation step. Of the investigated materials, coconut shells yield granular activated carbon of the highest quality. The following order of suitability of raw materials for activated carbon production was established: coconut shells> peach stones> plum stones> hazelnut shells> walnut shells> cherry stones.     

Rudolf Hoesch 90 Jahre

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Pre‐necking and post‐necking relaxation and creep behavior of polycarbonate: A phenomenological study

Experiments have been performed to investigate the mechanical response of unfilled polycarbonate vis‐à‐vis the influence of prior deformation on stress relaxation and creep. Piecewise linear deformation histories, which involve strain‐controlled tensile loading of a specimen to a maximum load and partial unloading to a target strain/stress point as prologue to a relaxation test, have been shown to qualitatively influence the recorded stress‐time behavior. In particular, the stress magnitude during relaxation first increases and is then followed by a decrease. Analogously, in creep tests during unloading, the strain might decrease and then increase. Time characteristics for this U‐turn in the deformation response are influenced by the placement of the test. The influence of prior specimen conditioning on this phenomenon is investigated by comparing test data from virgin samples to that of specimens having high (～85%) inelastic strain from prior tensile elongation. Findings suggest that the observed persistence in the occurrence of this reversal effect for both types of specimens is evidence of the need to incorporate this behavior into the fold of material modeling. Additionally, this novel relaxation and creep behavior has been observed in other amorphous (poly(phenylene oxide)) and crystalline (high‐density polyethylene) polymers. Polym. Eng. Sci. 44:1783–1791, 2004. © 2004 Society of Plastics Engineers.     

Approximate Symmetry Detection in Partial 3D Meshes

Symmetry is a common characteristic in natural and man‐made objects. Its ubiquitous nature can be exploited to facilitate the analysis and processing of computational representations of real objects. In particular, in computer graphics, the detection of symmetries in 3D geometry has enabled a number of applications in modeling and reconstruction. However, the problem of symmetry detection in incomplete geometry remains a challenging task. In this paper, we propose a vote‐based approach to detect symmetry in 3D shapes, with special interest in models with large missing parts. Our algorithm generates a set of candidate symmetries by matching local maxima of a surface function based on the heat diffusion in local domains, which guarantee robustness to missing data. In order to deal with local perturbations, we propose a multi‐scale surface function that is useful to select a set of distinctive points over which the approximate symmetries are defined. In addition, we introduce a vote‐based scheme that is aware of the partiality, and therefore reduces the number of false positive votes for the candidate symmetries. We show the effectiveness of our method in a varied set of 3D shapes and different levels of partiality. Furthermore, we show the applicability of our algorithm in the repair and completion of challenging reassembled objects in the context of cultural heritage.     

Fluorinated γ-alumina aerogels and xerogels: characterisation and catalytic behaviour

The porosity of -alumina-based materials is an important parameter affecting the extent of fluorination (aerogels > commercial -Al₂O₃ > xerogels) and, consequently, also the textural, acidic and catalytic properties of the final fluorinated materials. Only the highly fiuorinated aluminas having strong Lewis acidic sites catalyse the isomerisation of CHF₂CHF₂ to CF₃CH₂F.     

A visual digital library approach for time-oriented scientific primary data

Digital Library support for textual and certain types of non-textual documents has significantly advanced over the last years. While Digital Library support implies many aspects along the whole library workflow model, interactive and visual retrieval allowing effective query formulation and result presentation are important functions. Recently, new kinds of non-textual documents which merit Digital Library support, but yet cannot be fully accommodated by existing Digital Library technology, have come into focus. Scientific data, as produced for example, by scientific experimentation, simulation or observation, is such a document type. In this article we report on a concept and first implementation of Digital Library functionality for supporting visual retrieval and exploration in a specific important class of scientific primary data, namely, time-oriented research data. The approach is developed in an interdisciplinary effort by experts from the library, natural sciences, and visual analytics communities. In addition to presenting the concept and to discussing relevant challenges, we present results from a first implementation of our approach as applied on a real-world scientific primary data set. We also report from initial user feedback obtained during discussions with domain experts from the earth observation sciences, indicating the usefulness of our approach.     

A survey of approaches to automatic schema matching

Schema matching is a basic problem in many database application domains, such as data integration, E-business, data warehousing, and semantic query processing. In current implementations, schema matching is typically performed manually, which has significant limitations. On the other hand, previous research papers have proposed many techniques to achieve a partial automation of the match operation for specific application domains. We present a taxonomy that covers many of these existing approaches, and we describe the approaches in some detail. In particular, we distinguish between schema-level and instance-level, element-level and structure-level, and language-based and constraint-based matchers. Based on our classification we review some previous match implementations thereby indicating which part of the solution space they cover. We intend our taxonomy and review of past work to be useful when comparing different approaches to schema matching, when developing a new match algorithm, and when implementing a schema matching component. Received: 5 February 2001 / Accepted: 6 September 2001 Published online: 21 November 2001