Enhancing urban infrastructure investment planning practices for a changing climate.

Climate change raises many concerns for urban water management because of the effects on all aspects of the hydrological cycle. Urban water infrastructure has traditionally been designed using historical observations and assuming stationary climatic conditions. The capability of this infrastructure, whether for storm-water drainage, or water supply, may be over- or under-designed for future climatic conditions. In particular, changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events will have the most acute effect on storm-water drainage systems. Therefore, it is necessary to take future climatic conditions into consideration in engineering designs in order to enhance water infrastructure investment planning practices in a long time horizon. This paper provides the initial results of a study that is examining ways to enhance urban infrastructure investment planning practices against changes in hydrologic regimes for a changing climate. Design storms and intensity-duration-frequency curves that are used in the engineering design of storm-water drainage systems are developed under future climatic conditions by empirically adjusting the general circulation model output, and using the Gumbel distribution and the Chicago method. Simulations are then performed on an existing storm-water drainage system from NE Calgary to investigate the resiliency of the system under climate change.     

Popular biorthogonal wavelet filters via a lifting scheme and its application in image compression

A technique using a lifting scheme is presented for constructing compactly supported wavelets whose coefficients are composed of free variables locating in an interval. An efficient approach-based wavelet for image compression is developed by selecting the coefficients of the 9-7 wavelet filter and associated lifting scheme. Furthermore, the rationalised coefficients wavelet filter that can be implemented with simple integer arithmetic is achieved and its characteristic is close to the well known original irrational coefficients 9-7 wavelet filters developed by A. Cohen et al. (Commun. Pure Appl. Maths., vol.45, no.1, p.485-560, 1992). To reduce the computational cost of image coding applications further, an acceleration technique is proposed for the lifting steps. Software and hardware simulations show that the new method has very low complexity, and simultaneously preserves the high quality of the compressed image.     

Cover Picture: Arresting,Fixing, and Separating Dimers Composed of Uniform Silica Colloidal Spheres (Adv. Funct. Mater. 12/2006)

In colloidal suspensions of silica, particles undergo constant collisions. By controlling various parameters, the repulsive barrier can be reduced, thereby substantially increasing the number of collision‐induced dimerization events. Xia and co‐workers report on p. 1627 that the dimers could be arrested and then permanently fixed by introducing a small amount of fresh tetraethylorthosilicate into the colloidal suspension, with monodisperse dimer yields of up to 50 %. This yield could be increased to 80 % by centrifugation in a density gradient medium. When fresh tetraethylorthosilicate is introduced into a colloidal suspension of silica spheres, it hydrolyzes and condenses in situ to arrest and fix the dimers resulting from constant collisions between the spheres. By optimizing the experimental parameters (including the length of aging time) and the diameter of the silica spheres, as well as the concentrations of counterions, water, and ammonia, it is possible to routinely produce monodisperse dimers with a yield as high as 50 %. When combined with centrifugation using a density gradient medium, the yield of such dimers could be further increased to 80 %. It is believed that this method will provide a simple and versatile approach to the high‐volume production of dimers from spherical colloids composed of different materials. These dimers may find widespread use in a range of applications such as fabrication of photonic crystals and fundamental studies related to colloidal science.     

连续油管技术与装备发展综述

自世界上第一台连续油管作业机问世至今,连续油管作业技术与装备已经过了40多年的发展历程,以其占地面积小、作业成本低、搬迁安装方便、保护油层、增加油井产量和使用范围广等诸多不可比拟的优势,得到迅速发展,并广泛应用于钻井、完井、试油、采油、修井和集输等各个作业领域。实践表明,连续油管作业技术与装备是一项具有巨大潜力和生命力的实用性技术。目前,该项技术的应用日趋活跃,备受关注。在总结连续油管作业技术与装备的发展现状和展示其发展趋势的基础上,客观地分析了国内连续油管技术与装备的应用与研究现状,提出相应的发展对策。     

TEM Studies of High Temperature Corrosion Behaviour of TiAl Intermetallics with Surface Modifications

The oxidation/sulphidation behaviour of a Ti‐46.7Al‐1.9W‐0.5Si alloy with a TiAl₃ diffusion coating was studied in an environment of H₂/H₂S/H₂O at 850^oC. The kinetic results demonstrate that the TiAl₃ coating significantly increased the high temperature corrosion resistance of Ti‐46.7Al‐1.9W‐0.5Si. The SEM, EDX, XRD and TEM analysis reveals that the formation of an Al₂O₃ scale on the surface of the TiAl₃‐coated sample was responsible for the enhancement of the corroison resistance. The Ti‐46.7Al‐1.9W‐0.5Si alloy was also modified by Nb ion implantation. The Nb ion implanted and as received sampels were subjected to cyclic oxidation in an open air at 800^oC. The Nb ion implantation not only increased the oxidation resistance but also substantially improved the adhesion of scale to the substrate.     

Adaptive agents and multiagent systems

New information systems and recent applications (grid computing, Web Services, and so on) are often distributed, large-scale, open, heterogeneous, and characterized by a dynamic environment. To model these complex systems, researchers have spent much effort during the last few years on multiagent systems. The aim is to model complex distributed systems as a set of (possibly organized) software agents that interact in a common environment. The decomposition of a system into a number of agents lets the system react and adapt better in a changing environment. Moreover, organized structures ("social" structures) can emerge from interactions between agents, which in turn constrain and coordinate the agents' behavior. A multiagent system takes its metaphors of interaction from social systems rather than using the metaphor of the isolated thinker that early artificial intelligence researchers preferred. An important issue when dealing with this increasing complexity is to build adaptive agents and multiagent systems. Agents and multiagent systems must be aware of their own capabilities and of changes to other agents and their environment. To remain effective, agents must be able to adapt their structures and knowledge while they execute.     

一种改进的MC-CDMA系统结构

MC-CDMA在频域扩频时实际上是一种频率分集,对于频率分集重数的要求通常小于子载波的数目N,故扩频因子可以小于子载波数目。改进了这种MC-CDMA系统的结构,通过在频域引入交织器,使交织后频率分集各分量经历独立的哀落,从而提高了抗哀落能力。最后给出了用系统仿真软件SPW仿真的结果。