专家系统在废水生物处理操作和控制中的应用

本文介绍了国外近二十年来专家系统在废水生物处理工艺控制领域的应用及开发的典型系统,分析了废水生物处理工艺难于控制的原因、各类系统的结构和特点及目前废水处理专家系统的不足,探讨了废水生物处理专家系统今后应深入研究的问题及方向     

模拟煤灰渣垂直潜流人工湿地的除磷性能分析

为确定煤灰渣作为垂直潜流人工湿地基质的可行性,通过静态吸附实验和煤灰渣去除生活污水中的磷素实验,表明煤灰渣对污水中磷素的吸附平衡时间较短,吸附速率较快.当温度降低时,煤灰渣的磷素吸附容量对吸附平衡浓度依赖性和吸附强度随之降低,最大理论吸附容量亦降低 83.10% .在处理0.5 m 3 /(m2·d)的生活污水中,煤灰渣对TP的平均去除率达86.03%,吸附方式包括物理吸附和化学吸附,同时得出煤灰渣最大磷素解析量占最大理论吸附容量的0.73%,在实际人工湿地应用中应注意磷素解析而形成的二次污染.     

河南省煤化工行业环境风险等级划分研究

基于目前国家建立环境污染责任保险制度的规划需求和河南省当前新发展形势需要,选择以河南省典型高污染、高风险行业(即煤化工行业)为研究对象.在对相关理论进行分析的基础上,识别影响河南省煤化工行业的环境风险因子,并确定指标的评估标准(权重及评分结果).遵照指标体系的建立原则,采用层次分析法,从内在性和外在性两方面因素构建煤化工行业环境风险等级划分指标体系,进一步将评分结果与环境风险等级比对,最终将煤化工行业的环境风险等级划分为5个等级,为河南省环境污染责任保险制度的建立奠定基础.     

地震科技人员开发能力的灰色关联分析

应用灰色系统理论，根据江苏省地震工程研究院的地震科技开发资料，分别以项目负责人的年龄、学历、职称、职务、学科作为比较数列，对年度内完成的实际合同额进行了多因素灰色关联分析，排出了关联序。研究结果客观地揭示了开发能力与人的各种因素——年龄、学历、职称、职务、学科之间的相互关系，为市场经济条件下，地震科技人才的开发、培养和应用，提供了科学依据。     

燃煤锅炉湿式脱硫除尘一体化设备的综合分析

本文对湿式脱硫除尘一体化设备的结构和性能进行了较为全面的分析,指出了该设备存在的诸多弊病,提出了解决方案--脱硫、除尘分体组合式的思路.     

Impacts on industry of Europe's emerging chemicals policy REACh

For Europe, a new regime in chemicals regulation is about to start. After the proposal of the European Commission concerning the Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACh) passed its readings in the European Parliament and some differences with the European Council of Ministers were resolved, the regulation will come into force in June 2007. This paper is focused on the question how serious the cost burdens for industry induced by REACh will be, and whether the New European Member States (NMS) which joined the European Union in May 2004 will be able to cope with the regulation. This evaluation has been done by assessing the legislative, administrative and economic framework in New Member States and by analysing real business cases in companies. The empirical showcase business impact studies are at the same time of interest for companies of EU-15 states, other European countries who may implement the regulation, and even for exporters of raw materials and chemicals outside Europe, who will also have to comply with REACh if they market in the European Community. The results give no indications that REACh adoption will bring significant drawbacks to companies in the NMS. The emerging regulation will bring challenges for individual companies, especially for small and medium-sized ones, but for the European chemical industry as a whole, there is no question that it will be able to cope with REACh burdens without losing its global competitiveness.     

Assessing water quality of drinking water distribution system in the South Taiwan

This investigation conducted a full-scale survey the drinking water distribution system in Kaohsiung city, Taiwan. The aim was to investigate whether the distribution system was capable of maintaining high water quality from the water treatment facilities through to the end user. The results showed that the distribution system can maintain high water quality, except for suitable chlorine residuals. The authors plotted chlorine residual contour maps to identify areas with low chlorine residuals, helping them prioritize sections that must be flushed or renewal. The contour maps also provide sufficient and clear information for locating booster chlorination stations. Contour maps enable water facilities to identify how water quality decays in the distribution systems and the locations of such decay. Water quality decay can be caused by properties of pipeline materials, hydraulic conditions, and/or biofilm thickness. However, understanding the exact reasons is unnecessary because the contour maps provide sufficient information for trouble-shooting the distribution systems.     

Still falling short: protection and partnerships in the Lebanon emergency response

The Israeli–Hezbollah conflict in the summer of 2006, although brief, had a lasting impact on the region and prompted an intense humanitarian response. The conflict raised challenging questions for the United Nations (UN) about how to assist a middle‐income yet extremely vulnerable population in a context where global and local relations are highly politicised. This paper focuses on two key questions that emerged from the humanitarian response. First, how can humanitarian agencies, and particularly the UN, improve the protection of civilians, and was what they did in Lebanon enough? Second, how can humanitarian agencies create partnerships with local actors and still remain true to core humanitarian principles when local actors are fiercely divided along confessional lines and influenced by external actors, and when some, such as Hezbollah, are parties to the conflict? This paper argues that despite the importance of protection and partnerships to the humanitarian response, their role in the UN emergency response still falls short.     

Social and mating system of cooperatively breeding laughing kookaburras (Dacelo novaeguineae)

DNA fingerprinting was combined with field observations over four breeding seasons to investigate the social structure and mating system of the laughing kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae). Groups comprised a socially dominant pair and up to six helpers of either sex. Helpers were always recruited from young hatched in the group. Territorial inheritance, which is a feature of other cooperative breeders and an oft-cited benefit of philopatry, did not occur. Helpers only attained dominant status in an established group by dispersing into a vacant dominant position in that group. However, helpers could also form new groups by excising a new territory, often through a ”budding” process. The mating system was overwhelmingly monogamous. There were no cases of extra-group parentage in a sample of 140 nestlings; within groups of three or more birds, dominance predicted parentage almost perfectly (99.2% of 129 nestlings), irrespective of whether helpers in the group were related to one or both dominant birds. This is contrary to predictions from models of reproductive skew, possibly because they currently fail to incorporate the willingness of females to share reproduction among males. Received: 15 May 1999 / Received in revised form: 2 November 1999 / Accepted: 6 November 1999     

The effect of pup vocalisations on food allocation in a cooperative mammal, the meerkat (Suricata suricatta)

In the meerkat (Suricata suricatta), a cooperative mongoose, pups follow potential feeders while the group is foraging and emit incessant calls when soliciting food from them. In contrast to a ’stationary’ brood of chicks, in which nestlings are fed at a fixed location, meerkat pups are ’mobile’ and become spread out. The question arises whether meerkat pups that experience different constraints to those facing chicks have evolved similar begging strategies. This paper describes the vocalisations that meerkat pups emit in the context of begging and investigates the influence of these calls on food allocation by older group members and on the behaviour of littermates. Meerkat pups use two types of calls when soliciting food from a potential feeder. The most common is a ’repeat’ call, which pups emit continuously when following an older forager over several hours a day. In addition, when a potential feeder finds a prey item, the pups next to it emit a bout of calls with increased calling rate, amplitude and fundamental frequency, termed ’high-pitched’ calls. Observations, together with playback experiments, showed that more prey was allocated to pups that called longer and more intensely. The pup closest to a feeder was almost always fed. The probability of emitting high-pitched calls did not depend on the time since a pup had received food, and the change from repeat to high-pitched calls occurred suddenly. The main function of the high-pitched call, therefore, does not appear to be to signal a pup’s hunger state. More likely, the two calls, in the context of begging, may be an adaptation to energetic constraints in a mobile feeding system. Pups, which are dispersed during foraging, may emit repeat calls over long periods to prevent potential feeders from eating all the prey themselves. At the moment a potential feeder finds prey, pups may give the more intense high-pitched calls to direct feeders to bring the food item to them and not to a littermate. Therefore, unlike the stationary feeding system where chicks emit one type of begging call when the feeder approaches the nest, meerkats, with a mobile feeding system, have evolved two discrete types of vocalisations in the context of begging. Received: 22 November 1999 / Revised: 1 July 2000 / Accepted: 17 July 2000