副业图书助玩具店一臂之力

儿童图书与玩具的目标受众有很大的重叠性,这二者的关联性越来越大。目前我国许多购书中心都设有玩具专区,在美国,则有玩具商与书籍零售商联手,玩具店里开设图书区。这期报道的美国玩具店老板,把图书销售作为玩具店的特色服务,并采购一些与图书相关的产品,扩充品类,增加营业额。他的做法,值得借鉴。     

Morphological and Elemental Classification of Freshly Emitted Soot Particles and Atmospheric Ultrafine Particles using the TEM/EDS

The Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) were used to determine morphology and elemental composition of a variety of freshly emitted soot particles (acetylene flame, candle flame, kerosene flame, diesel exhaust, electric arc, plastic burning, styrofoam burning, wood burning [white oak and pine bark], and rice straw burning), which can be possible candidate soot in the ambient atmosphere, and ultrafine particles sampled in urban, industrial, and coastal sites during ultrafine particle formation events (combustion and photochemical events). By using mobility-classified non-refractory ((NH ₄ ) ₂ SO ₄ ) and refractory (Polystyrene latex (PSL) and salt (NaCl)) particles, limitation of the TEM was tested. Data showed that the TEM method can be used to examine shapes of both volatile particles such as (NH ₄ ) ₂ SO ₄ (100 nm) at low, but not high magnification (refer to low and high beam intensity, respectively), and non-volatile particles like NaCl (100 nm) and PSL (84 nm) at either low or high magnification. Distinct differences in morphological properties such as primary particle diameter, fractal dimension, and microstructure were observed among the different types of fresh soot particles. The atmospheric ultrafine particles were classified as agglomerates, sulfate mixtures (spherical), metallic oxides (spherical and polygonal), C-rich refractory (not agglomerated), C-rich non-refractory (not agglomerated), Si-rich (spherical), Na-rich (porous), or P-containing (non-spherical) particles. At the urban Gwangju site, a higher fraction of fresh and aged agglomerates was observed than at other sites. The C-rich non-refractory and sulfate mixtures were often observed in the photochemical event. The C-rich refractory particles were abundant at the Gwangju and Yeosu sites. The coastal Taean site had few agglomerates due to limited anthropogenic combustion source.     

Microbial Abundance in the Schwertmannite Formed in a Mine Water Treatment Plant

Treatment of acidic iron- and sulfate-rich mine waters in a pilot plant at the opencast lignite mining pit Nochten (Lusatia, Germany) involves microbial iron oxidation and subsequent precipitation of the iron-oxyhydroxysulfate schwertmannite. To determine if recirculation of schwertmannite can stabilize and optimize the oxidation process, cell number, viability, and diversity of the bacterial community in schwertmannite precipitated on carrier material and stored schwertmannite were analyzed. In schwertmannite on carrier material, the total cell number decreased slightly with increasing mineral depth, whereas the percentage of viable cells decreased significantly. The microbial community, investigated by fluorescence-in-situ-hybridization (FISH) and terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP), revealed the presence of the iron-oxidizing bacterium “Ferrovum” sp. and relatives of Gallionella, independent of mineral depth. Analysis of the viability of microorganism in stored schwertmannite indicated an almost constant percentage of viable cells over 42 days.     

Development of Breathing Rat-Lung Models for Particulate Deposition Studies

ABSTRACT

Techniques have been developed for casting both solid and hollow lung models from rat-lung specimens. To make a solid model, an air line at a positive pressure of 25 cm of water was connected to the trachea to air-dry lungs which had been removed surgically from the animal. Using the lost wax technique, a hollow cast of the airways and the nasopharynx was made. A mechanical breathing system, capable of simulating different breathing patterns, was developed.     

How to get residents/owners in housing cooperatives to agree on sustainable renovation

What factors increase the chance that residents/owners in housing cooperatives agree on sustainable energy efficient renovation? Based on 30 qualitative interviews with professional advisors in cooperative housing associations and chairman/board and residents in three chosen case studies, an analysis of opportunities and barriers for making a common decision on renovation is performed. Success criteria and barriers are found on the societal level as well as on the organizational/individual level. The barriers and success criteria identified on the societal level are: knowledge level on energy-efficient renovation among relevant actors, owner structure of the housing cooperative, and existing regulations and incentives. On the organizational and individual level, the following categories influencing renovation processes were identified: the time frame and organization of the process, understanding the residents` needs, economy, the information given, and the existence of available exemplary projects and role models. Based on the results of the study, ten guidelines that contribute to more successful decision making processes and increase the chances of sustainable energy efficient renovation in housing cooperatives are presented.     

Periodical Literature in Urban Studies and Planning: Contents in full

Geographic information systems have finally arrived in state and local governments and, with them, an extraordinary opportunity for planning. Many groups with differing agendas are competing to define this new technology, what it will do, and who will use it. It is by no means certain that planners will do well in this competition. This article mines the literature on technological innovation and concludes that planners must understand GIS as a socially constructed technology, including not just hardware and software but also the practices, laws, organizational arrangements, and knowledge that are necessary for its use. The article recommends a strategic approach to GIS implementation that involves both human and technical systems.     

Approaches to resource reservation for migrating real-time sessions in future mobile wireless networks

This paper presents two novel frameworks for session admission control and resource reservation in the context of next generation mobile and cellular networks. We also devised a special scheme that avoids per-user reservation signaling overhead in order to meet scalability requirements needed for next generation multi-access networks. The first proposal, Distributed Call Admission Control with Aggregate Resource Reservation (VR), uses mobility prediction based on mobile positioning system location information and takes into account the expected bandwidth to be used by calls handing off to and from neighboring cells within a configurable estimation time window. In conjunction, a novel concept called virtual reservation has been devised to prevent per-user reservation. Our second proposal, Local Call Admission Control and Time Series-based Resource Reservation, takes into account the expected bandwidth to be used by calls handed off from neighboring cells based only on local information stored into the current cell a user is seeking admission to. To this end, we suggest the use of two time series-based models for predicting handoff load: the Trigg and Leach (TL), which is an adaptive exponential smoothing technique, and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) that uses the Box and Jenkins methodology. It is worth to emphasize that the use of bandwidth prediction based on ARIMA technique still exist for wireless networks. The novelty of our approach is to build an adaptive framework based on ARIMA technique that takes into account the measured handoff dropping probability in order to tuning the prediction time window size so increasing the prediction accuracy. The proposed schemes are compared through simulations with the fixed guard channel (GC) and other optimized dynamic reservation-based proposals present in the literature. The results show that our schemes outperform many others and that the simpler local proposal based on TL can grant nearly similar levels of handoff dropping probability as compared to those from more the complex distributed approach.     

Comparative study of microwave and conventional methods for the preparation and optical properties of novel MgO-micro and nano-structures

Magnesium oxide (MgO) was synthesised by a simple microwave-assisted combustion route without using any template, catalyst or surfactant. For the purpose of comparison, it was also prepared using conventional method. The as-synthesized MgO was characterized by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform infrared spectra (FT-IR), high resolution scanning electron microscopy (HR-SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Energy Dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX), diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) and Photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. The XRD results confirmed the formation of cubic phase MgO. FT-IR was used to investigate the adsorption of water and CO₂ on MgO surface and confirm the formation of Mg-O phase. The formation of MgO micro cubes structures was confirmed by HR-SEM. The formation of MgO nanosheets was confirmed by HR-SEM and TEM and their possible formation mechanisms were also proposed. The optical absorption and photoluminescence emissions were determined by DRS and PL spectra respectively. An attempt has been made to compare the lattice parameter and the PL intensity.