Numerically investigating fire suppression mechanisms for the water mist with various droplet sizes through FDS code

With rapid progress in computer capability recently, it becomes feasible to investigate the sophisticated phenomena related to the fire, especially for the interaction of fire and water spray, by way of the computational fluid dynamics (CFD). In this paper, a fire simulation CFD code_FDS is used to numerically investigate the different droplet sizes on the fire suppression/extinguishment mechanisms. The CFD models adopted in the FDS are first assessed against the previous experimental work of Kim and Ryou. The droplet size interested is varied from 100 μm to 1000 μm that is located within the droplet size range for a water mist. Based on the sensitivity simulations with different droplet sizes, the dependency of fire extinguishing time on the discharged droplet size can be obtained. The fire extinguishing time decreases with the decreasing droplet size for a mist with relatively fine droplet size since both the evaporation cooling and the oxygen displacement are the dominant mechanisms of fire suppression. However, this trend is reverse for a mist with larger-size droplets for the sake that the direct cooling of flame is the major suppression mechanism. These conclusions are also confirmed by comparing the simulation distributions of gas temperature, oxygen concentration, and steam concentration after the mist actuation and just before the fire extinguishment.     

Benchmark characterization

An abstract system of benchmark characteristics that makes it possible, in the beginning of the design stage, to design with benchmark performance in mind is presented. The benchmark characteristics for a set of commonly used benchmarks are then shown. The benchmark set used includes some benchmarks from the Systems Performance Evaluation Cooperative. The SPEC programs are industry-standard applications that use specific inputs. Processor, memory-system, and operating-system characteristics are addressed     

Month of birth and schizophrenia in Taiwan: effect of gender, family history and age at onset

Schizophrenic patients have been shown to have a moderate excess of winter births in the areas where seasonal variations in weather are large. In this report, we examined the seasonality of schizophrenic births in Taiwan, which has a subtropical climate. Using nationwide hospitalization data (2429 male and 1320 female schizophrenic patients), we applied the life table method to compare the risk of schizophrenia among 12 cohorts of month-of-birth for males and females, respectively. Differences among the risks of the 12 cohorts were tested using the logrank test. The samples were further stratified by family history and age at onset. There was a significant association between the risk of being admitted as a schizophrenic and month of birth for both males and females. The cohorts born in November and January had the highest risks. After stratification, the association was significant only for non-familial, male, and early onset schizophrenic patients. The results indicate that seasonally varying factors might increase the risk of schizophrenia, especially in those without a family history of the disease. Men are more vulnerable to such factors than women, and the schizophrenics resulting from such insults tend to be early onset.     

The design and implementation of K: a high-level knowledge-base programming language of OSAM*.KBMS

The OSAM*.KBMS is a knowledge-base management system, or the so-called next-generation database management system, for non-traditional data/knowledge-intensive applications. In order to define, query, and manipulate a knowledge base, as well as to write codes to implement any application system, we have developed an object-oriented knowledge-base programming language called K to serve as the high-level interface of OSAM*.KBMS. This paper presents the design of K, its implementation, and its supporting KBMS developed at the Database Systems Research and Development Center of the University of Florida. Edited by Dennis McLeod. Received July 1992 / Accepted August 1995     

X-ray synthesis of nickel–gold composite nanoparticles

We developed a novel approach to prepare Ni–Au composite nanoparticles using synchrotron radiation X-rays. Ni–Au particles dispersed in aqueous solutions were synthesized with two different irradiation strategies. The first is by exposing to X-rays a mixed electroless solution of Ni and Au at two different temperatures, trying to nucleate Ni nanoparticles homogeneously at room temperature and to deposit Au subsequently on them at the high temperature of 70 °C. The second strategy is to change the pH value of the mixed solution, directly leading to the formation of Ni–Au nanoparticles. In both cases, the Ni–Au composite nanoparticles were successfully formed, as confirmed by the observed ferromagnetic behavior and by the evolution of the Au surface plasmon resonance band.     

A 155.52 mbps-3.125 gbps continuous-rate clock and data recovery circuit

A 155.52 Mbps-3.125 Gbps continuous-rate clock and data recovery (CDR) circuit using the full-rate bang-bang phase detector is presented. A frequency detector is proposed to eliminate the harmonic locking problem even with a wide range of data rates and its theoretical analysis is also discussed. A quadrature divider is also presented to generate the clocks with accurate quadrature phases. This CDR circuit has been realized in a 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS process and its die area is 1.1/spl times/0.8 mm/sup 2/. It consumes 95 mW at the highest bit rate of 3.125 Gbps. It can recover the NRZ data of a 2/sup 31/-1 PRBS with the bit rate ranging from 155.52 Mbps to 3.125Gbps for the incremental frequency acquisition and the NRZ data of a 2/sup 7/-1 PRBS for the decremental frequency acquisition. All the measured bit error rates are less than 10/sup -12/.     

Major depressive disorder in Taiwan defined by the Chinese diagnostic Interview Schedule

The lifetime prevalence rate of major depressive disorder (MDD), as defined by the Chinese Diagnostic Interview Schedule, is 1.14% in Taiwan. This is significantly lower than the lifetime prevalence rates reported in Western studies and similar to other studies in the Chinese population using similar methods for assessing cases of MDD. Epidemiological data from 136 MDD cases were analyzed to provide possible explanations for this difference in lifetime prevalence rates. The low rate of broken families in Chinese culture, low comorbidity rate, and older age of onset of MDD may suggest a reality of low lifetime prevalence rates of MDD in Taiwan.     

Improvement in ultrathin rapid thermal oxide uniformity by thecontrol of gas flow

A methodology to improve the temperature uniformity for the wafer in a rapid thermal processing (RTP) system is presented. The work aims at the temperature compensation at the wafer surface by thermal convection. From simulation results of the flow field, it is seen that the cold gas, while flowing from the periphery of the wafer toward the wafer center, causes a lower pressure at and around the center. This lower pressure is due to the flow away of gas by buoyancy and it aggregates thermal nonuniformity. A technique is suggested that consists of suppressing the upward gas flow using a transparent quartz cap above the monitored wafer. Simulation and experimental results show that by implementing this technique, the temperature uniformity of the wafer is improved     

Monolithic watt-level millimeter-wave diode-grid frequency tripler array

Thousands of solid-state diodes are monolithically integrated by a metal grid as a highly efficient frequency multiplier which promises watt-level CW output power throughout the millimeter and submillimeter wave region. Different devices such as GaAs Schottky diode, thin MOS diode, and GaAs Barrier-Intrinsic-N⁺ diode are employed in this study. The approach also results in low-cost fabication and small-size realization.