Participatory process management

Although the process of public and stakeholder participation continues to be intensively investigated and discussed in academic circles, the implementation of participatory methods in practice remains problematic. This can be attributed to the lack of knowledge transfer on the one hand, and the general underestimation of participatory approaches in planning processes on the other.\ud A possible solution - participatory processmanagement - is introduced in this article. Participatory process management means that all participatory activities are embedded in the overall planning activities of a project. The most significant criteria for a participatory process are identified as ’objectives’, ’constraints’ and ’process’which together forma framework for combining generally applicablemethodswith local constraints and the objectives of a project. Themain elements of the participatory management framework introduced here are levels and classes of participation and a generic process scheme includingmonitoring and evaluation of participatory processes. This work is based upon long-term experiences of consultants and scientists. However, the insights from the InterReg project TRUST are particularly valuable and confirm the hypotheses that different water management projects are comparable in terms of their participatory process performance. The participatory management framework is a step forward in closing the gap between scientific knowledge about participatory methods and their applicability in practice

Influence of measurement volume on predicted attrition by the distinct element method

During agitated drying and mixing processes, particle beds are exposed to shear deformation. This leads to particle attrition, the extent of which is dependent on the prevailing stresses and strains in the bed. The distributions of shear stresses and strain rates within the bed are highly non-uniform, requiring attention to localised conditions. Therefore a narrow angular sector of the bed is divided radially and vertically into a number of measurement cells, within which the stresses and strain rates are calculated throughout one rotation by the Distinct Element Method. These are then used in an empirical relationship of material breakage to predict the extent of attrition due to agitation. Here we investigate the influence of the measurement cell size on the estimated stresses and strain rates, and the subsequent effect on the predicted attrition. The measurement cell size is altered by varying the measurement sector size and the number of radial and vertical divisions within it. The median particle size is also varied to establish its influence on the predicted attrition. An increase in the average number of particles in a given cell, by varying the particle size or measurement cell dimensions, leads to a reduction in the estimated stresses and strain rates, and therefore a reduction in the predicted attrition. Comparison of the predicted attrition with the experimental breakage in the agitated vessel shows that the prediction method is accurate when the cell dimensions are comparable to the width of a naturally occurring shear band

Stress and strain rate analysis of the FT4 Powder Rheometer

The Freeman FT4 Powder Rheometer has been reported to describe well the powder flow behaviour in instances where other techniques fail. We use DEM to simulate the FT4 operation for slightly cohesive large glass beads at a range of strain rates. The curved impeller is shown to be beneficial in comparison to a flat blade as the variation of shear stress across the blade is reduced. The shear stress in front of the blade correlates well with flow energy (which the device measures) for a range of tip speeds and is shown to increase approximately linearly with tip speed when operating beyond the quasi-static regime

Cross-shelf and seasonal variation in larval fish assemblages on the southeast United States continental shelf off the coast of Georgia

Seasonal and cross-shelf patterns were investigated in larval fish assemblages on the continental shelf off the coast of Georgia. The influence of environmental factors on larval distributions also was examined, and larval transport processes on the shelf were considered. Ichthyoplankton and environmental data were collected approximately every other month from spring 2000 to winter 2002. Ten stations were repeatedly sampled along a 110-km cross-shelf transect, including four stations in the vicinity of Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary. Correspondence analysis (CA) on untransformed community data identified two seasonal (warm weather [spring, summer, and fall] and winter) and three cross-shelf larval assemblages (inner-, mid-, and outer-shelf ). Five environmental factors (temperature, salinity, density, depth of the water column, and stratification) were related to larval cross-shelf distribution. Specifically, increased water column stratification was associated with the outer-shelf assemblage in spring, summer, and fall. The inner shelf assemblage was associated with generally lower temperatures and lower salinities in the spring and summer and higher salinities in the winter. The three cross-shelf regions indicated by the three assemblages coincided with the location of three primary water masses on the shelf. However, taxa occurring together within an assemblage were transported to different parts of the shelf; thus, transport across the continental shelf off the coast of Georgia cannot be explained solely by twodimensional physical factors

Classifying Cantor Sets by their Fractal Dimensions

In this article we study Cantor sets defined by monotone sequences, in the sense of Besicovitch and Taylor. We classify these Cantor sets in terms of their h-Hausdorff and h-Packing measures, for the family of dimension functions h, and characterize this classification in terms of the underlying sequences.Comment: 10 pages, revised version. To appear in Proceedings of the AMS