The world's great solid waste management libraries

Solid waste knowledge is hard won and too easily lost. A large amount of that knowledge resides in each of our small offices. Many of us use photocopies of photocopies of reports from the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s, which may contain important data on topics like the performance of trommels for processing finished compost, or historic data on leachate quality, or economy-of-scale factors for incinerators. More and more, new professionals in the solid waste field do not know of these key documents and so are prone to wasting time and money pursuing information once known but now hidden

Coulombic Energy Transfer and Triple Ionization in Clusters

Using neon and its dimer as a specific example, it is shown that excited Auger decay channels that are electronically stable in the isolated monomer can relax in a cluster by electron emission. The decay mechanism, leading to the formation of a tricationic cluster, is based on an efficient energy-transfer process from the excited, dicationic monomer to a neighbor. The decay is ultrafast and expected to be relevant to numerous physical phenomena involving core holes in clusters and other forms of spatially extended atomic and molecular matter.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, to be published in PR

Site-specific management units in a commercial maize plot delineated using very high resolution remote sensing and soil properties mapping

14 Pags. The definitive version, with tabls. and figs., is available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01681699The joint use of satellite imagery and digital soil maps derived from soil sampling is investigated in the present paper with the goal of proposing site-specific management units (SSMU) within a commercial field plot. Very high resolution Quickbird imagery has been used to derive leaf area index (LAI) maps in maize canopies in two different years. Soil properties maps were obtained from the interpolation of ion concentrations (Na, Mg, Ca, K and P) and texture determined in soil samples and also from automatic readings of electromagnetic induction (EMI) readings taken with a mobile sensor. Links between the image-derived LAI and soil properties were established, making it possible to differentiate units within fields subject to abiotic stress associated with soil sodicity, a small water-holding capacity or flooding constraints. In accordance with the previous findings, the delineation of SSMUs is proposed, describing those field areas susceptible of variable-rate management for agricultural inputs such as water or fertilizing, or soil limitation correctors such as gypsum application in the case of sodicity problems. This demonstrates the suitability of spatial information technologies such as remote sensing and digital soil mapping in the context of precision agriculture.The Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA) funded the PhD grant of the first author. This work is a result of the project RTA2005-00230, funded by INIA. The contribution of the project AGL2009-08931/AGR is also recognized.Peer reviewe

Tempo-Express, a CBR Approach to Musical Tempo Transformations

The original publication is available at www.springerlink.comIn this paper, we describe a CBR system for applying musically acceptable tempo transformations to monophonic audio recordings of musical performances. Within the tempo transformation process, the expressivity of the performance is adjusted in such a way that the result sounds natural for the new tempo. A case base of previously performed melodies is used to infer the appropriate expressivity. Tempo transformation is one of the audio post-processing tasks manually done in audiolabs. Automatizing this process may, therefore, be of industrial interest.This research has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology under the project TIC 2003-07776-C2-02 "CBR-ProMusic: Content-based Music Processing using CBR" and EU-FEDER funds.Peer reviewe

Effect of annealing treatments on the anisotropy of a magnesium alloy sheet processed by severe rolling

The effect of annealing treatments on the normal plastic anisotropy (r-value) of a magnesium alloy, AZ61, processed by severe rolling was investigated. The various annealing treatments produce two effects on microstructure: grain coarsening and slight weakening of the texture. In addition, these treatments produce a noticeable decrease of the anisotropy that was correlated with an increase in strain rate sensitivity and a decrease of work hardening rate. It is concluded that an enhanced contribution of basal slip occurs as a consequence of the annealing treatments.The authors acknowledge the financial support from the CICYT grant MAT 2006-02672 awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science.Peer reviewe