A Journal for the Astronomical Computing Community?

One of the Birds of a Feather (BoF) discussion sessions at ADASS XX considered whether a new journal is needed to serve the astronomical computing community. In this paper we discuss the nature and requirements of that community, outline the analysis that led us to propose this as a topic for a BoF, and review the discussion from the BoF session itself. We also present the results from a survey designed to assess the suitability of astronomical computing papers of different kinds for publication in a range of existing astronomical and scientific computing journals. The discussion in the BoF session was somewhat inconclusive, and it seems likely that this topic will be debated again at a future ADASS or in a similar forum.Comment: 4 pages, no figures; to appear in proceedings of ADASS X

The bag-of-frames approach: a not so sufficient model for urban soundscapes

The "bag-of-frames" approach (BOF), which encodes audio signals as the long-term statistical distribution of short-term spectral features, is commonly regarded as an effective and sufficient way to represent environmental sound recordings (soundscapes) since its introduction in an influential 2007 article. The present paper describes a concep-tual replication of this seminal article using several new soundscape datasets, with results strongly questioning the adequacy of the BOF approach for the task. We show that the good accuracy originally re-ported with BOF likely result from a particularly thankful dataset with low within-class variability, and that for more realistic datasets, BOF in fact does not perform significantly better than a mere one-point av-erage of the signal's features. Soundscape modeling, therefore, may not be the closed case it was once thought to be. Progress, we ar-gue, could lie in reconsidering the problem of considering individual acoustical events within each soundscape

"Matrix Exponential Stochastic Volatility with Cross Leverage"

This paper examines the economic impact of re-invention - the degree to which an innovation is modified by user - on industry growth and productivity. The paper focuses on two re-inventions made by a Japanese steel company; these inventions improved the productive efficiency of Austrian-made refining technology, namely, basic oxygen furnace (BOF). Results obtained from the plant-level production-function estimation indicate that re-inventions account for approximately 30 percent of the total factor productivity of the BOF, substantially promoting the dissemination of the BOF technology. Our simulation analysis indeed reveals that re-inventions contributed to steel output growth by about 14 percent. This paper also documents that innovating companies played the role of a "lead user" in developing and disseminating their re-invented technologies.

Potassium citrate-activated pure BOF slag-based mortars utilizing carbonated and autoclaved BOF slag aggregates

This study proposes novel basic oxygen furnace (BOF) slag mortars formulated with tri-potassium citrate (TPC) activated BOF slag as binder and treated BOF slag (carbonated (CB) and autoclaved (AB)) as aggregates, aiming to maximize the utilization of BOF slag in the construction industry. Untreated BOF slag (UB) and natural sand (NS) were employed as reference aggregates. The effects of carbonation and autoclaving were investigated, focusing on the interfacial transition zone (ITZ) properties through SEM-BSE greyscale thresholding and constituent segmentation analysis. Results indicate that both treatments reduce the free CaO, promote CaCO3 formation, and modify the aggregate surface. The 28 d compressive strength of pure BOF slag-based mortars with UB, CB, and AB aggregates are 25.8, 29.4, and 34.8 MPa (average at varying TPC dosages), significantly higher than that with NS (19.6 MPa). Pure BOF slag-based mortars also show narrower ITZ thicknesses and the absence of bond cracks. Mortars with CB and AB aggregates exhibit fewer unreacted particles and more hydration products within the integral binder region compared to those with UB. Overall, pure BOF slag-based mortars present a more robust aggregate/binder interface that is further enhanced by the aggregate treatments. Leaching values of all mortars are well below the Dutch legal limits. The findings suggest promising application prospects for pure BOF slag-based mortars in substituting cement mortars and valorizing BOF slag

Interactive industrial application to represent isothermal sections of multi component phase diagram

“Make the slag and the steel will make itself” is an old phrase in steelmaking. The converter or basic oxygen furnace (BOF) process is a necessary step in the steel production during which carbon, phosphorus and other impurities present in the hot metal, coming from the blast furnace, are removed and steel is produced. This steel is tapped from the converter and further refined, next cast, rolled and finished. The BOF process is complex due to many reasons: high temperatures, multiple phases present, interactions of kinetics and thermodynamics, etc. Emphasis in this work is put upon the BOF steelmaking slag. Yet, even though this has been topic of many research projects no full understanding of all the slag related phenomena has been far from achieved. One of the difficulties is the multi-component nature of the slag. In its most simplified form, the slag is a three component system consisting of CaO, SiO2 and FeOn. However, in practical applications this slag contains more than three components, making graphical representations of equilibria complex and difficult. This work shows the potential to apply CALPHAD based data for industrial applications via an interactive visual tool. Isothermal sections of multi-components phase diagrams were constructed with Factsage 7.1 software. Addition of extra components to the calculated isothermal sections, gives a graphical representation which can be used to gain insight in certain observed phenomena in the BOF process. To illustrate that the interactive visualisation yields an interesting tool to integrate CALPHAD based calculations in industry two case studies from steelmaking are discussed: the effect of MgO upon the refractory wear and the effect of MgO upon dephosphorization