An Expert System for Managing an Activated Sludge Wastewater Treatment Plant

A diagnostic expert system for an activated sludge wastewater treatment plant has been designed to link with a relational database management system for obtaining operational parameter values that are used by the program to diagnose operational problems that may occur in the process. The problems that are dealt with by the system are bulking sludge, floating sludge, defloculation, ashing, solids washout, foaming problems, high soluble effluent BOD and problems in the aeration system. The link between the expert system and the database is accomplished via programming that is initiated by the expert system program. The operator of the system is not required to perform any action in order for the appropriate retrievals of operational parameter values to occur. The system is designed such that parameter values are retrieved from the database if such a database exists and contains appropriate values and, if no such database exists or if the appropriate values are not present, the operator is queried for the parameter values. Since many wastewater treatment plants maintain database management systems for operational parameter values, such an expert system has advantages over stand alone systems. However, an override of the database query is possible, making the system useful for experimental queries and for training

The Industry R&D Survey – Patent Database Link Project

This paper details the construction of a firm-year panel dataset combining the NBER Patent Dataset with the Industry R&D Survey conducted by the Census Bureau and National Science Foundation. The developed platform offers an unprecedented view of the R&D-to-patenting innovation process and a close analysis of the strengths and limitations of the Industry R&D Survey. The files are linked through a name-matching algorithm customized for uniting the firm names to which patents are assigned with the firm names in Census Bureau’s SSEL business registry. Through the Census Bureau’s file structure, this R&D platform can be linked to the operating performances of each firm’s establishments, further facilitating innovation-to-productivity studies.innovation, research and development, patents, scientists, technology

Ford Foundation - 2009 Annual Report

Contains president's and board chair's messages; grantee profiles; governance and program information; grants summary; financial statements; and lists of board members and staff. HTML Version contains detailed grantee profiles and link to grants database

A database/knowledge structure for a robotics vision system

Desirable properties of robotics vision database systems are given, and structures which possess properties appropriate for some aspects of such database systems are examined. Included in the structures discussed is a family of networks in which link membership is determined by measures of proximity between pairs of the entities stored in the database. This type of network is shown to have properties which guarantee that the search for a matching feature vector is monotonic. That is, the database can be searched with no backtracking, if there is a feature vector in the database which matches the feature vector of the external entity which is to be identified. The construction of the database is discussed, and the search procedure is presented. A section on the support provided by the database for description of the decision-making processes and the search path is also included

The contextual database of the Generations and Gender Program: overview, conceptual framework and the link to the Generations and Gender Survey

This paper follows two aims. First it intends to give an overview of the contextual database of the Generations and Gender Program and how it is linked to the Generations and Gender Survey. Secondly, it provides a documentation of the approaches taken towards the conceptual definition and construction of the database. The document consists of two parts. The first gives a brief description of the underlying ideas of the database and the approach taken in order to develop its conceptual framework and construct the database. The second part is a note on the link between the Generations and Gender Survey and the contextual database. Starting from the GGS questionnaire, the main interfaces between micro data and contextual domains are investigated.data collection

The Actions and Feelings Questionnaire in Autism and Typically Developed Adults

Open access via Springer Compact Agreement We are grateful to Simon Baron-Cohen and Paula Smith of the Cambridge Autism Centre for the use of the ARC database in distributing the questionnaire, to all participants for completing it, to Eilidh Farquar for special efforts in distributing the link and to Gemma Matthews for advice on using AMOS 23. JHGW is supported by the Northwood Trust.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Online learning and fun with databases

In this paper, we explore how online learning can support face-to-face teaching in fundamental database theory and the contributions it can make towards motivating and enhancing the student learning experience. We show how we have used WebCT for a third level database module and present student feedback to our approach. While online participation is high overall, motivation for self-learning is increased by the use of self-assessment exercises and summative assessment was also considered to be more fun online than using paper based equivalents. Evidence exists to link greater online participation of course materials to improved performance. We complement our feedback by presenting and discussing a number of software tools which help students practice important methods in database systems, including SQL. After evaluating these against known methods for improving student motivation, we suggest ideas for further development of more game-like learning tools