Growth Rate of Stony Corals of Broward County, Florida: Effects from Past Beach Renourishment Projects

The skeletal growth of hermatypic (reef-building) corals is a sensitive indicator of environmental conditions and perturbations. In particular, excessive sedimentation and turbidity act to depress coral growth because energy expenditure is required to remove sediment and because turbidity reduces light energy necessary for coral health and nutrition. Normalized annual growth (linear skeletal extension) rates of Broward County, Florida reef-building corals were over 16 years (1985-1970). Star corals (Montastrea annularis) and brain corals (Diploria labyrinthiformis) were collected from each of four reef sites at two depths (9m and 18m). Collection areas were located in the vicinity of possible adverse sedimentation/turbidity effects from one or more of six past beach renourishment projects. Coral growth differences among sites at particular years and among years within sites were statistically evaluated. Years tested included those of and subsequent to each of six past beach renourishment projects. The results are suggestive that, in general, Broward County beach renourishment projects have had minor or no influence on currently living off-shore corals. However, following the Hollywood-Hallandale renourishment project of 1979, D. labyrinthiformis from the Hollywood 18m site exhibited significantly lower normalized growth compared to other sites. This may not represent effects from the renourishment project. At the Hollywood site M. annularis from both 9m and 18m and D. labyrinthiformis from 9m did not exhibit significantly lowered growth in comparison to other sites. Site averages of absolute coral growth indicated that southern 9m specimens had higher rates of growth than northern counterparts for M. annularis. In the southern collection sites, 9m growth of both species tended to be greater than 18m growth. Correlation analysis indicated that the time pattern of coral growth is similar among sites, species, and depths. Comparison of time series of coral growth data to recorded environmental variables (temperature and salinity) revealed a positive relation with salinity (water density) variations

Quality control by a mobile molecular workshop: quality versus quantity

Ribosome is a molecular machine that moves on a mRNA track while, simultaneously, polymerizing a protein using the mRNA also as the corresponding template. We define, and analytically calculate, two different measures of the efficiency of this machine. However, we arugue that its performance is evaluated better in terms of the translational fidelity and the speed with which it polymerizes a protein. We define both these quantities and calculate these analytically. Fidelity is a measure of the quality of the products while the total quantity of products synthesized in a given interval depends on the speed of polymerization. We show that for synthesizing a large quantity of proteins, it is not necessary to sacrifice the quality. We also explore the effects of the quality control mechanism on the strength of mechano-chemical coupling. We suggest experiments for testing some of the ideas presented here.Comment: Final version published in Physical Review

Quality control of microelectronic wire bonds

Report evaluates ultrasonic bonding of small-diameter aluminum wire joined to ceramic substrates metalized with thin-film and thick-film gold. Quick testing technique for nondestructive location of poor wire bonds is also presented

Analysis and Quality Control from ARIMA Modeling

In this paper, we use ARIMA modelling to estimate a set of characteristics of a short-term indicator (for example, the index of industrial production), as trends, seasonal variations, cyclical oscillations, unpredictability, deterministic effects (as a strike), etc. Thus for each sector and product (more than 1000), we construct a vector of values corresponding to the above-mentioned characteristics, that can be used for data editing

Intergration of control chart and pattern recognizer for bivariate quality control

Monitoring and diagnosis of mean shifts in manufacturing processes become more challenging when involving two or more correlated variables. Unfortunately, most of the existing multivariate statistical process control schemes are only effective in rapid detection but suffer high false alarm. This is referred to as imbalanced performance monitoring. The problem becomes more complicated when dealing with small mean shift particularly in identifying the causable variables. In this research, a scheme that integrated the control charting and pattern recognition technique has been investigated toward improving the quality control (QC) performance. Design considerations involved extensive simulation experiments to select input representation based on raw data and statistical features, recognizer design structure based on individual and Statistical Features-ANN models, and monitoring-diagnosis approach based on single stage and two stages techniques. The study focuses on correlated process mean shifts for cross correlation function, ρ = 0.1, 0.5, 0.9, and mean shift, μ = ± 0.75 ~ 3.00 standard deviations. Among the investigated design, an Integrated Multivariate Exponentially Weighted Moving Average with Artificial Neural Network scheme provides superior performance, namely the Average Run Length for grand average ARL1 = 7.55 7.78 ( for out-of-control) and ARL0 = 491.03 (small mean shift) and 524.80 (large mean shift) in control process and the grand average for recognition accuracy (RA) = 96.36 98.74. This research has provided a new perspective in realizing balanced monitoring and accurate diagnosis of correlated process mean shifts

Conceptual quality modelling and integrated control of combined urban drainage system

This paper presents the first results of conceptual quality modelling approach oriented to the integrated real-time control (RTC) strategy for urban drainage networks (UDN) and wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) developed in the European project LIFE EFFIDRAIN (Efficient Integrated Real-time Control in Urban Drainage and Wastewater Treatment Plants for Environmental Protection). Model predictive control (MPC) has been selected as a proper RTC to minimize the polluting discharge in case of raining events. The simulator SWMM5 was modified to integrate a lumped conceptual model for total suspended solids (TSS) called SWMM-TSS, which has been used as virtual reality for calibration and validation of the proposed modelling approaches in Perinot network, a real case study in Bordeaux.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Quality control and product tracing in ERP systems

Food safety and quality are keys to companies' business survival and great efforts and resources are devoted to them. This is an on-going challenge, demanding the best control systems and day- to-day vigilance on farms, in processing plants and throughout the distribution system. The product quality of the Hungarian meet industry meets the high level international standards, because the Hungarian meet industry is an export oriented sector. However, the application of computers and information systems still haven’t got enough emphasis in the food sector, although the majority of companies use ERP systems. IT budgets of Hungarian companies are smaller than of the ones in industrialized countries. They spend 0.49% of their return from sales on IT operation and development. We find different rates among Hungarian owners and foreign owners. The Hungarian ones spend less (0.36%), but foreigners spend twice this amount (0.61) on informatics. Quality control is conducted at several stages of the production flow. The most important targets are basic materials coming from partners, purchased and processed products and foods. We have to be able to identify and determine what ingredients there are in the end-products and what the production and distribution processes were. Sometimes this refers to a process backwards that we have to conduct when we discover a mistake in the production flow or in the quality of the end-product. Back- tracing is a six stage flow in the system. Our paper and lecture describes how the ERP system is built-in food tracing functions and experiences in Hungary