Development of a computer programme for the design of municipal wastewater treatment facilities - Part 1 : the incoming conduit and screening faculty

A computer programme was developed using Fortran utilizing IBM-PC compatible microcomputers to design the primary sedimentation or clarification in a municipal wastewater treatment plant. The programme is used to determine the dimension and capacity of two rectangular primary sedimentation basins. The detention time 'and the overflow rate at an average design flow was investigated for the basins' designed dimensions. It also determined the dimension of the influent and emuent structure including the hydraulic flow profile in the basin. The weir loading at average design flow was also investigated. The sludge and scum quantities including the effluent quantities was also calculated. The programme was written in a subroutine called from the main programme which also call other subroutines for designing other facilities in the treatment plant. The programme runs successfully given the input data which is the average design flow calculated which based on the number of population served. The results are easy to interpret and automatically appear either on the computer screen or in an output file

IFRS introduction and its effect on listed companies in Spain

From the beginning of January 2005 publicly traded companies in the European Union have to comply with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for their consolidated accounts, as required by 1606/2002 European Commission Regulation. It had been suggested that the new accounting rules will facilitate not only the process of international harmonization of financial statements, but also efficient performance of financial markets and capital flows worldwide. This study analyzes the first results of IFRS implementation by Spanish non-financial listed companies.IFRS, IAS, Accounting harmonization

High-growth cooperatives: financial profile and key factors for competitiveness

Given the current economic environment, high-growth companies are particularly relevant for their contribution to employment generation and wealth. This paper discusses the results of a survey that was conducted in order to gain a deeper understanding of high-growth cooperatives through analyzing their financial profiles and then identifying key contributing factors to their growth. To do this, we compared this particular sample with other cooperatives and other high-growth mercantile companies. The results show the main drivers related to high-growth companies success. They are the competitive advantages based on the surveyed group, modern management techniques, quality and productivity, innovation and internationalization. Additionally, we have observed some financial strengths and weaknesses. In this sense, they are under capitalized companies with an unbalanced growth.Worker cooperatives, service cooperatives, high-growth cooperatives, competitiveness factors, financial information, management tools.

High-growth cooperatives: Financial profile and key factors for competitiveness

Given the current economic environment, high-growth companies are particularly relevant for their contribution to employment generation and wealth. This paper discusses the results of a survey that was conducted in order to gain a deeper understanding of high-growth cooperatives through analyzing their financial profiles and then identifying key contributing factors to their growth. To do this, we compared this particular sample with other cooperatives and other high-growth mercantile companies. The results show the main drivers related to high-growth companies success. They are the competitive advantages based on the surveyed group, modern management techniques, quality and productivity, innovation and internationalization. Additionally, we have observed some financial strengths and weaknesses. In this sense, they are under capitalized companies with an unbalanced growth.Worker cooperatives, service cooperatives, high-growth cooperatives, competitiveness factors, financial information, management tools.

Good Concatenated Code Ensembles for the Binary Erasure Channel

In this work, we give good concatenated code ensembles for the binary erasure channel (BEC). In particular, we consider repeat multiple-accumulate (RMA) code ensembles formed by the serial concatenation of a repetition code with multiple accumulators, and the hybrid concatenated code (HCC) ensembles recently introduced by Koller et al. (5th Int. Symp. on Turbo Codes & Rel. Topics, Lausanne, Switzerland) consisting of an outer multiple parallel concatenated code serially concatenated with an inner accumulator. We introduce stopping sets for iterative constituent code oriented decoding using maximum a posteriori erasure correction in the constituent codes. We then analyze the asymptotic stopping set distribution for RMA and HCC ensembles and show that their stopping distance hmin, defined as the size of the smallest nonempty stopping set, asymptotically grows linearly with the block length. Thus, these code ensembles are good for the BEC. It is shown that for RMA code ensembles, contrary to the asymptotic minimum distance dmin, whose growth rate coefficient increases with the number of accumulate codes, the hmin growth rate coefficient diminishes with the number of accumulators. We also consider random puncturing of RMA code ensembles and show that for sufficiently high code rates, the asymptotic hmin does not grow linearly with the block length, contrary to the asymptotic dmin, whose growth rate coefficient approaches the Gilbert-Varshamov bound as the rate increases. Finally, we give iterative decoding thresholds for the different code ensembles to compare the convergence properties.Comment: To appear in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, special issue on Capacity Approaching Code

Threshold Saturation for Nonbinary SC-LDPC Codes on the Binary Erasure Channel

We analyze the asymptotic performance of nonbinary spatially-coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) code ensembles defined over the general linear group on the binary erasure channel. In particular, we prove threshold saturation of belief propagation decoding to the so called potential threshold, using the proof technique based on potential functions introduced by Yedla \textit{et al.}, assuming that the potential function exists. We rewrite the density evolution of nonbinary SC-LDPC codes in an equivalent vector recursion form which is suited for the use of the potential function. We then discuss the existence of the potential function for the general case of vector recursions defined by multivariate polynomials, and give a method to construct it. We define a potential function in a slightly more general form than one by Yedla \textit{et al.}, in order to make the technique based on potential functions applicable to the case of nonbinary LDPC codes. We show that the potential function exists if a solution to a carefully designed system of linear equations exists. Furthermore, we show numerically the existence of a solution to the system of linear equations for a large number of nonbinary LDPC code ensembles, which allows us to define their potential function and thus prove threshold saturation.Comment: To appear in IT Transaction

Origin and genetic diversity of diploid parthenogenetic Artemia in Eurasia

There is wide interest in understanding how genetic diversity is generated and maintained in parthenogenetic lineages, as it will help clarify the debate of the evolution and maintenance of sexual reproduction. There are three mechanisms that can be responsible for the generation of genetic diversity of parthenogenetic lineages: contagious parthenogenesis, repeated hybridization and microorganism infections (e.g. Wolbachia). Brine shrimps of the genus Artemia (Crustacea, Branchiopoda, Anostraca) are a good model system to investigate evolutionary transitions between reproductive systems as they include sexual species and lineages of obligate parthenogenetic populations of different ploidy level, which often co-occur. Diploid parthenogenetic lineages produce occasional fully functional rare males, interspecific hybridization is known to occur, but the mechanisms of origin of asexual lineages are not completely understood. Here we sequenced and analysed fragments of one mitochondrial and two nuclear genes from an extensive set of populations of diploid parthenogenetic Artemia and sexual species from Central and East Asia to investigate the evolutionary origin of diploid parthenogenetic Artemia, and geographic origin of the parental taxa. Our results indicate that there are at least two, possibly three independent and recent maternal origins of parthenogenetic lineages, related to A. urmiana and Artemia sp. from Kazakhstan, but that the nuclear genes are very closely related in all the sexual species and parthenogegetic lineages except for A. sinica, who presumable took no part on the origin of diploid parthenogenetic strains. Our data cannot rule out either hybridization between any of the very closely related Asiatic sexual species or rare events of contagious parthenogenesis via rare males as the contributing mechanisms to the generation of genetic diversity in diploid parthenogenetic Artemia lineages

Distributed Turbo-Like Codes for Multi-User Cooperative Relay Networks

In this paper, a distributed turbo-like coding scheme for wireless networks with relays is proposed. We consider a scenario where multiple sources communicate with a single destination with the help of a relay. The proposed scheme can be regarded as of the decode-and-forward type. The relay decodes the information from the sources and it properly combines and re-encodes them to generate some extra redundancy, which is transmitted to the destination. The amount of redundancy generated by the relay can simply be adjusted according to requirements in terms of performance, throughput and/or power. At the destination, decoding of the information of all sources is performed jointly exploiting the redundancy provided by the relay in an iterative fashion. The overall communication network can be viewed as a serially concatenated code. The proposed distributed scheme achieves significant performance gains with respect to the non-cooperation system, even for a very large number of users. Furthermore, it presents a high flexibility in terms of code rate, block length and number of users.Comment: Submitted to ICC 201