Estimating Pure Diffusion Contributions in Alkaline Pulping Processes

A model that predicts isothermal alkali diffusion and reaction with acetyl groups in moist wood chips was derived and approximated. System parameters were estimated from unsteady-state experimental data. Simulation results reinforce the idea that the diffusion effect is not fully exploited in pulping processes. Traditionally, digestion is conducted at high temperature, where delignification reaction kinetics is enhanced and the reaction effect is predominant. This approach is being reviewed by modern industry since energy and environmental savings associated with low temperature operation might compensate for high-yield productivity. The concentration of alkali at the center of the chip is a measure of the completeness of wood deacetylation, which translates into the aptitude of the final product for pulping purposes. This concentration is predicted here from the solution to a pair of coupled ODE’s. Since alternatives combining both low and high-temperature processes are being studied, the results in this paper provide basic data for optimization analysis.Fil: Costanza, Vicente. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; ArgentinaFil: Costanza, Pedro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; Argentin

Xerox Cuts Costs Without Layoffs Through Union-Management Collaboration

The case study that follows deals with Xerox Corporation, a multinational equipment manufacturing company that decided to work with its union to find ways to use employees\u27 skills and new technologies in addressing economic problems in its manufacturing division. The specific labor-management cooperation project described here began after the Xerox Corporation decided that to produce some of its products competitively, it would need to save over 53 million in production costs. At first, the only solution the company saw was closing down one department, laying off ISO employees, and subcontracting the manufacturing of component parts. But this did not happen. Instead, the company and union agreed to try the unorthodox route of collaboration to solve economic and production problems—without any layoffs. This collaborative effort came despite a companywide downsizing policy that resulted in extensive layoffs throughout Xerox

A differentiable trajectory approximation to turbulent diffusion

The problem of turbulent diffusion is posed as determining the time evolution of the probability density of the concentration given those for the fluid velocity components, sources, and the initial concentration. At each time, all variables are elements of the Hilbert space L^2_R(R^3), and a finite-dimensional approximation based on expansions in orthonormal basis functions is developed. An expression for the joint probability density of all the Fourier coefficients is derived, the evaluation of which is shown to be particularly straightforward. Diffusion of material from a single source in an unbounded mildly turbulent fluid is considered as an application

¿Quo Vadis? Reclutamiento y Contratacion de Trabajadores Migrantes y su Acceso a la Seguridad Social: dinamicas de los sistemas de trabajo temporal migratorio en Norte y Centroamerica

Different regions and countries of the world face a serious need to design and make use of necessary policies and resources to better manage worker migration, thus ensuring the welfare and human rights of these people who, in the end, are of benefit to their society of origin, as well as the receiving society. Although international labor migration may turn out to be productive for many people, many of these migrant workers have unsatisfactory living and working conditions. While it is likely that their labor conditions are better than in their own country, in many cases they are inferior to the working conditions of nationals in their receiving country. Despite international standards to protect migrant workers, their labor rights are frequently abused, especially if they have immigrated in an irregular fashion. In this context, INEDIM took on the task of developing an integral and comprehensive document regarding different migrant worker and visa systems in Central and North America.The work presented here holds enormous value for delving in-depth to the forms of management of temporary migrant workers, as well as their access and guarantees to social and labor protection in North and Central America. This report addresses the problem of management of labor migrant flows among countries in our region. This study is based on an ordered and scrupulous methodology in which different migration systems and visa schemes for the hiring of temporary migrant workers are analyzed from the perspective of protection, respect for, guarantees and promotion of human rights. The study analyzes six systems that seek to regulate temporary migration in the region along the Central and North American corridor. The countries involved in these six systems are El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Canada, the United States, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The authors carry out a thorough and well-structured study based on two focuses of analysis: first, the processes for recruiting and contracting migrant workers and secondly, access to social protection for temporary migrant workers by means of the right to social security. From these two focuses, the authors are able to identify and demonstrate structural insufficiencies and gaps in the analyzed systems, which should guarantee labor security and social security for these workers

On random primitive sets, directable NDFAs and the generation of slowly synchronizing DFAs

We tackle the problem of the randomized generation of slowly synchronizing deterministic automata (DFAs) by generating random primitive sets of matrices. We show that when the randomized procedure is too simple the exponent of the generated sets is O(n log n) with high probability, thus the procedure fails to return DFAs with large reset threshold. We extend this result to random nondeterministic automata (NDFAs) by showing, in particular, that a uniformly sampled NDFA has both a 2-directing word and a 3-directing word of length O(n log n) with high probability. We then present a more involved randomized algorithm that manages to generate DFAs with large reset threshold and we finally leverage this finding for exhibiting new families of DFAs with reset threshold of order $\Omega(n^2/4)$.Comment: 31 pages, 9 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1805.0672

Costs and Benefits of Labour Mobility Between the EU and the Eastern Partnership Partner Countries. Country Report: Germany

This study provides an overview of the situation of migrants from Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries in Germany, with this chapter particularly focusing on the labour market integration of EaP migrants, their access to social assistance and social services, and the impact of these flows on the German labour market. We then provide an informed view of the scope for future increased mobility between Germany and EaP countries, in the light of the skills needs and demographic trends expected in the next 10 to 20 years. Based on the results, the following conclusions can be drawn. More than half of EaP migrants come to Germany for work and study purposes. Family reunification is important for Ukrainians and Moldovans. Work and family purposes are the two main residence grounds for migrants from Moldova and Ukraine, while the other nationalities hold residence permits for reasons of study and work in most cases

Beyond GDP: the need for new measures of progress

This repository item contains a single issue of The Pardee Papers, a series papers that began publishing in 2008 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. The Pardee Papers series features working papers by Pardee Center Fellows and other invited authors. Papers in this series explore current and future challenges by anticipating the pathways to human progress, human development, and human well-being. This series includes papers on a wide range of topics, with a special emphasis on interdisciplinary perspectives and a development orientation.This paper is a call for better indicators of human well-being in nations around the world. We critique the inappropriate use of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of national well-being, something for which it was never designed. We also question the idea that economic growth is always synonymous with improved well-being. Useful measures of progress and well-being must be measures of the degree to which society’s goals (i.e., to sustainably provide basic human needs for food, shelter, freedom, participation, etc.) are met, rather than measures of the mere volume of marketed economic activity, which is only one means to that end. Various alternatives and complements to GDP are discussed in terms of their motives, objectives, and limitations. Some of these are revised measures of economic activity while others measure changes in community capital—natural, social, human, and built—in an attempt to measure the extent to which development is using up the principle of community capital rather than living off its interest. We conclude that much useful work has been done; many of the alternative indicators have been used successfully in various levels of community planning. But the continued misuse of GDP as a measure of well-being necessitates an immediate, aggressive, and ongoing campaign to change the indicators that decision makers are using to guide policies and evaluate progress. We need indicators that promote truly sustainable development—development that improves the quality of human life while living within the carrying capacity of the supporting ecosystems. We end with a call for consensus on appropriate new measures of progress toward this new social goal

Ellipse-preserving Hermite interpolation and subdivision

We introduce a family of piecewise-exponential functions that have the Hermite interpolation property. Our design is motivated by the search for an effective scheme for the joint interpolation of points and associated tangents on a curve with the ability to perfectly reproduce ellipses. We prove that the proposed Hermite functions form a Riesz basis and that they reproduce prescribed exponential polynomials. We present a method based on Green's functions to unravel their multi-resolution and approximation-theoretic properties. Finally, we derive the corresponding vector and scalar subdivision schemes, which lend themselves to a fast implementation. The proposed vector scheme is interpolatory and level-dependent, but its asymptotic behaviour is the same as the classical cubic Hermite spline algorithm. The same convergence properties---i.e., fourth order of approximation---are hence ensured