Lignosulfonate as a Strength Additive for Non-Wood Paperboard

Recycle mills that use old corrugated cardboard (OCC) in their furnish experience difficulties in maintaining the quality of the paperboard produced. Recycle mills using the OCC collect their OCC from many parts of the world. Countries such as China and Japan use rice fibers in the production of corrugated cardboard. Other countries use straw as a fiber source. The end result is that OCC in the United States contains a portion of non-wood fibers as well as the typical wood fibers. Paperboard containing these non-wood fibers typically has lower strength properties than paperboard produced from pure wood fibers. Literature suggests that lignosulfonate compounds can be used as a strength agent for recycled wood fiber paperboards. Calcium lignosulfonate is readily available and is not costly and would prove to be an ideal strength agent for use in recycled paperboard. The objective of this project was to test calcium lignosulfonate as a strength agent in improving the runnability and strength properties on paperboard made from wheat straw paperboard and/or paperboard containing a mixture of wheat straw and wood fibers. Handsheets (120g/m2 ) were prepared on a Noble and Wood handsheet machine. The handsheets from each furnish were then immersed in a bath of calcium lignosulfonate followed by an immersion in kymene. Calcium lignosulfonate levels were varied in the bath in order to control the amount of calcium lignosulfonate applied to each handsheet. The results show that as far as recycled pulp is concerned, CaLS at 10% is definitely beneficial compared with no CaLS in all strength properties. In the case of straw paperboard, 10% CaLS definitely gives higher strength properties compared with no CaLS (except for burst and Scott bond). Higher CaLS levels (10% or 20%) may be justified only in the case of ring crush. As for mixed fiber paperboard, CaLS seems to yield better strength properties (except in the case of Scott bond and burst). While 10% CaLS still seems to be sufficient, 20% seems to result in better crushing resistance and stiffness. The conclusion of this project is that 10% CaLS yields better strength properties in most of the cases and can be the starting point for further refinement studies

The second Book of Aristotle's Politics

The second Book of the Politics has been object of multiple considerations, but it has called the attention of the scholars mainly because of its detailed criticism of Plato's political projects, especially the Republic. In fact Aristotle devotes 6 of the 12 chapters of Book II to examine Plato's proposals. Most of the scholarly contributions are focused on the criticism of Plato trying either to demonstrate the justice of Aristotle's reproaches or to invalidate his chapters on the basis of a supposed inexactness of his words

The Socioeconomic Status of Hispanic New Yorkers: Current Trends and Future Prospects

Presents data showing the major demographic and socioeconomic changes in the Hispanic population of New York during the 1990s. Examines the trends in income, poverty, labor force status, and other economic and demographic indicators

The Ricardo puzzle

This paper tackles the puzzle of Ricardo’s stubborn commitment to a labor theory of value that he himself saw as no more than an approximation to reality and which was heavily opposed by Malthus, his most respected contemporary. We show it is wrong to think that the theory had no analytical use. Quite to the contrary, it was the only defence Ricardo could find against Malthus’ destructive criticism, which introduced an unacceptable degree of indetermination in his theory of profits. By adopting the labor theory of value, Ricardo drastically simplified the method of proof of his main proposition, which otherwise seemed to present unsurmountable analytical difficulties. The irony is that the proposition was correct, quite independently of the labor theory of value, but Ricardo was just unable to prove it.

Critical phenomena of the Majority voter model in a three dimensional cubic lattice

In this work we investigate the critical behavior of the three dimensional simple-cubic Majority voter model. Using numerical simulations and a combination of two different cumulants we evaluated the critical point with a higher accuracy than the previous numerical result found by Yang et al. [J.- S. Yang, I.-M. Kim and W. Kwak, Phys. Rev. E 77, 051122 (2008)]. Using standard Finite Size Scaling theory and scaling corrections we find that the critical exponents {\nu}, {\gamma} and {\beta} are the same as those of the three dimensional Ising model.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures. Accepted in PR

Representation of industrial products in the early stages of design: Drawing and artistic expression in industrial design

Comunicació presentada a ICERI 2018 11th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (Seville, Spain. 12-14 November, 2018)Hand drawing is a basic tool for industrial designers, as it allows them to represent and communicate concepts in an agile way during the initial design phase. Although we can find subjects related to drawing in the first years of all university degrees in industrial design, the way to implement the necessary activities is not always the most appropriate, and it may happen that, despite having practiced sketching, at the end of the course the students do not have the necessary skills to communicate their ideas effectively or adequately represent the reality that surrounds them. This paper proposes twelve groups of activities designed to help industrial design students acquire skills related to hand drawing. The activities were implemented during the second course of the Degree in Industrial Design and Product Development Engineering at Universitat Jaume I, improving those implemented during the last course. The paper analyzes and discusses the positive results of the innovations introduced, which improved the mean grade of the course by 4.48% with respect to the grade obtained the previous year

Disjointly homogeneous Banach lattices and applications

This is a survey on disjointly homogeneous Banach lattices and their applicactions. Several structural properties of this class are analyzed. In addition we show how these spaces provide a natural framework for studying the compactness of powers of operators allowing for a unified treatment of well-known results.Comment: 20 pages, to appear in Proceedings Positivity VII Conference (2013