Exploring Environmental Inequity in South Korea: An Analysis of the Distribution of Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) Facilities and Toxic Releases

Recently, location data regarding the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) in South Korea was released to the public. This study investigated the spatial patterns of TRIs and releases of toxic substances in all 230 local governments in South Korea to determine whether spatial clusters relevant to the siting of noxious facilities occur. In addition, we employed spatial regression modeling to determine whether the number of TRI facilities and the volume of toxic releases in a given community were correlated with the community's socioeconomic, racial, political, and land use characteristics. We found that the TRI facilities and their toxic releases were disproportionately distributed with clustered spatial patterning. Spatial regression modeling indicated that jurisdictions with smaller percentages of minorities, stronger political activity, less industrial land use, and more commercial land use had smaller numbers of toxic releases, as well as smaller numbers of TRI facilities. However, the economic status of the community did not affect the siting of hazardous facilities. These results indicate that the siting of TRI facilities in Korea is more affected by sociopolitical factors than by economic status. Racial issues are thus crucial for consideration in environmental justice as the population of Korea becomes more racially and ethnically diverse

Hierarchical Joint Graph Learning and Multivariate Time Series Forecasting

Multivariate time series is prevalent in many scientific and industrial domains. Modeling multivariate signals is challenging due to their long-range temporal dependencies and intricate interactions--both direct and indirect. To confront these complexities, we introduce a method of representing multivariate signals as nodes in a graph with edges indicating interdependency between them. Specifically, we leverage graph neural networks (GNN) and attention mechanisms to efficiently learn the underlying relationships within the time series data. Moreover, we suggest employing hierarchical signal decompositions running over the graphs to capture multiple spatial dependencies. The effectiveness of our proposed model is evaluated across various real-world benchmark datasets designed for long-term forecasting tasks. The results consistently showcase the superiority of our model, achieving an average 23\% reduction in mean squared error (MSE) compared to existing models.Comment: Temporal Graph Learning Workshop @ NeurIPS 2023, New Orleans, United State

Entropy is not Enough for Test-Time Adaptation: From the Perspective of Disentangled Factors

Test-time adaptation (TTA) fine-tunes pre-trained deep neural networks for unseen test data. The primary challenge of TTA is limited access to the entire test dataset during online updates, causing error accumulation. To mitigate it, TTA methods have utilized the model output's entropy as a confidence metric that aims to determine which samples have a lower likelihood of causing error. Through experimental studies, however, we observed the unreliability of entropy as a confidence metric for TTA under biased scenarios and theoretically revealed that it stems from the neglect of the influence of latent disentangled factors of data on predictions. Building upon these findings, we introduce a novel TTA method named Destroy Your Object (DeYO), which leverages a newly proposed confidence metric named Pseudo-Label Probability Difference (PLPD). PLPD quantifies the influence of the shape of an object on prediction by measuring the difference between predictions before and after applying an object-destructive transformation. DeYO consists of sample selection and sample weighting, which employ entropy and PLPD concurrently. For robust adaptation, DeYO prioritizes samples that dominantly incorporate shape information when making predictions. Our extensive experiments demonstrate the consistent superiority of DeYO over baseline methods across various scenarios, including biased and wild. Project page is publicly available at https://whitesnowdrop.github.io/DeYO/.Comment: ICLR 2024 Spotlight; 26 pages, 9 figures, 20 tables

ICONE14-89044 APERIODIC INSTABILITY OF A ONCE-THROUGH STEAM GENERATOR WITH A FEEDWATER LINE

ABSTRACT Aperiodic (static) flow instability is an instability related to the change of a flow direction in individual steam generating U-shaped channels operating at given pressure difference. The nature of an aperiodic instability is close to a Ledinegg instability INTRODUCTION The hydrodynamic stability of OTSG, in particular OTSG in nuclear power plant, is one of the most important conditions ensuring their reliable operation. The operation of a OTSG under unstable conditions can damage the heating surface as a result of overheating or temperature fluctuations, and lead to a decrease of the heat reception It is known that two types of instability are possible for the OTSG [3]: a parallel-channel instability in the system of the channels connected in parallel and an aperiodic instability in the system of the U-shaped channels: Hydrodynamic instability of the OTSGs in terms of steamwater flow fluctuations occurs in the system of parallel channels and operating at a permanent pressure difference. It should be noted that it is typical for the OTSG to operate in low flow and low pressure conditions. The main disturbance source in a steam-water channel, finally leading to flowrat

INVESTIGATION ON EFFECTS OF ENLARGED PIPE RUPTURE SIZE AND AIR PENETRATION TIMING IN REALSCALE EXPERIMENT OF SIPHON BREAKER

To ensure the safety of research reactors, the water level must be maintained above the required height. When a pipe ruptures, the siphon phenomenon causes continuous loss of coolant until the hydraulic head is removed. To protect the reactor core from this kind of accident, a siphon breaker has been suggested as a passive safety device. This study mainly focused on two variables: the size of the pipe rupture and the timing of air entrainment. In this study, the size of the pipe rupture was increased to the guillotine break case. There was a region in which a larger pipe rupture did not need a larger siphon breaker, and the water flow rate was related to the size of the pipe rupture and affected the residual water quantity. The timing of air entrainment was predicted to influence residual water level. However, the residual water level was not affected by the timing of air entrainment. The experimental cases, which showed the characteristic of partical sweep-out mode in the separation of siphon breaking phenomenon [2], showed almost same trend of physical properties.ungraded1111Ysciescopu

Performance Analysis and Tube Inlet Orifice Length Evaluation of a Once–Through Steam Generator

A numerical study is conducted for performance analysis and secondary side screw-type tube inlet orifice design of a once–through steam generator (OTSG). Various tube plugging conditions and power levels are considered, and the secondary coolant flow rate is adjusted to maintain a constant thermal power. Comprehensive numerical solutions are acquired to evaluate the OTSG thermal–hydraulic performance and minimum orifice length under various operating conditions. The OTSG performance is analyzed according to the tube plugging condition in terms of the OTSG thermal power, steam outletsuperheat degree, and secondary coolant pressure drop. The results obtained show that a constant thermal power canbe maintained by properly adjusting the secondary coolant flow rate with a variation ofthe steam outlet superheat degree and secondary coolant pressure drop when the OTSG operates at high power level. The required minimum orifice length to suppress the flow oscillation below the allowablelevelis evaluated. The lowest power level results in the highest minimum orifice length, and non-plugging condition provides a limiting case for the orifice length criterion

Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of Disubstituted Pyrimidines as Selective 5-HT2C Agonists

Here, we describe the synthesis of disubstituted pyrimidine derivatives and their biological evaluation as selective 5-HT2C agonists. To improve selectivity for 5-HT2C over other subtypes, we synthesized two series of disubstituted pyrimidines with fluorophenylalkoxy groups at either the 5-position or 4-position and varying cyclic amines at the 2-position. The in vitro cell-based assay and binding assay identified compounds 10a and 10f as potent 5-HT2C agonists. Further studies on selectivity to 5-HT subtypes and drug-like properties indicated that 2,4-disubstituted pyrimidine 10a showed a highly agonistic effect on the 5-HT2C receptor, with excellent selectivity, as well as exceptional drug-like properties, including high plasma and microsomal stability, along with low CYP inhibition. Thus, pyrimidine 10a could be considered a viable lead compound as a 5-HT2C selective agonist

Experimental and numerical study for a siphon breaker design of a research reactor

For guaranteeing the pool water inventory, which is important to the nuclear safety of a research reactor, a siphon breaker is installed to limit the pool water drain during and after all postulated initiating events in the research reactor. Because the main pipe size of the reactor is relatively large, the size of the siphon break line should be determined to break the siphon phenomena. The siphon breaker design is validated through experiments and numerical simulations. An experimental loop was manufactured at a similar scale of a common research reactor, and a commercially available CFD code was used to compare the experimental results. The undershooting height was measured with a camera and absolute pressure transducer according to the siphon break line sizes. The pressure and superficial velocity inside the main pipe according to the pool water level were analyzed to understand the siphon break phenomena. The CFD code was tested to determine its usefulness for simulating siphon break phenomena over the same conditions with the experiment using several models for the two-phase flow phenomena. The undershooting height, pressure, and liquid superficial velocity were calculated using homogeneous and inhomogeneous models with the SST turbulent model and compared with the experimental results. Although the results of the ANSYS CFD model show some differences with the experimental data, the CFD results using the inhomogeneous model show good agreement with the experimental data. In addition, the homogeneous model results can be used conservatively in the design of a siphon breaker. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.X117sciescopu