Optimal Operation of the Peat Drying Process in Steam Tube Dryers

Ukraine is an energy-dependent country and aims to reduce the import of natural gas, heat, and power in general. This implies extracting fuel from her own natural resources; one relevant and readily available energy carrier for such extraction is peat (bio mass). Currently, the operating regimes of the drying of peat are not energy efficient; these operating regime maps were developed in the 1970s and aimed only to get dry peat of required quality, without taking into account the cost of heat and electric energy in the drying process. The current quality of dried peat in the dryer does not always satisfy the necessary quality; e.g. parts of the peat may be insufficiently dried, or it may be over-dried. This affects the energy performance of peat briquette production. To improve the quality and energy efficiency of the peat drying process, an analysis of the drying process is carried out: an empirical mathematical model of the drying process is developed using the GMDH principle [1, 2, 3], mapping input parameters and disturbances to output qualities based on available experimental data. Next, with known (measured) disturbances, optimal input parameters for the drying process are found. Changing the operational parameters too fast leads to insufficient drying or over-drying of parts of the peat. Thus, to avoid changing the operational conditions too fast, the operational conditions are classified into a number of classes corresponding to a certain range of values for the operational parameters. Finally, an iterative procedure for changing the input parameters from the past values to new values is introduced. The resulting algorithm for finding the optimal operation of peat drying is based on mathematical models developed from experimental data, and aims to ensure improved quality and energy efficiency in the peat drying process

Effects of strong correlations for 2D Bose-Einstein condensed dipolar excitons

By doing quantum Monte Carlo ab initio simulations we show that dipolar excitons, which are now under experimental study, actually are strongly correlated systems. Strong correlations manifest in significant deviations of excitation spectra from the Bogoliubov one, large Bose condensate depletion, short-range order in the pair correlation function, and peak(s) in the structure factor

Superfluidity of two- dimensional excitons in flat and harmonic traps

Superfluid exciton density and superfluid transition (crossover) temperature are calculated for 2D excitons in large-size flat and harmonic traps. A generalized local density approximation for the Kosterlitz-Thouless theory is developed

Impact of scarcity on consumer behavior

This article analyzes the impact of scarcity on consumer behavior and on perception of scarce goods consumer qualities. The author examines and subjects to the critical analysis the impact of scarcity on consumer behavior within economic theory, the theory of reactance and commodity theory. The differences in explaining the impact of scarcity on consumer behavior in economic and psychological sciences is highlighted. The current researcher experimentally proves the impact of the scarcity as an isolated factor on consumer behavior and the impact of scarcity on consumer perception of product quality. According to the reactance theory, an individual perceives scarcity as the restriction of his freedom that causes resistance in response to a possible restriction of freedom of actions. This reinforces the desire to have such a scarce product. To confirm the psychological impact of scarcity on a domestic consumer the author designs and conducts the experiment that confirms the following hypotheses: scarcity affects consumer behavior and stimulates consumers to purchase scarce commodities; scarcity has impact on the perception of scarce product consumer qualities. Such consumer behavior relatively to scarce goods can be used by marketers to promote products on the market

Psychosemantic image of a worker as the factor of enterprise’s labor force formation

The presented paper depicts the conducted empirical study of the image of a successful laborer in the perception of student youth. The sample of participants was formed with the students of two Zhytomyr universities (Zhytomyr National Agroecological University and Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University). The sample consisted of 54 individuals among who 34 were females and 20 were males. On the first stage of the study, the non-directed associative experiment was conducted, at the end of which the participants produced 543 associations to the stimulus-word (collocation) «a successful laborer». The list of the 15 most common associations that was formed from the array of acquired associations made the base for seven point scales in the questionnaire developed by the authors. This questionnaire was used to conduct the second stage of the inquiry that was directed on the examination of the semantic content of the image of «a successful laborer» in the perception of student youth. The results acquired on the second stage of the study was analyzed with the use of the factor analysis, which allowed to distinguish five factors that explained 70 % of the dispersion. The results of factor analysis allow to suggest that participants’ perception, which concerns a successful laborer can be described as following: 1) the occupational and financial success of a laborer depends on hard work only; 2) in the students' perception such characteristics as professionalism and creativity do not have any statistically significant relation to the financial success level of a laborer; 3) the reputational characteristics like planning capacity, integrity and generosity are emphasized; 4) the results of the study witness that a successful laborer is perceived by the student youth as a person deprived of any characteristics that suggest aspiration for the dominance and the high social status

Social networks and spin glasses

The networks formed from the links between telephones observed in a month's call detail records (CDRs) in the UK are analyzed, looking for the characteristics thought to identify a communications network or a social network. Some novel methods are employed. We find similarities to both types of network. We conclude that, just as analogies to spin glasses have proved fruitful for optimization of large-scale practical problems, there will be opportunities to exploit the statistical mechanics of the formation and dynamics of social networks in today's electronically connected world. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC