Wet Strength Resins

Wet strength is defined as a paper which has extraordinary resistance to rupture or disintegration when saturated with water. This definition has been interpreted as if a paper sample retains more than 15% of its dry strength when wetted, it can be considered to have wet strength properties. Wet strength resins are chemicals that aid in wet strength, and they have been around since the 1940\u27s. These wet strength resins help to protect paper and paper products from breaking down in the presence of water and high humidity. There are many uses for wet strength resins these days, Some of these are: To protect from outdoor weather, to aid in drying and wiping, to wrap up food products, and to help in things that must be totally submerged in water. The resins compared are urea formaldehyde, melamine formaldehyde, polyamide epichlorohydrin, and polyamine epichiorohydrin. These resins when compared showed that the newer PAE resins had better wet strength properties than the older formaldehydes. Because of this reason and that formaldehyde is a public hazard and is regulated by OSHA, the PAE resins came out better in cost and overall usage

Green Infrastructure Can Combat Combined Sewer Overflows

Every year millions of gallons of raw sewage are dumped directly into our local waterways here in Buffalo, NY. Combined sewer overflows (or CSO’s) are the cause of this environmental and human health hazard, and they occur an average of 68 times per year, whenever we have heavy rain or snow. Currently the Buffalo Sewer Authority (BSA) is negotiating with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to come up with a cost-effective means to prevent CSO’s from occurring and thus bring our local waterways into compliance with water quality standards. BSA is required by law to develop and implement a CSO Long Term Control Plan (LTCP) that explores all viable options for remedying the situation

High Road Economic Development: Best Practices

High Road Economic Development is an economic development strategy that emphasizes high quality jobs, environmental sustainability, and broad access to opportunities for a diversity of businesses and workers. High Road Economic Development prioritizes both a healthy economy and a healthy community. It ensures that public dollars result in both public good and economic growth, and that economic benefits are distributed equitably. The following list captures many best practices of High Road Economic Development. In a high road project, these principles and practices would apply to any developers, businesses, contractors and sub-contractors involved in the project and often would be reflected in an enforceable community benefit agreement

Taking Business to a “Hire” Level: Strategies for Workforce Planning

[Excerpt] Workforce planning has always existed in some form, but has seen a recent reemergence in the human resources arena as companies try to move away from just-in-time staffing. This renewed focus has forced HR professionals to question how to create a pipeline that considers both the number of required employees and the types of skills needed. The following paragraphs argue that, through estimating, collaborating, and adapting, organizations can maximize their opportunities for a strong pipeline. First, staffing models will be paired with HR metrics to formulate the staffing needs of the organization. Second, collaboration with other functions will be emphasized to maximize the accuracy of the estimations. Finally, emerging concepts, such as eLancing, will be discussed as a way to adjust for unexpected changes in human capital needs

VOX : an extensible natural language processor

VOX is a Natural Language Processor whose knowledge can be extended by interaction with a user.VOX consists of a text analyzer and an extensibility system that share a knowledge base. The extensibility system lets the user add vocabulary, concepts, phrases, events, and scenarios to the knowledge base. The analyzer uses information obtained in this way to understand previously unhandled text.The underlying knowledge representation of VOX, called Conceptual Grammar, has been developed to meet the severe requirements of extensibility. Conceptual Grammar uniformly represents syntactic and semantic information, and permits modular addition of knowledge