Effect of operating variables on the rectification of benzene and toluene

Distillation as an art goes back to the Middle Ages at least, as evidenced by alchemical prints showing various early forms of equipment. Particularly prominent up to the present century were destructive distillation processes, and the distillation of wines and fermented mashes to yield brandies and other spirituous liquors. Until the appearance of treatises by Sorel and by Hausbrand, and indeed even to the present day, knowledge of the subject was almost entirely empirical and uncoordinated with basic scientific laws. Sorel treated the distillation of binary mixtures mathematically from the standpoint of heat and material balances, and thus laid the foundation for the science of distillation. Since then steady and progressive applications of mathematics, physics and chemistry have been made. Current lines of work include refinements of present methods of calculation for binary mixtures, for three-component and more complex mixtures, and for design of equipment. Peculiarly enough, although there is a very active interest in distillation, the great majority of the articles on the subject are theoretical in nature and do not represent new distillation data under commercial or semi-commercial conditions. In fact, no published data are available on semi-commercial bubble-tray columns to comprehensively show the effect of operating conditions, in particular, reflux ratio and point of introduction of feed. This work was undertaken to shed some light on these very important factors for bubble-cap columnsChemical Engineerin

Cosmological parameters in the noncommutative inflation

We investigate how the uncertainty of noncommutative spacetime could explain the WMAP data. For this purpose, the spectrum is divided into the IR and UV region. We introduce a noncommutative parameter of $\gamma_0$ in the IR region and a noncommutative parameter of $\mu_0$ in the UV region. We calculate cosmological parameters using the slow-roll expansion in the UV region and a perturbation method in the IR region. The power-law inflation is chosen to obtain explicit forms for the power spectrum, spectral index, and running spectral index. Further, these are used to fit the data.Comment: 13 pages, version to appear in PL

Working lives of prison managers: exploring agency and structure in the late modern prison

This study explores the contemporary working lives of prison managers. It attempts to understand the ways in which globalised changes in management practices have intersected with localised practices and occupational cultures. Through an ethnographic study of the lived experience of the practitioners of prison management, the research explores the ways in which the operation of managerialism in a prison environment creates a series of tensions, pressures and expectations on senior managers, and the ways in which these are experienced, understood and negotiated. This study is therefore concerned with the relationships between global and local, and between agency and structure that are characteristic of late modernity. The constraining and enabling features of contemporary prison management are considered in light of Giddens’s account of ‘the duality of structure’. Relevant work on transformation of working lives by Sennett and others are also considered in order to situate this discussion within the world of work more generally. The original research involved ethnographic field work in two medium security prisons in England over a twelve month period, with data generated from observations, interviews and documentary sources. Four aspects of prison management are used in order to address the central issues. The first is a consideration of performance monitoring mechanisms such as targets, audits and inspections; how these are understood, operated, and influenced by those using them and also how they reshape and direct the approach and thinking of managers. The second is a discussion of aspects of agency such as values, discretion, resistance and the use of power; in what ways these are idiosyncratic and individual and how far they are patterned across the organisation and shaped by wider factors. The third issue is a consideration of how people become prison managers and how they approach and understand key issues that face them in managing individual staff, teams and prisoners. The final area considers the ‘hidden injuries’ of contemporary management practice, including how this is experienced by women, members of minority ethnic groups and others who experience themselves as having been marginalised. The study concludes by describing the confluence of global and local, and agency and structure that shape what is described as ‘prison managerialism’. It also describes some of the effects of this and discusses alternatives

Geologic context of geodetic data across a Basin and Range normal fault, Crescent Valley, Nevada

Geodetic strain and late Quaternary faulting in the Basin and Range province is distributed over a region much wider than historic seismicity, which is localized near the margins of the province. In the relatively aseismic interior, both the magnitude and direction of geodetic strain may be inconsistent with the Holocene faulting record. We document the best example of such a disagreement across the NE striking, ~55° NW dipping Crescent normal fault, where a NW oriented, 70 km geodetic baseline records contemporary shortening of ~2 mm/yr orthogonal to the fault trace. In contrast, our geomorphic, paleoseismic, and geochronologic analyses of the Crescent fault suggest that a large extensional rupture occurred during the late Holocene epoch. An excavation across the fault at Fourmile Canyon reveals that the most recent event occurred at 2.8 ± 0.1 ka, with net vertical tectonic displacement of 4.6 ± 0.4 m at this location, corresponding to the release of ~3 m of accumulated NW-SE extension. Measured alluvial scarp profiles suggest a minimum rupture length of 30 km along the range front for the event, implying a moment magnitude M_w of at least 6.6. No prior event occurred between ~2.8 ka and ~6.4 ± 0.1 ka, the ^(14)C calender age of strata near the base of the exposed section. Assuming typical slip rates for Basin and Range faults (~0.3 mm/yr), these results imply that up to one third, or ~1 m, of the extensional strain released in the previous earthquake could have reaccumulated across the fault since ~2.8 ka. However, the contemporary shortening implies that the fault is unloading due to a transient process, whose duration is limited to between 6 years (geodetic recording time) and 2.8 ka (the age of the most recent event). These results emphasize the importance of providing accurate geologic data on the timescale of the earthquake cycle in order to evaluate geodetic measurements

High Resolution Image Reconstruction from Projection of Low Resolution Images DIffering in Subpixel Shifts

In this paper, we demonstrate a simple algorithm that projects low resolution (LR) images differing in subpixel shifts on a high resolution (HR) also called super resolution (SR) grid. The algorithm is very effective in accuracy as well as time efficiency. A number of spatial interpolation techniques using nearest neighbor, inverse-distance weighted averages, Radial Basis Functions (RBF) etc. used in projection yield comparable results. For best accuracy of reconstructing SR image by a factor of two requires four LR images differing in four independent subpixel shifts. The algorithm has two steps: i) registration of low resolution images and (ii) shifting the low resolution images to align with reference image and projecting them on high resolution grid based on the shifts of each low resolution image using different interpolation techniques. Experiments are conducted by simulating low resolution images by subpixel shifts and subsampling of original high resolution image and the reconstructing the high resolution images from the simulated low resolution images. The results of accuracy of reconstruction are compared by using mean squared error measure between original high resolution image and reconstructed image. The algorithm was tested on remote sensing images and found to outperform previously proposed techniques such as Iterative Back Projection algorithm (IBP), Maximum Likelihood (ML), and Maximum a posterior (MAP) algorithms. The algorithm is robust and is not overly sensitive to the registration inaccuracies

Second-order Gauge Invariant Cosmological Perturbation Theory: -- Einstein equations in terms of gauge invariant variables --

Along the general framework of the gauge invariant perturbation theory developed in the papers [K. Nakamura, Prog. Theor. Phys. {\bf 110} (2003), 723; {\it ibid}, {\bf 113} (2005), 481.], we formulate the second order gauge invariant cosmological perturbation theory in a four dimensional homogeneous isotropic universe. We consider the perturbations both in the universe dominated by the single perfect fluid and in that dominated by the single scalar field. We derive the all components of the Einstein equations in the case where the first order vector and tensor modes are negligible. All equations are derived in terms of gauge invariant variables without any gauge fixing. These equations imply that the second order vector and tensor modes may be generated due to the mode-mode coupling of the linear order scalar perturbations. We also briefly discuss the main progress of this work by the comparison with some literatures.Comment: 58 pages, no figure. Complete version of gr-qc/0605107; some typos are corrected (v2); References and some typos are corrected. To be appeard Progress of Theoretical Physic

Fatness and fitness: how do they influence health-related quality of life in type 2 diabetes mellitus?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Objective</p> <p>We examined whether adiposity and fitness explain the decrease in health-related quality of life (HRQOL) associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This was a cross-sectional study using baseline data from two exercise training interventions. One study enrolled people with and the other without type 2 diabetes. We assessed aerobic fitness ("fitness") as peak oxygen uptake during treadmill testing, adiposity ("fatness") as percentage of total body fat by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry, and HRQOL by the Medical Outcomes Study SF-36. Bivariate and multivariate linear regression analyses were used examine determinants of HRQOL were used to examine determinants of HRQOL.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There were 98 participants with and 119 participants without type 2 diabetes. Participants with type 2 diabetes had a mean hemoglobin A1c of 6.6% and, compared with participants without diabetes had lower HRQOL on the physical component summary score (<it>P </it>= 0.004), role-physical (<it>P </it>= 0.035), vitality (<it>P </it>= 0.062) and general health (<it>P </it>< 0.001) scales after adjusting for age, sex and race. These associations of HRQOL with type 2 diabetes were attenuated by higher fitness, even more than reduced fatness. Only general health remained positively associated with type 2 diabetes after accounting for fatness or fitness (<it>P </it>= 0.003). There were no significant differences between participants with and without diabetes in the mental component score.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Improved fitness, even more than reduced fatness, attenuated the association of type 2 diabetes with HRQOL. The potential to improve HRQOL may motivate patients with type 2 diabetes to engage in physical activity aimed at increasing fitness. Findings from this cross-sectional analysis will be addressed in the ongoing trial of exercise training in this cohort of participants with type 2 diabetes.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>NCT00212303</p

Inflation parameters from Gauss-Bonnet braneworld

We calculate the spectral index and tensor-to-scalar ratio for patch inflation arisen from the Gauss-Bonnet braneworld scenario. The patch cosmological models consist of Gauss-Bonnet (GB), Randall-Sundrum (RS), and 4D general relativistic (GR) cases. In order to compare with the observation data, we perform leading-order calculations for all patch models by choosing large-field, small-field, and hybrid potentials. We show that the large-field potentials are sensitive to a given patch model, while the small-field and hybrid potentials are insensitive to a given patch model. It is easier to discriminates between quadratic potential and quartic potential in the GB model rather than RS and GR models. Irrespective of patch models, it turns out that the small-field potentials are the promising models in view of the observation.Comment: 13 pages, version to appear in PL