What\u27s News @ Rhode Island College

Mid-year grads hear judge, new president -- Request for proposals -- Lecture set on family violence --Financial aid forms available -- Pamela Jackson named acting ass\u27t provost -- \u27Where I am. magic is...it\u27s me\u27 -- Hacker to speak on new tech education -- I.R.S may review student loan applications -- RIC grads shine in the rain -- La Tuna Pasa -- Will attend N.E. festival -- Calendar of Eventshttps://digitalcommons.ric.edu/whats_news/1315/thumbnail.jp

Response of Eggplant to Integrated Approaches for Sustainable Reclamation and Improvement of a Cheringa Hot Spot of Acid Sulfate Soil

The application of basic slag (BS20 and BS30: basic slag 20 and 30 t ha-1) and aggregate size (A20 and A30: aggregate sizes of soil less than 20 and 20-30 mm) and different techniques (Tech 1: pyrite at top, jarosite at middle, and top soil at the bottom of ridge; Tech 2: top soil at top, pyrite at middle, and jarosite layer at the bottom of ridge) exerted significant (p≤0.05) positive effects on the growth and yield of eggplants cultivated under field condition and the effects varied not only with the kinds and amounts of amending materials but also with the techniques applied. The soil showed a silty clay loam texture, initial pH value of 4.1, pyrite content of 55 g kg-1, base saturation of 47%, ECe value of 3.6 dS m-1, high exchangeable Fe3+ and Al3+ contents of 1.47 and 5.29 cmolc kg-1, respectively. The pH value of the average soil data obtained from all the treatments during fruit set (95 days after transplantation) of eggplants was found to be increased in pH by 1.2 units higher compared with the control (i.e. initial pH value). The contents of P, K, Ca and Mg in the average soil data during fruit set were found to be increased (IOC = increased over control) by 41 to 127% IOC, while the contents of Al3+, Fe3+, Na+, Cl- and SO4 2- in the soil were found to be decreased by 28 to 92% IOC. The different treatments on eggplants grown under the modified-plain-ridge-ditch techniques in the Cheringa acid sulfate soil significantly (0≤0.05) increased the fresh yield of eggplants, and the increment was more pronounced with Tech 2. The maximum yield of 17.8 t ha-1 of eggplant for Tech 1 and 20.1 t ha-1 for Tech 2 were recorded by the application of BS30 in the soils of smaller aggregates (A20) at the ridges of Tech 2, followed by the A30BS30 treatments in both the techniques. The lowest quantity of 1.7 t ha-1 yield was recorded by the control treatment. The eggplants grown in the ridges of both the techniques exhibited the best responses on N, P, K, Ca and Mg contents in eggplant tissues during fruit set. As expected, the lowest contents of these nutrients in the eggplants were recorded in the control treatment. Sulfur content of the eggplants grown in the control plots was 3.6 g kg-1 and was in the range of adequate S content (4 g kg-1). However, the S contents in the eggplants grown in different treatments were significantly (p≤0.01) lower compared with the adequate level. The effectiveness of the treatments for the reclamation of the soil in relation to the growth of eggplants was: Tech 2 > Tech 1, BS30 > BS20, and A20 > A30. The results suggest that the physicochemical properties of the soil, and the growth, yield and nutrition of eggplants were strikingly improved by the application of flash leaching followed by BS30 and A20 treatments in the ridges of Tech 2, and are regarded as the best reclamation measures for this acid sulfate soil

An efficient ant colony system based on receding horizon control for the aircraft arrival sequencing and scheduling problem

The aircraft arrival sequencing and scheduling (ASS) problem is a salient problem in air traffic control (ATC), which proves to be nondeterministic polynomial (NP) hard. This paper formulates the ASS problem in the form of a permutation problem and proposes a new solution framework that makes the first attempt at using an ant colony system (ACS) algorithm based on the receding horizon control (RHC) to solve it. The resultant RHC-improved ACS algorithm for the ASS problem (termed the RHC-ACS-ASS algorithm) is robust, effective, and efficient, not only due to that the ACS algorithm has a strong global search ability and has been proven to be suitable for these kinds of NP-hard problems but also due to that the RHC technique can divide the problem with receding time windows to reduce the computational burden and enhance the solution's quality. The RHC-ACS-ASS algorithm is extensively tested on the cases from the literatures and the cases randomly generated. Comprehensive investigations are also made for the evaluation of the influences of ACS and RHC parameters on the performance of the algorithm. Moreover, the proposed algorithm is further enhanced by using a two-opt exchange heuristic local search. Experimental results verify that the proposed RHC-ACS-ASS algorithm generally outperforms ordinary ACS without using the RHC technique and genetic algorithms (GAs) in solving the ASS problems and offers high robustness, effectiveness, and efficienc

KBE frameworks and their applicability to a resource-based country: The case of Brunei Darussalam

Knowledge is generally considered to be one of the most important drivers of economic growth. The difference between a knowledge-based economy (KBE) and a resource-based one is that in the former, the main competition between individuals, firms, and countries is the ability to innovate. Other forms of competition, for example through pricing strategies and access to resources, become secondary. Generally, knowledge is information combined with technology that dramatically increases its impact when shared. Organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC), Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and the World Bank Institute (WBI) have developed different KBE frameworks to indicate the extent of countries' knowledge base and implicitly to guide policy. But these frameworks have little in theoretical underpinnings and applying them universally across all countries in different regions, at different stages of development and with different institutional, social and economic characteristics may be misleading and result in inappropriate policy responses. In this paper we propose a framework that clearly distinguishes input-output indicators of a knowledge-based economy under four important dimensions: knowledge acquisition, knowledge production, knowledge distribution and knowledge utilization, and attempt to adapt them in a practical policy oriented approach for an economy like Brunei Darussalam, which is attempting to transform from a resource-based to a knowledge-based economy

Decomposition of total factor productivity growth: A regional analysis of Indian industrial manufacturing growth.

Total factor productivity (TFP) growth in industrial manufacturing is measured for 15 major Indian states for the period 1982-83 to 2000-01 using non-parametric linear programming methods. TFP growth is decomposed into efficiency and technological changes and also measure for the bias in technical change. The resulting information is used to examine whether the post-reform period shows any improvement in productivity and efficiency in comparison to the pre-reform one. Findings of the present exercise indicate the improvement in TFP. The recent change in TFP is governed by the technical progress in contrast to similar gain caused by the improvement in technical efficiency in the pre-reform regime. The technological progress in state manufacturing exhibited a capital using bias during the study period. Regional differences in TFP persist, although the magnitude of variation has declined in the post-reform period. Moreover, it is also found that there is a tendency of convergence in terms of TFP growth rate among Indian states during the post-reform years and only the states that were technically efficient at the beginning of the reform remain innovative.Industry ; Industrial manufacturing ; Growth ; Total factor productivity

Facts, Damned Lies and Statistics: A 55 Year Stumbling Block

I have to admit something: when it comes to interpretation, I\u27m making this all up as I go along. I don\u27t have some magical cache of best practices stored up, waiting to deposit them week after week in posts here on the blog. Most of what I know about interpretation I\u27ve stumbled upon, either in the thoughts of others shamelessly stolen and added to my toolbox or as rough experiments based on my so-called common sense. [excerpt

Bioremediation of contaminated soil : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Technology in Environmental Engineering at Massey University

The release of contaminants into the environment is inevitable. Contaminants are released through manufacture and use of products and as a result of treatment and disposal of wastes. Upon release to the environment, contaminants move and respond to a number of interrelated natural and man made factors. Penta-chloro-phenol (PCP) is one such contaminant that has been released into the environment and is known to have serious long term environmental effects. The objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of biological processes to remediate soil contaminated with Penta-chloro-phenol (PCP). This thesis reviews mechanisms by which soil is contaminated, processes available to remediate soils, and in particular, process requirements for successful bioremediation. The abilities of bacteria to degrade PCP from soil contaminated with PCP was evaluated. Solid phase and slurry phase experiments were examined for their effect on PCP concentration over a four month period at the Department of Technology. Massey University. The objectives of this study were (1) To determine if aeration and inoculation of soil in-situ could produce significant removal of PCP. (2) Determine the effect of concentration on bioremediation rates. (3) Compare in-situ treatment with bio-slurry treatments. The experiments showed that it is possible to remove up to 95% of PCP from contaminated soil by inoculation with bacteria. Inoculum size and aeration were shown to be critical factors in affecting the rate of degradation. The larger the initial inoculum the greater the rate of degradation. Without aeration the inoculum was unable to significantly degrade PCP. The bio-slurry confirmed that PCP could be removed readily from soil to an aqueous state. In an aqueous state PCP is degraded at a faster rate than when it is incorporated into the soil matrix. The results of this work is to show that soil rehabilitation by way of biodegradation is a feasible and attractive process

Graph Annotations in Modeling Complex Network Topologies

The coarsest approximation of the structure of a complex network, such as the Internet, is a simple undirected unweighted graph. This approximation, however, loses too much detail. In reality, objects represented by vertices and edges in such a graph possess some non-trivial internal structure that varies across and differentiates among distinct types of links or nodes. In this work, we abstract such additional information as network annotations. We introduce a network topology modeling framework that treats annotations as an extended correlation profile of a network. Assuming we have this profile measured for a given network, we present an algorithm to rescale it in order to construct networks of varying size that still reproduce the original measured annotation profile. Using this methodology, we accurately capture the network properties essential for realistic simulations of network applications and protocols, or any other simulations involving complex network topologies, including modeling and simulation of network evolution. We apply our approach to the Autonomous System (AS) topology of the Internet annotated with business relationships between ASs. This topology captures the large-scale structure of the Internet. In depth understanding of this structure and tools to model it are cornerstones of research on future Internet architectures and designs. We find that our techniques are able to accurately capture the structure of annotation correlations within this topology, thus reproducing a number of its important properties in synthetically-generated random graphs