Purification of Tannery Effluent by electrolytic corrosion of aluminium

Tannery Effluent is noxious because tanning process chemicals are preservatives, including chromium, and the pH is high. Electrolytic processing is feasible because the high salt content gives a high electrical conductivity. While research on the subject dates back to early in the 20th Century, commercialization has not occurred, perhaps due to excessive power consumption. Other researchers have produced promising results with rendering plant effluent (Tetrault 2003). During 2005 a specialised proprietary prototype with a novel anode design was trialed extensively at a Tannery site in New Zealand and produced good results during continuous inline operation despite wide variation in the inflow. Greater than 90% removal of chromium from solution with similar reductions in turbidity were achieved at lower operating cost, residual aluminum and total aluminum addition than by dosing with usual commercial aluminum based flocculants. Results from the field trials are shown and discussed

Multipath Parameter Estimation from OFDM Signals in Mobile Channels

We study multipath parameter estimation from orthogonal frequency division multiplex signals transmitted over doubly dispersive mobile radio channels. We are interested in cases where the transmission is long enough to suffer time selectivity, but short enough such that the time variation can be accurately modeled as depending only on per-tap linear phase variations due to Doppler effects. We therefore concentrate on the estimation of the complex gain, delay and Doppler offset of each tap of the multipath channel impulse response. We show that the frequency domain channel coefficients for an entire packet can be expressed as the superimposition of two-dimensional complex sinusoids. The maximum likelihood estimate requires solution of a multidimensional non-linear least squares problem, which is computationally infeasible in practice. We therefore propose a low complexity suboptimal solution based on iterative successive and parallel cancellation. First, initial delay/Doppler estimates are obtained via successive cancellation. These estimates are then refined using an iterative parallel cancellation procedure. We demonstrate via Monte Carlo simulations that the root mean squared error statistics of our estimator are very close to the Cramer-Rao lower bound of a single two-dimensional sinusoid in Gaussian noise.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (26 pages, 9 figures and 3 tables

Evidence on the Insurance Effect of Redistributive Taxation

If households face uninsurable idiosyncratic earnings risk, theory predicts that redistributive tax and transfer systems have both an insurance and a distortionary effect. Exploiting the substantial variation of tax and transfer systems across US states we investigate the necessary traces of these two effects in the data: that state-level measures of redistributive taxation should correlate negatively with, (a) the standard deviation, and (b) the mean, of the within-state consumption distribution. We find that the first correlation is robust, supporting strongly the presence of an insurance effect. The distortionary effect can also be detected in the data but it is less precisely estimated.Undiversi¯able Earnings Risk, Consumption Insurance, Tax Distortions

Evidence on the Insurance Effect of Marginal Income Taxes

Marginal income taxes may have an insurance effect by decreasing the effective fluctuations of after-tax individual income. By compressing the idiosyncratic component o personal income fluctuations, higher marginal taxes should be negatively correlated with the dispersion of consumption across households, a necessary implication of an insurance effect of taxation. Our study empirically examines this negative correlation, exploiting the ample variation of state taxes across US states. We show that taxes are negatively correlated with the consumption dispersion of the within-state distribution of non-durable consumption and that this correlation is robust.Undiversifiable Earnings Risk, Consumption Insurance, Tax Distortions

Evidence on the Insurance Effect of Redistributive Taxation

A distinguishing feature among households is whether adult members work or not, since the occupational status of adults affects their available time for home activities. Using a survey method in two countries, Belgium and Germany, we provide household incomes that retain the level of well-being across different family types, distinguished by family size and occupational status of adults. Our tests support that childcare-time costs are important determinants of household well-being. Estimates of child costs relative to an adult are higher for households that are time-constrained (all adults in the household work). Moreover, we find supportive evidence for the hypothesis that, in two-adult households, there is a potential for within-household welfare gains from specialization in market- vs. domestic activities, especially childcare.

The growth and development of the winter barley crop

The growth and development of both six -row and two-row winter barley varieties was studied in field trials in two seasons near Edinburgh.The rate at which the crop passed through development stages was closely related to temperature. For some aspects of development the date of sowing (ie photoperiod) was also important.The agrochemical industry produces recommendations for applying hormonal chemicals based upon plant growth stage. Unfortunately external plant morphology could not be used as a guide to apical deve- lopment; floral initiation occurred with as few as two or as many as five leaves unfolded on the mainstem.Poor winter hardiness and leaf death were correlated with low levels of water soluble carbohydrate.For all sowings the green area index (GAI) reached by the start of stem elongation was 1.0 ± 0.3. From this time until its maximum value the GAI increased linearly in thermal time.Over much of the season crop growth rate was closely related to the rate at which photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) was absorbed. The six -row cultivars partitioned more dry matter to the ear than the two-row's, giving the six -row types a higher harvest index and higher grain yield.Growing conditions before anthesis had a greater effect on grain yield than conditions afterwards. A positive correlation between absorbed PAR after anthesis and grain yield was not a causal relationship since it was based upon an increase in grain number rather than grain size.There was little difference in the tillering behaviour of the six -row and two -row cultivars before mainstem elongation. Differences in final ear population were due to poor tiller survival in the six - row cultivars

Quantification of Localized Brain Iron Sources Using Magnetic Resonance Phase

Brain microbleeds (BMB), often present in cerebrovascular and neurodegenerative diseases and neurotrauma, are associated with both chronic and acute illness of significant social and economic impact. Because BMB present a source of potentially cyctotoxic iron to the brain proportional to the amount of extravasated blood, non-invasive quantification of this iron pool is potentially valuable both to assess tissue risk and as a biomarker to monitor disease progression, treatment efficacy, and inform treatment. Past efforts to quantify brain iron have focused on distributed (e.g., anatomical) brain regions. However, BMB represent localized sources of iron deposition. In addition, conventional magnitude MR images have significant limitations, especially for localized iron quantification. Moreover, due to susceptibility effects, the localized bypointensities in gradient recalled T2* magnitude images associated with BMB typically appear larger than the actual tissue lesion (the blooming effect) and obscure the true dimensions of an iron susceptibility source. In the present research, we proposed a family of techniques that use magnetic resonance phase images (instead of magnitude images) to quantify the iron content and dimensions of localized iron sources such as BMB. The techniques were tested in four systems: 1) magnetic resonance agarose phantom and 2) postmortem rat brain, using a ferric iron oxy0hydroxide mimic for hemosiderin, 3) the living rat brain, using collagenase-induced bleeds, and 4) with actual BMB in postmortem cerebral amyloid angiopathy brain. Measurements of geometric features in phase images were related to source iron content and diameter using mathematical models. Iron samples and BMB lesions were assayed for iron content using atomic absorption spectrometry. Results from experiments 1 and 3 in particular showed very good agreement with predictions of the theory underlying the techniques, providing validation for the methods and demonstrating that prominent phase image features can potentially be used to measure localized iron content including iron in real BMB. Our methods potentially allow the calculation of brain iron load indices based on BMB iron content as well as classification of BMB by size unobscured by the blooming effect. These results represent significant steps toward the use of similar localized iron quantification methods in experimental and clinical settings