A review of alternative approaches to the reduction of CO2 emissions associated with the manufacture of the binder phase in concrete

In this review we discuss a wide range of alternative approaches to the reduction of CO2 emissions associated with the manufacture of the binder phase in concrete. They are classified broadly as follows: (1) Use alternative fuels and/or alternative raw materials in the manufacture of Portland-based cements. (2) Replace Portland clinker with “low-carbon” supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) in concrete. (3) Develop alternative low-carbon binders not based on Portland clinkers. The first approach mainly represents incremental improvements that can be achieved fairly easily and cheaply as long as suitable raw materials can be found. The second approach ranges from incremental improvements, if low levels of SCM substitution are used, all the way to major innovations for binders with very high Portland clinker replacement levels. The third approach is the most risky but also holds the greatest promise for truly significant CO2 reductions if it can be implemented on a large scale

Enumeration of Extractive Oracle Summaries

To analyze the limitations and the future directions of the extractive summarization paradigm, this paper proposes an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulation to obtain extractive oracle summaries in terms of ROUGE-N. We also propose an algorithm that enumerates all of the oracle summaries for a set of reference summaries to exploit F-measures that evaluate which system summaries contain how many sentences that are extracted as an oracle summary. Our experimental results obtained from Document Understanding Conference (DUC) corpora demonstrated the following: (1) room still exists to improve the performance of extractive summarization; (2) the F-measures derived from the enumerated oracle summaries have significantly stronger correlations with human judgment than those derived from single oracle summaries.Comment: 12 page

Evaluation of Carotid Arterial Intima-Media Thickness (IMT) and Its Relation to Clinical Parameters in Japanese Children

The aim of this study was to evaluate the carotid arterial intima-media thickness (IMT) and its relation to clinical parameters in Japanese children. Fifty-two healthy children (39 boys and 13 girls), aged 6-14 years, were enrolled in this cross-sectional investigation study. IMT of the common carotid artery was determined using ultrasonography. We also investigated anthropometric parameters, blood pressure (BP), lifestyles and blood examinations. The mean value of IMT was 0.4±0.1mm, which was lower than the normal value (1.0mm) in adults. IMT was positively correlated with age (r＝0.340) and height (r＝0.346) in boys, while it was positively correlated with body mass index (BMI) (r＝0.584) and diastolic BP (DBP) (r＝0.563) in girls. In addition, IMT was associated with sleeping hours and hours of watching television (TV) by using stepwise regression analysis. In conclusion, IMT increased with aging, and it was linked to some clinical parameters of atherosclerosis and lifestyles in children. Therefore, this reference data will be helpful for future assessment of age-related change in Japanese children in clinical practice, and IMT might be a good predictor of atherosclerosis in Japanese children

New phenomena in interaction of intense ultrashort light pulses with transparent materials: from 3D self-assembled nanostructures to quill writing and nonreciprocal photosensitivity

Interaction of intense ulrashort light pulses with transparent materials reveal new ultrafast phenomena. Recent demonstrations of 3D nanoripple formation, ultrafast laser calligraphy and nonreciprocal photosensitivity are reviewed

Recent advances in ultrafast laser processing of transparent materials

Interaction of intense ulrashort light pulses with transparent materials reveal new interesting properties and phenomena. Recent demonstrations of 3D nanoripple formation, self-assembled form birefringency and ultrafast laser calligraphy are reviewed

Femtosecond laser nanostructuring of transparent materials: from bulk to fiber lasers

Progress in high power ultra-short pulse lasers has opened new frontiers in the physics of light-matter interactions and laser material processing. Recently there has been considerable interest in the application of femtosecond lasers to writing inside transparent materials and in particular to fabrication of three-dimensional microstructures