Soil Liquefaction and Ground Settlement in Chi-Chi Taiwan, Earthquake

This paper presents an investigation of soil liquefaction and ground settlement in the 1999 Chi-Chi, Taiwan, earthquake. The quake killed more than 2400 people and caused a great destruction to buildings, bridges, dams, highways and railways. One of the causes for heavy damages to the structures is soil liquefaction and ground settlement during the earthquake. Six sites that were observed to experience liquefaction are investigated through cone penetration testing (CPT), and the liquefaction potential of each site and the settlement of the liquefied soil strata are analyzed

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Applying Two-Stage Differential Evolution for Energy Saving in Optimal Chiller Loading

In Taiwan, over 45% of the energy in common buildings is used for the air-conditioning system. In particular, the chiller plant consumes about 70% of the energy in air-conditioning system. The electric energy consumption of air-condition system in a clean room of semiconductor factory is about 5–10 times of that in a common building. Consequently, the optimal chiller loading in energy saving of building is a vital issue. This paper develops a new algorithm to solve optimal chiller loading (OCL) problems. The proposed two-stage differential evolution algorithm integrated the advantages of exploration (global search) in the modified binary differential evolution (MBDE) algorithm and exploitation (local search) in the real-valued differential evolution (DE) algorithm for finding the optimal solution of OCL problems. In order to show the performance of the proposed algorithm, comparison with other optimization methods has been done and analyzed. The result shows that the proposed algorithm can obtain similar or better solution in comparison to previous studies. It is a promising approach for the OCL problem

Impacts of Mixing Mode on Photocatalytic Reduction of Hexavalent Chromium over Titanium Dioxide Nanomaterial under Various Environmental Conditions

This study explores the effects of initial Cr(VI) concentration, wavelength, hole-scavenger (absence and presence of salicylic acid), and oxygen conditions (aeration by air, nitrogen gas, and mechanical stir only) on photocatalytic reduction of hexavalent chromium over titanium dioxide photocatalyst and the chromic species distribution after photocatalysis. The experimental results show the existence of strong interactions between these factors. The factor of hole-scavenger was more important than the UV light wavelength condition for a reduction of 3 mg Cr(VI) L−1, whereas both factors became important when Cr(VI) concentration increased to 20 mgL−1. The higher the UV wavelength was, the less the amount of chromium retained on the TiO2 surface. The influence of oxygen-containing conditions in the solution on the reduction of 3 mgL−1 Cr(VI) was unobvious, whereas its influence became remarkable for the reduction of 20 mgL−1 Cr(VI) in the presence of SA. The interaction between oxygen-containing factor and other environmental factors, such as Cr(VI) concentration and scavenger presence (SA in this study), is a key factor about the degree of oxygen effect on Cr(VI) photo-reduction and the chromic species distribution. Simple stirring obtained better photocatalytic efficiency than aeration by air or nitrogen gas