Optimal Methodology for Synchronized Scheduling of Parallel Station Assembly with Air Transportation

We present an optimal methodology for synchronized scheduling of production assembly with air transportation to achieve accurate delivery with minimized cost in consumer electronics supply chain (CESC). This problem was motivated by a major PC manufacturer in consumer electronics industry, where it is required to schedule the delivery requirements to meet the customer needs in different parts of South East Asia. The overall problem is decomposed into two sub-problems which consist of an air transportation allocation problem and an assembly scheduling problem. The air transportation allocation problem is formulated as a Linear Programming Problem with earliness tardiness penalties for job orders. For the assembly scheduling problem, it is basically required to sequence the job orders on the assembly stations to minimize their waiting times before they are shipped by flights to their destinations. Hence the second sub-problem is modelled as a scheduling problem with earliness penalties. The earliness penalties are assumed to be independent of the job orders.

Effects of Air Pollution Control on Climate

Urban air pollution and climate are closely connected due to shared generating processes (e.g., combustion) for emissions of the driving gases and aerosols. They are also connected because the atmospheric lifecycles of common air pollutants such as CO, NOx and VOCs, and of the climatically important methane gas (CH4) and sulfate aerosols, both involve the fast photochemistry of the hydroxyl free radical (OH). Thus policies designed to address air pollution may impact climate and vice versa. We present calculations using a model coupling economics, atmospheric chemistry, climate and ecosystems to illustrate some effects of air pollution policy alone on global warming. We consider caps on emissions of NOx, CO, volatile organic carbon, and SOx both individually and combined in two ways. These caps can lower ozone causing less warming, lower sulfate aerosols yielding more warming, lower OH and thus increase CH4 giving more warming, and finally, allow more carbon uptake by ecosystems leading to less warming. Overall, these effects significantly offset each other suggesting that air pollution policy has a relatively small net effect on the global mean surface temperature and sea level rise. However, our study does not account for the effects of air pollution policies on overall demand for fossil fuels and on the choice of fuels (coal, oil, gas), nor have we considered the effects of caps on black carbon or organic carbon aerosols on climate. These effects, if included, could lead to more substantial impacts of capping pollutant emissions on global temperature and sea level than concluded here. Caps on aerosols in general could also yield impacts on other important aspects of climate beyond those addressed here, such as the regional patterns of cloudiness and precipitation.

Experiment with air.

Realiza experimentos con aviones de papel, botellas de plástico, instrumentos musicales de viento caseros, globos llenos de aire caliente, paracaidas, para explicar las propiedades del aire.Tiene un glosario.Para alumnos de primaria.

Air.

Explica por qué el aire es importante para la vida vegetal y animal. Se analiza cómo algunos inventos han dependido de él, y se sugieren actividades que demuestren sus propiedades.

I can help clean our air.

Analiza las formas prácticas en las que los niños pueden proteger el medio ambiente. Sencillas actividades para mostrar cuáles son los problemas, y sugerir la forma en que pueden participar en la preservación de los recursos naturales del planeta a través del reciclaje. Le cuenta a los lectores cual es la composición del aire que respiramos, por qué es importante para nosotros, la forma en que está contaminado y lo que podemos hacer para mantenerlo limpio y saludable.

Instituciones pedagógicas extranjeras : Le Centre National D'Education de plein air de Suresnes.

Se describen brevemente las instalaciones y la organización de esta institución pedagógica francesa, cuyo objetivo es la formación de maestros especializados en la enseñanza de alumnos con deficiencias mentales, sensoriales y motóricas. En cuanto al alumnado, vive en la escuela en régimen de seminternado y su estancia puede variar desde unos meses hasta el ciclo de escolaridad completo.

Case-Crossover Analysis of Air Pollution Health Effects: A Systematic Review of Methodology and Application

Case-crossover is one of the most used designs for analyzing the health-related effects of air pollution. Nevertheless, no one has reviewed its application and methodology in this context. Objective: We conducted a systematic review of case-crossover (CCO) designs used to study the relationship between air pollution and morbidity and mortality, from the standpoint of methodology and application.Data sources and extraction: A search was made of the MEDLINE and EMBASE databases.Reports were classified as methodologic or applied. From the latter, the following information was extracted: author, study location, year, type of population (general or patients), dependent variable(s), independent variable(s), type of CCO design, and whether effect modification was analyzed for variables at the individual level. Data synthesis: The review covered 105 reports that fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Of these, 24 addressed methodological aspects, and the remainder involved the design’s application. In the methodological reports, the designs that yielded the best results in simulation were symmetric bidirectional CCO and time-stratified CCO. Furthermore, we observed an increase across time in the use of certain CCO designs, mainly symmetric bidirectional and time-stratified CCO. The dependent variables most frequently analyzed were those relating to hospital morbidity; the pollutants most often studied were those linked to particulate matter. Among the CCO-application reports, 13.6% studied effect modification for variables at the individual level.Conclusions: The use of CCO designs has undergone considerable growth; the most widely used designs were those that yielded better results in simulation studies: symmetric bidirectional and time-stratified CCO. However, the advantages of CCO as a method of analysis of variables at the individual level are put to little use

Combined Analysis of the Short-Term Effects of Photochemical Air Pollutants on Mortality within the EMECAM Project

In recent years, some epidemiologic studies have attributed adverse effects of air pollutants on health not only to particles and sulfur dioxide but also to photochemical air pollutants (nitrogen dioxide and ozone). The effects are usually small, leading to some inconsistencies in the results of the studies. Furthermore, the different methodologic approaches of the studies used has made it difficult to derive generic conclusions. We provide here a quantitative summary of the short-term effects of photochemical air pollutants on mortality in seven Spanish cities involved in the EMECAM project, using generalized additive models from analyses of single and multiple pollutants. Nitrogen dioxide and ozone data were provided by seven EMECAM cities (Barcelona, Gijón, Huelva, Madrid, Oviedo, Seville, and Valencia). Mortality indicators included daily total mortality from all causes excluding external causes, daily cardiovascular mortality, and daily respiratory mortality. Individual estimates, obtained from city-specific generalized additive Poisson autoregressive models, were combined by means of fixed effects models and, if significant heterogeneity among local estimates was found, also by random effects models. Significant positive associations were found between daily mortality (all causes and cardiovascular) and NO2, once the rest of air pollutants were taken into account. A 10 μg/m3 increase in the 24-hr average 1-day NO2 level was associated with an increase in the daily number of deaths of 0.43% [95% confidence interval(CI), –0.003–0.86%] for all causes excluding external. In the case of significant relationships, relative risks for cause-specific mortality were nearly twice as much as that for total mortality for all the photochemical pollutants. Ozone was independently related only to cardiovascular daily mortality. No independent statistically significant relationship between photochemical air pollutants and respiratory mortality was found. The results in this study suggest that, given the present levels of photochemical pollutants, people living in Spanish cities are exposed to health risks derived from air pollution

Comparing meta-analysis and ecological-longitudinal analysis in time-series studies: a case study of the effects of air pollution on mortality in three Spanish cities

The objective of this paper is to introduce a diVerent approach, called the ecological-longitudinal, to carrying out pooled analysis in time series ecological studies. Because it gives a larger number of data points and, hence, increases the statistical power of the analysis, this approach, unlike conventional ones, allows the complementation of aspects such as accommodation of random effect models, of lags, of interaction between pollutants and between pollutants and meteorological variables, that are hardly implemented in conventional approaches. Design—The approach is illustrated by providing quantitative estimates of the short-termeVects of air pollution on mortality in three Spanish cities, Barcelona,Valencia and Vigo, for the period 1992–1994. Because the dependent variable was a count, a Poisson generalised linear model was first specified. Several modelling issues are worth mentioning. Firstly, because the relations between mortality and explanatory variables were nonlinear, cubic splines were used for covariate control, leading to a generalised additive model, GAM. Secondly, the effects of the predictors on the response were allowed to occur with some lag. Thirdly, the residual autocorrelation, because of imperfect control, was controlled for by means of an autoregressive Poisson GAM. Finally, the longitudinal design demanded the consideration of the existence of individual heterogeneity, requiring the consideration of mixed models. Main results—The estimates of the relative risks obtained from the individual analyses varied across cities, particularly those associated with sulphur dioxide. The highest relative risks corresponded to black smoke in Valencia. These estimates were higher than those obtained from the ecological-longitudinal analysis. Relative risks estimated from this latter analysis were practically identical across cities, 1.00638 (95% confidence intervals 1.0002, 1.0011) for a black smoke increase of 10 μg/m3 and 1.00415 (95% CI 1.0001, 1.0007) for a increase of 10 μg/m3 of sulphur dioxide. Because the statistical power is higher than in the individual analysis more interactions were statistically significant,especially those among air pollutants and meteorological variables. Conclusions—Air pollutant levels were related to mortality in the three cities of the study, Barcelona, Valencia and Vigo. These results were consistent with similar studies in other cities, with other multicentric studies and coherent with both, previous individual, for each city, and multicentric studies for all three cities

Development of an air-scour control system for membrane bioreactors

The thesis involves the development and implementation of a new and robust control system based on permeability trends but at the same time capable of reducing aeration proportionally to permeate flux. Permeability was made a key parameter for directly comparing temporary changes in membrane performance. Transmembrane pressure and flux were gathered every 10 seconds and permeability values were automatically calculated; different mathematical algorithms were applied for the signal filtering of on-line data. Short term and long term permeability trends were compared once a day, and a control action was applied proportionally to the short term/long term permeability ratio without exceeding the aeration flow recommended by the membrane suppliers.

Air cargo economics

Air Cargo Economics - Outline - Air cargo participants - Air cargo pricing, rates & yields - Cargo related costs - Freighter aircraft operating costs - Methods of cost allocation - Pax/combi vs freighter services - Lufthansa’s cargo strategy - Quick change aircraft - Aircraft wet leasing - Conclusions

Air traffic rights : the path to multilateralism

Types of Air ABSTRACT: Transport Trading Agreements - Bilateral - “Open Skies” - Plurilateral - Multilateral

Bone-conducted tones masked by air-conducted noise

This paper presents a study designed to develop and evaluate a method for obtaining monaural thresholds for bone-conducted signals masked by air-conducted noises.

Ocular vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (oVEMP) using air conducted sound: Effect of body position on threshold

The primary objective of this research study is to determine if various body positions for ocular vestibular evoked myogenic potential (oVEMP) testing demonstrate differentiation of the saccule and utricle through threshold responses.