admission. This proportion could already be greater in some parts of the country and may increase if referrals of cases of self-poisoning increase faster than the facilities for their assessment and management. The provision of social work and psychiatric expertise in casualty departments may be one means of preventing unnecessary medical admissions without risk to the patients. Dr Blake's and Dr Bramble's figures do not demonstrate, however, that any advantage would attach to medical teams taking over assessment from psychiatrists except that, by implication, assessments would be completed sooner by staff working on the ward full time. What the figures actually suggest is that if assessment of overdoses were left to house doctors there would be an increase in admissions to psychiatric units (by 19°U), outpatients (by 5O°'), and referrals to social services (by 140o). So for house doctors to assess overdoses would provide no economy for the psychiatric or social services. The study does not tell us what the consequences would have been for the six patients who the psychiatrists would have admitted but to whom the house doctors would have offered outpatient appointments. E J SALTER

Vitamin D deficiency.

Impatti, adattamento e vulnerabilita Le cause e le responsabilita dei cambiamenti climatici sono state trattate sul numero di ottobre della rivista Cda. Approfondiamo l’argomento presentando il documento: “Cambiamenti climatici 2007: impatti, adattamento e vulnerabilita” votato ad aprile 2007 dal secondo gruppo di lavoro del Comitato Intergovernativo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Si tratta del secondo di tre documenti che compongono il quarto rapporto sui cambiamenti climatici.

/pdf/climate-change-2007-impacts-adaptation-and-vulnerability-31xc1cf4d3.pdf

Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.

Renewable technologies are considered as clean sources of energy and optimal use of these resources minimize environmental impacts, produce minimum secondary wastes and are sustainable based on current and future economic and social societal needs. Sun is the source of all energies. The primary forms of solar energy are heat and light. Sunlight and heat are transformed and absorbed by the environment in a multitude of ways. Some of these transformations result in renewable energy flows such as biomass and wind energy. Renewable energy technologies provide an excellent opportunity for mitigation of greenhouse gas emission and reducing global warming through substituting conventional energy sources. In this article a review has been done on scope of CO2 mitigation through solar cooker, water heater, dryer, biofuel, improved cookstoves and by hydrogen.

https://www.beren.sakarya.edu.tr/sites/beren.sakarya.edu.tr/file/1380752545-07-RenewEn.pdf.pdf

Role of renewable energy sources in environmental protection: A review

The science and technology of ultracapacitors are reviewed for a number of electrode materials, including carbon, mixed metal oxides, and conducting polymers. More work has been done using microporous carbons than with the other materials and most of the commercially available devices use carbon electrodes and an organic electrolytes. The energy density of these devices is 3¯5 Wh/kg with a power density of 300¯500 W/kg for high efficiency (90¯95%) charge/discharges. Projections of future developments using carbon indicate that energy densities of 10 Wh/kg or higher are likely with power densities of 1¯2 kW/kg. A key problem in the fabrication of these advanced devices is the bonding of the thin electrodes to a current collector such the contact resistance is less than 0.1 cm2. Special attention is given in the paper to comparing the power density characteristics of ultracapacitors and batteries. The comparisons should be made at the same charge/discharge efficiency.

Ultracapacitors: Why, How, and Where is the Technology

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) constitute a class of flexible nonlinear models designed to mimic biological neural systems. In this entry, we introduce ANN using familiar econometric terminology and provide an overview of ANN modeling approach and its implementation methods. † Correspondence: Chung-Ming Kuan, Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, 128 Academia Road, Sec. 2, Taipei 115, Taiwan; ckuan@econ.sinica.edu.tw. †† I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the editor, Professor Steven Durlauf, for his patience and constructive comments on early drafts of this entry. I also thank Shih-Hsun Hsu and Yu-Lieh Huang for very helpful suggestions. The remaining errors are all mine.

Artificial neural networks

The influence of an impermeable surface on pore steam pressure during drying of refractory concrete slabs

Spray drying of a concentrated common salt (NaCl) solution carried out in the intense oscillating high-temperature turbulent flow field generated in the tailpipe of a pulse combustor was simulated. Simulation of such transport process problems is especially crucial since the environmental conditions are too hostile for detailed and reliable measurements. The momentum, heat, and mass transfer processes between the gas and droplet phases during drying were simulated using a computational fluid dynamic solver. The simulated profiles of flow field, temperature, and humidity of gaseous phase, and particle trajectories in a drying chamber are presented and discussed. The effects of gas temperature, pulse frequency and amplitude, and gas mass flow rate on the transient flow patterns, droplet trajectories, and overall dryer performance were investigated. Different turbulence models were also tested. Simulation results show that the flow field and droplet drying conditions vary widely during a single pulsating per...

A Parametric Study of Spray Drying of a Solution in a Pulsating High-Temperature Turbulent Flow

Experimental studies are presented on drying of soybean milk in a vibrated fluidized bed of inert particles. The effects of inlet air temperature, superficial air velocity, static bed height, and the feed rate on the bed pressure drop, product hold-up and the convective heat transfer coefficient are discussed. The thermal efficiency of the dryer as well as some basic characteristics for the vibrated fluid bed of glass beads and Teflon pellets are given and compared to the ones for conventional fluid beds. A regression equation for the volumetric heat transfer coefficient is provided.

Performance characteristics of the vibrated fluid bed of inert particles for drying of liquid feeds

Drying of Herbal Medicines and Tea

The operating parameters for spray drying play a significant role in determining the properties of the dried product. Ginkgo biloba (GB) seeds are a popular food and additive in the food and medicine market; in this study we spray dried these seeds. According to the L1644 orthogonal experimental design, a total of 16 tests was performed in a compact spray dryer. Parameters, i.e., inlet air temperature, air flow rate, outlet air temperature, and feed concentration, were selected as affecting factors. The dried product was evaluated with respect to residual moisture content, color difference, mean particle size, and protein content. The effects of these four parameters on the product properties were investigated. The experimental results showed that operating air temperature, especially the outlet air temperature, significantly affected the residual moisture and protein content in the dried product. High outlet air temperature can reduce the product quality. On the other hand, the mean particle size of GB p...

Arun S. Mujumdar

Papers

The influence of an impermeable surface on pore steam pressure during drying of refractory concrete slabs

A Parametric Study of Spray Drying of a Solution in a Pulsating High-Temperature Turbulent Flow

Performance characteristics of the vibrated fluid bed of inert particles for drying of liquid feeds

Drying of Herbal Medicines and Tea

Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Spray-Drying Parameters on the Dried Powder Properties of Ginkgo biloba Seeds