The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) is an independent organization devoted to the development of standards.

American Society for Testing and Materials

In this Chapter, we imagine a decision maker (or a group of experts) trying to establish or examine fair procedures to combine opinions about alternatives related to different points of view.

Multiple criteria decision making

Alan Ford,† Hugues Miel, Aoife Ring,† Catherine N. Slattery,† Anita R. Maguire,*,†,‡ and M. Anthony McKervey* †Department of Chemistry and ‡School of Pharmacy, Analytical and Biological Chemistry Research Facility, Synthesis and Solid State Pharmaceutical Centre, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland Almac Discovery Ltd., David Keir Building, Stranmillis Road, Belfast BT9 5AG, United Kingdom Almac Sciences Ltd., Almac House, 20 Seagoe Industrial Estate, Craigavon BT63 5QD, United Kingdom

Modern Organic Synthesis with α-Diazocarbonyl Compounds

A new method for exact analytical calculation of the accessible surface areas and their gradients with respect to atomic coordinates is described. The new surface routine, GETAREA, finds solvent-exposed vertices of intersecting atoms, and thereby avoids calculating buried vertices which are not needed to determine the accessible surface area by the Gauss)Bonnet theorem. The surface routine was implemented in FANTOM, a program for energy minimization and Monte Carlo simulation, and tested for accuracy and efficiency in extensive energy minimizations of Met-enkephalin, the a-amylase inhibitor . tendamistat, and avian pancreatic polypeptide APP . The CPU time for the exact calculation of the accessible surface areas and their gradients has been . . reduced by factors of 2.2 Met-enkephalin and 3.2 tendamistat compared with our previous approach. The efficiency of our exact method is similar to the recently described approximate methods MSEED and SASAD. The performance of several atomic solvation parameter sets was tested in searches for low energy conformations of APP among conformations near the native X-ray crystal structure and highly distorted structures. The protein solvation parameters from w . x

Exact and efficient analytical calculation of the accessible surface areas and their gradients for macromolecules

The aim of this review article on recent developments of mechanochemistry (nowadays established as a part of chemistry) is to provide a comprehensive overview of advances achieved in the field of atomistic processes, phase transformations, simple and multicomponent nanosystems and peculiarities of mechanochemical reactions. Industrial aspects with successful penetration into fields like materials engineering, heterogeneous catalysis and extractive metallurgy are also reviewed. The hallmarks of mechanochemistry include influencing reactivity of solids by the presence of solid-state defects, interphases and relaxation phenomena, enabling processes to take place under non-equilibrium conditions, creating a well-crystallized core of nanoparticles with disordered near-surface shell regions and performing simple dry time-convenient one-step syntheses. Underlying these hallmarks are technological consequences like preparing new nanomaterials with the desired properties or producing these materials in a reproducible way with high yield and under simple and easy operating conditions. The last but not least hallmark is enabling work under environmentally friendly and essentially waste-free conditions (822 references).

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Hallmarks of mechanochemistry: From nanoparticles to technology

Over the past 20 years, China's transportation infrastructure has developed rapidly. To date, more than 40,000 kilometers expressway have been built and opened to traffic, ranking second in the world. In the meantime, short service life and early failure of the highway pavement have become one of major concerns. This may be contributed by the poorly designed semi-rigid pavement structure and heavily overloaded vehicles. In more recent years, some long-life pavement structures have been designed and constructed. This paper discusses the design and construction of an expressway long-life flexible pavement structure in China. The project involved is a new 26.78 kilometer, Da'an to Jiliao Section in Henan Province, of the Erlianhaote to Guangzhou Expressway. The pavement had been designed as a semi-rigid structure which was later replaced by the new long-life flexible pavement structure in order to introduce this pavement technology as a cost-effective alternative to current semi-rigid or rigid pavement technology in China. Technical services provided through integrated technology transfer activities have presented a model for future expressway projects an option, and made the long-life flexible pavement structure the leading edge of national practice.

Long-Life Pavement Design and Construction: A Case Study

The management of facility construction for hallmark events is critically important for their financial viability. However, little knowledge has been produced regarding the management of this type of construction. Based on the construction program for the Shanghai Expo 2010 and other cases reported in the literature, this paper provides an analysis of the common characteristics of construction for hallmark events, the challenges of financial management due to these characteristics, techniques to address these challenges, and lessons learned from the Expo construction. It is believed that one critical factor that contributes to the success of the Expo construction program is the integration of the financial management and contract management processes, assisted by a specifically designed computer program. The techniques used to integrate the two processes involve (1) mapping the program’s work breakdown structure, cost breakdown structure, and contract breakdown structure; (2) integrating the infor...

Integration of Financial and Contract Management on the Shanghai Expo Construction Program

An unequal interval grey model is constructed to predict component reliability using meantime between failure data. The initial grey model developed focuses on predicting failure tendencies using equal time intervals or an equally spaced interval sequence for small sample sizes. Using this approach, the grey model does a poor job of predicting component reliabilities. To better predict component reliability at a random failure time an unequal time interval grey model is constructed. An improved formula expression for the first-order accumulated generation operator is developed. Using this formula and the whitened equation for the grey differential model, yields a higher prediction precision for the improved unequal interval grey model. A numerical example is used to illustrate the method mentioned above. These results are compared with parametric estimates found using the maximum likelihood method as well as with Kaplan-Meier nonparametric estimates of reliability. The results indicate that the unequal time interval grey model is capable of predicting component reliabilities better than maximum likelihood estimation approach and the Kaplan-Meier nonparametric methods.

Reliability prediction using an unequal interval grey model

Regional Industrial Structure

The invention relates to plant physiology and pesticide science, in particular to a method for identifying herbicide resistance of cotton leaves by cotton ball positioning, which includes the steps: selecting material leaves for treatment, namely selecting intact functional leaves or leaves adjacent to those; secondly, cotton ball positioning, namely setting action spots on the front face of every functional leaf of each cotton plant clockwise or anticlockwise from a stipe, dipping cotton balls approximately in the same size with herbicide solutions having set concentrations, and sequentially placing the cotton balls dipped with the solutions having different concentrations at the corresponding action spots on the surface of each leaf; thirdly, observing action conditions of the treated spots to determine resistance levels of the spots. By the method, materials can be saved greatly, experimental scale can be reduced, artificial errors can be reduced greatly, results are precise and reliable, precision identification of the material resistance levels is technically guaranteed, and deep resistance research on current-generation material single plants is guaranteed. The method is quite simple in operation and easy to master.

Yuhong Wang

Papers

Long-Life Pavement Design and Construction: A Case Study

Integration of Financial and Contract Management on the Shanghai Expo Construction Program

Reliability prediction using an unequal interval grey model

Regional Industrial Structure

Method for identifying herbicide resistance of cotton leaves by cotton ball positioning