University of Rhode Island

About: University of Rhode Island is a education organization based out in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Bay. The organization has 11464 authors who have published 22770 publications receiving 841066 citations. The organization is also known as: URI & Rhode Island College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts.

Models for recycling electronics end-of-life products

Abstract: Increasing environmental concerns about the disposal of mass produced products have resulted in efforts to take back end-of-life consumer products. Legislation aimed at forcing manufacturers to take back electronics products at the end of their useful lives has either been adopted or is impending in many countries. This, along with shrinking landfill capacity and the reluctance of communities to open new waste sinks underscores the importance of developing methods and models for the management of end-of-life materials and products. This paper reports a study of the reverse channels for recycling of electronics products. The economics of electronics recycling are modeled from the viewpoints of the generators, recyclers, and material processors separately. A variety of mathematical programming models, representative of the many ways in which the recycling industry currently operates, have been proposed along with numerical illustrations. Models integrating disassembly and material recovery decisions are also presented. These models can be used by recyclers and processors for optimizing recycling operations and thus contribute towards the economic sustainability of electronics recycling.

Who Participates, Who Does Not, and Why? An Analysis of Voluntary Neighborhood Organizations in the United States and Israel

Abstract: Lack of participation in voluntary associations and the associated issues of why people do or do not participate are major areas of interest in the research literature concerning citizen participation. The present study used three types of variables (demographic, social psychological, and costs/benefits) to investigate the characteristics of participants and nonparticipants in neighborhood-type organizations in the United States and Israel. Findings from analysis of the demographic variables show some cross-cultural similarities (including a surprising lack of race/ethnic and education differences between participants and nonparticipants). There were striking cross-cultural similarities using the social psychological variables. The data from the Israel sample provide important information on the costs and benefits of participation. A discriminant analysis points to the predictive strength of social psychological and cost/benefit variables in comparison to demographic variables. Implications of these results for explanatory and predictive purposes are discussed.

Swimming pattern as an indicator of the roles of copepod sensory systems in the recognition of food

Abstract: The roles of copepod sensory systems in the recognition of food were investigated using the “Bugwatcher”, a video-computer system designed to track and describe quantitatively the swimming patterns of aquatic organisms. The swimming behavior of the copepodPseudocalanus minutus in the presence of phytoplankton is characterized by a decrease in average swimming speed and an increase in “pause” behaviors compared to its swimming behavior in filtered seawater. Copepods exposed to chemosensory stimulation alone (filtered phytoplankton exudate) exhibited an increase in average swimming speed and an increase in the number of “burst” swimming behaviors. When exposed to a novel, non-food chemosensory stimulus (morpholine), no change in swimming behavior was observed unless the copepods had been conditioned to this odor in the presence of phytoplankton. Copepods exposed to mechanosensory stimulation alone (plastic spheres) exhibited a decrease in swimming speed and an increase in pause behaviors. When exposed to both forms of stimulation simultaneously (phytoplankton exudate and plastic spheres), a further decrease in swimming speed and increase in pause behaviors occurs, yielding a swimming pattern similar to that found in the presence of phytoplankton. This analysis of swimming pattern indicates that both chemoreception and mechanoreception contribute to the recognition of food inP. minutus.

Fast base extension using a redundant modulus in RNS

Abstract: A technique to extend the base of a residue number system (RNS) based on the Chinese remainder theorem (CRT) and the use of a redundant modulus, is proposed. The technique obtains the residue(s) of a given number in the extended moduli without resorting to the traditional mixed-radix conversion (MRC) algorithm. The base extension can be achieved in log/sub 2/n table lookup cycles, where n is the number of moduli in the RNS. The superiority of the technique, compared in terms of latency and hardware requirements to the traditional Szabo-Tanaka method is demonstrated. >