On the Local Detectability of the Passage Through the Schwarzschild Horizon

Using the property of the simplest invariant built from the covariant derivatives of the curvature tensor to change sign on the Schwarzschild horizon, and the relativistic quadratic geodesic deviation equation to express the invariant in terms of locally measurable quantities, viz., separation, relative velocity and acceleration of test particles, a scheme is presented which can, in principle, be used by an imaginary observer to detect by local measurements the passage through the event horizon in the Schwarzschild spacetime.     

Linear differential equations in the unit disc with analytic solutions of finite order

A function , analytic in the unit disc , belongs to the weighted Hardy space if , where is the maximum modulus of in the circle of radius centered at the origin. If belongs to for some , then it is said to be an -function. Heittokangas has shown that all solutions of the linear differential equation

()

where is analytic in for all , are of finite order of growth in if and only if all coefficients are -functions.

It is said that when . In this study it is shown that if all coefficients of satisfy for all , then all nontrivial solutions of satisfy

where and

In addition, if is the smallest index for which

then there are at least linearly independent solutions of such that

These results are a generalization of a recent result due to Chyzhykov, Gundersen and Heittokangas.

     

Chemical characterisation of biosludge from a wastewater treatment plant in a neutral sulphite semi-chemical pulp mill by single and sequential extraction of heavy metals and micro-/macronutrients — a case study

The main impetus for utilising the biosludge from the neutral sulphite semi-chemical pulping process is the Finnish legislation which from 1st January 2016 prohibits the deposition of this residue in landfills in Finland. The dry matter content of the biosludge in this case study was low (12.1 mass %), meaning that incineration of this residue is uneconomical. The biosludge was rich in P (6260 mg kg^?1). This, together with the high total organic carbon value of 459 g kg^?1 and the metal concentrations (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, Zn and Hg) lower than the Finnish permissible limits for land application, supports wide and various end-uses for this residue. Except for S (27600 mg kg^?1) and Cd (1.4 mg kg^?1), the other heavy metal concentrations in the biosludge were lower than the maximum values for heavy metal concentrations in a non-contaminated soil referred to the literature. From the utilisation perspective, and in view of the high levels of S and Na, this residue could efficiently be used, for example, to landscape landfills.     

Atmospheric pressure thermospray ionization using a heated microchip nebulizer

When a standard atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) or atmospheric pressure photoionization (APPI) ion source is used without applying the corona discharge or photoirradiation, atmospheric pressure thermospray ionization (APTSI) of various compounds can be achieved. Although largely ignored, this phenomenon has recently gained interest as an alternative ionization technique. In this study, this technique is performed for the first time on a miniaturized scale using a microchip nebulizer. Sample ionization with the presented microchip‐APTSI (µAPTSI) is achieved by applying only heat and gas flow to a nebulizer chip, without any other methods to promote gas‐phase ionization. To evaluate the performance of the described µAPTSI setup, ionization efficiency for a set of test compounds was monitored as the microchip positioning, temperature, nebulizer gas flow rate, sample solution composition, and solvent flow rate were varied. The µAPTSI mass spectra of the test compounds were also compared to those obtained with ESI and APCI. The µAPTSI produces ESI‐like spectra with low background noise, favoring the formation of protonated or deprotonated molecules of compounds that are ionizable in solution. Multiple charging of peptides without in‐source fragmentation was also observed. Unlike ESI, however, the µAPTSI source can tolerate the presence of mobile phase additives like trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) without significant ion suppression. The µAPTSI source can be used with standard mass spectrometer ion source hardware, being a unique alternative to the present interfacing techniques. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Efficient algorithms for combined heat and power production planning under the deregulated electricity market

Combined heat and power (CHP) production is an important energy production technology that can yield much higher total energy efficiency than separate heat and power generation. In CHP production, the heat and power production follows a joint characteristic, which means that the production planning must be done in coordination. Cost-efficient operation of a CHP system can be planned by using an optimization model. A long-term planning model decomposes into thousands of hourly models. Earlier, in the regulated electric power market, the planning problem was symmetrically driven by heat and power demand. The liberalization of the power market has created an asymmetrical planning problem, where heat production responds to the demand and power production to the volatile market price. In this paper, we utilize this asymmetry to develop novel envelope-based dual algorithms for solving the hourly CHP models efficiently. The basic idea is to transform the three-dimensional characteristic operating region for heat and power production of each CHP plant into a two-dimensional envelope by taking the power price as a parameter. Then the envelopes of each plant are used for looking up the optimal solution rapidly. We propose two versions of the algorithm: the on-line envelope construction algorithm (ECON) where the envelopes are constructed for each hour based on the power price and the off-line envelope construction algorithm (ECOFF) where envelopes are pre-computed for all different power price ranges. We derive the theoretical time complexity of the two algorithms and compare their performance empirically with realistic test models against the ILOG CPLEX solver and the Power Simplex (PS) algorithm. PS is an extremely efficient specialized primal algorithm developed for the symmetrical CHP planning problem under the regulated market. On average, when reusing previous basic solutions, ECON is 603 times faster than CPLEX and 1.3 times faster than PS. ECOFF is 1860 times faster than CPLEX and four times faster than PS.     

Implementing stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis

Stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis (SMAA) is a family of methods for aiding multicriteria group decision making in problems with inaccurate, uncertain, or missing information. These methods are based on exploring the weight space in order to describe the preferences that make each alternative the most preferred one, or that would give a certain rank for a specific alternative. The main results of the analysis are rank acceptability indices, central weight vectors and confidence factors for different alternatives. The rank acceptability indices describe the variety of different preferences resulting in a certain rank for an alternative, the central weight vectors represent the typical preferences favouring each alternative, and the confidence factors measure whether the criteria measurements are sufficiently accurate for making an informed decision.     

A variant of the dynamic programming algorithm for unit commitment of combined heat and power systems

The paper addresses the unit commitment in multi-period combined heat and power (CHP) production planning under the deregulated power market. In CHP plants (units), generation of heat and power follows joint characteristics, which means that production planning must be done in coordination. We introduce in this paper the DP-RSC1 algorithm, which is a variant of the dynamic programming (DP) algorithm based on linear relaxation of the ON/OFF states of the units and sequential commitment of units one by one. The time complexity of DP-RSC1 is proportional to the number of generating units in the system, the number of periods over the planning horizon and the time for solving a single-period economic dispatch problem. We have compared the DP-RSC1 algorithm with realistic power plants against the unit decommitment algorithm and the traditional priority listing method. The results show that the DP-RSC1 algorithm gives somewhat more accurate results (0.08–0.5% on average, maximum 10% for the individual sub-case) and executes 3–5 times faster on average than the unit decommitment algorithm. It is not surprising that the solution quality of the DP-RSC1 algorithm is much better than that of the priority listing method.     

Lagrangian relaxation based algorithm for trigeneration planning with storages

Trigeneration is a booming power production technology where three energy commodities are simultaneously produced in a single integrated process. Electric power, heat (e.g. hot water) and cooling (e.g. chilled water) are three typical energy commodities in the trigeneration system. The production of three energy commodities follows a joint characteristic. This paper presents a Lagrangian relaxation (LR) based algorithm for trigeneration planning with storages based on deflected subgradient optimization method. The trigeneration planning problem is modeled as a linear programming (LP) problem. The linear cost function poses the convergence challenge to the LR algorithm and the joint characteristic of trigeneration plants makes the operating region of trigeneration system more complicated than that of power-only generation system and that of combined heat and power (CHP) system. We develop an effective method for the long-term planning problem based on the proper strategy to form Lagrangian subproblems and solve the Lagrangian dual (LD) problem based on deflected subgradient optimization method. We also develop a heuristic for restoring feasibility from the LD solution. Numerical results based on realistic production models show that the algorithm is efficient and near-optimal solutions are obtained.     

Role of the ionic reactions in teaching and research in Finland

Summary The status of ionic reactions in the chemistry curricula of the Finnish universities is outlined. In analytics their role is evidently changed. Qualitative analysis is no longer carried out by means of ionic reactions, but in modern instrumental methods of analysis these reactions are needed in sample preparation. Additionally, the ionic reactions are still important in teaching of analytical and inorganic chemistry. However, this topic should partly be taught already in the secondary school.