Validated, non-destructive and environmentally friendly determination of cocaine in euro bank notes

A non-destructive, fast and environmentally friendly procedure has been developed for cocaine determination in euro bank notes. Cocaine was extracted with 15 ml methanol by vortex agitation during 5 min. The extract was evaporated and reconstituted in 0.5 ml methanol. GC-MS-MS analysis was performed using as precursor ion m/z 182.2, with an excitation energy voltage of 1.60 eV, being the product ions measured m/z 150.2 and 82.0. A limit of detection of 0.15 ng per note and a repeatability of 6%, established from the relative standard deviation, of a 1 ng ml(-1) level, were achieved. Recoveries of 101+/-2 and 98+/-3% were obtained for samples spiked with 100 and 10 microg respectively. Results show that all the euro bank notes measured (16 samples) were contaminated with cocaine in the range between 1.25 and 889 microg. Two different contamination levels, high level (150-889 microg) and low one (1.25-77 microg) were found and it could be related with the direct or indirect contact with the drug.     

Fingerprint image enhancement using data driven Directional Filter Bank

A new method based upon data driven tool, principal component analysis (PCA), for fingerprint enhancement is proposed in this paper. PCA is a very useful statistical technique that has found application in many different fields like image compression, face recognition and is commonly used for finding patterns in data of high dimension. In the proposed method, the input image is first decomposed into directional images using decimation free Directional Filter Bank (DDFB). Then these directional images are normalized. A data driven technique PCA is applied to these normalized directional fingerprint images, which gives the PCA filtered images. These are basically directional images. Then these directional images are reconstructed into one image which is the enhanced one. Simulation results are included illustrating the capability of the proposed method.     

Antarctic Environmental Specimen Bank-First 5 Years of Experience

Abstract

The Project on an Antarctic Environmental Specimen Bank (Banca Campioni Ambientali Antartici—BCAA) began in 1994 in order to collect and classify samples from the Antarctic ecosystem to be used for future studies.

The objectives of the project are similar to the general aims of the Environmental Specimen Banks, but they specifically focus on the chemical aspects concerning the research activities of the Italian Project on the “Micropollutants Chemistry” (Sector “Chemical Contamination” of the Italian Antarctic Research Programme—PNRA).

During these first years the facilities suitable for storing a significant number of specimens (now over 2,000) at different temperatures (from ?30°C to ?150°C) and a database system, specifically designed for managing and consulting information concerning both the storage of samples and data on their chemical characterisation, have been developed.

In addition, a programme for validating the procedures of Antarctic organisms storage by checking the stability of some chemical parameters both in fresh and freeze-dried specimens has been developed.     

Analysis of Japanese banks’ historical tree diagram

By using the historical data from the Japanese banks’ database at “The Bankers Library” of Japanese Banker Association, we analyze the historical network of banks from 1868 to 2006. Firstly, we define a bank every year by a particle and draw a space-time evolution process of merger, division, establishment, and failure by a tree diagram structure. We found that the distribution of the tree basin size of real data and simulation result are mostly fitting well. Secondly, we analyze the raw data of financial statements of banks collected by the National Diet library. We confirm that the distributions of the amount of deposits have fat-tail every year, however, small deviations are observed relating to governmental policy.     

Benchmarking with quality-adjusted DEA (Q-DEA) to seek lower-cost high-quality service: Evidence from a U.S.bank application

Benchmarking is a widely cited method to identify and adopt best-practices as a means to improve performance. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been demonstrated to be a powerful benchmarking methodology for situations where multiple inputs and outputs need to be assessed to identify best-practices and improve productivity in organizations. Most DEA benchmarking studies have excluded quality, even in service-sector applications such as health care where quality is a key element of performance. This limits the practical value of DEA in organizations where maintaining and improving service quality is critical to achieving performance objectives. In this paper, alternative methods incorporating quality in DEA benchmarking are demonstrated and evaluated. It is shown that simply treating the quality measures as DEA outputs does not help in discriminating the performance. Thus, the current study presents a new, more sensitive, quality-adjusted DEA (Q-DEA), which effectively deals with quality measures in benchmarking. We report the results of applying Q-DEA to a U.S. bank's 200-branch network that required a method for benchmarking to help manage operating costs and service quality. Q-DEA findings helped the bank achieve cost savings and improved operations while preserving service quality, a dimension critical to its mission. New insights about ways to improve branch operations based on the best-practice (high-quality low-cost) benchmarks identified with Q-DEA are also described in the paper. This demonstrates the practical need and potential benefits of Q-DEA and its efficacy in one application, and also suggests the need for further research on measuring and incorporating quality into DEA benchmarking. The review process of this paper was handled by the Edit-in-Chief Peter Hammer.     

伊犁河南岸滩地水文地质条件及其开发利用

伊犁河南岸滩地面积广大，水土资源丰富，稍加投资改造即可利用，因此研究伊犁河滩地水土资源的开发利用，有其重要意义，本文以大量的第一手资料阐明了滩地的水文地质条件，分析和研究地下水的资源量，可开采量、排水问题及地下水资源的开发利用。     

An Exner-based coupled model for two-dimensional transient flow over erodible bed

Transient flow over erodible bed is solved in this work assuming that the dynamics of the bed load problem is described by two mathematical models: the hydrodynamic model, assumed to be well formulated by means of the depth averaged shallow water equations, and the Exner equation. The Exner equation is written assuming that bed load transport is governed by a power law of the flow velocity and by a flow/sediment interaction parameter variable in time and space. The complete system is formed by four coupled partial differential equations and a genuinely Roe-type first order scheme has been used to solve it on triangular unstructured meshes. Exact solutions have been derived for the particular case of initial value Riemann problems with variable bed level and depending on particular forms of the solid discharge formula. The model, supplied with the corresponding solid transport formulae, is tested by comparing with the exact solutions. The model is validated against laboratory experimental data of different unsteady problems over erodible bed.     

Evolution of bank efficiency in Brazil: A DEA approach

This paper investigates cost, technical and allocative efficiencies for Brazilian banks in the recent period (2000–2007). We use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to compute efficiency scores. Brazilian banks were found to have low levels of economic (cost) efficiency compared to banks in Europe and in the US. For the period with high macroeconomic volatility (2000–2002) the economic inefficiency in Brazilian banks can be attributed mainly to technical inefficiency rather than allocative inefficiency. State-owned banks are significantly more cost efficient than foreign, private domestic and private with foreign participation. There is no evidence of differences in economic efficiency due to type of activity and bank size. These results may provide some useful guidance for financial regulators and bank managers.     

Influences of the separation distance,ship speed and channel dimension on ship maneuverability in a confined waterway

Ship maneuvering in the confined inland waterway is investigated using the system-based method, where a nonlinear transient hydrodynamic model is adopted and confinement models are implemented to account for the influence of the channel bank and bottom. The maneuvering model is validated using the turning circle test, and the confinement model is validated using the experimental data. The separation distance, ship speed, and channel width are then varied to investigate their influences on ship maneuverability. With smaller separation distances and higher speeds near the bank, the ship's trajectory deviates more from the original course and the bow is repelled with a larger yaw angle, which increase the difficulty of maneuvering. Smaller channel widths induce higher advancing resistances on the ship. The minimum distance to the bank are extracted and studied. It is suggested to navigate the ship in the middle of the channel and with a reasonable speed in the restricted waterway.     

Surface characterization of plasma-modified resist patterns by ToF-SIMS analysis

We report the use of the time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) technique to determine whether the patterned bank is suitable for inkjet printing, by evaluating the phobicity contrast between two regions, the glass substrate inside pixels and the surface of the resist bank. We first examined the effect of plasma treatment on the ink spreading behavior inside pixels. The phobicity contrast was optimized by removing residues inside the pixels and by providing high phobicity on the bank surface. We show that ToF-SIMS spectra and mass-resolved images are effective tools in examining the existence of organic contaminants inside pixels and predicting the actual inkjet printing behavior. The ToF-SIMS technique will find promising applications that are related to surface characteristics where conventional contact angle measurement is hard to apply due to geometrical and technical restrictions.