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The present study proposes a graphical method for the design of ternary distillation systems at finite reflux. Here key design parameters are determined, in particular feed stage location and the number of theoretical stages required for separation at finite reflux for ideal and nonideal systems in simple columns. The procedure provides designers with a visual tool to determine the design parameters simultaneously and no additional calculations are required unlike current approaches. The proposed graphical method correlated to the Fenske-Underwood-Gilliland (FUG) method for ideal systems. The parameters obtained from the proposed graphical allow for implementation in rigorous simulators as starting values to achieve a converged column with the first simulation and less computational difficulty.

Introduction: Sesame is one of the oldest crops and probably the oldest oilseed in the world. In most regions, the landrace and local masses of sesame are used. To increase production and yield, the production of modified cultivars for different agricultural climates is extremely important. Material and Methods: Seven genotypes included Isfahan, Sirjan, Fars, Oltan, Jiroft, Sabzevar, TS-3 and 21 hybrids that were obtained from them were studied in the research farm of the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Birjand under the drought stress conditions during 2015-2018. The experiment was conducted in a randomized complete block design with three replications as a 7 × 7 one-way diallel. In this study, several traits were measured. These traits were including plant height, height to the first fruiting capsule, number of capsules per plant, number of sub-branches, number of leaves, leaf length, number of seeds per capsule, capsule length, capsule weight, capsule width, days to 50% and 90% flowering, days to physiological maturity, thousand seed weight, oil percentage, protein percentage, amount of chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, total chlorophyll, biological yield, economic yield and harvest index. Results: The investigation of the adequacy of the additive-dominance model showed that the model was sufficient in the traits including plant height, capsule length, capsule weight, number of leaves, number of sub-branches, number of capsules per plant, economic yield, biological yield, days to 50 flowering, days to 90% flowering and days to physiological maturity, and therefore diallel analysis was done on these traits. Hayman's variance analysis showed that were significant component a (additive effects of genes) in all traits and component b (dominant effects of genes) in all traits except plant height. Also, were significant the component b1 (mean dominance effects) in most traits except plant height, number of auxiliary branches, number of capsules and seed yield, the component b2 (other dominance deviation due to the parents) in most traits except plant height, number of auxiliary branches and number of capsules, and the component b3 (residual dominance variation) in all traits except plant height. The investigation of genetic parameters showed significant additive genetic component (D) and dominanant genetic components (H1 and H2) in most traits. Also were significant the component F (average covariance of additive and dominance effects) and the component h2 (the overall dominance effect of heterozygous loci) in half of the traits. The average degree of dominance (√ (H1/D)) in different traits was observed as additive, incomplete, and over dominance. In all characteristics, except capsule weight, the ratio of genes with positive and negative effects (H2/(4H1)) was not equal to 0.25; therefore, in all traits, increasing and decreasing genes did not have symmetrical distribution among parents. The ratio of dominant and recessive genes in parents ((√(4DH1)+F)/(√(4DH1)-F)) was more than unity in most of the traits, so there was an uneven distribution of dominant and recessive genes in most of the traits. The number of dominant gene groups (h2/H2) was obtained from 0 to 2.04; therefore, all traits were controlled by one or two gene blocks. Broad sense (hb 2) and narrow sense (hn 2) heritability were high in all traits. Conclusion: In the traits studied, the type of action of genes controlling the traits, the ratio of dominant and recessive genes, the ratio of genes with increasing and decreasing effects, additive effects and dominance were variable and were different in most of the traits. Generally, most traits were controlled by genes with additive and dominant effects. The high heritability estimate indicates the promising news of the studied genetic materials in future studies. Therefore, among these materials, better genotypes can be selected for the climatic conditions of Birjand, so that it can be further investigated in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anaerobic lagoons remove organic matter in the absence of oxygen and must be designed considering facultative or aerated lagoons, to continue with the treatment and at the same time re-oxygenate the wastewater. The purpose of this document is to determine two graphs to calculate the elimination of fecal coliforms in anaerobic lagoons. An application example is included with the traditional method adopted by the Instituto Mexicano de Tecnología del Agua y la Comisión Nacional del Agua, later the graphs previously prepared are used. The results show the same values calculated with the traditional criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Comparing the differences in outcomes (that is, in “dependent variables”) between two subpopulations is often most informative when comparing outcomes only for individuals from the subpopulations who are similar according to “independent variables.” The independent variables are generally known as “scores,” as in propensity scores for matching or as in the probabilities predicted by statistical or machine-learned models, for example. If the outcomes are discrete, then some averaging is necessary to reduce the noise arising from the outcomes varying randomly over those discrete values in the observed data. The traditional method of averaging is to bin the data according to the scores and plot the average outcome in each bin against the average score in the bin. However, such binning can be rather arbitrary and yet greatly impacts the interpretation of displayed deviation between the subpopulations and assessment of its statistical significance. Fortunately, such binning is entirely unnecessary in plots of cumulative differences and in the associated scalar summary metrics that are analogous to the workhorse statistics of comparing probability distributions—those due to Kolmogorov and Smirnov and their refinements due to Kuiper. The present paper develops such cumulative methods for the common case in which no score of any member of the subpopulations being compared is exactly equal to the score of any other member of either subpopulation.

At gauged watersheds, the time of concentration can be estimated using rainfall-runoff data; however, at ungauged watersheds, empirical methods are used instead. Large errors in the application of empirical methods may cause inaccurate modeling of floods and unreliable structure design. In this paper, methods for calculating the time of concentration (Tc) were compared to identify the best equation for estimating Tc in ungauged watersheds of an arid region. The graphical method, based on measured data, was compared to 15 empirical methods to determine which empirical method returned the best results. The graphical method was applied to 33 rainfall-runoff events in four rural sub-watersheds located in the central parts of Hormozgan province, Iran. A ranking-based procedure was used to select the best performing empirical methods. To minimize bias and improve accuracy, the best performing empirical methods were modified by adjusting their formulas. According to the study, three empirical methods: (1) Williams, (2) Pilgrim and Mac Dermott, and (3) Arizona DOT, performed the best in the study areas. The results also showed that the modified Williams and Arizona DOT’s formulas were able to estimate the time of concentration in ungauged watersheds with an error lower than 1%.

Abstract The ecological niche sensu Hutchinson is defined as the set of environmental conditions allowing a species to grow, maintain, and reproduce. This conception of the niche, which is assimilated to a p‐dimensional hypervolume, with p representing all environmental variables, has been widely applied in ecology. However, displaying the niche hypervolume has proved challenging when more than three environmental dimensions are considered simultaneously. We propose a simple method (implemented in the specieschrom R package) that displays the full multidimensionality of the ecological niche of a species into a two‐dimensional space by means of a graphic we call species chromatogram. This method gives a graphical summary of the niche by representing together abundance gradients with respect to all environmental variables. A chromatogram enables niche optimums and breaths to be rapidly quantified, and when several chromatograms are examined (one per species), rapid comparisons can be made. From our chromatograms, we proposed a procedure that quantifies niche optimum and breadth as well as niche overlapping (index D) and the identification of the most discriminant combination of environmental variables. We apply these analyses on eight planktonic species collected by the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey in the North Atlantic Ocean using 10 environmental variables. We display their full multidimensional niches and quantify their niche optimums and breadths along each dimension. We also compare our index D with other indices by means of hypervolume and dynRB R packages. By catching the full complexity of the niche, species chromatograms allow many different niche properties to be rapidly assessed and compared among species from niche optimums and breadths to the identification of the most relevant environmental parameters and the degree of niche overlapping among species. Species chromatograms may be seen as species’ fingerprint and may also allow a better identification of the mechanisms involved in species assembly.