Comparative evaluation of energy and resource consumption for vacuum carbothermal reduction and Pidgeon process used in magnesium production

With the fast development of the application of magnesium based alloys,the demand for primary magnesium is increasing dramatically all over the world.The Pidgeon process is the most widely used process for producing magnesium in China,but suffers from problems such as high energy,resource consumption and environmental pollution.While the process of vacuum carbothermal reduction to produce magnesium(VCTRM)has attracted more and more attention as its advantages,but it has not been well-practiced in industrial applications and there also is no comprehensive and quantitative analysis of this process.This study quantified the flows of resource and energy for the Pidgeon process and the VCTRM process,then compared and analyzed these two processes with each other from three aspects.The VCTRM process results in 63.14%and 69.16%lower of non-renewable mineral resources and energy consumptions when compared to the Pidgeon process,respectively.Moreover,the low energy consumption(2.675 tce vs.8.681 tce)and material to magnesium ratio(2.953:1 vs.6.429:1)of the VCTRM process,which lead to lower greenhouse gas(GHG)emissions(8.777 t vs.26.337 t)and solid waste generation(0.522 t vs.5.465 t)with a decrease of 66.67%and 90.45%,respectively.Results indicate that the VCTRM process is a more environmentally friendly process for magnesium production with high efficiency but low cost and low pollution,and it shows a good potential to be industrialized in the future after solving the bottleneck problem of the reverse reaction.

Elasticity Ratio of Resource Consumption and the Resource Consumption

Today the resources are becoming scarcer, which should not be regarded as unexhausted any more. Correspondingly, the production would be constrained by the scarcity of resources clearly. Then the economic researchers would pay much more attention to reducing the consumption of natural resources in the future. Therefore this paper brings foreword the conception of elasticity ratio of resource consumption based on the concept of elasticity and analyzes the relationship between the parameters. For the certain relationships between the elasticity ratio of resource consumption and resource consumption, this paper will try to reveal, to keep economy growing while resource consumption reducing, what conditions should be met as to the relationships among resource productivity, its growth rate, energy saving efficiency, economic growth rate and elasticity ratio of resource consumption. This paper proves the relationship between the China＇s energy consumption and economy growth using statistic data from 1978 to 2003.

Development of Future Generations:Oriented Virtual Negotiation Support System for Intergenerational Conflict

Intergenerational conflict coordination is the fundamental requirement and core of sustainable development. In this paper, through the analysis of the future generations-oriented management mechanisms for intergenerational conflict, the idea of mechanisms and institution building for the coordination and management of intergenerational conflict is put forward. Furthermore, the future generations-oriented virtual negotiation support system (NSS) for intergenerational conflict is developed, built on the analysis of the process simulation of intergenerational wealth transfer, intergenerational equilibrium allocation of resources, and strategies for the mitigation and avoidance of intergenerational conflict, through the application of advanced IT technology. The virtual NSS for intergenerational conflict is helpful to the practical application of the sustainable development theory; on the other hand, it can be applied directly to the intergenerational equilibrium allocation of resources, national economic accounting, formulation of sustainable development strategies and other urgent national economic and social development issues. Finally, the sustainable development theory can be enriched and extended. Therefore, the development of the future generations-oriented virtual NSS for intergenerational conflict has certain theoretical and practical effects on the theory of sustainable development.

IRP/DSM and Sustainable Development

This paper introduces the energy consumption status in China, elaborate the affects of the unreasonable energy consumption structure on energy environment and sustainable development of economy. Simultaneously, it points out the solution, i.e., to implement integrated resources planning (IRP)/demand side management (DSM), and gives some recommendations on the way of implementing IRP/DSM.

Resource pre-allocation algorithms for low-energy task scheduling of cloud computing

In order to lower the power consumption and improve the coefficient of resource utilization of current cloud computing systems, this paper proposes two resource pre-allocation algorithms based on the ＂shut down the redundant, turn on the demanded＂ strategy here. Firstly, a green cloud computing model is presented, abstracting the task scheduling problem to the virtual machine deployment issue with the virtualization technology. Secondly, the future workloads of system need to be predicted： a cubic exponential smoothing algorithm based on the conservative control（CESCC） strategy is proposed, combining with the current state and resource distribution of system, in order to calculate the demand of resources for the next period of task requests. Then, a multi-objective constrained optimization model of power consumption and a low-energy resource allocation algorithm based on probabilistic matching（RA-PM） are proposed. In order to reduce the power consumption further, the resource allocation algorithm based on the improved simulated annealing（RA-ISA） is designed with the improved simulated annealing algorithm. Experimental results show that the prediction and conservative control strategy make resource pre-allocation catch up with demands, and improve the efficiency of real-time response and the stability of the system. Both RA-PM and RA-ISA can activate fewer hosts, achieve better load balance among the set of high applicable hosts, maximize the utilization of resources, and greatly reduce the power consumption of cloud computing systems.

Study on Eco-environmental Stress Trend of Inner Mongolia Based on Ecological Stress Index

[Objective] The study aimed to analyze the eco-environrnental stress trend of Inner Mongolia using ecological stress index method. [Methed] On the basis of the improved ecological stress index （ESI） analysis method, the eco-environmental stress trend of Inner Mongolia from 1996 to 2009 was analyzed, as well as the changes of eco-environmental stress in major industrial cities of Inner Mongolia in 2008. [ Result] With the economic development of Inner Mongolia from 1996 to 2009, the U-shape change could be found in the eco-environmental stress, showing an upward trend on the whole, especially since 2003, and there was a sharp raise in the environmental pollution index. In addition, the eco-enviren- mental stress lessened in most major cities of Inner Mongolian in 2008, but it was in a polarization state, that is, Baotou, Wuhai and Hohhot biased resource and energy consumption, while Ordos and Chifeng biased environmental pollution. [ Conclusion] The research could provide scientific ref- erences for the protection of ecological environment and the adjustment of industrial structure in Inner Mongolia.

Two Approaches for Indirect Teleportation with Partially Entangled States

Teleportation of a qubit with two partially entangled qubit states linking three nodes as quantum channels is extensively studied via the usual ancilla method. With the method two realization approaches, i.e., the node progression approach and the global accumulation approach, are presented. Their resource consumptions, operation complexities, and el^ciencies axe evaluated and compared. It is found that the latter approach is better than the former one besides the error is partially self-corrected. The latter approach is further improved so that two merits are resultant. The improved version is compared with a similar protocol [M.Y. Wang and F.L. Yah, Eur. Phys. J. D 54 （2009） 111]. Their merits and additional costs are exposed.

A multistandard and resource-efficient Viterbi decoder for a multimode communication system

We present a novel standard convolutional symbols generator(SCSG)block for a multi-parameter reconfigurable Viterbi decoder to optimize resource consumption and adaption of multiple parameters.The SCSG block generates all the states and calculates all the possible standard convolutional symbols corresponding to the states using an iterative approach.The architecture of the Viterbi decoder based on the SCSG reduces resource consumption for recalculating the branch metrics and rearranging the correspondence between branch metrics and transition paths.The proposed architecture supports constraint lengths from 3 to 9,code rates of 1/2,1/3,and 1/4,and fully optional polynomials.The proposed Viterbi decoder has been implemented on the Xilinx XC7VX485T device with a high throughput of about 200 Mbps and a low resource consumption of 162k logic gates.