Multivariate statistical methods, i.e., cluster analysis (CA) and discriminant analysis (DA), were used to assess temporal and spatial variations in the water quality of the watercourses in the Northwestern New Territories, Hong Kong, over a period of five years (2000-2004) using 23 parameters at 23 different sites (31,740 observations). Hierarchical CA grouped the 12 months into two periods (the first and second periods) and classified the 23 monitoring sites into three groups (group A, group B, and group C) based on similarities of water quality characteristics. DA provided better results with great discriminatory ability for both temporal and spatial analysis. DA also provided an important data reduction because it only used six parameters (pH, temperature, five-day biochemical oxygen demand, fecal coliforms, Fe, and Ni) for temporal analysis, affording about 84% correct assignations, and seven parameters (pH, ammonia-nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen, fecal coliforms, Fe, Ni, and Zn) for spatial analysis, affording more than 90% correct assignations. Therefore, DA allowed a reduction in the dimensionality of the large data set and indicated a few significant parameters that were responsible for most of the variations in water quality. Thus, this study demonstrated that the multivariate statistical methods are useful for interpreting complex data sets in the analysis of temporal and spatial variations in water quality and the optimization of regional water quality monitoring network.
During the 2003 Chinese Arctic Research Expedition from the Bohai Sea to the high Arctic (37–80°N) aboard the icebreaker Xuelong (Snow Dragon), air samples were collected using a modified high-volume sampler that pulls air through a quartz filter and a polyurethane foam plug (PUF). These filters and PUFs were analyzed for particulate phase and gas phase polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), respectively, in the North Pacific Ocean and adjacent Arctic region. The ∑PAHs (where ∑=15 compounds) ranged from undetectable level to 4380pgm−3 in the particulate phase and 928–92600pgm−3 in the gas phase, respectively. A decreasing latitudinal trend was observed for gas-phase PAHs, probably resulting from temperature effects, dilution and decomposition processes; particulate-phase PAHs, however, showed poor latitudinal trends, because the effects of temperature, dilution and photochemistry played different roles in different regions from middle-latitude source areas to the high latitudes. The ratios of PAH isomer pairs, either conservative or sensitive to degradation during long-range transport, were employed to interpret sources and chemical aging of PAHs in ocean air. In this present study the fluoranthene/pyrene and indeno[123-cd]pyrene/benzo[ghi]pyrene isomer pairs, whose ratios are conservative to photo-degradation, implies that biomass or coal burning might be the major sources of PAHs observed over the North Pacific Ocean and the Arctic region in the summer. The isomer ratios of 1,7/(1,7+2,6)-DMP (dimethylphenanthrene) and anthracene/phenanthrene, which are sensitive to aging of air masses, not only imply chemical evolving of PAHs over the North Pacific Ocean were different from those over the Arctic, but reveal that PAHs over the Arctic were mainly related to coal burning, and biomass burning might have a larger contribution to the PAHs over the North pacific ocean.
The yrast bands of Fe-51,Fe-52,Fe-53 have been studied with a microscopical effective Hamiltonian derived from the charge-dependent Bonn NN potential. Calculations obtain satisfactory agreements with experimental data, reproducing the observed isomeric states. The possible origins of the isomers are discussed.
In this paper, we investigate boundary recovery, the problem that has troubled researchers ever since Delaunay-based methods were applied to generate mesh. There are a number of algorithms for boundary recovery already and most of them depend heavily on adding extra nodes. In this paper, we make an effort to seek a method to recover boundaries without using extra nodes.It was noted that some previous algorithms imposed artificial boundary constraints on a meshing problem at the recovering stage; we first try to discard these artificial constraints and thus make things easier. Then a new method is proposed by which the boundaries can be recovered by means of two operations: (1) creating a segment in the mesh and (2) removing a segment from the mesh. Both operations are special cases of a general local transformation called small polyhedron reconnection operation. The method works well when coupled with the sphere-packing method proposed by the first author. If the mesh sizing function is suitable, a good configuration of nodes will be created accordingly by the sphere-packing method and the boundary can be recovered by the local transformation presented here without inserting extra nodes. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.