Opportunity costs of carbon sequestration in a forest concession in central Africa.

Background: A large proportion of the tropical rain forests of central Africa undergo periodic selective logging for timber harvesting. The REDD+ mechanism could promote less intensive logging if revenue from the additional carbon stored in the forest compensates financially for the reduced timber yield.

Results: Carbon stocks, and timber yields, and their associated values, were predicted at the scale of a forest concession in Gabon over a project scenario of 40 yr with reduced logging intensity.

Add Control: plant virtualization for control solutions in WWTP.

This paper summarizes part of the research work carried out in the Add Control project, which proposes an extension of the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) models and modelling architectures used in traditional WWTP simulation tools, addressing, in addition to the classical mass transformations (transport, physico-chemical phenomena, biological reactions), all the instrumentation, actuation and automation & control components (sensors, actuators, controllers), considering their real behaviour (signal delays, noise, failures and power consumption of actuators). Its ultimate objective is to allow a rapid transition from the simulation of the control strategy to its implementation at full-scale plants. Thus, this paper presents the application of the Add Control simulation platform for the design and implementation of new control strategies at the WWTP of Mekolalde.

Water network cost optimization in a paper mill based on a new library of mathematical models.

The increasing costs associated with water supply and the disposal of wastewater has stimulated industries to seek more efficient water management systems. Mathematical modelling and simulation can be a very valuable tool for the study of the multiple alternatives available whilst assessing optimum solutions for water management in industry. This study introduces a new steady state model library able to reproduce industrial water circuits.

Assessing the convergence of LHS Monte Carlo simulations of wastewater treatment models.

Monte Carlo (MC) simulation appears to be the only currently adopted tool to estimate global sensitivities and uncertainties in wastewater treatment modelling. Such models are highly complex, dynamic and non-linear, requiring long computation times, especially in the scope of MC simulation, due to the large number of simulations usually required. However, no stopping rule to decide on the number of simulations required to achieve a given confidence in the MC simulation results has been adopted so far in the field.

Hunger and negative alliesthesia to aspartame and sucrose in patients treated with antipsychotic drugs and controls.

The present study explores sweet stimuli effects on hunger and negative alliesthesia in patients treated with antipsychotic drugs and controls. Those phenomena were examined in relation to previous weight gain, eating and weight-related cognitions and type of sweet stimuli: aspartame or sucrose. Alliesthesia is delayed in participants who gained weight regardless of cross group differences.