Deformation-Induced Chemical Inhomogeneity and Short-Circuit Diffusion in Shear Bands of a Bulk Metallic Glass.

The compositional changes in shear bands of a Cu_{50}Zr_{50} metallic glass after plastic deformation at room temperature have been monitored by atom probe tomography. Across the width of the shear bands an asymmetry of the enriched and depleted zones of the constituent elements is observed, while no change of the composition within the surrounding matrix occurs. The diffusion coefficients determined from the concentration profiles are orders of magnitude larger than the values of bulk diffusion at room temperature. The asymmetric concentration profiles of the constituent elements (Cu and Zr) remain stable during annealing at a temperature of 543 K, even though fast and preferential diffusion of a Ni tracer has been found along the shear band at the same temperature. The results indicate that the atomic structure and stress distribution within the shear bands is altered from that of the surrounding amorphous matrix. The fact that the shear band structure is unaltered at elevated temperatures and that fast diffusion occurs preferentially within the shear bands leads to the conclusion that they are structurally stable.

Artificial neural network models for prediction of daily fine particulate matter concentrations in Algiers.

Neural network (NN) models were evaluated for the prediction of suspended particulates with aerodynamic diameter less than 10-µm (PM10) concentrations. The model evaluation work considered the sequential hourly concentration time series of PM10, which were measured at El Hamma station in Algiers. Artificial neural network models were developed using a combination of meteorological and time-scale as input variables. The results were rather satisfactory, with values of the coefficient of correlation (R (2)) for independent test sets ranging between 0.60 and 0.85 and values of the index of agreement (IA) between 0.87 and 0.96. In addition, the root mean square error (RMSE), the mean absolute error (MAE), the normalized mean squared error (NMSE), the absolute relative percentage error (ARPE), the fractional bias (FB), and the fractional variance (FS) were calculated to assess the performance of the model. It was seen that the overall performance of model 3 was better than models 1 and 2.

Impact of urban and industrial effluents on the coastal marine environment in Oran, Algeria.

In Algeria most of the urban waste water is dumped without treatment into the Sea. It is tremendously important to assess the consequences of organic matter rich sewage on marine ecosystem. In this study we investigated the effects of industrial and urban sewage on the dissolved oxygen (O2), chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demands (BOD5), pH, salinity, electrical conductivity (EC), Metal element (Hg, Pb, Cu, Ni, Cr, Cd), petroleum hydrocarbons (HC), oil and grease (OG) in Bay of Oran, Algeria. A ten-year follow-up research showed that the concentrations of oil and grease released into the bionetwork are of higher ecological impact and this needs to be given the desired consideration. Information on bathing water quality revealed that the most beaches in Oran are under the national environmental standard limit.