Major Technical Problems

The major technical problem was the inability to define subsurface geohydrologic conditions with the initial data. Expertise in the area of geohydrology was clearly needed. A lack of specific analytical techniques precluded meaningful environmental and risk assessments. Cleanup efforts were complicated because poltiners are not regulated under RCRA but are regulated under state law. In the middle of the cleanup effort, the site became involved in Superfund activities, and to date this involvement has not been clarified. Project management has become very difficult because of the many players and laws involved. As a result, public confidence has been affected. 

It is clear from the discussion in Section 10.4 that the advancements in biochemistry, molecular cloning, random and site-directed mutagenesis, directed evolution of biocatalysts, metabolic engineering and fermentation technology can circumvent the major technical problems... 

The use or safe disposal of the iron residues from zinc production (see Figure 7) presents a major technical problem.204 The use of chelating aminomethylene phosphonic acid extractants such as (28) and (29) to recover iron from these residues has been proposed.205 These give much higher FenI/Znn selectivity than D2EHPA but are more difficult to strip. A reductive-stripping process is proposed.187,205... 

A key feature of apoptosis is that, similar to the cell cycle, the duration of apoptosis is variable and the process is asynchronous in most cell populations. Consequently, there are variable proportions of cells in distinct phases of apoptosis and a sample, collected from a culture in which apoptosis has been induced, will contain cells in all the phases of apoptosis. This could represent a major technical problem in the investigation of apoptosis and requires measurement of metabolic apoptotic changes concomitantly with established markers of apoptosis progression. Using the same cellular model described above, we investigated metabolic alterations induced by X-rays using flow cytometry and a panel of fluorochromes... 

Resolution of major technical problems of current surface mining technology. 

In a 1999 survey of 110 energy companies, flow assurance was listed as the major technical problem in offshore development (Welling and Associates, 1999). On September 24,2003, in a Flow Assurance Forum, Professor James Brill (2003) discussed the need for a new academic discipline called Flow Assurance. Such a question, presented to an audience of 289 flow assurance engineers, would not have been considered in 1993, when the flow assurance community totaled a few dozen people. 

One of the major technical problems that had to be overcome to integrate the POLYBED system with the steam reformer was the variation in tail gas flow and composition. Because of the cyclic nature of the process, tail gas is rejected by the POLYBED unit during blowdown and purge with significant flow and composition variations. The fluctuations would have made it impossible to use the tail gas for fuel and a sophisticated system was developed to balance tail gas heating value. This buffer/mixing tank system has proven to be very reliable in holding heat input variation to 1% (2). ... 

A wealth of investigations have been carried out during the past 15 years in the direction of cathode activation. A number of them remain of exclusive fundamental interest, while only a few prospective solutions have indeed found practical application. The main reason is that cathode activation must be really cost effective to be applied, since it is not strictly needed to solve major technical problems otherwise hampering the process (as it is the case with anodes). 

In the mid-range, the major technical problem is the fact that glass absorbs the infrared strongly so that special crystals such as potassium bromide, dried sodium chloride, or silver chloride need to be used. In the near range there are special glasses that can be used, for example, special black glass. 

Savings and Cost/Benefit Analysis. The bench scale experiments were successful Tn overcoming major technical problems while demonstrating that dyebath/auxiliary bath reuse is indeed feasible with reactive dyes on cotton-containing fabrics. In addition, a shortened-cycle dyeing procedure coupled with reuse for cotton/polyester blends was shown to further increase energy, mass, and time savings (Table XXX). 

As mentioned in Chapter 8, many catalysts in homogeneous catalysis are liquid which are acids, bases or other ion-generating compounds. The corrosive nature of these catalysts and the reaction mixtures suggests the utility of inorganic membranes. Two major technical problems need to be solved. One is the immobilization or encapsulation... 

There is one major technical problem that must be overcome In a liquid crystal most properties are best expressed relative a to a director based coordinate system. This is not a problem in a macroscopic system where the reorientation rate of the director is virtually zero but it can be a problem in a small system such as a simulation cell where the director is constantly diffusing on the unit sphere. When NEMD methods are applied the fictitious mechanical field exerts torques that twist the director and might make it impossible to reach a steady state. This problem has been solved by devising a Lagrangian constraint algorithm that fixes the director in space so that a director based coordinate system becomes an inertial frame. 

A quantum computer thus has the capability of operating in a massively parallel mode. A 300-qubit quantum computer could theoretically store 2 10 bits of information, more than the estimated number of atoms in the known Universe, and also be capable of doing 2 ° simultaneous calculations. A classical computer can be likened to a solo musical instrument, a quantum computer to a full orchestra. If the music is well played, a symphony is much more profound than the sum of its parts. A major technical problem in constructing quantum computers is to minimize interactions within the machine and with the environment, which would cause decoherence—a breakdown in quantum entanglement. 

The major technical problems with the GC mode are the need for an independent distance measurement and the absence of a well-defined mass transport rate in some situations. These are linked in the sense that when mass transport is well defined, the distance dependence of the tip signal can be used to calibrate the tip-to-surface separation as well as to quantify the flux of analyte. One method of overcoming these problems is therefore the use of a microfabricated substrate where the enzymatic reaction is confined to a small disk-shaped region. The concentration profile of the products of the... 

The measurement of the steroid hormones and their metabolites in tissues and body fluids has long been a major technical problem to endocrinologists and biochemists, and even more of a problem to clinical chemists. Steroid biochemistry has been somewhat esoteric and to some... 

Major technical problems were solved by these companies to keep their commercial efforts alive. Difficulties in dyeing were overcome by developing cationic dyes and by modifying the fiber morphology with comonomers, such as methyl acrylate (MA) and vinyl acetate (VA). 

Iron sulphides are a major source of fuel to the process. The oxidation of iron sulphides to form feirosilicate slag does not pose any major technical problem. This process can probably dispose of iron more easily and profitably than can any existing process route. This is a most useful feature because many of the polymetallic sulphides are very pyritic and mineral separation of pyrite from the other sulphides results in losses of values. 

L. H. Lee We do not foresee any major technical problems before the large growth of waterborne adhesives to occur. There are more waterborne adhesives on the market today than four or five years ago. 

Here p r) is the electron density, T[p] is the kinetic energy, and Vee[p] collects aU electron-electron interaction energies. A major technical problem is the accurate description of the kinetic energy functional T[p], In the Kohn-Sham approximation this problem is avoided by introducing orbitals of a non-interacting reference system. Levy and Perdew (Levy 1979 Levy and Perdew 1985) have shown that these orbitals are delivered by the following minimization procedure ... 

The CEGB went on to say that major technical problems identified had cost implications totalling over 61 million. These included ... 

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