Primary Element Behaviour

This is a difficult subject matter, and a small example may help to get a better view of it. Consider an element whose function is to decide the best option out of a number of options presented to it. It has a built-in function that provides the decision criterion, and that function depends on one or more variables. The element has the ability to accept values for these variables, but as a stand-alone element it uses default values. If the element is part of a system, and one or more of the other elements in the system are able to provide values for these variables, the behaviour of the element (i.e. its decisions) can be very different to its standalone behaviour, and as a consequence, the system has a behaviour that cannot be found in any one of the elements on its own. 

It would appear, then, that what we call emergent properties of a system have two quite different sources. One is the interaction between elements that, each one, behave as they do in isolation this is e.g. the case with the antenna system consisting of identical radiating elements. The other is the activation of inputs that are inactive in a stand-alone application when the elements are embedded in a system environment, causing the individual elements to have a different behaviour and thus providing a contribution to the system behaviour that is different from what would be expected from the stand-alone behaviour. A well-known example of this is the different behaviour of people as individuals and in a crowd. 

The second source results in two different cases of emergent behaviour. One is where the additional inputs were designed into an element, and their activation is a decision by the system designer to exploit their influence on the element behaviour. The second case is where the inputs are unintentional, and their activation in the system environment leads to unintended consequences. An example of this is noise pulses entering into embedded control systems and causing unintended behaviour. 

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The use of chemical modelling to predict the formation of secondary phases and the mobility of trace elements in the CCB disposal environment requires detailed knowledge of the primary and secondary phases present in CCBs, thermodynamic and kinetic data for these phases, and the incorporation of possible adsorp-tion/desorption reactions into the model. As noted above, secondary minerals are typically difficult to identify due to their low abundance in weathered CCB materials. In many cases, appropriate thermochemical, adsorption/desorp-tion and kinetic data are lacking to quantitatively describe the processes that potentially affect the leaching behaviour of CCBs. This is particularly tme for the trace elements. Laboratory leaching studies vary in the experimental conditions used (e.g., the type and concentration of the extractant solution, the L/S ratio, and other parameters such as temperature and duration/ intensity of agitation), and therefore may not adequately simulate the weathering environment (Rai et al. 1988 Eary et al. 1990 Spears Lee, 2004). 

In order to predict the T-H-M response of the bentonite, a coupled T-H-M transient analysis was performed with the Finite Element Code FRACON. The governing equations incorporated in the FRACON code were derived from an extension of Biot s (1941) theory of poro-elasticity to include the T-H-M behaviour of the unsaturated FEBEX bentonite. The model formulation(Nguyen, Selvadurai and Armand, 2003) resulted in three governing equations where the primary unknowns are temperature, the displacement vector and the pore fluid pressure, as follows ... 

As for many immobilised enz3nnes, the hydraulic behaviour Is not adequately described by classical fluid mechanics. It was, therefore, necessary to develop a detailed mathematical model of the column hydraulics which together with a laboratory test procedure, would provide data on the basic mechanical properties of the enzyme pellet. The model Is based on a force balance across a differential element of the enzyme bed. The primary forces involved are fluid friction, wall friction, solids cohesion, static weight and buoyancy. The force balance Is integrated to provide generating functions for fluid pressure drop and solid stress pressure down the length of the column under given conditions. 

Secondly, polymers are known to possess multilevel structures (molecular, topological, supermolecular, and floccular or block levels), the elements of which are interconnected [43, 44]. In addition, an external action on a polymer can induce the formation of new (secondary) structural elements — cracks, fractured surfaces, plastic flow regions, etc. These primary and secondary structural elements as well as the processes forming them are characterised by miscellaneous parameters therefore, only empirical correlations have been obtained, at best, between these parameters. If each of the above-mentioned elements (processes) is described by a standard parameter, for example, fractal dimension, one can derive analytical equations relating them to one another and containing no adjustable parameters. This is very significant for the computer synthesis of structure and for the prediction of properties and behaviour of polymeric materials during performance. Note that fractal analysis has been used successfully to describe the phenomena of rubber elasticity [16, 45, 46] and fluidity [25, 47-49]. 

Femto/picosecond time-resolved absorption spectroscopy (see section 2.A) traces the pathway of the electron from P to P+H and constitutes so far the only experimental approach leading to the various rates of the reaction schemes (1) and (2). However, this is only true for extensive data sets acquired under special excitation and probing conditions. Then, the measurement and evaluation of the temperature dependence of the kinetics may yield the electronic matrix elements V23 or 3, provided that the nonadiabatic ET theory [12,13] is applicable and thermal contraction effects influencing the couplings are negligible. With these assumptions, the weak increase of the time constant of H formation at low temperatures has been attributed to an activationless behaviour of the primary ET [4] leading to a... 

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