Academic literature on the topic 'Shallow Packing Problem'

Agriculture is the process of utilizing biological resources. One of the community groups that run agricultural activities is the Harapan Jaya Farmers Group. It is located on Jalan Kauman RT 15, RW 03, Talang Kramat Village, Talang Kelapa Regency, Banyuasin, South Sumatra, which was then called a partner in the Community Partnership Program. Based on the interviews, observations, data analysis and identification of problems with the partners, several major problems were found: low pH land, lack of agricultural equipment, partners’ lack of ability to understand the techniques of shallots cultivation, less attractive packaging, and the absence of promotion. The solution to these problems was by conducting pre-implementation socialization and discussion, seeding shallots, planting media preparation, liming and fertilizing, planting shallots, designing agricultural equipment and conducting product marketing training. The results are the partners have completely understood about the process of planting shallots both from seed and from shallots tuber seedlings. The partners are also able to understand the working mechanism of agricultural aids thus they are able to repair the damage of their simple tools. Partners who are relatively young are able to manage the web thus it is expected to simplify the marketing process. Increasing the partners’ ability can increase the partners’ independence both personally and in groups. Increasing the potential of the agriculture field, especially regarding the planting of shallots could erase the pessimistic view of planting shallots in marshy and low pH land.

Indonesia has abundant agricultural resources and great potential in agricultural development. The existence of these agricultural resources has not been matched by the low regeneration of millennial farmers. The Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Indonesia through the Agriculture and Food Security Service of Gunungkidul Regency projects a Horticulture Village program to be implemented in Karangrejek Village, Kapanewon Wonosari. This program encourages millennial farmers who have their own innovations and strategies in agricultural development, especially in running farming in the horticulture sector. This paper aims to find out the strategies and innovations carried out by millennial farmers in running farming in the horticulture sector. The millennial farmer strategy is carried out when cultivating and marketing horticultural products, especially shallots and chilies. The strategies carried out in the cultivation aspect are: planting with the intercropping method, off season farming, selection of superior seeds, use of biological control agents, and use of high beds. On the marketing aspect of the results: digital media marketing, post-harvest packaging. The characteristics of millennial farmers in dealing with entrepreneurial problems are: never give up, keep trying, innovate and stay afloat in horticultural farming.

Introduction. We have tried to solve two environmentally dangerous problems at the same time - water pollution by petroleum products and the growth of polymer packaging in the share of household waste. On the one hand, oil pollution is one of the largest and most dangerous types of human impact on the environment. In oil-contaminated reservoirs, depending on the concentration of hydrocarbons in the water, adult fish, caviar, larvae and young fish die on the surface of the water and in shallow water. Zooplankton in a polluted reservoir dies completely. It is established that only 1 g of oil kills all living things in 1 m3 of water. It is known that polymer waste can absorb a small amount of petroleum products (from 1.4 to 1.6 g / g) depending on the type of polymer. To increase the oil content of the polymer, in addition to increasing its specific surface area (eg, fiber cutting), surfactants (surfactants) are applied to the surface, which improve the adhesion of the polymer to the petroleum product and, thus, increase the sorption of the polymer. Mechanical treatment of the polymer surface does not have a negative environmental impact on the environment, unlike surfactants, which actively pass from the polymer surface into moist soil and water and cause pollution. However, the refusal to apply surfactants on the polymer surface makes polymer sorbents inefficient, economically and environmentally impractical due to the need to use them in large quantities. In addition, after their use, a new problem arises - highly toxic waste that needs to be disposed of. In our opinion, one of the options for solving this problem is the use of surfactants from vegetable raw materials. The purpose and objectives of the study. The research aimed to hygienically substantiate the possibility of using sorbents, which are made from household polymer waste with the simultaneous application of environmentally friendly vegetable surfactants on their surface, to extract petroleum products from water. To achieve this goal, the following tasks were solved: 1. Investigate the possibility of using environmentally friendly surfactants from plant materials common in Ukraine to increase the extraction of oil from water. 2. To establish the possibility of using secondary polymer raw materials from packaging waste as oil sorbents. 3. Investigate the possibility of increasing oil recovery by sorbents from secondary polymer raw materials from packaging waste by means of their mechanical activation and application of vegetable surfactants to the surface of the sorbent. 4. Design an installation for the separation of oil from oil-water mixture. Methods and methodical: The study was conducted using: petroleum sludge, vegetable surfactants based on soapwort (Saponaria officinalis L), horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum), waste PET (polyethylene terephthalate) packaging. Research methods: photometric, which was implemented using a photocolorimeter CPK - 2. The method of intensification of oil extraction from water was based on the method of flotation purification of water from oil using surfactants, according to which surfactants are introduced into the water-oil mixture and saturate the mixture with air, while foaming the mixture and oil, "sticking" to bubbles The surfactant is washed out of the water and moved to the water surface together with the foam. After that, the resulting foam is removed from the surface by various devices and methods. Results.To determine the amount of oil in the solution used the method of calibration graph, based on the reduction of light flux when passing through the oil solution; The study was performed on the photocolorimeter. To do this, we prepared a series of water-oil solutions with a known concentration of oil in them and found the heights of polarographic waves. After constructing a calibration graph on the value of the height of the polarographic wave, established experimentally, found the concentration of oil in the mixture. The result was much lower than expected: the oil concentration after purification with surfactant 1 was 2.27 ml / dm3, for surfactant 2 - 2.88 mg / dm3. For example, compared to the most environmentally friendly surfactant sodium laureth sulfate, the degree of oil recovery was 2.6 times lower, ie only vegetable surfactants themselves did not clean the water-oil mixture from oil. In the next stage of our experiment, to improve the extraction of oil from the water-oil mixture, we used as a collector plates made from recycled packaging waste with smooth and rough surfaces. The dimensions of the plates were 1 cm × 10 cm. The result of the use of mechanically recycled polymer packaging waste during flotation is a decrease in the concentration of oil in the water-oil mixture in the surfactant medium with: PET 2.2 times, PVC - 2.5 times, PP - 2.4 times, PE - 2 , 1 times; in the environment of surfactants 2 of: PET 1.6 times, PVC - 1.9 times, PP - 1.8 times, PE - 1.6 times. Additional mechanical activation of polymer packaging waste increases the extraction of oil, during flotation, from the water-oil mixture in which vegetable surfactants are present: for PET 3.4 times with surfactant 1 and 1.9 times with surfactant 2; for PVC 4.3 times with surfactant 1 and 2.22 times with surfactant 2; for PP 3.8 times with surfactant 1 and 1.6 times with surfactant 2; for PE 3.3 times with surfactant1 and 1.8 times with surfactant 2. Application to the surface of mechanically activated polymer waste solution of surfactant 1 significantly increases the amount of extracted oil from water-oil mixtures during flotation in surfactant medium 1: for PET 8.8 times (88.6%) to 0.243 mg / dm3 1.15 times lower than the maximum allowable concentration of oil in drinking and domestic water; for PVC waste 9.9 times (90.1%) to 0.218 mg / dm3, which is 1.3 times lower than the MPC of oil in drinking water and domestic water; for PP waste 9.5 times (89.6%) to 0.229 mg / dm3, which is 1.25 times lower than the MPC of oil in drinking water and domestic water; for PE waste 8.4 times (88.15%) to 0.258 mg / dm3, which is 1.1 times lower than the MPC of oil in drinking and domestic water. Conclusions. 1. A simple laboratory installation for flotation separation of oil from oil-water mixture using surfactants is designed. The efficiency of purification of water-oil mixtures by the plant using vegetable surfactants with the simultaneous use of sorbents from polymer mechanically activated waste, the surface of which is covered with vegetable surfactants, increases the degree of purification of water-oil mixtures by the plant up to 90.1% 2. It is established that the use of foaming agent from Saponaria officinalis L during flotation separation of water-oil mixtures allows to extract up to 32.4% of oil from mixtures. The surfactant from Saponaria officinalis L is an environmentally safe and quite effective dispersant, so it can be recommended for intensification of purification of water contaminated with dissolved oil.

Over the past quarter-century 'the self' has been transformed from a relatively esoteric concept of principal interest to philosophers and psychologists to a mainstay of popular culture and critical reflection. This paper addresses some of the themes linking this transition and suggests that the driving impetus behind it is the commodification of ideas as a strategy of coping with change (as well as the packaging and consumption of goods and services which bridge the gap between the less-than-perfect present and the shining future just around the corner). I start with a vivid recollection of some weeks in my undergraduate years worrying about the issue 'Is self-deception possible?' The problem to be solved for a tutorial presentation was, 'If the self is deceived by the self, which part of the self is doing the deceiving?' This conundrum could be handily addressed by reference to the various models of the divided self: the mind/brain model; or the conscious/subconscious model; the id/ego/superego model; the Parent/Adult/Child model (for all those Transactional Analysis aficionados) and, had I been dealing with the same query today, the Adult/Inner Child model. In addition to these theoretical constructions, there was evidence from physiological psychology of the 'split brain' phenomenon, where some unfortunate patients had had the crossover pathways between the two hemispheres of the brain surgically cut, usually as a strategy for dealing with epilepsy. Here it seemed to be literally possible for the right hand to not know what the left hand was doing (but only under strict laboratory conditions where certain information was only available to one hand or the other, or one eye or the other). Essentially, psychological theory had gone to considerable trouble to identify the self as a potential battleground for warring elements: internal 'others' with which the self is composed; in addition to the external influences impacting upon the self. All of these approaches offered a metaphor for conflict, which tied in with the subjective impression of 'the self' wanting things a number of ways; in particular wanting to have the cake, wanting to have a different cake and also wanting to eat all possible varieties of cake. The trouble was, this approach didn't really answer the question 'Is self-deception possible?' because I knew when I felt conflicted, and thus was not deceived. To be truly deceived, I rationalised, I wouldn't ever be aware that self-deception had been in operation. In which case, had it ever really happened? Where internal warring was evident, the idea of 'deception' failed to convince me, and was replaced instead by one of opposing impulses. Thus I decided that self-deception is impossible, and that instead we use it as a more-or-less conscious excuse for behaviour that is out of character. (My tutor was concerned that I had elided the concepts of 'I' and 'myself', in this presentation, but that is another story.) Two decades later, in the mid-nineties, I suddenly woke up to the fact that popular psychology had spawned a library of self-help literature of Alexandrian proportions. In fact, the volume of books, articles, magazines and related TV/radio shows (such as Oprah) -- not to mention the mega-millionaire motivationalists such as Wayne Dyer and Tony Robbins, whose website promises 'resources for creating an extraordinary quality of life' and whose influence is now evident in other areas of popular culture (eg, Farrelly and Farrelly's embarrassingly awful Shallow Hal). Robbins' claim: 'Within you is a powerful driving force that, once unleashed, can make your boldest visions, dreams, and desires real. You are about to discover the finest resources and tools available for awakening that force within you -- and transforming your life, instantly and forever', somewhat overstates my own experience of trying to put his theories into practice, but I've only bought the books and thus may be deceiving myself that I've truly committed what it takes to achieve transformation... (For those of you lacking 'disposable time' -- too busy to read the books -- the principles are often available on easy-to-consume cassette-tapes, videos, CDs and interactive websites.) A visit to any popular bookshop (although these sections are generally lacking in the academic ones) indicates that self-help is right up there with business/motivational books, and with new age/spiritual guidance. The popular culture of business practice might arguablely have started with Blanchard and Johnson's The One Minute Manager, but it is increasingly evident in such global best sellers as Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly EffectivePeople, Gardner and Gardner's The Motley Fool Investment Guide and Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad (and associated spin-offs). This interest in business, however, is more than an interest in practice and process: it's an interest in versions of the self. Thus the Motley Fool reader is advised to 'go against' their instincts, because that way they do something different from the average. Rich Dad, Poor Dad is a fable of different ways to view life, success and happiness (one of which is presented as more likely to result in a humungous bank balance). If it only takes a minute to be a manager -- why wouldn't you spend that minute? And all of us would like to be more effective in some area of our lives… The business books that make it into the best seller lists offer help to transform the self into someone … rather more suited to the times than we were before we started to read that particular guru's take on the future perfect. The impetus for the growth in the popular culture of the evolving self seems to me to be (at least partly) explained by our sense of accelerating change. The constant in both the business and the self-help literature is a valuing of the capacity of managing and adapting to change. It is no accident that there has been this burgeoning of self-development material at the same time that we are encouraged: to prepare ourselves for new careers every seven years; to reclassify ourselves as lifelong learners; to assess ourselves as a collection of 'skills', 'attributes' and 'competencies', able to apply to others for 'recognition of prior learning'; and, to accept a governmental diktat that we are all in the business of 'mutual obligation'. Under these circumstances, and in this environment, a willing engagement with the self-help literature indicates a positive desire to manage the transition of the self to some acceptance of a changed future. It implies the resolution of the five stages of grief (Kubler-Ross). Having worked through denial and isolation; anger; bargaining; and depression the active self-developer reaches 'acceptance' and manages the stress of change by helping the self adjust to an anticipated future. Even the sense of having a strategy to cope with new demands can be part of a solution to perceived powerlessness: helpless leads to hopeless (and depressed). Self-help is a strategy to cope with change and move on. The pressures may be new, and the books may be growing in number and in applicability, but the marketing principles fuelling this consumer demand are well established. For example, an Australianised Consumer Behaviour textbook identifies (Schiffman et al, 137) 'four specific kinds of self-image: Actual self-image (ie how consumers in fact see themselves) Ideal self-image (ie how consumers would like to see themselves) Social self-image (ie how consumers feel others see them) Ideal social self-image (ie how consumers would like others to see them) before going on to add, "a fifth type of self-image, expected self-image (ie how consumers expect to see themselves at some specified future time)" (137, bold in original). Marketers use the gap between the perceived self-image and the ideal self-image as an opportunity for product development, and for creating strategies to promote existing goods and services. In essence, consumer societies continuously package and represent images of our future selves as ways of selling us products that help us become more beautiful, clever and effective. They might also 'reverse the visible signs of aging'. (The realage.com website is a wonderful place where an older self becomes younger as the days pass and the life-extending strategies are adopted, minimising an individual's 'real' -- as opposed to chronological -- age.) Although Schiffman et al (137) argue that the expected self-image is somewhere between the actual self-image and the ideal self-image, most well-founded (credible) expectations of the future-self involve a planned programme of change -- such as enrolment in a course of study or diligent application to the contents and suggestions of an appropriate self-help book… Thus the expected self-image might differ qualitatively from the ideal self-image in that the former may have some basis in an achievable future while the latter might be impossibly unlikely. An individual's social identity and their consumption practices are already well linked. For example, Hearn, Mandeville and Anthony (104) estimate that 'consumption now accounts for about 60 per cent of GDP … mass communication, advertising and the consumer economy form a nexus that is centrally implicated in the operation of Western societies.' They go on to argue that the 'central assertion of postmodern views of consumption is that social identity can be interpreted as a function of consumption' (106). Green suggests that it is 'the voluntary nature of consumption -- together with the impossibility of not consuming -- [that] prevents [consumption] from being categorised unambiguously as work'. The implication is that the self-help literature represents a complex communication. Purchase of a self-help book identifies one version of an ideal self-image for that person, and also allies them with those aspects of popular culture including and touching upon that book and that self-help philosophy. (Even more is communicated if the book is purchased for someone else, or received as a gift from someone else!) The presence of the book on a person's shelves can also indicate a strategy to manipulate perceptions of the individual's social self-image and might express to others an element of the individual's ideal social self-image (moderated, perhaps, by throw-away statements such as: 'Of course, theory is one thing, practice another', or 'I think Carmen may have been dropping a heavy hint with this present'). At the same time, the individual may have a clear impression of the expected self-image likely to result from consumption of the book's contents, and thus the act of consumption is likely to represent the adoption of a particularly individual vision for the future self. The popularity of the self-help genre and its generalisation into lifestyle programmes and publications -- the Martha Stewart effect -- is an indication that the 'present self' is generally categorised as a work in progress. Paradoxically, the self may be most evident and fixed in the act of becoming, since the self in the present undergoes continual change (apart from its constant requirement for 'help'). References Blanchard, Kenneth and Spencer Johnson. The One Minute Manager. New York: Berkley Books, 1983. Covey, Stephen. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Restoring the Character Ethic. Melbourne: Business Library, 1989. Dyer, Wayne. http://www.drwaynedyer.com [accessed 25 Aug. 2002] Gardner, David and Tom Gardner. The Motley Fool Investment Guide: How the Fool Beats Wall Street's Wise Men and How You Can Too. New York: Fireside Books, 1997. Green, Lelia. 'The Work of Consumption -- Why Aren't We Paid?' M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture. 4.5 (2001) http://www.media-culture.org.au [accessed 25 Aug. 2002] Hearn, Greg, Tom Mandeville, and David Anthony. The Communication Superhighway: Social and Economic Change in the Digital Age. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1997. 104-31. Kiyosaki, Richard with Sharon Lechter. Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Thei rKids about Money that the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not! Paradise Valley, Arizona: TechPress Inc, 1997. Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth. On Death and Dying. London: Tavistock Publications, 1970. realage.com. http://www.realage.com [accessed 25 Aug. 2002] Robbins, Anthony. http://www.tonyrobbins.com [accessed 25 Aug. 2002] - - - . Unlimited Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement. London: Simon & Schuster, 1988. - - - . Awaken the Giant Within. New York: Summit Books, 1991. - - - . Giant Steps. New York: Fireside Books, 1994. - - - . Notes from a Friend. New York, Fireside Books, 1995. Schiffman, Leon, David Bednall, Elizabeth Cowley, Aaron O'Cass, Judith Watson and Leslie Kanuk. Consumer Behaviour. 2nd ed. French's Forest: Pearson Education Australia, 2001. Shallow Hal. Dir. Bobby and Peter Farrelly. 20th Century Fox, 2001. Links http://www.media-culture.org.au http://www.realage.com http://www.tonyrobbins.com http://www.drwaynedyer.com Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Green, Lelia. "Who is Being Helped When We Help Our Self?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.5 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Green2.html &gt. Chicago Style Green, Lelia, "Who is Being Helped When We Help Our Self?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 5 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Green2.html &gt ([your date of access]). APA Style Green, Lelia. (2002) Who is Being Helped When We Help Our Self?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(5). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Green2.html &gt ([your date of access]).

We study a host of geometric optimization problems that are NP-hard and design polynomial time approximation algorithms for them. More precisely, we are given a family of geometric objects and a point set, mostly in the plane, and study different variants and generalizations of Packing and Covering problems. Our objects of study are mostly family of non-piercing regions in the plane. We call a set of simple and connected regions to be non-piercing if for any pair of intersecting regions, A and B both A\B and B\A are connected regions. A set of disks, squares, half-planes are examples of non-piercing regions, whereas, a set of lines, rectangles are examples of piercing objects. For most of the problems we have studied, a simple local search algorithm is enough to yield a PTAS whose analysis of approximation requires a suitable bipartite graph on the local search solution and the optimal solution to have a balanced sub-linear separator. We study a generalization of the standard packing problem, called the Capacitated Region Packing problem and its slight variant, the Shallow Packing problem. We devise a PTAS for both these problems with restrictions on the capacities. For the former problem, the objects are non-piercing whereas for the latter problem the objects can be even more general and only have sub-quadratic union complexity with the capacities at most some constant for both the cases. The non-triviality here is to show that the intersection graph of arrangements with shallow depth, which is not planar, has balanced sub-linear separators. Our results complement the Maximum Independent Set of Rectangles problem as rectangles are both piercing and have quadratic union complexity. We also study the Shallow Point Packing problem and are able to show that local search works here as well for unit capacity and devise a constant factor approximation algorithm using an adaptation Brannaman-Goodrich technique for packing problems. Runaway Rectangle Escape problem is closely related to the above packing problems and is motivated from routing in printed circuit boards. Here we are given a set of axis-parallel rectangles inside a rectangular boundary R and a maximum allowed depth d. The objective is to extend the maximum number of input rectangles to one of the four sides of R such that the maximum depth of a point is at most d after extension. We show that local search gives a (2 + )-approximation for d = O(1). When the input rectangles are all disjoint then we devise a simple 4(1 + 1=(d 􀀀 1))-approximation algorithm. We also propose a randomized (1 + )-approximation algorithm based on randomized rounding making some density assumptions. Lastly, we show the problem to be NP-hard even when the rectangles are unit squares aligned in a grid. We study the Multi-Cover problem which is a generalization of the Set Cover problem. We give a PTAS for non-piercing regions when the depth of every point is at most constant. We also study different variants of the covering problem like the Unique Coverage, and Prize Collecting Set Cover problem. For Unique Cover we show that local search yields a PTAS for non-piercing regions for bounded depth and degree. For Prize Collecting Set Cover a PTAS works for non-piercing regions if the weight of every region is within a range [1; a], where a is some constant. Lastly, we consider variants of the Art Gallery problems called the Minimum (Horizontal) Sliding Cameras problem, M(H)SC. We are given an orthogonal polygon and we need to deploy mobile guards who can walk along an orthogonal (horizontal) line segment and can guard a point inside the polygon if the perpendicular drawn from the point onto the line segment lies inside the polygon. Our local search algorithm yields a PTAS for the MHSC problem and also the MSC problem when the polygon has no holes. In order to do so we prove an appropriate graph on orthogonal line segments to be planar by proposing a graph drawing scheme.

Nanotechnology can contribute to food security in supply chains of agri production-consumption systems. The unique properties of nanoparticles have stimulated the increasing interest in their application as biosensing. Biosensing devices are designed for the biological recognition of events and signal transduction. Many types of nanoparticles can be used as biosensors, but gold nanoparticles have sparked most interest. In the work presented here, we will address the problem of fruit and vegetable decay and rotting during transportation and storage, which could be easily generalized also onto post-harvest loss prevention in general. During the process of rotting, different compounds, including different gasses, are released into the environment. The application of sensitive bionanosensors in the storage/transport containers can detect any changes due to fruit and vegetable decay and transduce the signal. The goal of this is to reduce the logistics cost for this items. Therefore, our approach requires a multidisciplinary and an interdisciplinary approach in science and technology. The cold supply chain is namely a science, a technology and a process which combines applied bio-nanotechnology, innovations in the industrial engineering of cooling processes including sensors for temperature and humidity measurements, transportation, and applied mathematics. It is a science, since it requires the understanding of chemical and biological processes linked to perishability and the systems theory which enables the developing of a theoretical framework for the control of systems with perturbed time-lags. Secondly, it is a technology developed in engineering which relies on the physical means to assure appropriate temperature conditions along the CSC and, thirdly, it is also a process, since a series of tasks must be performed to prepare, store, and transport the cargo as well as monitor the temperature and humidity of sensitive cargo and give proper feedback control, as it will be outlined in this chapter. Therefore, we shall discuss how to break the silos of separated knowledge to build an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary science of post-harvest loss prevention. Considering the sensors as floating activity cells, modelled as floating nodes, in a graph of such a system, an extended Material Requirement Planning (MRP) theory will be described which will make it possible to determine the optimal feedback control in post-harvest loss prevention, based on bionanosensors. Therefore, we present also a model how to use nanotechnology from the packaging facility to the final retail. Any changes in time, distance, humidity or temperature in the chain could cause the Net Present Value (NPV) of the activities and their added value in the supply chain to be perturbed, as presented in the subchapter. In this chapter we give the answers to the questions, how to measure the effects of some perturbations in a supply chain on the stability of perishable agricultural goods in such systems and how nanotechnology can contribute with the appropriate packaging and control which preserves the required level of quality and quantity of the product at the final delivery. The presented model will not include multicriteria optimization but will stay at the NPV approach. But the annuity stream achieved by improved sensing and feedback control could be easily combined with environmental and medical/health criteria. An interdisciplinary perspective of industrial engineering and management demonstrates how the development of creative ideas born in separate research fields can be liaised into an innovative design of smart control devices and their installation in trucks and warehouses. These innovative technologies could contribute to an increase in the NPV of activities in the supply chains of perishable goods in general.

Abstract One of the offshore gas fields, the formations are comprised of mixed deltaic and young shallow marine clastic sediments, which are considered among the shallowest unconsolidated and poorly sorted formations, with a high percentage of fines. Along with the sand production issue is the multiple stacked reservoirs that consist of interbedded sand-shale and laminations having undergone gas-water contact (GWC). The proximity of a water leg to the gas column also indicates likelihood of early water production. Water breakthrough can cause significant reserve loss in the gas reservoir and can be even more serious in the sand control completion, which creates a challenge when the two problems combine water and sand. Typical sand control treatments were high-rate water packs (HRWPs) and Extension packs (ExtPacs) or fracture for placement of proppant (FPP). The use of a pad is necessary to maximize the amount of proppant placed into the formation and help reduce overall skin using onsite data analysis. The gravel pack carrier fluid is a viscosified system with shear thinning rheological properties and efficiently suspends sand in static condition. Additionally, this fluid allows substantial flexibility in sand control design for varying degrees of sand support for gravel packing, fluid-loss control, friction-pressure reduction, and a low-damage fluid system (validated with laboratory testing using reservoir cores to validate return permeability values). The objective of the relative permeability modifier (RPM) in sand-control chemical treatments is to prolong hydrocarbon production over time using effective control of water production in one step as a prepad fluid, eliminating the cost and complexity of the water shutoff treatment stage later as part of well life Applying the RPM process has not only reduced water production in these areas but has also resulted in more gas cumulative production. It is also important to monitor production for several months after the treatment to determine the success or failure of the application. Globally, this is the first successful application of RPM delivery in the same aqueous gravel-packing carrier fluid system using a pad fluid, consisting of high-grade xanthan polymer as a gelling agent. Implementation of this process provides the operator an additional tool to increase the possibility of hydrocarbon production from a reservoir that has not been considered viable. Use of the RPM technique in sand-control completions also an option to treat wells after sand-control treatments and control water production resulting from nearby GWC

Management of decommissioning waste is considered as complex task of seeking for optimal solution in the environment of various competing technical, safety and socio-economical factors. If from the formal mathematics viewpoint it is a multi-parameter optimization task, then for real conditions simplified approach for such problem should be applied. We propose to decompose this task into the set of optimization analysis for particular steps, and then in each step it is easier to find optimum. For the real case of management of radioactive waste arising from dismantling and decommissioning of Salaspils Research Reactor (SRR) we consider following main optimization steps: 1) the choice of the decommissioning concept — among three elaborated versions — with estimation of the foreseen radioactive waste amount for disposal, recycling and free release, taking into account also potential exposures and financial resources; 2) establishment of national radioactive waste management agency “RAPA” Ltd., ensuring common administration and maintenance of the shutdown SRR and radioactive waste (RW) disposal site — RAPA manages some decommissioning activities of SRR and shall actively participate together with envisaged decommissioning operator in this process also in future, but in all stages will keep full responsibility of waste management; 3) optimization of radioactive waste transportation: i) organizational aspects (packing, transportation time, schedule, route, etc.), ii) environmental safety control; 4) optimization arrangement of space for radioactive waste disposal: i) choice of the best strategy to ensure a new space, ii) optimization of the vault size — to be able accommodate decommissioning waste without being oversized; 5) strategy of treatment, conditioning and packing of solid decommissioning waste; 6) optimization of liquid decommissioning waste management — its conditioning together with the solid radioactive waste; 7) socio-economical optimization features: i) existing infrastructure for RW disposal, ii) financial compensation for local municipality, iii) international cooperation, technical and financial assistance by EU, IAEA, Sweden. The proposed optimization features used in the developing of Concept for radioactive waste management in Latvia for the period 2003–2010 (which corresponds to the approved decommissioning period of SRR) supplement existing separate optimization aspects of decommissioning waste management and could be considered as simplified integral set of factors for elaboration of optimal strategy for decommissioning waste management.