To identify the microwave drying characteristics of corn, microwave drying tests were conducted on corn. By taking the moisture content, drying rate, and drying temperature as indices, this research revealed the effects of different microwave powers and loads on the microwave drying characteristics of corn. Moreover, energy consumption and quality of dried corn were analysed under different drying conditions. The results demonstrate that microwave drying has significant energy-saving effects. The energy consumption by microwave drying is less than 0.3 times that used by electrothermal drying under the same load. Both microwave power and load exert significant influences on drying characteristics. Higher microwave power results in a greater average drying rate, wherein shorter periods of time are required to reach the maximum drying rate and higher temperatures of the corn. However, the load shows the opposite tendency. The smaller the load, the higher the temperature of the corn in the early stage of drying. However, as drying continues, the temperature curve changes significantly, and the temperature rises with the increase in load in the later stage of drying. In consideration of energy consumption and dried quality, the load of corn should be increased as appropriate, and the microwave intensity should be limited to no higher than 0.7 W/g in the experiment.

This paper presents a goal oriented office form system. Comparing to the previous developed office form $ystems, two contributions have been made by this system. First, basedon the AI frame system and the unification process, an office form pattern language k developed. This pattern language can handle the association of a form to ha subforms which have a group of repetitions of the same structure.Second, an AI planner which can directly manipulate the office forms is achieved. The specific difficulty for developing a ptanner to directly manipulate office forms is the frame problem [Hayes, 1975]. Since office form entity can no longer be represented by a symbol ora relation, the situation representation in the planning network has to consider not only the changes of some office forms against the whole office form base, but also the changes of the attributes against the form in which the attributes are located. The goal oriented office form system is developed based on constraint manipulation.

This chapter mainly introduces the icing of railway contact wires and corresponding antiicing technologies and deals with the following four aspects: (1) the hazards of the icing of railway contact wires and significances of this research; (2) the characteristics of the icing of railway contact wires and affecting factors of the icing; (3) experimental research into the icing and anti-icing of railway contact wires; (4) expert system of the icing and ice melting of railway contact wires. Through the above introduction, the paper aims to make researchers, engineers and managers who are interested in this field have a comprehensive understanding of the causes, hazards and contributing factors of the icing of railway contact wires, to let them have a basic knowledge of icing and ice melting and the current technologies of anti-icing and ice removal and finally to provide readers with an expert system that can anti-ice and melt ice. www.intechopen.com Reliability and Safety in Railway 296 1.1 Background of research into icing of railway contact wires Large, heavy ice accretions may form on objects exposed to freezing rain. These can damage or destroy structures and cause great economic and social hardship.

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