The macro-environment for liquid biofuels in the US mass media, science and government

The purpose of this study is to investigate under which dimensions the macro-environment for liquid biofuels has been structured during time, respectively by science, mass media, and government in Germany, and how these three social expressions related to each other. Research was carried out on German official government documents, mass media news, and scientific papers on the topic ‘liquid biofuels’. Text Mining was used to extract knowledge from their content. The results indicate that in configurating the macro-environment for liquid biofuels there is some degree of proximity between media and government, less between media and science, and the least between government and scienc

Real-time performance monitoring of tuned mass damper system for a 183 m reinforced concrete chimney

A 183 m reinforced concrete chimney for a coal-fired power station was instrumented in the latter part of its life during the construction of a replacement chimney. Because of concerns about large-amplitude response induced by interference effects from the new chimney in the prevailing upwind direction, a response monitoring system was installed, quickly followed by a tuned mass damper (TMD) system. As well as providing live display of the chimney response, the monitoring system was also used to check the functioning of the TMD. The monitoring system featured a direct implementation of the stochastic subspace identification procedure in the 'virtual instrument' controlling the system, so that modal damping values for the system were displayed automatically, in real-time. The system thus provided an immediate visual indication of increased damping levels during strong winds, showing the correct functioning of the TMD. The paper describes the chimney, the monitoring system and its installation, the data processing and system identification procedure, together with performance data before, during and after installation of the TMD. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Performance analysis of a common-rail Diesel engine fuelled with different blends of waste cooking oil and gasoil

An experimental campaign was performed to study the behavior of a common-rail Diesel engine in automotive configuration when it is fuelled with blends of Diesel fuel (DF) and waste cooking oil (WCO). In particular the tested fuels are: B20 blend, composed of 20% WCO and 80% DF; B50, composed of 50% WCO and 50% DF; WCO 100% and 100% DF. In order to fuel the engine with fuel having a similar viscosity, this quantity, together with density, has been meas-ured at temperature ranging from rom to about 80 °C. According to these measurements, before fuelling the engine B20 was heated up to 35 °C and B50 to 75 °C. An in-house software was developed to acquire the data elaborated by the electronic control unit. Results show the trend in torque and global efficiency at different gas pedal position (gpp) and different engine speed. The experiments show that larger discrepancies are measured at smaller gpp values, while at larger ones dif-ferences become smaller. A similar trend is noticed for engine global efficiency

Who Succeeds in STEM Studies? An Analysis of Binghamton University Undergraduate Students

Using student level data, the characteristics of STEM and Non-STEM students are examined for attributes associated with academic success. We use fixed effects models to analyze the variables’ role in attaining graduation and college GPA and find preparation and ability, as evidenced by Advanced Placement course work, mathematical ability, gender, ethnicity, high school GPA and college experience are all statistically significant indicators of success. These attributes may confer a comparative advantage to STEM students. The engineers have statistically significant differing response elasticities than the non-engineers, and show evidence of persistence that may arise from learning-by-doing. A successful engineering STEM major at Binghamton has good mathematics preparation, and disproportionately is of Asian ethnicity. Women are few in numbers as engineers. Other STEM fields see less emphasis on mathematics preparation, but more emphasis on the presence of AP course work. Women have the same presence in these other STEM fields as in the whole university

Community Structure in the United States House of Representatives

We investigate the networks of committee and subcommittee assignments in the United States House of Representatives from the 101st--108th Congresses, with the committees connected by ``interlocks'' or common membership. We examine the community structure in these networks using several methods, revealing strong links between certain committees as well as an intrinsic hierarchical structure in the House as a whole. We identify structural changes, including additional hierarchical levels and higher modularity, resulting from the 1994 election, in which the Republican party earned majority status in the House for the first time in more than forty years. We also combine our network approach with analysis of roll call votes using singular value decomposition to uncover correlations between the political and organizational structure of House committees.Comment: 44 pages, 13 figures (some with multiple parts and most in color), 9 tables, to appear in Physica A; new figures and revised discussion (including extra introductory material) for this versio

The Evolution of Wikipedia's Norm Network

Social norms have traditionally been difficult to quantify. In any particular society, their sheer number and complex interdependencies often limit a system-level analysis. One exception is that of the network of norms that sustain the online Wikipedia community. We study the fifteen-year evolution of this network using the interconnected set of pages that establish, describe, and interpret the community's norms. Despite Wikipedia's reputation for \textit{ad hoc} governance, we find that its normative evolution is highly conservative. The earliest users create norms that both dominate the network and persist over time. These core norms govern both content and interpersonal interactions using abstract principles such as neutrality, verifiability, and assume good faith. As the network grows, norm neighborhoods decouple topologically from each other, while increasing in semantic coherence. Taken together, these results suggest that the evolution of Wikipedia's norm network is akin to bureaucratic systems that predate the information age.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures. Matches published version. Data available at http://bit.ly/wiki_nor

Quality assessment and usage behavior of a mobile voice-over-IP service

Voice-over-IP (VoIP) services offer users a cheap alternative to the traditional mobile operators to make voice calls. Due to the increased capabilities and connectivity of mobile devices, these VoIP services are becoming increasingly popular on the mobile platform. Understanding the user's usage behavior and quality assessment of the VoIP service plays a key role in optimizing the Quality of Experience (QoE) and making the service to succeed or to fail. By analyzing the usage and quality assessments of a commercial VoIP service, this paper identifies device characteristics, context parameters, and user aspects that influence the usage behavior and experience during VoIP calls. Whereas multimedia services are traditionally evaluated by monitoring usage and quality for a limited number of test subjects and during a limited evaluation period, this study analyzes the service usage and quality assessments of more than thousand users over a period of 120 days. This allows to analyze evolutions in the usage behavior and perceived quality over time, which has not been done up to now for a widely-used, mobile, multimedia service. The results show a significant evolution over time of the number of calls, the call duration, and the quality assessment. The time of the call, the used network, and handovers during the call showed to have a significant influence on the users' quality assessments