Large Scale Deployment of Renewables for Electricity Generation

Comparisons of resource assessments suggest resource constraints are not an obstacle to the large-scale deployment of renewable energy technologies. Economic analysis identifies barriers to the adoption of renewable energy sources resulting from market structure, competition in an uneven playing field and various non-market place barriers. However, even if these barriers are removed, the problem of ‘technology lock-out’ remains. The key policy response is strategic deployment coupled with increased R&D support to accelerate the pace of improvement through market experience. The paper suggests significant contributions from various technologies, but does not assess their optimal or maximal market share

Large Scale Deployment of Renewables for Electricity Generation

Comparisons of resource assessments suggest resource constraints are not an obstacle to the large-scale deployment of renewable energy technologies. Economic analysis identifies barriers to the adoption of renewable energy sources resulting from market structure, competition in an uneven playing field and various non-market place barriers. However, even if these barriers are removed, the problem of ‘technology lock-out’ remains. The key policy response is strategic deployment coupled with increased R&D support to accelerate the pace of improvement through market experience. The paper suggests significant contributions from various technologies, but does not assess their optimal or maximal market share.technology policy, renewable energy, learning externalities, market structure

WiFi hot spot superdistribution : a profit scheme for WiFi access distribution

The wide-area deployment of WiFi hot spots challenges IP access providers. While new profit models are sought after by them, profitability as well as logistics for large-scale deployment of 802.11 wireless technology are still to be proven. Expenditure for hardware, locations, maintenance, connectivity, marketing, billing and customer care must be considered. Even for large carriers with infrastructure, the deployment of a large-scale WiFi infrastructure may be risky. This paper proposes a multi-level scheme for hot spot distribution and customer acquisition that reduces financial risk, cost of marketing and cost of maintenance for the large-scale deployment of WiFi hot spots

Alignment uncertainty, regressive alignment and large scale deployment

A multiple sequence alignment (MSA) provides a description of the relationship between biological sequences where columns represent a shared ancestry through an implied set of evolutionary events. The majority of research in the field has focused on improving the accuracy of alignments within the progressive alignment framework and has allowed for powerful inferences including phylogenetic reconstruction, homology modelling and disease prediction. Notwithstanding this, when applied to modern genomics datasets - often comprising tens of thousands of sequences - new challenges arise in the construction of accurate MSA. These issues can be generalised to form three basic problems. Foremost, as the number of sequences increases, progressive alignment methodologies exhibit a dramatic decrease in alignment accuracy. Additionally, for any given dataset many possible MSA solutions exist, a problem which is exacerbated with an increasing number of sequences due to alignment uncertainty. Finally, technical difficulties hamper the deployment of such genomic analysis workflows - especially in a reproducible manner - often presenting a high barrier for even skilled practitioners. This work aims to address this trifecta of problems through a web server for fast homology extension based MSA, two new methods for improved phylogenetic bootstrap supports incorporating alignment uncertainty, a novel alignment procedure that improves large scale alignments termed regressive MSA and finally a workflow framework that enables the deployment of large scale reproducible analyses across clusters and clouds titled Nextflow. Together, this work can be seen to provide both conceptual and technical advances which deliver substantial improvements to existing MSA methods and the resulting inferences.Un alineament de seqüència múltiple (MSA) proporciona una descripció de la relació entre seqüències biològiques on les columnes representen una ascendència compartida a través d'un conjunt implicat d'esdeveniments evolutius. La majoria de la investigació en el camp s'ha centrat a millorar la precisió dels alineaments dins del marc d'alineació progressiva i ha permès inferències poderoses, incloent-hi la reconstrucció filogenètica, el modelatge d'homologia i la predicció de malalties. Malgrat això, quan s'aplica als conjunts de dades de genòmica moderns, que sovint comprenen desenes de milers de seqüències, sorgeixen nous reptes en la construcció d'un MSA precís. Aquests problemes es poden generalitzar per formar tres problemes bàsics. En primer lloc, a mesura que augmenta el nombre de seqüències, les metodologies d'alineació progressiva presenten una disminució espectacular de la precisió de l'alineació. A més, per a un conjunt de dades, existeixen molts MSA com a possibles solucions un problema que s'agreuja amb un nombre creixent de seqüències a causa de la incertesa d'alineació. Finalment, les dificultats tècniques obstaculitzen el desplegament d'aquests fluxos de treball d'anàlisi genòmica, especialment de manera reproduïble, sovint presenten una gran barrera per als professionals fins i tot qualificats. Aquest treball té com a objectiu abordar aquesta trifecta de problemes a través d'un servidor web per a l'extensió ràpida d'homologia basada en MSA, dos nous mètodes per a la millora de l'arrencada filogenètica permeten incorporar incertesa d'alineació, un nou procediment d'alineació que millora els alineaments a gran escala anomenat MSA regressivu i, finalment, un marc de flux de treball permet el desplegament d'anàlisis reproduïbles a gran escala a través de clústers i computació al núvol anomenat Nextflow. En conjunt, es pot veure que aquest treball proporciona tant avanços conceptuals com tècniques que proporcionen millores substancials als mètodes MSA existents i les conseqüències resultants

Large-Scale Deployment of Three Intelligent Web-Based Database Tutors

We present our experiences with DatabasePlace, a Web portal aimed at university-level students enrolled in database courses. The portal was established by Addison-Wesley in January 2003. Besides presenting information about the textbooks, the portal also provides additional domain information, online quizzes and three Intelligent Tutoring Systems developed by the Intelligent Computer Tutoring Group (ICTG). We briefly present the three systems, and then discuss our experiences. We also compare the DatabasePlace students to our local students using the three ITSs

Considerations on the Large Scale Deployment of Nuclear Fuel Cycles

In recent papers by Hafele, Manne and Schikorr, strategies for a transition from fossil to nuclear fuels are considered for a model society of 250 million people with an asymptotic energy consumption of 10 kilowatt thermal per capita. In the final state, a purely nuclear energy production system, based on only two reactor types, was assumed to cover all electric and non-electrical energy demands of the model society. It is the purpose of this paper to evaluate the whole nuclear fuel cycle belonging to the asymptotic nuclear energy production system. In order to achieve this, all normal operational and accidental risks connected with the nuclear material throughputs are analyzed. Thus, an idea of the relative importance of the different hazards is obtained; furthermore, the basis for a comparison of the nuclear option with alternative options (which is the subject of forthcoming work) is given. With this purpose in mind, only orders of magnitude are considered throughout the paper; in addition, the argumentation is restricted to the level of expected values. The structure of this paper is as follows. Following the introduction, the mass flows of nuclear material through the nuclear fuel cycle are analyzed. The methodology used is then developed. The normal operations releases of radioactivity are considered, and possible modes of accidental radioactive releases are analyzed; the problem of a final waste storage is treated separately because of its unique nature. Different kinds of sabotage and blackmail, including the construction of a nuclear explosive device, are next analyzed, and finally all calculations are summarized. In conclusion, a number of decision-oriented assessments are identified that must be made when the large-scale deployment of nuclear energy is considered

Large-Scale Deployment of Three Intelligent Web-based Database Tutors

We present our experiences with DatabasePlace, a Web portal aimed at university-level students enrolled in database courses. The portal was established by Addison-Wesley in January 2003. Besides presenting information about the textbooks, the portal also provides additional domain information, online quizzes and three Intelligent Tutoring Systems developed by the Intelligent Computer Tutoring Group (ICTG). We briefly present the three systems, and then discuss our experiences. We also compare the DatabasePlace students to our local students using the three ITSs

Getting connected- at what cost? Some ethical issues on mobile HCI

The large scale deployment of mobile applications inevitably affects our daily lives and the whole culture. Not all of these effects are desirable. In a market economy, ethical issues are not the foremost drivers in the development of technology. In this paper, we ask whether the mobile human-computer interaction community could take an active role in discussing the issues which really matter in the development of technology for human beings, rather than concentrating on the fine tuning of emerging gadgets

Exploiting Randomly-located Blockages for Large-Scale Deployment of Intelligent Surfaces

One of the promising technologies for the next generation wireless networks is the reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs). This technology provides planar surfaces the capability to manipulate the reflected waves of impinging signals, which leads to a more controllable wireless environment. One potential use case of such technology is providing indirect line-of-sight (LoS) links between mobile users and base stations (BSs) which do not have direct LoS channels. Objects that act as blockages for the communication links, such as buildings or trees, can be equipped with RISs to enhance the coverage probability of the cellular network through providing extra indirect LoS-links. In this paper, we use tools from stochastic geometry to study the effect of large-scale deployment of RISs on the performance of cellular networks. In particular, we model the blockages using the line Boolean model. For this setup, we study how equipping a subset of the blockages with RISs will enhance the performance of the cellular network. We first derive the ratio of the blind-spots to the total area. Next, we derive the probability that a typical mobile user associates with a BS using an RIS. Finally, we derive the probability distribution of the path-loss between the typical user and its associated BS. We draw multiple useful system-level insights from the proposed analysis. For instance, we show that deployment of RISs highly improves the coverage regions of the BSs. Furthermore, we show that to ensure that the ratio of blind-spots to the total area is below 10^5, the required density of RISs increases from just 6 RISs/km2 when the density of the blockages is 300 blockage/km^2 to 490 RISs/km^2 when the density of the blockages is 700 blockage/km^2.Comment: Accepted in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication