Strategic Human Capital Management: NRC Could Better Manage the Size and Composition of Its Workforce by Further Incorporating Leading Practices

[Excerpt] After the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which included tax incentives for nuclear energy, NRC significantly expanded its workforce to meet the demands of an anticipated increase in workload that ultimately did not occur. More recently, a forecast for reduced growth in the nuclear industry prompted NRC to develop plans for changing its structure and workforce to better respond to changes in the nuclear industry. Strategic human capital planning is one of several actions the agency is taking. The explanatory statement accompanying the Consolidated Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2016 included a provision for GAO to report on NRC’s workforce management. GAO examined NRC’s strategic human capital management efforts and the extent to which these efforts incorporate leading practices. GAO reviewed NRC’s strategic workforce plan and other related documents and interviewed knowledgeable NRC officials

Internet of Things-aided Smart Grid: Technologies, Architectures, Applications, Prototypes, and Future Research Directions

Traditional power grids are being transformed into Smart Grids (SGs) to address the issues in existing power system due to uni-directional information flow, energy wastage, growing energy demand, reliability and security. SGs offer bi-directional energy flow between service providers and consumers, involving power generation, transmission, distribution and utilization systems. SGs employ various devices for the monitoring, analysis and control of the grid, deployed at power plants, distribution centers and in consumers' premises in a very large number. Hence, an SG requires connectivity, automation and the tracking of such devices. This is achieved with the help of Internet of Things (IoT). IoT helps SG systems to support various network functions throughout the generation, transmission, distribution and consumption of energy by incorporating IoT devices (such as sensors, actuators and smart meters), as well as by providing the connectivity, automation and tracking for such devices. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on IoT-aided SG systems, which includes the existing architectures, applications and prototypes of IoT-aided SG systems. This survey also highlights the open issues, challenges and future research directions for IoT-aided SG systems

Rotating Machine Technologies for Integration of Pulsed and High Power Loads in Naval Electric Power Systems

Advanced electric sensors and weapons are placing increasing demands on the electric power distribution systems of future naval vessels and energy storage is viewed as a critical technology for effective integration of IPS architectures in these platforms. This paper shows that kinetic energy storage, i.e. stored in the angular momentum of a rotating mass, can be applied in differing topologies to address a range of ship power system applications. Rotating machine technologies are presented for UPS and load leveling applications as well as for high cycle rate pulsed power applications.Center for Electromechanic

Digital curation and the cloud

Digital curation involves a wide range of activities, many of which could benefit from cloud deployment to a greater or lesser extent. These range from infrequent, resource-intensive tasks which benefit from the ability to rapidly provision resources to day-to-day collaborative activities which can be facilitated by networked cloud services. Associated benefits are offset by risks such as loss of data or service level, legal and governance incompatibilities and transfer bottlenecks. There is considerable variability across both risks and benefits according to the service and deployment models being adopted and the context in which activities are performed. Some risks, such as legal liabilities, are mitigated by the use of alternative, e.g., private cloud models, but this is typically at the expense of benefits such as resource elasticity and economies of scale. Infrastructure as a Service model may provide a basis on which more specialised software services may be provided. There is considerable work to be done in helping institutions understand the cloud and its associated costs, risks and benefits, and how these compare to their current working methods, in order that the most beneficial uses of cloud technologies may be identified. Specific proposals, echoing recent work coordinated by EPSRC and JISC are the development of advisory, costing and brokering services to facilitate appropriate cloud deployments, the exploration of opportunities for certifying or accrediting cloud preservation providers, and the targeted publicity of outputs from pilot studies to the full range of stakeholders within the curation lifecycle, including data creators and owners, repositories, institutional IT support professionals and senior manager

Diffractive X-ray Telescopes

Diffractive X-ray telescopes using zone plates, phase Fresnel lenses, or related optical elements have the potential to provide astronomers with true imaging capability with resolution several orders of magnitude better than available in any other waveband. Lenses that would be relatively easy to fabricate could have an angular resolution of the order of micro-arc-seconds or even better, that would allow, for example, imaging of the distorted space- time in the immediate vicinity of the super-massive black holes in the center of active galaxies What then is precluding their immediate adoption? Extremely long focal lengths, very limited bandwidth, and difficulty stabilizing the image are the main problems. The history, and status of the development of such lenses is reviewed here and the prospects for managing the challenges that they present are discussed.Comment: 46 pages, 15 figures, invited review paper to be published in a special issue on "X-Ray Focusing: Techniques and Applications" of the online journal "X-Ray Optics & Instrumentation

Use of airborne vehicles as research platforms

This is the accepted version of the following chapter: Gratton, G. 2012. Use of Airborne Vehicles as Research Platforms. Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470686652.eae604/full. Copyright @ John Wiley & Sons 2012.The use of aircraft is often valuable to position airborne sensors or to conduct experiments in ways not possible purely on the ground. An airframe, typically an older one, must be selected then adapted to the role – likely to include inlets, windows, structural changes, power supply, computing and data recording capacity, and likely the provision of external hardpoints. Once the research vehicle is created, the instruments on board will require calibration, either in isolation or by intercomparison against already calibrated instruments on board another aircraft. This calibration process will continue throughout the life of the airplane. Additionally, an operating organization must be created and obtain any necessary organizational approvals. For some specialist applications, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) may also be used, which carry some special considerations of autonomy and interoperability, but similar concerns of instrument, vehicle, and operational integrity