Solid Earth science in the 1990s. Volume 3: Measurement techniques and technology

Reports are contained from the NASA Workshop on Solid Earth Science in the 1990s. The techniques and technologies needed to address the program objectives are discussed. The Measurement Technique and Technology Panel identified (1) candidate measurement systems for each of the measurements required for the Solid Earth Science Program that would fall under the NASA purview; (2) the capabilities and limitations of each technique; and (3) the developments necessary for each technique to meet the science panel requirements. In nearly all cases, current technology or a development path with existing technology was identified as capable of meeting the requirements of the science panels. These technologies and development paths are discussed

Dialogic education, historical thinking and epistemic beliefs: a design-based research study of teaching in Taiwanese classrooms

The study reported in this dissertation explored: (1) teachers’ use of dialogue to facilitate students’ historical thinking and (2) the trajectory of historical personal epistemology through a design-based approach. Empirical evidence emerging in previous decades has acknowledged that good quality classroom dialogue could have a positive impact on students’ learning. Through dialogic teaching, it has been argued that teachers could probe and promote students’ higher thinking skills. However, how dialogue is being used in history classes as well as the cultural context of dialogic education in East Asia was a salient gap in current research. The first research aim was to explore both teachers’ and students’ epistemic beliefs regarding the domain of history, which has been largely neglected in this field of study. The aim of this research was also to propose a new perspective on dialogic education that might not only bridge the dichotomy of the monologic and dialogic forms of teaching, but also address the pedagogical dilemma in history education raised by the latest Taiwanese national curriculum reform. Finally, another major aim of the research was to design a teacher professional development programme to change teachers’ epistemic beliefs and their teaching practice towards dialogic history education for promoting historical thinking. Adopting the notion of design-based research, a teaching professional programme was designed and administered throughout the one-academic year to 7 high school teachers. Three students of each participating teacher were chosen for semi-structured interviews to explore their personal epistemology, which were later analysed with an innovative discourse analysis method: Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA). Data concerning classroom dialogue was collected from monthly class observations and then analysed with a reconceptualised coding framework adapted from the Teacher’s Scheme for Educational Dialogue Analysis (T-SEDA, Hennessy, et al., 2021) and an observational instrument for historical thinking (Gestsdóttir, et al., 2018). In regard to personal epistemology, the findings reported a mixture of results with only a few students seeing a significant change in their epistemic beliefs after the programme. However, a pattern-based model for analysing historical epistemic beliefs reported from this study, has been generated resulting in four major patterns of beliefs being identified. In terms of classroom dialogue, the results found a positive increase in teachers’ use of dialogue. A hybrid form of dialogue informed by current dialogic theories synthesised with Confucianism and Taoism allowed dialogue to transgress away from the dichotomy of structural forms of monologue and dialogue was also put forward and characterised from the analysis. The contributions of this present study are discussed in terms of theoretical, methodological and practical uses

Organic Waste Composting through Nexus Thinking

Organic waste composting is another excellent example to demonstrate the power and the benefits of nexus thinking. Even though organic waste composting itself is not a new topic, those who want to start a new project or align an ongoing project with nexus thinking, find it difficult to gather the necessary information. With nine case studies from four continents, this book aims to fill above gap in literature. While current literature on composting is often found to be limited to either soil/agriculture sector or waste management sector, this book presents a combined point of view. This open access book starts with an introductory chapter that describes the need to bring the waste management aspects and soil nutrient management aspects of compost production into one integrated theme. The relevance of nexus thinking and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are also presented in this introduction. The first three chapters after the introduction covers composting from the solid waste management and its policy aspects, taking examples from three developing countries. The next three examples are mostly about the benefits composting can provide to the soil and agriculture. These examples are also from three developing countries, but with a mixture of urban as well as rural settings. Last three chapters present more insight into the latest developments taking examples from Europe, as well as new methods adapted from the traditional styles from Africa

Organic Waste Composting through Nexus Thinking

Organic waste composting is another excellent example to demonstrate the power and the benefits of nexus thinking. Even though organic waste composting itself is not a new topic, those who want to start a new project or align an ongoing project with nexus thinking, find it difficult to gather the necessary information. With nine case studies from four continents, this book aims to fill above gap in literature. While current literature on composting is often found to be limited to either soil/agriculture sector or waste management sector, this book presents a combined point of view. This open access book starts with an introductory chapter that describes the need to bring the waste management aspects and soil nutrient management aspects of compost production into one integrated theme. The relevance of nexus thinking and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are also presented in this introduction. The first three chapters after the introduction covers composting from the solid waste management and its policy aspects, taking examples from three developing countries. The next three examples are mostly about the benefits composting can provide to the soil and agriculture. These examples are also from three developing countries, but with a mixture of urban as well as rural settings. Last three chapters present more insight into the latest developments taking examples from Europe, as well as new methods adapted from the traditional styles from Africa

Aspects of charge recombination and charge transport in organic solar cells and light-emitting devices

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Chemistry, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Vita.Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-111).In this thesis, aspects of charge reconbination and charge transport in organic solar cells and light-emitting devices are presented. These devices show promise relative to traditional inorganic semiconductors. We show that the energy splitting between singlet and triplet CT states in organic materials is appreciable and is material and geometry dependent. This prediction is used to guide the development of an OLED with enhanced fluorescence. The effects of nuclear disorder on optical and transport properties in organic semiconductors are examined and a general computational method for carrying out this analysis is described. The function of organic semiconductors is characterized by the interplay between localized and delocalized excited states. We present an ab initio method for obtaining the electronic coupling between CT states and excitons and (discuss the nonadiabatic transitions between these states.by Seth Difley.Ph.D

Summaries of the Fifth Annual JPL Airborne Earth Science Workshop. Volume 1: AVIRIS Workshop

This publication is the first of three containing summaries for the Fifth Annual JPL Airborne Earth Science Workshop, held in Pasadena, California, on January 23-26, 1995. The main workshop is divided into three smaller workshops as follows: (1) The Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) workshop, on January 23-24. The summaries for this workshop appear in this volume; (2) The Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR) workshop, on January 25-26. The summaries for this workshop appear in Volume 3; and (3) The Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanner (TIMS) workshop, on January 26. The summaries for this workshop appear in Volume 2

2009 Annual Progress Report: DOE Hydrogen Program

This report summarizes the hydrogen and fuel cell R&D activities and accomplishments of the DOE Hydrogen Program for FY2009. It covers the program areas of hydrogen production and delivery; fuel cells; manufacturing; technology validation; safety, codes and standards; education; and systems analysis

Investigations of the use of spent sorbent from the Ca looping process in cement manufacture and investigation of long-term CO2 uptake in cement and concrete

This thesis comes in three distinct parts: an evaluation of concrete carbonation to improve accuracy of lifecycle carbon emissions of concrete; a detailed rationale outlining the importance of carbon capture and storage (CCS) for Portland cement and discussing viable technology deployment trajectories for the UK; and experimental investigation of one of the most promising carbon capture technology for the industry. Using a data set of around 2000 points from the literature, two regression models using common predictor variables were generated using multilevel modelling. One of these was used to quantify the amount of CO2 absorbed annually by all the world’s concrete. The best estimate for 2012 was 136 Mt CO2. To better understand the current development status of five carbon capture technologies in the cement industry, a sector-specific Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale was produced. From this, dates of commercialisation are predicted and used in a bottom-up model which simulates the installation of carbon capture on UK cement plants at times when they are expected to be closed for other major alterations. The calculated rate of decarbonisation is compared with those presented in existing top-down pathways to determine how realistic the latter are. They seem realistic but only in a supportive policy environment. One of the five promising technologies studied was calcium looping. It is attractive for the Portland cement industry because the mainly CaO waste from the capture plant can be used as a raw material in the cement plant. The effect of looping on the compressive strength of cement was investigated. There was not statistically significant (α = 0.05) difference between the compressive strength of cement made with CaO looped 0, 5 and 10 times. Some significant differences were observed between cements which differed in other ways such as the type of sorbent used as the raw material.Open Acces

Model-based predictive control methods for distributed energy resources in smart grids.

This thesis develops optimization-based techniques for the control of distributed energy resources to provide multiple services to the power network. It is divided into three parts. The first part of this thesis focuses on the development of a framework for the efficient control of a single resource that is subject to the effect of periodic stochastic uncertainties. More specifically, resources that can be described by the general class of periodic constrained linear systems are considered and a method, based on Stochastic MPC, to control the over-time-average constraint violations is developed. Finally, the effectiveness of the control framework is tested, by means of a simulation analysis, for the case of the climate control of a building. The second part of the thesis introduces the required background for the electric power grid, energy markets, and distributed energy resources providing grid support services. First, the control problem of scheduling the operation of a set of energy resources offering multiple services to the grid is formally stated as a multi-stage uncertain optimization problem. In particular, the problem is designed so as to maximize the provision of a shared tracking service while enforcing the satisfaction of the operational constraints on both the individual resources, as well as on the hosting distribution network. Two computationally tractable approximated solution methods are then presented, which are based on robust-optimization techniques and on a linearization of the power flow equations around a general linearization point. A simulation-based analysis demonstrates the capability of the proposed framework to adapt to different levels of uncertainty acting on the overall system. Finally, a quantitative and qualitative comparison between the two approximation schemes is presented and general guidelines are given. The last part of the thesis demonstrates the practical relevance of the control framework developed in Part II. In particular, the aggregation of an electrical battery system and of an office building is considered, and two case studies are investigated. The first deals with the provision of secondary frequency control in the Swiss market, whereas the second deals with the problem of dispatching the operation of an active distribution feeder characterized by the presence of stochastic prosumers. In both cases, we show how to adapt the general framework of Part II so as to accommodate the given application. Then, we design a hierarchical multi-timescale controller in order to reliably deliver the service by coordinating the controllable resources during real-time operation. The results of both experimental campaigns demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the control methodology against the wide range of uncertainty involved. In fact, in both cases, high-quality tracking performance could be achieved without jeopardizing the occupants' comfort in the building nor violating the operational constraints of the battery. Finally, the results also show the benefit of combining resources with complementary technical capabilities as the building and the battery