From Gettysburg to Townsville, Australia and Back

I studied abroad in Townsville, AU in the Fall 2014 and had the semester of my life. I am biology major, who has always wanted to pursue a career with animals and I got to run hands on experiments at James Cook University. I collected research on wild rock wallabies, I got Open Water Padi Dive certified and dove throughout Australia and Bali, Indonesia. I got up close with wild sharks, eels, jellyfish, and a variety of tropical fish. I joined the co-ed soccer and disc team. Most importantly, I became friends with amazing people from all over the world

The Climate Imperative and Innovative Behavior: Encouraging Greater Advances in the Production of Energy-Efficient Technologies and Services

This white paper examines why a larger array of innovative institutions, behaviors, technologies, and servicesis needed – specifically in the context of what we call “the climate imperative.” We explore possible mechanisms that can encourage the more robust development of innovative programs and policies within the State of California, with special attention to the activities of the California Public Utilities Commission

Pursuing Energy-Efficient Behavior in a Regulatory Environment: Motivating Policymakers, Program Administrators, and Program Implementers

This white paper examines how policymakers, program administrators, and program implementers can be motivated to pursue behavioral change in a regulatory environment. For the purposes of this report, behavior change is defined rather broadly, encompassing both behaviors associated with the purchase and installation of energy efficiency technologies as well as behaviors, decisions, and actions that might be thought of as more independent of technology. These include energy use habits, lifestyle choices, and consumption patterns. The insights and lessons discussed in this paper are drawn from a wide variety of sources including interviews with representatives from the energy and utility communities, and program documentation for energy-related programs and projects

Arc Fault Protection System in Low-Voltage Installations for Protecting Installations and Persons

Overcurrent protective devices are often not sufficient to protect installations and persons from the ef-fects of arc faults. Fast active protective devices, which limit the arc duration to some milliseconds, pro-vide significantly increased protection. This article deals with the design of and requirements on such an active protection system, which consists of an arc detection device and a short-circuiter. Both fixed in-stallation and a mobile arrangement of the system will be presented

On the rise and fall of networked societies

We review recent results on the dynamics of social networks which suggest that the interplay between the network formation process and volatility may lead to the occurrence of discontinuous phase transitions and phase coexistence in a large class of models. We then investigate the effects of negative links -- links inhibiting local growth of the network -- and of a geographical distribution of the agents in such models. We show, by extensive numerical simulations, that both effects enhance this phenomenology, i.e. it increases the size of the coexistence region.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, Proceedings of Granada Workshop 200

Asymptotics of block Toeplitz determinants and the classical dimer model

We compute the asymptotics of a block Toeplitz determinant which arises in the classical dimer model for the triangular lattice when considering the monomer-monomer correlation function. The model depends on a parameter interpolating between the square lattice ($t=0$) and the triangular lattice ($t=1$), and we obtain the asymptotics for $0<t\le 1$. For $0<t<1$ we apply the Szeg\"o Limit Theorem for block Toeplitz determinants. The main difficulty is to evaluate the constant term in the asymptotics, which is generally given only in a rather abstract form