Review and assessment of the German tidal energy resource

To mitigate climate change, a transformation of the energy sector towards a low-emission power generation is necessary. Tidal energy technology has matured in recent years and has the potential to balance Europe’s future power grid. While reviews of the tidal energy resource exist for a number of European countries, along the German North Sea coast is overlooked so far. This paper closes this gap and provides a comprehensive review and assessment of the German tidal energy resource. Germany’s North Sea coast is characterised by comparatively low current velocities and shallow waters. Using available data from the EasyGSH-DB North Sea Model, Germany’s practical tidal energy resource is estimated in a range between 66.6 and 565.8 GWh y - 1 to, excluding the most energetic sites in the estuaries of Elbe, Weser, and Ems. A stakeholder questionnaire aimed at tidal energy technology developers has shown that it is considered important to further develop the technology towards the use in shallow water and under low current velocities

RNA secondary structure design

We consider the inverse-folding problem for RNA secondary structures: for a given (pseudo-knot-free) secondary structure find a sequence that has that structure as its ground state. If such a sequence exists, the structure is called designable. We implemented a branch-and-bound algorithm that is able to do an exhaustive search within the sequence space, i.e., gives an exact answer whether such a sequence exists. The bound required by the branch-and-bound algorithm are calculated by a dynamic programming algorithm. We consider different alphabet sizes and an ensemble of random structures, which we want to design. We find that for two letters almost none of these structures are designable. The designability improves for the three-letter case, but still a significant fraction of structures is undesignable. This changes when we look at the natural four-letter case with two pairs of complementary bases: undesignable structures are the exception, although they still exist. Finally, we also study the relation between designability and the algorithmic complexity of the branch-and-bound algorithm. Within the ensemble of structures, a high average degree of undesignability is correlated to a long time to prove that a given structure is (un-)designable. In the four-letter case, where the designability is high everywhere, the algorithmic complexity is highest in the region of naturally occurring RNA.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure

Thermally activated processes in materials probed by nanoindentation - challenges, solutions, and insights

Nanoindentation experiments are widely used for assessing the local mechanical properties of materials. In recent years some new exciting developments were established for also analyzing thermally activated processes during deformation using indentation based techniques, namely nanoindentation strain rate jump and nanoindentation long term creep tests. For these different methods, control of the indenter tip movement as well as determination of the correct contact conditions are hugely important to assure reliable data. In fact, long term nanoindentation tests are prone to be strongly influenced by thermal drift, starting at room temperature but even more intensified for elevated temperatures. This talk will first focus on experimental issues and challenges, but also solutions during advanced nanoindentation testing to overcome thermal drift influences, as demonstrated for fused silica and ultra-fine grained (ufg) Au. Special focus will be on high temperature testing, different testing methodologies will be described, and it will be demonstrated how distinct indentation time and indentation depths related errors influence the basic results. In the second part different results on single crystal (sx) and ufg Cr but also on the intermetallic phase Mg17Al12 are presented. For Mg17Al12, it was observed that the deformation behavior, especially in terms of thermally activated processes, is significantly changing over temperature. While at room temperature up to 125°C deformation is dominated by jerky flow and a slight negative strain-rate sensitivity due to dislocation pinning and the Portevin - Le Chatelier effect, overcoming 150°C the material behaves remarkably different. In this regime the indentation data show significant ductile deformation behavior with large pile-up formation and a pronounced strain rate sensitivity in the superplastic regime, where the deformation is sustained by dislocation glide and climb. Sx and ufg Cr also show significant changes in deformation behavior with temperature. At ambient conditions, both microstructures show an enhanced strain-rate sensitivity due to the large thermally activated component in the flow stress. Overcoming the materials specific temperature Tc (~150°C for Cr) the behavior changes. For sx Cr the apparent strain-rate sensitivity diminishes completely, while for the ufg state the strain-rate sensitivity increases due to the increased importance of dislocation – grain boundary interactions paired with a change in the dominating deformation mechanism

Internet of Things (IoT) technology research in business and management literature : results from a co-citation analysis

In coherence with the progressive digitalization of all areas of life, the Internet of Things (IoT) is a flourishing concept in both research and practice. Due to the increasing scholarly attention, the literature landscape has become scattered and fragmented. With a focus on the commercial application of the IoT and corresponding research, we employ a co-citation analysis and literature review to structure the field. We find and describe 19 research themes. To consolidate the extant research, we propose a research framework, which is based on a theoretical implementation process of IoT as a concept, specific IoT applications, or architectures integrated in an adapted input-process-output model. The main variables of the model are an initial definition and conceptualization of an IoT concept (input), which goes through an evaluation process (process), before it is implemented and can have an impact in practice (output). The paper contributes to interdisciplinary research relating to a business and management perspective on IoT by providing a holistic overview of predominant research themes and an integrative research framework

Transkulturalität und deren Bedeutung im Alltag kinder- und jugendpsychiatrischer Versorgung: eine Bestandsaufnahme

Das Paradigma der Transkulturalität, das in engem Bezug zum postkolonialen Diskurs steht bzw. aus diesem hervorgegangen ist, wird erläutert und sein handlungsleitendes Potenzial aufgezeigt. Es wird der Frage nachgegangen, welche Implikationen sich infolge der neu gewonnenen Perspektive für die Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie und Psychotherapie ergeben­. Transkulturalität betrifft nicht nur die gesellschaftliche Makroebene: Die heutigen Jugendlichen, deren Identitätsfindung sich maßgeblich auch über die Auseinandersetzung mit transnationalen Jugendbewegungen und nicht selten innerhalb transethnischer Milieus vollzieht, sind zunehmend in sich transkulturell (Mikroebene). Die sich daraus ergebenen praktischen Konsequenzen werden diskutiert

Ground-State and Domain-Wall Energies in the Spin-Glass Region of the 2D ±J\pm J Random-Bond Ising Model

The statistics of the ground-state and domain-wall energies for the two-dimensional random-bond Ising model on square lattices with independent, identically distributed bonds of probability $p$ of $J_{ij}= -1$ and $(1-p)$ of $J_{ij}= +1$ are studied. We are able to consider large samples of up to $320^2$ spins by using sophisticated matching algorithms. We study $L \times L$ systems, but we also consider $L \times M$ samples, for different aspect ratios $R = L / M$. We find that the scaling behavior of the ground-state energy and its sample-to-sample fluctuations inside the spin-glass region ($p_c \le p \le 1 - p_c$) are characterized by simple scaling functions. In particular, the fluctuations exhibit a cusp-like singularity at $p_c$. Inside the spin-glass region the average domain-wall energy converges to a finite nonzero value as the sample size becomes infinite, holding $R$ fixed. Here, large finite-size effects are visible, which can be explained for all $p$ by a single exponent $\omega\approx 2/3$, provided higher-order corrections to scaling are included. Finally, we confirm the validity of aspect-ratio scaling for $R \to 0$: the distribution of the domain-wall energies converges to a Gaussian for $R \to 0$, although the domain walls of neighboring subsystems of size $L \times L$ are not independent.Comment: 11 pages with 15 figures, extensively revise

Reduction of Two-Dimensional Dilute Ising Spin Glasses

The recently proposed reduction method is applied to the Edwards-Anderson model on bond-diluted square lattices. This allows, in combination with a graph-theoretical matching algorithm, to calculate numerically exact ground states of large systems. Low-temperature domain-wall excitations are studied to determine the stiffness exponent y_2. A value of y_2=-0.281(3) is found, consistent with previous results obtained on undiluted lattices. This comparison demonstrates the validity of the reduction method for bond-diluted spin systems and provides strong support for similar studies proclaiming accurate results for stiffness exponents in dimensions d=3,...,7.Comment: 7 pages, RevTex4, 6 ps-figures included, for related information, see http://www.physics.emory.edu/faculty/boettcher