The Integration of Smart Meters Into Electrical Grids to Ensure Maximum Benefit for Consumers, Generators and Network Operators.

The term “smart metering” has been used in many project descriptions and publications produced by utility companies (e.g. gas, water and electricity), conference papers and journal papers, but the true meaning of the term has been fudged. Does smart metering signify rapid recording of data (i.e. data logger) or does it give totals (e.g. maximum, minimum and average), as neither of these are truly “Smart” or “Intelligent” virtues in themselves, or is there some additional role that needs to be explored. This dissertation examines the “smart metering” idiom jointly from energy supplier, grid manager and consumer perspectives and formulates a detailed model of the interfaces that are currently being touted as necessary for realising a smart system. Other aspects such as infrastructure, networking of data, ownership, location etc are also explored. Using a base model of the existing approach, this research shows where true “Smart” or “Intelligent” virtues could be incorporated. The proposed model alterations are verified using scenarios, thereby stress-testing the use of the components employed and illustrates limitations of the approach. This research highlights the necessity for a Home Area Network (HAN), to manage the use of energy in the home, and for a Consolation Entity, to fairly distribute and manage in a collaborative way the available energy on the grid. Not only are the needs for these shown but functional definitions for the HAN and consolation entity are also introduced. These two aspects have a particular importance as we, as a nation, introduce more renewable resources (e.g. wind, wave, solar), that are variable in their availability

What Color Are Our Hearts? Challenging Social and Literacy Inequalities in an Elementary School Writing Club

This longitudinal phenomenological study centers on an after-school writing club at an elementary school started by two high school English teachers and their students. Over the course of a school year, the writing club addressed local and systemic issues of inequality and facilitated the voice, agency and creative expression of the third to fifth grade students who chose to participate. Emerging trends and themes speak to the promise and possibilities of inter-age writing clubs that go far beyond traditional tutorial models. Rather than engaging in a banking method of tutoring, this project facilitates voice, agency and equality, as well as making significant gains in literacy acquisition for the students participating

In-Space Manufacturing Baseline Property Development

The In-Space Manufacturing (ISM) project at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center currently operates a 3D FDM (fused deposition modeling) printer onboard the International Space Station. In order to enable utilization of this capability by designer, the project needs to establish characteristic material properties for materials produced using the process. This is difficult for additive manufacturing since standards and specifications do not yet exist for these technologies. Due to availability of crew time, there are limitations to the sample size which in turn limits the application of the traditional design allowables approaches to develop a materials property database for designers. In this study, various approaches to development of material databases were evaluated for use by designers of space systems who wish to leverage in-space manufacturing capabilities. This study focuses on alternative statistical techniques for baseline property development to support in-space manufacturing

Comparing key compositional indicators in Jupiter with those in extra-solar giant planets

Spectroscopic transiting observations of the atmospheres of hot Jupiters around other stars, first with Hubble Space Telescope and then Spitzer, opened the door to compositional studies of exoplanets. The James Webb Space Telescope will provide such a profound improvement in signal-to-noise ratio that it will enable detailed analysis of molecular abundances, including but not limited to determining abundances of all the major carbon- and oxygen-bearing species in hot Jupiter atmospheres. This will allow determination of the carbon-to-oxygen ratio, an essential number for planet formation models and a motivating goal of the Juno mission currently around Jupiter

Sorghum Growth and Development

8 pp., 1 table, 8 photosSorghum is well adapted to Texas, and its ability to yield consistently makes it popular with growers. This publication discusses sorghum plant biology and growth

Humanitarianism 2.0

It is difficult to overstate the importance of trust in a world where global networks facilitate the constant flow of contradictory information. The search for verifiable leads and trusted sources is a central facet of daily communication and is becoming more so as our connections with one another become more decontextualised, geographically distant and, increasingly entirely virtual. The swell of internet connection rates across the world has meant an explosion of interaction and allowed new opportunities for global collective action. Whilst countless words have been written exploring the dangers of this global network and the threats that “new media” represents to social structures and moral fabrics, this collection seeks to explore the role that new social technologies are having in the world of humanitarianism and conflict response

LearningMapR: A Prototype Tool for Creating IMS-LD Compliant Units of Learning

Commentary on: Chapter 22: A Learning Design Worked Example. (Gorissen & Tattersall, 2005) Abstract: This article demonstrates and discusses a model to help instructors select appropriate designs from learning design repositories for courses they are developing. We describe the LearningMapR: A prototype pedagogical design tool being developed as a first step toward an IMS-LD-compliant authoring system. This tool's output is a Unit of Learning [UOL] containing storyboards, placeholders for content, and IMS-LD compliant templates and exemplars that are chosen from an illustrative set developed for the project. Based on collaborative work with the University of Oxford and using tools such as Reload as the base, we intend to create a 'teacher-friendly' tool for instructors to create UOLs. Editors: Colin Tattersall and Rob Koper

Identifying physical health comorbidities in a cohort of individuals with severe mental illness:An application of SemEHR

Multimorbidity research in mental health services requires data from physical health conditions which is traditionally limited in mental health care electronic health records. In this study, we aimed to extract data from physical health conditions from clinical notes using SemEHR. Data was extracted from Clinical Record Interactive Search (CRIS) system at South London and Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre (SLaM BRC) and the cohort consisted of all individuals who had received a primary or secondary diagnosis of severe mental illness between 2007 and 2018. Three pairs of annotators annotated 2403 documents with an average Cohen's Kappa of 0.757. Results show that the NLP performance varies across different diseases areas (F1 0.601 - 0.954) suggesting that the language patterns or terminologies of different condition groups entail different technical challenges to the same NLP task.Comment: 4 pages, 2 table

Validation of Nuclear Material Control and Accountability (MC&A) System Effectiveness Tool (MSEF) at Idaho National Laboratory (INL)

A Nuclear Material Control and Accountability (MC&A) Functional Model has been developed to describe MC&A systems at facilities possessing Category I or II Special Nuclear Material (SNM). Emphasis is on achieving the objectives of 144 “Fundamental Elements” in key areas ranging from categorization of nuclear material to establishment of Material Balance Areas (MBAs), controlling access, performing quality measurements of inventories and transfers, timely reporting all activities, and detecting and investigating anomalies. An MC&A System Effectiveness Tool (MSET), including probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) technology for evaluating MC&A effectiveness and relative risk, has been developed to accompany the Functional Model. The functional model and MSET were introduced at the 48th annual International Nuclear Material Management (INMM) annual meeting in July, 20071,2. A survey/questionnaire is used to accumulate comprehensive data regarding the MC&A elements at a facility. Data is converted from the questionnaire to numerical values using the DELPHI method and exercises are conducted to evaluate the overall effectiveness of an MC&A system. In 2007 a peer review was conducted and a questionnaire was completed for a hypothetical facility and exercises were conducted. In the first quarter of 2008, a questionnaire was completed at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and MSET exercises were conducted. The experience gained from conducting the MSET exercises at INL helped evaluate the completeness and consistency of the MC&A Functional Model, descriptions of fundamental elements of the MC&A Functional Model, relationship between the MC&A Functional Model and the MC&A PRA tool and usefulness of the MSET questionnaire data collection process