Professional Affairs: Research Workers: Produce or Perish

To produce research results or perish is today a continual threat to the research worker who in the boom days of the past was only sometimes subjected to the threat of publish or perish. Research management must become more effective to ensure higher productivity and continued funding. We live in an age of change, and successful technological innovation is essential for survival. The selection, motivation, and continuing education of people can contribute much to successful R & D. The systems approach and the use of industrial economics and engineering concepts can contribute to optimum utilization of research workers and facilities

Avian determinants of rocky intertidal community structure in South Africa

Includes bibliographies.Rocky islands in Saldanha Bay, southwestern Cape, South Africa, support aggregations of seabirds. Guano produced by the seabirds washed off the islands into intertidal and nearshore waters,where it provides a source of inorganic and organic nutrients. The concentrations of nutrients in intertidal rockpools at island and mainland sites in the Saldanha Bay area were measured,and the biological structures of intertidal communities at these sites were compared in the light of differences in intertidal nutrient status. Monthly measurements were made of algal production and of the growth, density, reproductive condition and mortality of the dominant intertidal herbivore, Patella granularis.The rate of intertidal algal production was enhanced on shores washed by nutrient-rich waters, and the growth rates and life-history patterns of populations of P. granularis were, in turn, modified by the increased availability of algal food. On unenriched shores rates of algal production and limpet growth and reproduction were slow. Seabirds thus influence trophic relationships between intertidal organisms, without themselves being components of the community. Islands in Saldanha Bay also support dense populations of African Black Oystercatchers Haematopus moqu.ini, which forage intertidally. Predation by oystercatchers on P. granular is resulted in a modification of limpet densities and population size structures, and a reduction in the intensity of grazing. The impact of predation was, however, modified by the presence, in intertidal waters, of nutrients from seabird guano, and the consequences thereof. It is proposed that differences in the structures of communities on rocky shores, and in the roles of processes influencing structure, might •be due, in part, to differences in the nutrient status of intertidal waters

Improved Heat Demand Prediction of Individual Households

One of the options to increase the energy efficiency of current electricity network is the use of a Virtual Power Plant. By using multiple small (micro)generators distributed over the country, electricity can be produced more efficiently since these small generators are more efficient and located where the energy is needed. In this paper we focus on micro Combined Heat and Power generators. For such generators, the production capacity is determined and limited by the heat demand. To keep the global electricity network stable, information about the production capacity of the heat-driven generators is required in advance. In this paper we present methods to perform heat demand prediction of individual households based on neural network techniques. Using different input sets and a so called sliding window, the quality of the predictions can be improved significantly. Simulations show that these improvements have a positive impact on controlling the distributed microgenerators

A Three-Step Methodology to Improve Domestic Energy Efficiency

Increasing energy prices and the greenhouse effect lead to more awareness of energy efficiency of electricity supply. During the last years, a lot of technologies have been developed to improve this efficiency. Next to large scale technologies such as windturbine parks, domestic technologies are developed. These domestic technologies can be divided in 1) Distributed Generation (DG), 2) Energy Storage and 3) Demand Side Load Management. Control algorithms optimizing a combination of these techniques can raise the energy reduction potential of the individual techniques. In this paper an overview of current research is given and a general concept is deducted. Based on this concept, a three-step optimization methodology is proposed using 1) offline local prediction, 2) offline global planning and 3) online local scheduling. The paper ends with results of simulations and field tests showing that the methodology is promising.\u