Enhancing Microgrid Resilience with Green Hydrogen Storage

We consider the problem of hydrogen storage integration in microgrids to improve the electricity supply resilience. Nonlinear effects from electrochemical models of electrolyzers and fuel cells for hydrogen storage are considered, making scheduling under the nonlinear model intractable and the conventional linear approximation infeasible. A piecewise linear model approximation with feasibility projection is proposed, resulting in a computationally efficient model predictive control for hydrogen storage operation. Several resilience performance measures, such as loss-of-load, duration-of-outage, and system cost, are used in performance evaluation. Simulations for the proposed optimization demonstrated a 13%-48% reduction in duration-of-outage, a 6.4%-21.7% reduction in system cost, and a 95% reduction in loss-of-load for critical loads compared to the scheduling algorithm involving linear model approximation. The performance gap of the proposed optimization to the benchmark involving the accurate nonlinear electrochemical model is less than 1% in most metrics.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure, PESGM202

Implementing IFRS from the perspective of public sector banks in India

This study examines the perception of Public Sector Banks in India towards the implementation of IFRS.The paper provides insights into the IFRS adoption process based on a questionnaire sent to Public Sector Banks in India in 2015. The 291 responses received indicates: (1) Loan Impairment will affect the bank’s financial performances; (2) transparency of the results of the Banks will be increased; (3) global operations of the Banks will be impacted in positive direction; (4) the accessibility of the Global Capital Market will increase; (5) corporate governance aspect of the banks will increase; (6) the quality of financial information provided to the regulators and shareholders will improve; (7) the comparability aspect of financial statements will increase; (8) market capitalization of banks will improve; (9) the training needs of the staff will increase; (10) the opportunities for the accounting professionals will expand; (11) the flow of FDI in the banking sector will increas

Legal Transplantation of Minors’ Contracts in India and Malaysia: Weak Watson and a ‘Misfitted’ Transplant’

While contracts by minors are generally voidable in most common law jurisdictions, the apex court in India and in Malaysia has each held that such contracts are void ab initio, following a century-old Privy Council decision in Mohori Bibee (1903) 30 ILR Cal 539. This article explores minors’ contracts through the lens of legal transplant—viewing transplanted laws on a continuum, from a ‘Strong Watson’ perspective where English common law was adopted by the Indian courts, to a ‘Weak Watson’ position following the Privy Council’s interpretation of the law in the Indian Contract Act 1872. The authors conclude that the current Weak Watson transplant of laws on minors’ contracts is a ‘misfitted’ transplant which is neither consistent with the original intent of the transplanted law nor fit for purpose in a modern context. Given minors’ inability to enter into contracts or seek remedies, urgent legislative reform or judicial reinterpretation is required in India and Malaysia

Beyond the oxymoronic idea of no-detention policy

The periodic debates on continuous and comprehensive evaluation and no-detention policy in media are completely futile, given the current class-wise structure of schools and curricula. As a result, elementary education gets defi ned by the number of years spent in school. The examination system thwarts all attempts at bringing reforms in pedagogy, curriculum and textbooks. Therefore, discarding both examinations and detention is necessary, and an alternative imagination of schools and curriculum organisation is imperative for the success of educational reforms

I want my freedom: don’t give me a route map

Often one hears a challenge disguised as a query: what use is a National Curriculum Framework (NCF)? The challenges that emerge in the further dialogue depend on how reasonable, concerned or radical the challenger wants to pose himself/ herself to be. Some of them are: Our country is so vast and varied in cultural and natural environment that no single scheme of education can ever hope to be suitable for all. A supposed to be fundamental principle is often quoted in this regard is ‘one size does not fit all’. Or, that the curriculum binds the teacher and the learner both; their interests are ignored, their creativity stifled and their curiosity killed; the child should be left free. Or, that NCFs are so idealistic that they have no use in the practical business of education, everyone completely ignores them. These people often sound to me like a sailor declaring ‘I want my freedom, please don’t foist a route map on me’. The sailor will, of course, be lost in his long sea voyage without a map and so are these innovative people in the choppy sea of education. To properly respond to these challenges let us have a brief look at the uses and abuses of NCFs.However, the ideal of national education is much older than that. There was a nationwide debate in the first two decades of the last century in which many people noted the ill effects of colonial education on the national consciousness of Indians and wanted to replace it with the national system of education. Aurobindo wanted education to be rooted in the Indian—largely based on Sankhya and Yoga—understanding of human mind 1 . Lala Har Dayal criticized colonial education with fervent nationalism and advocated a national system based on Indian culture and love for the nation 2 . Tagore argued that a university fit for a country could emerge only from the national cultural resources 3 ; this argument for the university for him held for school education as well

Comparison of the conventional CMAC and the D-blade CMAC with the direct laryngoscopes in simulated cervical spine injury—a manikin study

AbstractBackgroundCMAC videolaryngoscope has recently been introduced for videoscope guided intubation. The aim of our study was to compare and evaluate the efficacy of the conventional blade and the angulated D blade of the CMAC videolaryngoscope with the direct laryngoscopes in simulated cervical spine injury patients on the airway manikin.Materials and methodsFollowing power analysis, 33 resident doctors were enrolled to perform endotracheal intubation using all the 4 different laryngoscopes namely the Macintosh laryngoscope, McCoy laryngoscope, conventional CMAC videolaryngoscope and the D blade of the CMAC videolaryngoscopes on the airway manikin in simulated cervical spine injury. The demographic variables of the resident doctors were recorded. The outcomes measured included vocal cord visualization (Cormack–Lehane grading), time taken to intubate, number of attempts for successful intubation and optimizing maneuvers required.ResultsThe use of indirect videolaryngoscopes resulted in better glottic visualization in comparison to the direct laryngoscopes (CL-I) in 20/33 (60.6%) in the Macintosh group, 24/33 (72.7%) in McCoy group, 30/33 in (90.9%) in Vlc group and 32/33 (96.9%) in Vld group. The time taken to intubate averaged to 15.54±2.6 in Macintosh group, 18.90±4.47 in McCoy group, 20.21±7.9 in Vlc group and 27.42±9.09 in Vld group. The 1st attempt intubation success rate was 84.8% (Macintosh), 72.7% (McCoy), 90.9% (Vlc) and, 78.7% (Vld).ConclusionsThe overall performance of the conventional CMAC blade proved to be the best when compared with the D-blade CMAC, Macintosh blade and the McCoy blade for intubation in simulated cervical spine patients by anesthesia residents

Importance of language

The central importance of language in primary education and the child's command over it is widely accepted. It's not difficult to see the reasons for this wide agreement. It's obvious that language is essential for communication, for the child as well as for everyone else. So is it essential for gaining understanding of all disciplines be it mathematics, sciences or any other. Indeed the child links to all aspects of education only through language. In fact, the child thinks, makes decisions and acts through and with language. Language is central to the child's (as everyone else's) existence as a part of society

Islamic financial development and economic growth-empirical evidence from United Arab Emirates / Mosab I. Tabash and Raj S. Dhankar

This paper analyzes empirically the relationship between the development of Islamic finance system and growth of the economy in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). To document the relationship between development of Islamic finance and economic growth, time series data from 1990 to 2010 were used. We use Islamic banks’ financing credited to private sector through modes of financing as a proxy for the development of Islamic finance system and Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF), as proxies for real economic growth. For the analysis, the unit root test, cointegration test and Granger Causality tests were done. Our empirical results show that there is a strong positive association between Islamic banks’ financing and economic growth in the UAE, which reinforces the idea that a well-functioning banking system promotes economic growth. However, our results indicate that a causal relationship happens only in one direction, i.e., from Islamic banks’ financing to economic growth, which supports Schumpeter’s supply-leading theory. In this case, the development in the Islamic financial sector acts as supply, leading to transfer of resources from the traditional, low-growth sectors to the modern high-growth sectors, and to promote and stimulate an entrepreneurial response in these modern sectors. Furthermore, the results show that Islamic Banks’ financing has contributed to the increase of investment in UAE in the long term and in a positive way