Promoting energy efficiency at household level: a literature review

The household sector is one of the most energy-intensive sectors in Europe, and thus a focal point for reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with energy consumption. Energy efficiency is considered a key measure to reduce household energy consumption, but several factors could lead to an underinvestment in energy efficiency. This is the so-called energy efficiency gap or paradox. The factors in question are grouped under market failures (including informational failures), behavioural failures and other factors. Various policies can be used to address these failures and promote the adoption of energy-efficient technologies, including energy standards and codes, economic incentives and information instruments. This paper reviews the empirical evidence to date on energy efficiency policies and discusses their effectiveness. On the one hand, command and control instruments seem to be effective policies, but they have to overcome several barriers. In the case of price instruments, subsidies and taxes do not seem to be effective while rebates present mixed results as they sometimes are effective and in other cases, they could present significant shortcomings. Finally, the effectiveness of informational policies is not always ensured as they depend on the country, sector and product category. Information feedback tools also seem to be effective as they work as a constant reminder of energy-efficient behaviour. Some limitations of energy efficiency policies are also identified, such as the difficulties of implementing codes and standards given that a minimum level need to be achieved, differences in the effectiveness of rebate programmes and non-conclusive results in regard to the effectiveness of monetary energy efficiency labels. © 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. part of Springer Nature.This study was conducted as part of the CONSumer Energy Efficiency Decision making (CONSEED) project, an EU-funded H2020 research project under grant agreement number 723741. This research is also supported by the Spanish State Research Agency through María de Maeztu Excellence Unit accreditation 2018-2022 (Ref. MDM-2017-0714). The project leading to these results has received funding from ‘la Caixa’ Foundation under the project SR0435 led by Ibon Galarraga. Amaya de Ayala also acknowledges the support of Fundación Ramon Areces under XVIII Concurso Nacional para la Adjudicación de Ayudas a la Investigación en Ciencias Sociales. Marta Escapa is grateful for financial support from the University of the Basque Country (Grant GIU18/136) and from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Grant RTI2018-093352-B-I00)

Deep learning for the detection and characterization of the carotid artery in ultrasound imaging

Treballs finals del Màster de Fonaments de Ciència de Dades, Facultat de matemàtiques, Universitat de Barcelona, Any: 2018, Tutor: Laura Igual Muñoz[en] Atherosclerosis is the main process causing most Cardio Vascular (CV) diseases. The measurement of Intima Media Thickness (IMT) in artery ultrasound images can be used to detect the presence of atherosclerotic plaques, which may appear in several territories of the artery. Moreover, it is well known that disruption of atherosclerotic plaque plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of CV events. Several works have tried to automatize the detection of the IMT and the classification of the plaque by its composition. Traditionally, the methods used in the literature are semi-automatic. Furthermore, very little work has been done using Deep Learning approaches in order to solve this problems. In this thesis, we explore the effectiveness of Deep Learning techniques in attempting to automatize and improve the diagnosis of atheroma plaques. To achieve so we tackle the following problems: ultrasound image segmentation and plaque tissue classification. The techniques applied in this work are the following. For the segmentation of the common carotid artery IMT we replicate a state of the art Fully Convolutional Network approach and explore the implementation of a trained network to another dataset. Regarding the plaque classification problem, we explore the performance of Convolutional Neural Networks as well with two baseline methods. These techniques are applied on two datasets: REGICOR and NEFRONA. These datasets are provided by two research groups of IMIM and IRBLleida in collaboration in a larger project with the UB. A data exploration analysis is also presented on the patient’s data of NEFRONA to justify the importance of detecting the atherosclerotic plaques and thus the techniques we explore

The theory of canonical perturbations applied to attitude dynamics and to the Earth rotation. Osculating and nonosculating Andoyer variables

The Hamiltonian theory of Earth rotation, known as the Kinoshita-Souchay theory, operates with nonosculating Andoyer elements. This situation parallels a similar phenomenon that often happens (but seldom gets noticed) in orbital dynamics, when the standard Lagrange-type or Delaunay-type planetary equations unexpectedly render nonosculating orbital elements. In orbital mechanics, osculation loss happens when a velocity-dependent perturbation is plugged into the standard planetary equations. In attitude mechanics, osculation is lost when an angular-velocity-dependent disturbance is plugged in the standard dynamical equations for the Andoyer elements. We encounter exactly this situation in the theory of Earth rotation, because this theory contains an angular-velocity-dependent perturbation (the switch from an inertial frame to that associated with the precessing ecliptic of date). While the osculation loss does not influence the predictions for the figure axis of the planet, it considerably alters the predictions for the instantaneous spin-axis' orientation. We explore this issue in great detail

Bioelectrochemical enhancement of methane production from exhausted vine shoot fermentation broth by integration of MEC with anaerobic digestion

[ES] A microbial electrolysis cell integrated in an anaerobic digestion system (MEC-AD) is an efficient configuration to produce methane from an exhausted vine shoot fermentation broth (EVS). The cell worked in a single-chamber two-electrode configuration at an applied potential of 1 V with a feeding ratio of 30/70 (30% EVS to 70% synthetic medium). In addition, an identical cell operated in an open circuit was used as a control reactor. Experimental results showed similar behavior in terms of carbon removal (70–76%), while the specific averaged methane production from cycle 7 was more stable and higher in the connected cell (MECAD) compared with the unpolarized one (OCAD) accounting for 403.7 ± 33.6 L CH4·kg VS−1 and 121.3 ± 49.7 L CH4·kg VS−1, respectively. In addition, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy revealed that the electrical capacitance of the bioanode in MECAD was twice the capacitance shown by OCAD. The bacterial community in both cells was similar but a clear adaptation of Methanosarcina Archaea was exhibited in MECAD, which could explain the increased yields in CH4 production. In summary, the results reported here confirm the advantages of integrating MEC-AD for the treatment of real organic liquid waste instead of traditional AD treatment.SIPublicación en abierto financiada por el Consorcio de Bibliotecas Universitarias de Castilla y León (BUCLE), con cargo al Programa Operativo 2014ES16RFOP009 FEDER 2014-2020 DE CASTILLA Y LEÓN, Actuación:20007-CL - Apoyo Consorcio BUCL

A new cupressaceous wood from the Lower Cretaceous of central Patagonia reveals possible clonal growth habit

A new genus and species, Austrocupressinoxylon barcinense, based on remains of cupressaceous wood is described for the Lower Cretaceous of central Patagonia, Argentina. The studied specimens are silicified fragments of picnoxylic and homoxylic wood that exhibit a combination of characters not previously reported, therefore a new genus is erected. The characters are: 1- growth ring boundaries distinct, 2- transition from earlywood to latewood gradual, 3- axial parenchyma diffuse,4- radial tracheid pitting predominantly abietinean,5- cross-field pitting cupressoid, arranged in both cupressoid and araucarioid patterns, 6- rays uniseriate heterocellular, 7- end and horizontal walls of ray parenchyma cells smooth or slightly nodular, and 8- ray tracheids with smooth walls. The cross-field pitting patterns and the presence of ray tracheids are two traits of particular interest in the context of systematic affinities. The fragments were collected from two stumps found in life position attached to each other by a main root, consequently, the disposition of the stumps suggests a case of clonal growth by root suckering. This is the second report of such mechanisms in the fossil records worldwide and the first one for South America.Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Muse

Electron Standing Wave Formation in Atomic Wires

Using the Landauer formulation of transport theory and tight binding models of the electronic structure, we study electron transport through atomic wires that form 1D constrictions between pairs of metallic nano-contacts. Our results are interpreted in terms of electron standing waves formed in the atomic wires due to interference of electron waves reflected at the ends of the atomic constrictions. We explore the influence of the chemistry of the atomic wire-metal contact interfaces on these standing waves and the associated transport resonances by considering two types of atomic wires: gold wires attached to gold contacts and carbon wires attached to gold contacts. We find that the conductance of the gold wires is roughly $1 G_0 = 2 e^2/h$ for the wire lengths studied, in agreement with experiments. By contrast, for the carbon wires the conductance is found to oscillate strongly as the number of atoms in the wire varies, the odd numbered chains being more conductive than the even numbered ones, in agreement with previous theoretical work that was based on a different model of the carbon wire and metal contacts.Comment: 14 pages, includes 6 figure