25,467 research outputs found
Carbon accounting in the context of multi-criteria assessment for SLES: challenges and opportunities
In the UK, national carbon emission reduction targets aim to reach Net Zero by 2050, with a fully decarbonised electricity system by 2035. Smart Local Energy Systems (SLES) are being deployed to combine and intelligently control complementary low and zero carbon technologies within micro-gridsto amplify their impacts and accelerate this ambitious transition towards a decarbonized energy system and low-carbon society.
Today, national and local governments monitor the potential carbon reduction of energy system retrofitting and
policy implementation through simplified carbon accounting methods, which allow for calculation of the accumulated carbon emissions. This focus on carbon may, however, neglect broader socioeconomic impacts and benefits of these actions.
This paper describes the how the application of a multi-criteria assessment tool focusing on SLES can be used to
evaluate (i) the carbon emissions from an energy system and (ii) the carbon reduction potential of renewable and smart energy technology implementation. Alongside the carbon accounting this MCA-SLES tool provides assessment and insights into the local socioeconomic and environmental benefits and impacts of the SLES development. The application of such a complex assessment tool has challenges in application, such as data collection, the intensity of the stakeholder approach, and the large volume of information for user dissemination. This paper illustrates how the developed assessment tool mitigates for these challenges and highlights the opportunity for small-scale energy development projects to employ it to assess project feasibility and progress
towards economic, social, and environmental co-benefits
Work-related psychological health and psychological type among lead elders within the Newfrontiers network of churches in the United Kingdom
Building on a series of recent studies concerned with assessing work-related psychological health and psychological type among various groups of church leaders, this study reports new data provided by 134 Lead Elders within the Newfrontiers network of churches in the United Kingdom who completed the Francis Psychological Type Scales (FPTS) together with the two scales of the Francis Burnout Inventory (FBI) concerned with emotional exhaustion and satisfaction in ministry. Compared with other groups of church leaders, Lead Elders within the Newfrontiers network of churches reported lower levels of emotional exhaustion and higher levels of satisfaction in ministry. Compared with other groups of church leaders, there was a higher proportion of extraverts among Lead Elders within the Newfrontiers network of churches. There was only a weak association between psychological type and burnout
Look at Me Now: What Attracts U.S. Shareholders?
This paper investigates the underlying determinants of home bias using a comprehensive data set on U.S. investors' aggregate holdings of every foreign stock. Among those foreign stocks that are not listed on U.S. exchanges, which account for more than 96 percent of our usable data sample, we find that U.S. investors prefer firms with characteristics associated with greater information transparency, such as stronger home-country accounting standards. We document that a U.S. cross-listing is economically important, as U.S. ownership of a foreign firm roughly doubles upon cross-listing in the United States. We explore the cross-sectional variation in this "cross-listing effect" and find that the increase in U.S. investment is greatest for firms that are from weak accounting backgrounds and are otherwise informationally opaque, suggesting that the key effect of cross-listing is improvements in disclosure that are valued by U.S. investors. By contrast, cross-listing does not increase the appeal of stocks from countries with weak shareholder rights, suggesting that U.S. cross-listing cannot substitute for legal protections in the home country. Nor does the cross-listing effect appear to be driven simply by increased "familiarity"� with the stock or lowered cross-border transactions costs.
Possible High-Redshift, Low-Luminosity AGN Activity in the Hubble Deep Field
In the Hubble Deep Field (HDF), twelve candidate sources of high-redshift (z
> 3.5) AGN activity have been identified. The color selection criteria were
established by passing spectra of selected quasars and Seyfert galaxies
(appropriately redshifted and modified for "Lyman forest" absorption), as well
as stars, observed normal and starburst galaxies, and galaxy models for various
redshifts through the filters used for the HDF observations. The actual
identification of AGN candidates also involved convolving a
Laplacian-of-Gaussian filter with the HDF images, thereby removing relatively
flat galactic backgrounds and leaving only the point-like components in the
centers. Along with positions and colors, estimated redshifts and absolute
magnitudes are reported, with the candidates falling toward the faint end of
the AGN luminosity function. One candidate has been previously observed
spectroscopically, with a measured redshift of 4.02. The number of sources
reported here is consistent with a simple extrapolation of the observed quasar
luminosity function to magnitude 30 in B_Johnson. Implications for ionization
of the intergalactic medium and for gravitational lensing are discussed.Comment: 10 pages LaTex plus 2 separate files (Table 1 which is a two-page
landscape LaTex file; and Figure 6 which is a large (0.7 MB) non-encapsulated
postscript file). Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journa
Contacting the spirits of the dead: paranormal belief and the teenage worldview
A number of previous studies have examined both the overall level of belief expressed by young people in the paranormal and the major demographic predictors of such belief. Building on this research tradition, the present study examines how one specific paranormal belief concerning contact with the spirits of the dead integrates with the wider teenage worldview. Data provided by 33,982 pupils age 13 to 15 years throughout England and Wales demonstrated that almost one in three young people (31%) believed that it is possible to contact the spirits of the dead. Compared with young people who did not share this belief, the young people who believed in the possibility of contacting the spirits of the dead displayed lower psychological wellbeing, higher anxiety, greater isolation, greater alienation, less positive social attitudes, and less socially conforming lifestyles. Overall, paranormal beliefs seem to be associated with a less healthy worldview, in both personal and social terms
Exact moments in a continuous time random walk with complete memory of its history
We present a continuous time generalization of a random walk with complete
memory of its history [Phys. Rev. E 70, 045101(R) (2004)] and derive exact
expressions for the first four moments of the distribution of displacement when
the number of steps is Poisson distributed. We analyze the asymptotic behavior
of the normalized third and fourth cumulants and identify new transitions in a
parameter regime where the random walk exhibits superdiffusion. These
transitions, which are also present in the discrete time case, arise from the
memory of the process and are not reproduced by Fokker-Planck approximations to
the evolution equation of this random walk.Comment: Revtex4, 10 pages, 2 figures. v2: applications discussed, clarity
improved, corrected scaling of third momen
Radiative hydrodynamic modelling and observations of the X-class solar flare on 2011 March 9
We investigated the response of the solar atmosphere to non-thermal electron
beam heating using the radiative transfer and hydrodynamics modelling code
RADYN. The temporal evolution of the parameters that describe the non-thermal
electron energy distribution were derived from hard X-ray observations of a
particular flare, and we compared the modelled and observed parameters. The
evolution of the non-thermal electron beam parameters during the X1.5 solar
flare on 2011 March 9 were obtained from analysis of RHESSI X-ray spectra. The
RADYN flare model was allowed to evolve for 110 seconds, after which the
electron beam heating was ended, and was then allowed to continue evolving for
a further 300s. The modelled flare parameters were compared to the observed
parameters determined from extreme-ultraviolet spectroscopy. The model produced
a hotter and denser flare loop than that observed and also cooled more rapidly,
suggesting that additional energy input in the decay phase of the flare is
required. In the explosive evaporation phase a region of high-density cool
material propagated upward through the corona. This material underwent a rapid
increase in temperature as it was unable to radiate away all of the energy
deposited across it by the non-thermal electron beam and via thermal
conduction. A narrow and high-density ( cm) region at
the base of the flare transition region was the source of optical line emission
in the model atmosphere. The collision-stopping depth of electrons was
calculated throughout the evolution of the flare, and it was found that the
compression of the lower atmosphere may permit electrons to penetrate farther
into a flaring atmosphere compared to a quiet Sun atmosphere.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figure
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