Understanding the indirect costs of renewable energy using real option theory

We examine the economic efficiency of incentive mechanisms used to promote renewable energy as a policy in the European Union (EU). We evaluate the financial performance of renewable investments and employ real option theory to model and analyze their impact in the EU’s liberalized electricity markets. Our analysis covers key European countries and uses five years of the most recent historic electricity price data from 2009 to consider sensitivities in key parameters. As renewable energy policies are presented as public goods to address environmental concerns, we explain how the financial performance of these policies can strike a balance between social costs and private benefits. We consider how markets may incorporate renewable energy without major adjustments. For other regions, our research offers lessons on effectiveness and cost-efficiency in designing renewables incentive schemes

Getting the Right Mix: Developing a primary - secondary health provider IT interface in the Waikato District Health Board

The article presents a study on the electronic health record systems (EHR) developed by Waikato District Health Board (DHB) in New Zealand. The DHB develop EHR with the intention of integrating primary, secondary and tertiary provider information. The findings shows key issues like stability of a sound secondary health provider information technology (IT) infrastructure and basis of patient data on health industry standards

Categories of insight and their correlates: An exploration of relationships among classic-type insight problems, rebus puzzles, remote associates and esoteric analogies.

A central question in creativity concerns how insightful ideas emerge. Anecdotal examples of insightful scientific and technical discoveries include Goodyear's discovery of the vulcanization of rubber, and Mendeleev's realization that there may be gaps as he tried to arrange the elements into the Periodic Table. Although most people would regard these discoveries as insightful, cognitive psychologists have had difficulty in agreeing on whether such ideas resulted from insights or from conventional problem solving processes. One area of wide agreement among psychologists is that insight involves a process of restructuring. If this view is correct, then understanding insight and its role in problem solving will depend on a better understanding of restructuring and the characteristics that describe it. This article proposes and tests a preliminary classification of insight problems based on several restructuring characteristics: the need to redefine spatial assumptions, the need to change defined forms, the degree of misdirection involved, the difficulty in visualizing a possible solution, the number of restructuring sequences in the problem, and the requirement for figure-ground type reversals. A second purpose of the study was to compare performance on classic spatial insight problems with two types of verbal tests that may be related to insight, the Remote Associates Test (RAT), and rebus puzzles. In doing so, we report on the results of a survey of 172 business students at the University of Waikato in New Zealand who completed classic-type insight, RAT and rebus problems

Production of Reducing Gases from Petroleum Products by the Shell Gasification Process

The development of processes for the direct reduction of iron ore with gaseous agents has been stimulated by two main factors, viz. the increasing demand for steel all over the world and the local shortage of suitable coal for the manufacture of metallurgical coke. The economic necessity to switch from coal to another source of carbon monoxide and hydrogen has also been felt in other than metallurgical industries, The rapidly increasing demand for water as as basic material for processes such as the production of town gas, the synthesis of methanol and a ammonia, the hydrogenation and hydrodesulphurization of petroleum fractions, and the hydrogenation of vegetable oils has resulted in an increasingly important call upon oil as a raw material in the production of gas for use in industry

A computationally efficacious free-energy functional for studies of inhomogeneous liquid water

We present an accurate equation of state for water based on a simple microscopic Hamiltonian, with only four parameters that are well-constrained by bulk experimental data. With one additional parameter for the range of interaction, this model yields a computationally efficient free-energy functional for inhomogeneous water which captures short-ranged correlations, cavitation energies and, with suitable long-range corrections, the non-linear dielectric response of water, making it an excellent candidate for studies of mesoscale water and for use in ab initio solvation methods.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Relation between the High Density Phase and the Very-High Density Phase of Amorphous Solid Water

It has been suggested that high-density amorphous (HDA) ice is a structurally arrested form of high-density liquid (HDL) water, while low-density amorphous (LDA) ice is a structurally arrested form of low-density liquid (LDL) water. Recent experiments and simulations have been interpreted to support the possibility of a second "distinct" high-density structural state, named very high-density amorphous (VHDA) ice, questioning the LDL-HDL hypothesis. We test this interpretation using extensive computer simulations, and find that VHDA is a more stable form of HDA and that in fact VHDA should be considered as the amorphous ice of the quenched HDL.Comment: 5 pages, 4 fig

Meteorological application of Apollo photography Final report

Development of meteorological information and parameters based on cloud photographs taken during Apollo 9 fligh

The Go Clean Cup

Single-serve coffee machines and pods have gained popularity in recent years for ease of use. While these machines can save energy and water in the long run, especially in business settings, the consequences include billions of disposable coffee pods being thrown into landfills around the world each year. Although companies, such as Keurig®, have made reusable pods to fix this problem, the current designs are incompatible with many machines and they use hard plastic, making them difficult to clean. According to a survey conducted by the Go Clean Cup project, 63% of consumers would buy a new reusable single-serve coffee pod of equal price as the others if it was easier to clean. The Go Clean Cup is a reusable single-serve coffee pod that is flexible and eversible for easy cleaning. The pod can be partially or completely everted for coffee grounds to be wiped out without hassle and will be universally compatible with single-serve beverage machines. With a pending utility patent on the design, the Go Clean Cup project is currently focused on developing the best manufacturing method, including molding and laser drilling, to get the product on retail shelves for the lowest cost

Objectively estimating tropical cyclone intensity and wind structure using the advanced microwave sounding unit

Includes bibliographical references.Estimating tropical cyclone (TC) intensity and structure is becoming increasingly important in light of population expansion along coastal regions. The two most commonly used techniques for estimating TC intensity, the Dvorak Technique and the Objective Dvorak Technique (ODT), utilize visible and infrared satellite imagery. However, both have limitations, as do observing techniques of TC wind structure. Satellite-borne passive microwave radiometers provide an opportune alternative for near real-time assessments of TC maximum sustained winds and wind radii. The first Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU), aboard the NOAA-15 polar orbiting satellite, is the first NOAA instrument with sufficient resolution to do so. In this study, data derived from AMSU temperature, pressure, and wind retrievals are used to make objective intensity and wind radii estimates for tropical disturbances in the Atlantic and East Pacific basins. To approximate TC maximum sustained winds and azimuthally averaged wind radii of 34, 50, and 64 kt winds, algorithms are developed via correlations and multiple linear regressions from AMSU data from the 1999 tropical season; they then are tested independently on the 2000 tropical season data Additionally, the AMSU-derived estimates of the azimuthally averaged wind radii are used with a modified Rankine vortex model to assess the wind radii asymmetrically, specifically in the northeast (NE), northwest (NW), southeast (SE), and southwest (SW) quadrants of the TC. Validation data are from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) best track data for the intensity estimates, and from the NHC operational forecast advisories for the average and asymmetric wind radii estimates. Results show the objective AMSU algorithm is comparable to the ODT for estimating TC intensity in the Atlantic, with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 13 kts. The RMSE increases slightly to 16 kts for both basins combined. In general, the AMSU algorithm has a tendency to over (under) approximate the intensity of weak (strong) TCs. For the AMSU-estimated azimuthally averaged 34, 50, and 64 kt wind radii, the mean absolute errors (MAE) are 16, 17, and 8 nautical miles (nm), respectively. With respect to the average radii of each, these correspond to errors of 14.4 percent, 24.6 percent, and 17.8 percent. As with the intensity estimation algorithm, there is a tendency toward over (under) estimation of small (large) azimuthally averaged wind radii by the AMSU. Additionally, the wind radii estimates in the NE, SE, SW, and NW quadrants capture the asymmetric structure well, generally comparing favorably with the NHC operational advisory estimates. In some cases, the AMSU estimates may even be superior to NHC estimates, especially in the Eastern Pacific. Finally, the 1999 and 2000 AMSU data are combined to refine the TC intensity and azimuthally averaged wind radii estimation algorithms. The two-year based algorithms currently are being tested on AMSU data received from the Atlantic and East Pacific basins during the 2001 tropical season.Funding for this research is supplied in part by an American Meteorological Society Graduate Student Fellowship, sponsored by GTE Government Systems, and also by the United States Weather Research Program, NOAA grant NA67RJ0152

Relative momentum for identical particles

Possible definitions for the relative momentum of identical particles are considered