Modular AC coupled hybrid power systems for the emerging GHG mitigation products market

Bioenergy systems particularly waste to energy (WTE) systems are increasingly gaining prominence. Market for modular hybrid energy systems (HES) combining renewable energy sources including WTEs is potentially large. Novel configuration of AC coupling for HES is discussed. Emerging opportunities for market development of hybrid energy systems under green house gas mitigation initiatives particularly Kyoto flexibility mechanisms is analysed

Stabilizing the electroweak vacuum by higher dimensional operators in a Higgs-Yukawa model

The Higgs boson discovery at the LHC with a mass of approximately 126 GeV suggests, that the electroweak vacuum of the standard model may be metastable at very high energies. However, any new physics beyond the standard model can change this picture. We want to address this important question within a lattice Higgs-Yukawa model as the limit of the standard model (SM). In this framework we will probe the effect of a higher dimensional operator for which we take a $(\phi^{\dagger}\phi)^3$-term. Such a term could easily originate as a remnant of physics beyond the SM at very large scales. As a first step we investigate the phase diagram of the model including such a $(\phi^{\dagger}\phi)^3$ operator. Exploratory results suggest the existence of regions in parameter space where first order transitions turn to second order ones, indicating the existence of a tri-critical line. We will explore the phase structure and the consequences for the stability of the SM, both analytically by investigating the constraint effective potential in lattice perturbation theory, and by studying the system non-perturbatively using lattice simulations.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures; Proceedings of the 31st International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory - LATTICE 201

Hydrothermal Ethanol Flames in Co-Flow Jets

Results on the autoignition and stabilization of ethanol hydrothermal flames in a Supercritical Water Oxidation (SCWO) reactor operating at constant pressure are reported. The flames are observed as luminous reaction zones occurring in supercritical water; i.e., water at conditions above its critical point (approximately 22 MPa and 374 C). A co-flow injector is used to inject fuel (inner flow), comprising an aqueous solution ranging from 20%-v to 50%-v ethanol, and air (annular flow) into a reactor filled with supercritical water at approximately 24.3 MPa and 425 C. Results show hydrothermal flames are autoignited and form diffusion flames which exhibit laminar and/or turbulent features depending upon flow conditions. Two orthogonal camera views are used; one providing a backlit shadowgraphic image of the co-flow jet and the other providing color images of the flame. In addition, spectroscopic measurements of flame emissions in the UV and visible spectrum are discussed

Endogenous human cytomegalovirus gB is efficiently presented by MHC class II molecules to CD4+ CTL

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infects endothelial, epithelial, and glial cells in vivo. These cells can express MHC class II proteins, but are unlikely to play important roles in priming host immunity. Instead, it seems that class II presentation of endogenous HCMV antigens in these cells allows recognition of virus infection. We characterized class II presentation of HCMV glycoprotein B (gB), a membrane protein that accumulates extensively in endosomes during virus assembly. Human CD4+ T cells specific for gB were both highly abundant in blood and cytolytic in vivo. gB-specific CD4+ T cell clones recognized gB that was expressed in glial, endothelial, and epithelial cells, but not exogenous gB that was fed to these cells. Glial cells efficiently presented extremely low levels of endogenous gB--expressed by adenovirus vectors or after HCMV infection--and stimulated CD4+ T cells better than DCs that were incubated with exogenous gB. Presentation of endogenous gB required sorting of gB to endosomal compartments and processing by acidic proteases. Although presentation of cellular proteins that traffic into endosomes is well known, our observations demonstrate for the first time that a viral protein sorted to endosomes is presented exceptionally well, and can promote CD4+ T cell recognition and killing of biologically important host cells

The finite temperature QCD using 2+1 flavors of domain wall fermions at N_t = 8

We study the region of the QCD phase transition using 2+1 flavors of domain wall fermions (DWF) and a $16^3 \times 8$ lattice volume with a fifth dimension of $L_s = 32$. The disconnected light quark chiral susceptibility, quark number susceptibility and the Polyakov loop suggest a chiral and deconfining crossover transition lying between 155 and 185 MeV for our choice of quark mass and lattice spacing. In this region the lattice scale deduced from the Sommer parameter $r_0$ is $a^{-1} \approx 1.3$ GeV, the pion mass is $\approx 300$ MeV and the kaon mass is approximately physical. The peak in the chiral susceptibility implies a pseudo critical temperature $T_c = 171(10)(17)$ MeV where the first error is associated with determining the peak location and the second with our unphysical light quark mass and non-zero lattice spacing. The effects of residual chiral symmetry breaking on the chiral condensate and disconnected chiral susceptibility are studied using several values of the valence $L_s$.Comment: 41 pages, 10 tables, 13 figure

Robust Hybrid Precoding for Interference Exploitation in Massive Mimo Systems

In this paper, we consider a multiuser massive MIMO system with hybrid analog-digital precoding architecture. The phase shifters in the hybrid precoding architecture are assumed to be imperfect, where the true values of both phase and magnitude of the phase shifters are different from their nominal values. For a given analog precoding matrix, we develop an iterative algorithm to compute robust digital precoders based on the interference exploitation approach to eliminate any potential symbol errors due to the phase shifter impairments. Numerical experiments demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm and show its advantage over a conventional robust precoding technique