The development of a mapping tool for the evaluation of building systems for future climate scenarios on European scale

The paper presents a tool for the mapping of the performance of building systems on European scale for different (future) time periods. The tool is to use for users and be applicable for different building systems. Users should also be able to use a broad range of climate parameters to assess the influence of climate change on these climatic parameters. Also should the calculation time be reasonable short. The mapping tool is developed in MATLAB, which can be used by other users for their own studies.Comment: 21 pages, 24 figures, pre-conferenc

Norm discontinuity and spectral properties of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck semigroups

Let $E$ be a real Banach space. We study the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck semigroup $P(t)$ associated with the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck operator $$Lf(x) = \frac12 {\rm Tr} Q D^2 f(x) + .$$ Here $Q$ is a positive symmetric operator from $E^*$ to $E$ and $A$ is the generator of a $C_0$-semigroup $S(t)$ on $E$. Under the assumption that $P$ admits an invariant measure $\mu$ we prove that if $S$ is eventually compact and the spectrum of its generator is nonempty, then \n P(t)-P(s)\n_{L^1(E,\mu)} = 2 for all $t,s\ge 0$ with $t\not=s$. This result is new even when $E = \R^n$. We also study the behaviour of $P$ in the space $BUC(E)$. We show that if $A\not=0$ there exists $t_0>0$ such that \n P(t)-P(s)\n_{BUC(E)} = 2 for all $0\le t,s\le t_0$ with $t\not=s$. Moreover, under a nondegeneracy assumption or a strong Feller assumption, the following dichotomy holds: either \n P(t)- P(s)\n_{BUC(E)} = 2 for all $t,s\ge 0$, \ $t\not=s$, or $S$ is the direct sum of a nilpotent semigroup and a finite-dimensional periodic semigroup. Finally we investigate the spectrum of $L$ in the spaces $L^1(E,\mu)$ and $BUC(E)$.Comment: 14 pages; to appear in J. Evolution Equation

Effect of bonding of a CO molecule on the conductance of atomic metal wires

We have measured the effect of bonding of a CO molecule on the conductance of Au, Cu, Pt, and Ni atomic contacts at 4.2 K. When CO gas is admitted to the metal nano contacts, a conductance feature appears in the conductance histogram near 0.5 of the quantum unit of conductance, for all metals. For Au, the intensity of this fractional conductance feature can be tuned with the bias voltage, and it disappears at high bias voltage (above $\sim$ 200 mV). The bonding of CO to Au appears to be weakest, and associated with monotomic Au wire formation.Comment: 6 figure

Observation of electronic and atomic shell effects in gold nanowires

The formation of gold nanowires in vacuum at room temperature reveals a periodic spectrum of exceptionally stable diameters. This is identified as shell structure similar to that which was recently discovered for alkali metals at low temperatures. The gold nanowires present two competing `magic' series of stable diameters, one governed by electronic structure and the other by the atomic packing.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Surface energetics and structure of the Ge wetting layer on Si(100)

Ge deposited on Si(100) initially forms heteroepitaxial layers, which grow to a critical thickness of ~3 MLs before the appearance of three-dimensional strain relieving structures. Experimental observations reveal that the surface structure of this Ge wetting layer is a dimer vacancy line (DVL) superstructure of the unstrained Ge(100) dimer reconstruction. In the following, the results of first-principles calculations of the thickness dependence of the wetting layer surface excess energy for the c(4×2) and 4×6 DVL surface reconstructions are reported. These results predict a wetting layer critical thickness of ~3 MLs, which is largely unaffected by the presence of dimer vacancy lines. The 4×6 DVL reconstruction is found to be thermodynamically stable with respect to the c(4×2) structure for wetting layers at least 2 ML thick. A strong correlation between the fraction of total surface induced deformation present in the substrate and the thickness dependence of wetting layer surface energy is also shown

Size dependent exciton g-factor in self-assembled InAs/InP quantum dots

We have studied the size dependence of the exciton g-factor in self-assembled InAs/InP quantum dots. Photoluminescence measurements on a large ensemble of these dots indicate a multimodal height distribution. Cross-sectional Scanning Tunneling Microscopy measurements have been performed and support the interpretation of the macro photoluminescence spectra. More than 160 individual quantum dots have systematically been investigated by analyzing single dot magneto-luminescence between 1200nm and 1600 nm. We demonstrate a strong dependence of the exciton g-factor on the height and diameter of the quantum dots, which eventually gives rise to a sign change of the g-factor. The observed correlation between exciton g-factor and the size of the dots is in good agreement with calculations. Moreover, we find a size dependent anisotropy splitting of the exciton emission in zero magnetic field.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure

Stochastic integration in UMD Banach spaces

In this paper we construct a theory of stochastic integration of processes with values in $\mathcal{L}(H,E)$, where $H$ is a separable Hilbert space and $E$ is a UMD Banach space (i.e., a space in which martingale differences are unconditional). The integrator is an $H$-cylindrical Brownian motion. Our approach is based on a two-sided $L^p$-decoupling inequality for UMD spaces due to Garling, which is combined with the theory of stochastic integration of $\mathcal{L}(H,E)$-valued functions introduced recently by two of the authors. We obtain various characterizations of the stochastic integral and prove versions of the It\^{o} isometry, the Burkholder--Davis--Gundy inequalities, and the representation theorem for Brownian martingales.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009117906000001006 in the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Estimating the causal effect of a time-varying treatment on time-to-event using structural nested failure time models

In this paper we review an approach to estimating the causal effect of a time-varying treatment on time to some event of interest. This approach is designed for the situation where the treatment may have been repeatedly adapted to patient characteristics, which themselves may also be time-dependent. In this situation the effect of the treatment cannot simply be estimated by conditioning on the patient characteristics, as these may themselves be indicators of the treatment effect. This so-called time-dependent confounding is typical in observational studies. We discuss a new class of failure time models, structural nested failure time models, which can be used to estimate the causal effect of a time-varying treatment, and present methods for estimating and testing the parameters of these models