Energy, carbon and cost performance of building stocks : upgrade analysis, energy labelling and national policy development

The area of policy formulation for the energy and carbon performance of buildings is coming under increasing focus. A major challenge is to account for the large variation within building stocks relative to factors such as location, climate, age, construction, previous upgrades, appliance usage, and type of heating/cooling/lighting system. Existing policy-related tools that rely on simple calculation methods have limited ability to represent the dynamic interconnectedness of technology options and the impact of possible future changes in climate and occupant behaviour. The use of detailed simulation tools to address these limitations in the context of policy development has hitherto been focussed on the modelling of a number of representative designs rather than dealing with the spread inherent in large building stocks. Further, these tools have been research-oriented and largely unsuitable for direct use by policy-makers, practitioners and, ultimately, building owners/occupiers. This paper summarises recent initiatives that have applied advanced modelling and simulation in the context of policy formulation for large building stocks. To exemplify the stages of the process, aspects of the ESRU Domestic Energy Model (EDEM) are described. EDEM is a policy support tool built on detailed simulation models aligned with the outcomes of national surveys and future projections for the housing stock. On the basis of pragmatic inputs, the tool is able to determine energy use, carbon emissions and upgrade/running cost for any national building stock or sub-set. The tool has been used at the behest of the Scottish Building Standards Agency and South Ayrshire Council to determine the impact of housing upgrades, including the deployment of new and renewable energy systems, and to rate the energy/carbon performance of individual dwellings as required by the European Commission's Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings (EC 2002)

Quantum interference with beamlike type-II spontaneous parametric down-conversion

We implement experimentally a method to generate photon-number$-$path and polarization entangled photon pairs using ``beamlike'' type-II spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC), in which the signal-idler photon pairs are emitted as two separate circular beams with small emission angles rather than as two diverging cones.Comment: 4 pages, two-colum

CFD Simulation of Liquid-solid Multiphase Flow in Mud Mixer

In the present study, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was performed to analyze the mixing phenomena associated with multi-phase flow in a mud mixing system. For the validation of CFD simulation, firstly a liquid-solid multiphase flow inside horizontal pipe was simulated and compared with the experiments and other numerical simulations. And then, the multiphase flow simulation was carried out for the mud mixer in the drilling handling system in order to understand mixing phenomena and predict the mixing efficiency. For the modeling and simulation, a commercial software, STAR-CCM+, based on a finite-volume method (FVM) was adopted. The simulation results for liquid-solid flow inside the pipe shows a good agreement with the experimental data. With the same multiphase model, the simulation for mud mixer is performed under the generalized boundary condition and then pressure drop through the mud mixer will be discussed

Experimental Entanglement Concentration and Universal Bell-state Synthesizer

We report a novel Bell-state synthesizer in which an interferometric entanglement concentration scheme is used. An initially mixed polarization state from type-II spontaneous parametric down-conversion becomes entangled after the interferometric entanglement concentrator. This Bell-state synthesizer is universal in the sense that the output polarization state is not affected by spectral filtering, crystal thickness, and, most importantly, the choice of pump source. It is also robust against environmental disturbance and a more general state, partially mixed$-$partially entangled state, can be readily generated as well.Comment: Minor update (Newer data

Aligning archive maps and extracting footprints for analysis of historic urban environments.

Archive cartography and archaeologist's sketches are invaluable resources when analysing a historic town or city. A virtual reconstruction of a city provides the user with the ability to navigate and explore an environment which no longer exists to obtain better insight into its design and purpose. However, the process of reconstructing the city from maps depicting features such as building footprints and roads can be labour intensive. In this paper we present techniques to aid in the semi-automatic extraction of building footprints from digital images of archive maps and sketches. Archive maps often exhibit problems in the form of inaccuracies and inconsistencies in scale which can lead to incorrect reconstructions. By aligning archive maps to accurate modern vector data one may reduce these problems. Furthermore, the efficiency of the footprint extraction methods may be improved by aligning either modern vector data or previously extracted footprints, since common elements can be identified between maps of differing time periods and only the difference between the two needs to be extracted. An evaluation of two alignment approaches is presented: using a linear affine transformation and a set of piecewise linear affine transformations

Observation of correlated-photon statistics using a single detector

We report experimental observations of correlated-photon statistics in the single-photon detection rate. The usual quantum interference in a two-photon polarization interferometer always accompanies a dip in the single detector counting rate, regardless of whether a dip or peak is seen in the coincidence rate. This effect is explained by taking into account all possible photon number states that reach the detector, rather than considering just the state post-selected by the coincidence measurement. We also report an interferometeric scheme in which the interference peak or dip in coincidence corresponds directly to a peak or dip in the single-photon detection rate.Comment: 4 pages, two-column (minor errors corrected.

A Prismatic Analyser concept for Neutron Spectrometers

A development in modern neutron spectroscopy is to avoid the need of large samples. We demonstrate how small samples together with the right choice of analyser and detector components makes distance collimation an important concept in crystal analyser spectrometers. We further show that this opens new possibilities where neutrons with different energies are reflected by the same analyser but counted in different detectors, thus improving both energy resolution and total count rate compared to conventional spectrometers. The technique can be combined with advanced focusing geometries and with multiplexing instrument designs. We present a combination of simulations and data with 3 energies from one analyser. The data was taken on a prototype installed at PSI, Switzerland, and shows excellent agreement with the predictions. Typical improvements will be 2 times finer resolution and a factor 1.9 in flux gain compared to a Rowland geometry or 3 times finer resolution and a factor 3.2 in flux gain compared to a single flat analyser slab

Reliability of the beamsplitter based Bell-state measurement

A linear 50/50 beamsplitter, together with a coincidence measurement, has been widely used in quantum optical experiments, such as teleportation, dense coding, etc., for interferometrically distinguishing, measuring, or projecting onto one of the four two-photon polarization Bell-states $|\psi^{(-)}>$. In this paper, we demonstrate that the coincidence measurement at the output of a beamsplitter cannot be used as an absolute identifier of the input state $|\psi^{(-)}>$ nor as an indication that the input photons have projected to the $|\psi^{(-)}>$ state.Comment: 4 pages, two-colum

M-theory Supertubes with Three and Four Charges

Using the covariant M5-brane action, we construct configurations corresponding to supertubes with three and four charges. We derive the BPS equations and study the full structure of the solutions. In particular, we find new solutions involving arbitrariness in field strengths.Comment: 24 pages, references added and typos correcte

Ferromagnetic Polarons in La0.5Ca0.5MnO3 and La0.33Ca0.67MnO3

Unrestricted Hartree-Fock calculations on La0.5Ca0.5MnO3 and La0.33Ca0.67MnO3 in the full magnetic unit cell show that the magnetic ground states of these compounds consist of 'ferromagnetic molecules' or polarons ordered in herring-bone patterns. Each polaron consists of either three or five Mn ions separated by O- ions with a magnetic moment opposed to those of the Mn ions. Ferromagnetic coupling within the polarons is strong while coupling between them is relatively weak. Magnetic moments on the Mn ions range between 3.8 and 3.9 Bohr magnetons in La0.5Ca0.5MnO3 and moments on the O- ions are -0.7 Bohr magnetons. Each polaron has a net magnetic moment of 7.0 Bohr magnetons, in good agreement with recently reported magnetisation measurements from electron microscopy. The polaronic nature of the electronic structure reported here is obviously related to the Zener polaron model recently proposed for Pr0.6Ca0.4MnO3 on the basis of neutron scattering data.Comment: 4 pages 5 figure