Solar Updraft Power Technology: Fighting Global Warming and Rising Energy Costs

Solar updraft power technology (SUPT) forms a highly innovative, modern and efficient concept for solar-based electricity generation. Solar updraft power plants (SUPPs) are fueled purely by solar irradiation. They require no water for power generation, so their ideal locations are deserts. A SUPP consists of the glass-covered collector area (CA), in its centre the solar chimney (SC), and around the SC's perimeter the power conversion units (PCU). This arrangement causes a permanent flow of warm air through the SUPP, producing electricity. The paper describes computer simulation concepts to evaluate the power/energy harvest in such plants, based on fluid-thermodynamics and radiation-physics. The nonlinear numerical processes for the SUPPs' power harvests are solved by fast computer algorithms. Finally, the high economy of SUPT for world-wide arid zones in terms of leveled electricity costs (LECs) is exemplified by several optimized SUPPs

Тестування як засіб контролю студентів в дистанційних курсах

Some questions of electronic testing in distance learning are concerned in the article: its importance in checking students’ knowledge, the main spheres of tests usage, testing possibilities in the virtual educational environment "Web-Class-KPI", special moments in criteria testings

Моделирование тепловых режимов резервуаров для хранения топлив

Моделирование процесса теплопереноса посредством теплопроводности резервуара с подогревателем постоянной температуры. Цель данной работы – моделирование и оценка тепловых потерь резервуаров для хранения топлив ТЭС и котельных с учетом разной температуры окружающей среды и меняющимся коэффициентом теплообмена. Объект исследования – стальной цилиндрический вертикальный резервуар марки РВС – 100. Задача работы – прогноз механизмов теплового воздействия на резервуар для хранения мазута с учетом изменения температуры окружающей среды и коэффициента теплообмена; моделирование тепловых воздействий внутри резервуара; анализ результатов моделирования тепловых режимов.Simulation of the heat transfer process by means of the thermal conductivity of a tank with a constant temperature heate

Rethinking classic starling displacement experiments : evidence for innate or for learned migratory directions?

Funding for the present work came from the Spinoza Premium 2014 awarded to TP by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), with supplementary funding from an anonymous donor, the Gieskes-Strijbis Fonds and the Ubbo Emmius Fonds of the University of Groningen. TO was supported by Rubicon a grant from NWO (ref. 019.172EN.011)In an attempt to encourage the discourse on sources of individual variation in seasonal migration patterns and the microevolution of bird migration, we here critically examine the published interpretations of a now classic displacement study with starlings Sturnus vulgaris. Based on the ring recoveries after experimental displacement towards the south and southeast of Dutch capture sites of over 18 000 hatch‐year and older starlings, in a series of analyses published in Ardea from 1958 to 1983, A. C. Perdeck established that displaced starlings showed appropriately changed orientations only when they were experienced. During both southward and northward migration, released adults navigated to an apparently previously learned goal (i.e. the wintering or the breeding area) by showing appropriately changed orientations. Juveniles showed appropriate directions when returning to the breeding grounds. In contrast, during their first southward migration displaced juveniles carried on in the direction (and possibly the distance) expected for their release at the Dutch capture site. From the mid‐1970s this work has become cited as evidence for starlings demonstrating ‘innate’ migratory directions. If the definition of innateness is ‘not learned by the individual itself’, then there is a range of non‐innate influences on development that are not ruled out by Perdeck's experimental outcomes. For example, young starlings might have carried on in the direction that they learned to migrate before being caught, e.g. by observing the migratory directions of experienced conspecifics. We argue that, despite over 60 citations to Perdeck as demonstrating innate migratory directions, the jury is out.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe