IRISH RESIDENTS’ VIEWS OF ENERGY-RELATED TECHNOLOGIES. ESRI Research Bulletin 2017/05

The European Union (EU) has put in place ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to increase the use of energy from renewable sources. The transformation of the current electricity system will play a significant role in reaching these targets. This is true in all EU member states, but none more so than in Ireland where the goal is to have 40 percent of electricity generation coming from renewable sources by 2020. Reaching this target will require significant investments in renewable generation technologies, with accompanying development of the electricity grid to bring the electricity which is generated in often remote locations, to the homes and businesses where it is needed. Experience has shown that while people generally hold positive opinions of electricity generation from renewable sources, there remains a significant degree of local opposition when it comes to infrastructure siting decisions. Local opposition can lead to project delays, unhappy citizens, and frustrated investors and policy makers. Moreover, delays to infrastructure development may result in missed targets down the line resulting in fines, reputational damage and environmental consequences. So how can we reduce opposition to local infrastructure development? An important first step is to conduct a comprehensive survey of people’s opinions, coupled with a detailed analysis of the drivers thereof

Output, Investment and Capacity: An Empirical Investigation using Firm-Level Business-Survey Data in the United Kingdom

This thesis uses firm-level survey data to examine the decision-making of firms in order to gain greater insight into macrodynamics. Chapter 2 examines the questions posed, the sample frame (i.e. details on the number and participation rates of respondents) and the characteristics of the firm participants of the Confederation of British Industry's (CBI) suite of business surveys. This dataset of firm-level survey responses is then matched to two external company accounts datasets (the Bureau van Dijk FAME dataset and the Office of National Statistics (ONS) Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR), including various ONS business surveys). Matching to external data sources often requires decisions to be made on how the matching should be conducted. Matching the CBI data to the IDBR yields a set of multiple matches when propensity-score matching is unable to select a definite match. Rather than dropping these firms from the sample, this chapter develops a decision rule to select a unique match from this set of multiple matches. Match results are around 50% when matching the CBI dataset with the Bureau van Dijk FAME dataset and around 90% when matched with the IDBR. However, match rates with the various ONS business surveys are lower than the corresponding match rates with the Bureau van Dijk FAME dataset (and in some cases far lower). Match rates are also reported for variation by geography, size and time-period. The matched dataset is then used in an illustrative exercise to examine the directional accuracy of firm output and employment forecasts. The results indicate the output and employment forecasts of firms in the manufacturing and mining and distributive trades sectors have value. However, this is not the case in either the service or financial services sector. Chapter 3 introduces the new and novel meta-modelling quantification approach, which is used to produce quantitative industry-level measures of expected output growth, output disagreement and output uncertainty in the UK (using firm-level survey responses in the CBI dataset). This new quantification strategy provides more reliable estimates of expected output growth and output uncertainty compared to existing techniques such as the simple balance statistic (or the Anderson-Pesaran regression approach). These new quantified series are employed alongside actual output growth data in an analysis of the source of innovations and propagation mechanisms underlying output dynamics. These interactions are complex and out-of-line with those suggested by simple models embodying rational expectations. In addition, using a Beveridge-Nelson trends decomposition, this chapter shows there is a role for output uncertainty and output disagreement shocks in influencing business cycle dynamics - with these having relatively substantial effects of up to 4% in different sectors during the Great Financial Crisis (GFC), the sovereign debt crisis and the Brexit negotiations. Chapter 4 extends the classic Abel (1981) paper to introduce capacity utilisation into a dynamic model with adjustment costs describing investment and hiring decisions of the firm. It provides an analytical solution for the theoretical model and then uses survey data from the CBI Industrial Trends Survey to test the model empirically. The results show that firms adjust their capital stock around a long-run equilibrium determined by sales over time. However, the speed of this adjustment depends on whether the model accounts for a capacity error correction term. Specifically, models which do not include a capacity error correction term overestimate the error correcting behaviour of firms, and imply a quicker adjustment speed of capital to its long-run equilibrium value. In other words, excluding capacity dynamics from an accelerator model of investment underestimates the time it takes capital to return to its long-run equilibrium value - providing an explanation for sluggish investment following recessionary periods

Eternity and the now: an exploration of Paul's understanding of a new creation in Gal. 6:15 and 2 Cor. 5:17.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.This thesis forms the first part of a programme of research whose ultimate aim is to draw upon Saint Paul’s vision of a new creation in Galatians and Second Corinthians in order to provide a new window of access into the Christian hope of eternal life for people of this secular age. Many contemporary people are deeply concerned about the Cosmos (they would not term it ‘Creation’) but have lost all conception of a Cosmos of eternal dimensions, one which includes the human species in its resurrected state. As such, this programme of research, while drawing upon academic scholarship, is ultimately addressed to the woman and the man ‘in the street’. This present thesis, albeit the first step in the broader programme, confines its scope to how a new creation would have been communicated by Paul to the communities which he addressed of the early church. After the introduction and methodological issues, the study proper opens in Chapter 2 with a summary of the theology of the apostle Paul the author of the two NT letters concerned. Paul’s personality will also be touched upon here because of the forthright way in which Paul expresses himself in these letters. Building upon recent studies by a number of biblical scholars, Chapter 2 includes a study of how the previously scholarly Pharisee Saul, would have acquired his original sense of a new creation from his Jewish background as well as from his own Christ-encountered theology. In Chapter 3 (Second Corinthians) and Chapter 4 (Galatians) interpretations of the new creation texts are undertaken within the context of the principal themes of the two letters and the particular characteristics of the two communities being addressed. What emerges from this analysis is that, in spite of widely differing views amongst biblical scholars, Paul’s understanding of new creation can be seen to manifest the three-fold characteristics of being anthropological, cosmological, and ecclesiological. This present thesis recognises this but attributes more significance to the anthropological. While eschatological considerations are often associated with the cosmological dimension, this, of course, is not exclusive, all three elements can have eschatological characteristics. Two other aspects are addressed which seem to be understated in the existing literature, namely the importance of individual and corporate identity in the communities being addressed by Paul, and the nature of the relationship between new creation and the Pauline concept of ‘being in Christ’. In addition, a concern is raised which is absent in the literature. In the interpretation process for these two elliptical Greek texts the influence of some secondary sources over and against that of the texts themselves, as reflected in the prevailing translations of these texts, is interrogated. Accordingly, in these chapters, the following questions are raised and answers proposed for them: Why is Paul able to introduce the words of a new creation, καινὴ κτίσις, without any prior explanation? What accounts for the abruptness with which these words appear? Also, the practice of including verbs into the two texts (as the vast majority of translations do in varied ways in order to express the interpretations arrived at) is (controversially) critiqued, and an alternative approach – with alternative interpretations and translations – proposed; ones which further enhance the relationship between the concepts of ‘a new creation’, and of ‘persons being in Christ’. Chapter 5 summarises the main conclusions arising from this study, and identifies areas of further research (particularly those related to the subjects of mystery, love and identity in new creation). A closing ‘Afterword’ illustrates the significance of καινὴ κτίσις for today

Output, Investment and Capacity: An Empirical Investigation using Firm-Level Business-Survey Data in the United Kingdom

This thesis uses firm-level survey data to examine the decision-making of firms in order to gain greater insight into macrodynamics. Chapter 2 examines the questions posed, the sample frame (i.e. details on the number and participation rates of respondents) and the characteristics of the firm participants of the Confederation of British Industry's (CBI) suite of business surveys. This dataset of firm-level survey responses is then matched to two external company accounts datasets (the Bureau van Dijk FAME dataset and the Office of National Statistics (ONS) Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR), including various ONS business surveys). Matching to external data sources often requires decisions to be made on how the matching should be conducted. Matching the CBI data to the IDBR yields a set of multiple matches when propensity-score matching is unable to select a definite match. Rather than dropping these firms from the sample, this chapter develops a decision rule to select a unique match from this set of multiple matches. Match results are around 50% when matching the CBI dataset with the Bureau van Dijk FAME dataset and around 90% when matched with the IDBR. However, match rates with the various ONS business surveys are lower than the corresponding match rates with the Bureau van Dijk FAME dataset (and in some cases far lower). Match rates are also reported for variation by geography, size and time-period. The matched dataset is then used in an illustrative exercise to examine the directional accuracy of firm output and employment forecasts. The results indicate the output and employment forecasts of firms in the manufacturing and mining and distributive trades sectors have value. However, this is not the case in either the service or financial services sector. Chapter 3 introduces the new and novel meta-modelling quantification approach, which is used to produce quantitative industry-level measures of expected output growth, output disagreement and output uncertainty in the UK (using firm-level survey responses in the CBI dataset). This new quantification strategy provides more reliable estimates of expected output growth and output uncertainty compared to existing techniques such as the simple balance statistic (or the Anderson-Pesaran regression approach). These new quantified series are employed alongside actual output growth data in an analysis of the source of innovations and propagation mechanisms underlying output dynamics. These interactions are complex and out-of-line with those suggested by simple models embodying rational expectations. In addition, using a Beveridge-Nelson trends decomposition, this chapter shows there is a role for output uncertainty and output disagreement shocks in influencing business cycle dynamics - with these having relatively substantial effects of up to 4% in different sectors during the Great Financial Crisis (GFC), the sovereign debt crisis and the Brexit negotiations. Chapter 4 extends the classic Abel (1981) paper to introduce capacity utilisation into a dynamic model with adjustment costs describing investment and hiring decisions of the firm. It provides an analytical solution for the theoretical model and then uses survey data from the CBI Industrial Trends Survey to test the model empirically. The results show that firms adjust their capital stock around a long-run equilibrium determined by sales over time. However, the speed of this adjustment depends on whether the model accounts for a capacity error correction term. Specifically, models which do not include a capacity error correction term overestimate the error correcting behaviour of firms, and imply a quicker adjustment speed of capital to its long-run equilibrium value. In other words, excluding capacity dynamics from an accelerator model of investment underestimates the time it takes capital to return to its long-run equilibrium value - providing an explanation for sluggish investment following recessionary periods

HELP – Home Electronics Laboratory Platform –Development And Evaluation

In response to the COVID pandemic, many of our undergraduate students were supplied with custom development kits to undertake their electronic laboratory activities at home. Following our return to on-campus teaching, we plan to combine on-campus laboratory sessions with at-home experiments taking advantage of both on-campus and at-home experimental work while avoiding some of the limitations experienced during remote teaching. The goal is to embed active learning as a key part of a long-term strategy to enable students to better manage their learning and to maximise the analytical engagement with lecturers in a hybrid blend of on-campus and remote activities. In this paper, we report on three generations of the at-home laboratory kit developed by the author\u27s institute and partners in the Erasmus+ project “Home Electronics Laboratory Platform (HELP)”. The HELP kit comprises a portable signal generator and measurement instrument and a custom electronic board, which includes several functional blocks alongside the usual breadboard for assembling circuits with discrete components. The motivation for the design of each generation is introduced and the desired functionality and its implementation are described. The impact and user experience with the kits have been assessed through student surveys and staff focus groups in the HELP consortium partners. The main themes associated with take-home electronics laboratories have also been explored in a workshop with HELP partners and contributors from other universities across Europe and the USA. This work is summarised and future potential technical and pedagogical developments are outlined

A randomised control trial of low glycaemic index carbohydrate diet versus no dietary intervention in the prevention of recurrence of macrosomia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Maternal weight and maternal weight gain during pregnancy exert a significant influence on infant birth weight and the incidence of macrosomia. Fetal macrosomia is associated with an increase in both adverse obstetric and neonatal outcome, and also confers a future risk of childhood obesity. Studies have shown that a low glycaemic diet is associated with lower birth weights, however these studies have been small and not randomised <abbrgrp><abbr bid="B1">1</abbr><abbr bid="B2">2</abbr></abbrgrp>. Fetal macrosomia recurs in a second pregnancy in one third of women, and maternal weight influences this recurrence risk <abbrgrp><abbr bid="B3">3</abbr></abbrgrp>.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>We propose a randomised control trial of low glycaemic index carbohydrate diet vs. no dietary intervention in the prevention of recurrence of fetal macrosomia.</p> <p>Secundigravid women whose first baby was macrosomic, defined as a birth weight greater than 4000 g will be recruited at their first antenatal visit.</p> <p>Patients will be randomised into two arms, a control arm which will receive no dietary intervention and a diet arm which will be commenced on a low glycaemic index diet.</p> <p>The primary outcome measure will be the mean birth weight centiles and ponderal indices in each group.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Altering the source of maternal dietary carbohydrate may prove to be valuable in the management of pregnancies where there has been a history of fetal macrosomia. Fetal macrosomia recurs in a second pregnancy in one third of women. This randomised control trial will investigate whether or not a low glycaemic index diet can affect this recurrence risk.</p> <p>Current Controlled Trials Registration Number</p> <p>ISRCTN54392969</p

Phase Identification of Smart Meters Using a Fourier Series Compression and a Statistical Clustering Algorithm

Accurate labeling of phase connectivity in electrical distribution systems is important for maintenance and operations but is often erroneous or missing. In this paper, we present a process to identify which smart meters must be in the same phase using a hierarchical clustering method on voltage time series data. Instead of working with the time series data directly, we apply the Fourier transform to represent the data in their frequency domain, remove $98\%$ of the Fourier coefficients, and use the remaining coefficients to cluster the meters are in the same phase. Result of this process is validated by confirming that cluster (phase) membership of meters does not change over two monthly periods. In addition, we also confirm that meters that belong to the same feeder within the distribution network are correctly classified into the same cluster, that is, assigned to the same phase.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, 4 table