3,270 research outputs found
Gordon Valentine Manley and his contribution to the study of climate change: a review of his life and work
British climatologist and geographer, Gordon Manley (1902–1980), is perhaps best known for his pioneering work on climate variability in the UK, for establishing the Central England Temperature series and, for his pivotal role in demonstrating the powerful relationship between climate, weather, and culture in post-World War II Britain. Yet Manley made many contributions, both professional and popular, to climate change debates in the twentieth century, where climate change is broadly understood to be changes over a range of temporal and spatial scales rather than anthropogenic warming per se. This review first establishes how Manley's work, including that on snow and ice, was influenced by key figures in debates over climatic amelioration around the North Atlantic between 1920s and 1950s. His research exploring historical climate variability in the UK using documentary sources is then discussed. His perspectives on the relationship between climate changes and cultural history are reviewed, paying particular attention to his interpretation of this relationship as it played out in the UK. Throughout, the review aims to show Manley to be a fieldworker and an empiricist and reveals how he remained committed to rigorous scientific investigation despite changing trends within his academic discipline
Scenic and Recreational River Designation: What Happened to the James?
In 1976, the South Dakota Department of Game , Fish and Parks (DGFP) sponsored the nomination of the upper James River as a state scenic and recreational river. The nomination failed to receive legislative approval in the 1977 and 1978 state legislative sessions. A case analysis of this nomination and the failure to approve it is provided in this publication. The major participants are identified, and their �· relationships with each other and how they fared are examined. This gives an understanding of why and how the actors react to the rules in a water allocation process and an overview of the designation process. The case study also provides a historical perspective on one designation process, serving as a basis for future public considerations of changes in the river designation process
Hiring and Training Work-Study Students: A Case Study
This paper describes the implementation of a comprehensive hiring and training program for library work-study students designed to reduce the time spent on individual training. After staff reductions, Marygrove College Library in Detroit, Michigan turned to an underutilized resource--work-study students. Formerly, training these students took so much permanent staff time that the library questioned investing so much effort on a contingent work force. With the cuts, the library reconsidered the value of work-study employees and devised a hiring and training program to choose the best candidates for the position and to reduce the effort full-time staff spent training new workers
Light absorption enhancement for ultrathin Cu In1 xGax Se2 solar cells using closely packed 2 D SiO2 nanosphere arrays
2 D closely packed SiO2 nanosphere arrays serving as the photonic structure for light absorption enhancement on top of ultra thin Cu In1 xGax Se2 solar cells are investigated both theoretically and experimentally. It is theoretically demonstrated that whispering gallery modes and high order Mie resonances contribute to the light absorption enhancement for the large spheres and an anti reflection effect is prominent for small ones. The ultra thin CIGSe solar cells achieve the optimum absorption enhancement for the small sphere array with a diameter of 110 nm, contrary to the larger spheres used in Si solar cells. The reason is attributed to the strong parasitic absorption in the AZO ZnO CdS front layers. They absorb mainly in the short wavelength range where the Mie resonances occur. Additionally, it is shown that the 110 nm diameter sphere array exhibits a better angular tolerance than a conventional planar anti reflection layer, which shows the potential as a promising anti reflection structur
Improving Monolithic Perovskite Silicon Tandem Solar Cells From an Optical Viewpoint
Perovskite silicon tandem solar cells are the most promising concept for a future photovoltaic technology. We report on recent progress from an optical viewpoint and disucss how we achieved more than 25 device efficienc
Antireflective nanotextures for monolithic perovskite silicon tandem solar cells
Recently, we studied the effect of hexagonal sinusoidal textures on the reflective properties of perovskite silicon tandem solar cells using the finite element method FEM . We saw that such nanotextures, applied to the perovskite top cell, can strongly increase the current density utilization from 91 for the optimized planar reference to 98 for the best nanotextured device period 500 nm and peak to valley height 500 nm , where 100 refers to the Tiedje Yablonovitch limit. [D. Chen et al., J. Photonics Energy 8, 022601, 2018 , doi 10.1117 1.JPE.8.022601] In this manuscript we elaborate on some numerical details of that work we validate an assumption based on the Tiedje Yablonovitch limit, we present a convergence study for simulations with the finite element method, and we compare different configurations for sinusoidal nanotexture
Modeling the characteristics of spontaneous otoacoustic emissions in lizards
Lizard auditory papillae have proven to be an attractive object for modelling the production of spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (SOAE). Here we use an established model (Vilfan and Duke, 2008) and extend it by exploring the effect of varying the number of oscillating elements, the strength of the parameters that describe the coupling between oscillators, the strength of the oscillators, and additive noise. The most remarkable result is that the actual number of oscillating elements hardly influences the spectral pattern, explaining why spectra from very different papillar dimensions are similar. Furthermore, the spacing between spectral peaks primarily depends on the reactive coupling between the oscillator elements. This is consistent with observed differences between lizard species with respect to tectorial covering of hair cells and SOAE peak spacings. Thus, the model provides a basic understanding of the variation in SOAE properties across lizard species. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
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