Valuing the attributes of renewable energy investments in Scotland

This study was funded by a grant from the Scottish Economic Policy Network (SEPN) with funding assistance provided by the University of Glasgow, Department of Economics (Professor Nick Hanley) and the University of Sterling (Robert Wright). The goal of the project was to determine the value of differing types of renewable energy projects by how they would effect environmental and community quality of life factors. The key issues examined include; air quality, landscape, wildlife, and long term local employment. Stated preference methods were employed through the use of a discrete choice experiment survey approach. Willingness-to-pay for different types of renewable energy projects was estimated, i.e., moderate onshore windmill farms, large onshore windmill farms, offshore windmill farms, and biomass fueled power plants. The most significant findings were that rural areas likely to be most highly impacted by the new energy projects were willing to accept low or moderate environmental damage in exchange for commercial development gains. Urban respondents on the other hand were more likely to oppose any disturbance to the landscape or wildlife and had no value placed on the economics development gains for the rural areas; income level of households showed no significant difference in environmental values

Interfacing requirements for MEMS components in system-on-chip methodologies

Modern VLSI design is moving towards a System-on-Chip design paradigm, where chip design involves the integration of separate macrocells from different manufacturers. This paper explores the obstacles to adopting this same methodology for systems incorporating MEMS components. These obstacles include the technology specific nature of most MEMS devices, interference between MEMS sensors, and the limited electronics device density of mixed MEMS/Microelectronics technologies. It is conjectured that one fruitful avenue for further work is the development of MEMS interface circuits which can be incorporated into a single SoC along with other electronics macrocells, and which men connect to discrete MEMS sensor chips

Measuring a coherent superposition

We propose a simple method for measuring the populations and the relative phase in a coherent superposition of two atomic states. The method is based on coupling the two states to a third common (excited) state by means of two laser pulses, and measuring the total fluorescence from the third state for several choices of the excitation pulses.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, twocolumn REVTe

Effect of current corrugations on the stability of the tearing mode

The generation of zonal magnetic fields in laboratory fusion plasmas is predicted by theoretical and numerical models and was recently observed experimentally. It is shown that the modification of the current density gradient associated with such corrugations can significantly affect the stability of the tearing mode. A simple scaling law is derived that predicts the impact of small stationary current corrugations on the stability parameter $\Delta'$. The described destabilization mechanism can provide an explanation for the trigger of the Neoclassical Tearing Mode (NTM) in plasmas without significant MHD activity.Comment: Accepted to Physics of Plasma

Egret: A platform for reconfigurable system-on-chip

Reconfigurable System-on-Chip (rSoC) design is inherently a complex task with enormous freedom in design parameters such as processor, operating system, and backplane buses. Design efficiency can be improved by the use of an rSoC platform which constrains these choices, and allows new designs to leverage much of the expertise of previous designs. Egret is an rSoC prototyping platform being developed at the University of Queensland, Australia, and this paper explains and justifies the design decisions for the first version of Egret

Hardware support for real-time reconfigurable system-on-chip

This paper introduces a computer architecture suitable for embedded real-time applications where low power consumption is a requirement. This is achieved through the use of a hybrid hardware-software system. A system architecture is proposed which allows for modules of a system to be implemented at run-time in either hardware or software. Implementation choices may be made dynamically based on the loading of the host microprocessor, in a multi-tasking environment. An approach to inter-module communication is described, along with how this is affected by dynamic configuration. Some research goals are identified, including investigating the effects on real-time performance, power consumption and the design process involved in reconfigurable systems