Double potential step chronoamperometry at a microband electrode: Theory and experiment

Numerical simulation is used to characterise double potential step chronoamperometry at a microband electrode for a simple redox process A + e- goes to B, under conditions of full support such that diffusion is the only active form of mass transport. The method is shown to be highly sensitive for the measurement of the diffusion coefficient of both A and B, and is applied to the one electron reduction of decamethylferrocene (DMFc), DMFc - e- goes to DMFc+, in the room temperature ionic liquid 1-propyl-3-methylimidazolium bistrifluoromethylsulfonylimide. Theory and experiment are seen to be in excellent agreement and the following values of the diffusion coefficients were measured at 298 K: D_(DMFc) = 2.50 x 10^(-7) cm^(2) s^(-1) and D_(DMFc+) = 9.50 x 10^(-8) cm^(2) s^(-1)

Consumers\u27 Willingness to Pay for Energy Labels on Household Appliances

Voluntary environmental labeling or certification programs provide information about the environmental characteristics of one or more aspects of a product’s life cycle to consumers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy were among the first governmental agencies in the world to adopt environmental information programs. This study examines two U.S. programs – Energy Star, an energy efficiency labeling program, and Green Power Partnership (GPP), a green energy purchasing program, and estimates how much consumers are willing to pay for refrigerators that have been awarded these labels and what factors motivate that willingness to pay. The data were obtained from a survey conducted in March and April of 2009 via an online research panel, which was constructed to be representative of the U.S. population. Analysis of the data was conducted using conditional logit regression models with fixed parameters and mixed logit regression models with random parameters. Results revealed that consumers, on average, have a willingness to pay ranging from $237.81 to$350.54 for the Energy Star label and a willingness to pay ranging from $48.52 to$70.95 for the GPP label. The results also indicate that consumer demographics and attitudes influence WTP. In particular, individuals with greater levels of stated concern for the environment or individuals exhibiting strong perceptions on the effectiveness of consumers to affect product design and the ambient environment had a greater likelihood of choosing a labeled alternative, and thus, a greater WTP for both the Energy Star and GPP label. To manufacturers and government regulators, these results suggest that energy labels can play a significant role in a consumer’s decision making process when selecting a new appliance

Leveraging legacy codes to distributed problem solving environments: A web service approach

This paper describes techniques used to leverage high performance legacy codes as CORBA components to a distributed problem solving environment. It first briefly introduces the software architecture adopted by the environment. Then it presents a CORBA oriented wrapper generator (COWG) which can be used to automatically wrap high performance legacy codes as CORBA components. Two legacy codes have been wrapped with COWG. One is an MPI-based molecular dynamic simulation (MDS) code, the other is a finite element based computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code for simulating incompressible Navier-Stokes flows. Performance comparisons between runs of the MDS CORBA component and the original MDS legacy code on a cluster of workstations and on a parallel computer are also presented. Wrapped as CORBA components, these legacy codes can be reused in a distributed computing environment. The first case shows that high performance can be maintained with the wrapped MDS component. The second case shows that a Web user can submit a task to the wrapped CFD component through a Web page without knowing the exact implementation of the component. In this way, a user’s desktop computing environment can be extended to a high performance computing environment using a cluster of workstations or a parallel computer

The Relationship of Eighth Grade Pupil Achievement To Teacher Preparation and Experience

Many questions may be raised concerning the relationship in achievement that lies between the pupil on the one hand and the experience and training of the teacher on the other. Parents, school officials, and others interested in the efficiency of schools have raised such questions as these, does teacher preparation and experience materially effect pupil achievement or, “does the standardization of a school have an effect upon pupil achievement?” Answers pro and con are to be found to these questions, some based upon careful study and inquiry and others on mere subjective opinion. The writer of this thesis has had experience as a teacher at the high school level. This experience most of which was in the field of social science raised questions regarding the relationship 1 of pupil. achievement and teacher preparation and experience. Furthermore this question may be raised as it applies to one school or another, for example, a one-teacher school or an eight grade elementary school. To be more specific, the question of achievement may be tied to a specific subject or to several subjects in these types of schools. Very naturally then out of this experience not only as a teacher but 1 as an administrator as well grew the particular problem of this thesis, which may be stated as follows: The Relationship of Eighth Grade Pupil Achievement to Teacher Preparation and Experience. The problem as stated divides itself into two parts: achievement of eighth grade pupils in history and geography (2) teacher preparation and experience