Central Management of Local Performance: A Comparison of England and Korea

The author analyses performance measurement in the public sector and empirically tests the validity, legitimacy and functionality of Comprehensive Performance Assessment in England and Joint Performance Assessment in Korea on the basis of comparative methodology.Since the 1980s, New Public Management (NPM) has deeply influenced the public sector across the world, and thus measuring or managing performance has become a principal element of government reform. In terms of borrowing models and techniques from the private sector, performance measurement has been significantly extended into government, but differences between the two sectors have led to difficulties and criticism of this practice with a wide inconsistent variety of different theoretical explanations about it. In this context, this thesis investigates the effectiveness of performance measurement and theoretical explanations of conditions for its success in the public sector. It focuses through a comparative methodology on Comprehensive Performance Assessment and Joint Performance Assessment that have recently been introduced between the levels of government in England and Korea for the improvement of local government performance and accountability. Extensive analysis of literature and case studies have allowed the thesis to find firstly, that the introduction of such unique assessment systems, by which the centre assesses localities, was deeply affected by the environmental commonalities of both countries such as centralisation in inter-governmental relations and enthusiasm for NPM. Second, the empirical evaluation of both tools shows that they have in practice been valid for accurate assessment, and directly functional for improvement and indirectly for accountability to the public. Their high validity and functionality proved to be mainly attributable to two characteristics. One was institutionally that both frameworks were based on a balanced approach to performance and the disclosure of assessment results to the public for facilitating competition between localities. The other was that both had impacted on internal management of local government which led to change in organisational culture with more focus on performance. However, it identified a necessity for local authorities to participate in the development process of those tools to ensure legitimacy of central management of local performance since they enjoy their own electorally based political support. The research has also found the importance of assessors’ expertise for accurate assessment and a possibility that performance measurement can contribute to the resolution of political tension and cooperation between central and local government when it focuses more on outcomes than input and process. A deeper theoretical and practical understanding of these successful experiences and important policy elements in contemporary public management contributes significantly to knowledge in the three settings of evaluation of policy instruments, comparison between countries and central-local relations. Finally, the study assists each country and others to draw lessons from each other

Chemo-enzymatic saccharification strategy of microalgae chlorella sorokiniana

Biofuel production using microalgae attracted much attention because it can be cultured using CO2 and sunlight. With high carbohydrate content, microalgae have the potential to be used as a fermentation feedstock for bioethanol production. In present work, chemo-enzymatic saccharification of Chlorella sorokiniana microalgae were investigated. Chemical hydrolysis of the biomass followed by enzymatic hydrolysis and was also evaluated the effect of combining the two enzymes and the sequential addition. The effect of α-amylase concentrations was analyzed in ranged between 50 and 8000 U/g of biomass and for amyloglucosidase between 90 and 600 U/g of biomass. The higher concentrations showed the highest conversion of reducing sugars. The α-amylase concentration 8000 U/g of biomass presented a conversion of 43.06 ± 2.92% (w/w), while amyloglucosidase with 600 U/g of biomass obtained 76.57 ± 6.42% (w/w). The combination of two enzymes simultaneously was more efficient than the sequential addition for low enzyme concentrations (α-amylase 50 U/g and amyloglucosidase 90 U/g) with a total reducing sugar of 22.78 ± 3.06 and 16.92 ± 2.06% (w/w), respectively. On the other hand, using the higher enzymes concentrations, no difference was observed between the two addition strategies, 58.9 ± 3.55 and 57.05 ± 2.33% (w/w) for the sequential and simultaneous, respectively. Both strategies didn’t present advantage, since the amyloglucosidase enzyme alone produced slightly higher results. Even thought, the obtained results showed successfully performed saccharification of microalgal biomass and clearly point to microalgae use for saccharification and subsequent bioethanol production.Part of this work has been supported by European governments (INTERREG VA-POCTEP- 2014-2020; 0055_ALGARED_PLUS_5_E) and the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT) through the grant UID/MAR/00350/2013 to the CIMA of the University of Algarve.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Popular movements in Korea = 韓國民眾運動

On 24th July 2016, at the Third South South Forum, Lee Jung Ok delivered a talk titled Popular Movements in Korea

Using Hydrated Salt Phase Change Materials for Residential Air Conditioning Peak Demand Reduction and Energy Conservation in Coastal and Transitional Climates in the State of California

The recent rapid economic and population growth in the State of California have led to a significant increase in air conditioning use, especially in areas of the State with coastal and transitional climates. This fact makes that the electric peak demand be dominated by air conditioning use of residential buildings in the summer time. This extra peak demand caused by the use of air conditioning equipment lasts only a few days out of the year. As a result, unavoidable power outages have occurred when electric supply could not keep up with such electric demand. This thesis proposed a possible solution to this problem by using building thermal mass via phase change materials to reduce peak air conditioning demand loads. This proposed solution was tested via a new wall called Phase Change Frame Wall (PCFW). The PCFW is a typical residential frame wall in which Phase Change Materials (PCMs) were integrated to add thermal mass. The thermal performance of the PCFWs was first evaluated, experimentally, in two test houses, built for this purpose, located in Lawrence, KS and then via computer simulations of residential buildings located in coastal and transitional climates in California. In this thesis, a hydrated salt PCM was used, which was added in concentrations of 10% and 20% by weight of the interior sheathing of the walls. Based on the experimental results, under Lawrence, KS weather, the PCFWs at 10% and 20% of PCM concentrations reduced the peak heat transfer rates by 27.0% and 27.3%, on average, of all four walls, respectively. Simulated results using California climate data indicated that PCFWs would reduce peak heat transfer rates by 8% and 19% at 10% PCM concentration and 12.2% and 27% at 20% PCM concentration for the coastal and transitional climates, respectively. Furthermore, the PCFWs, at 10% PCM concentration, would reduce the space cooling load and the annual energy consumption by 10.4% and 7.2%, on average in both climates, respectively

Experimental and Simulation Approaches for Optimizing the Thermal Performance of Building Enclosures Containing Phase Change Materials

It has been proven that the integration of phase change materials (PCM) into building enclosures helps with wall thermal management as well as in reducing building energy consumption. Most older and some current PCM integration methods for building enclosures are impractical and create problems such as PCM leakage and evaporation, PCM water absorption, moisture transfer problems leading to building materials degradation, and problems related to the improper mixing of PCMs with insulation products (e.g., cellulose insulation). The use of thin PCM layers assembled and contained in blanket-like or board products would be practical to install and would eliminate or ameliorate these problems. The integration of thin PCM layers into building enclosure components, such as walls and ceilings, was accomplished via the use of thin PCM thermal shields (PCM shields) and via thin PCM boards. The thermal performance of building enclosures integrated with PCM shields and PCM boards was studied using experimental and simulation methods. For the experiments, the PCM shields were tested in the test houses of typical residential construction and the PCM boards were tested in the institutional building of commercial construction. For the modeling and simulations, a public-domain building energy simulation software, known as EnergyPlus, that included a new open-source algorithm, known as CondFD, was used. For model calibration purposes, the model predictions were compared against experimental data. From the experimental evaluation of the PCM shields, it was observed that their thermal performance depended on their installation location within the cavities of the walls and ceilings. Therefore, a critical part of this research was to discover which installation location would produce the optimal performance of an enclosure outfitted with PCM shields.For this, several locations, measured from the interior surface of the wallboard which was in contact with the conditioned space, were specified as locations 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. The location number increased with distance from the surface indicated in the preceding sentence. It was discovered that in terms of peak heat fluxes, the integration of PCM shields in enclosure components produced the maximum percent reductions of 57.4% when installed at location 3 (i.e., in the middle of the wall cavity) in a south-facing wall, 37.3% when installed at location 2 in a west-facing wall, and 41.1% when installed at location 4 in a ceiling. In terms of daytime total heat transfer, the integration of PCM shields produced the maximum percent reductions of 47.9% for location 3 for a south wall, 34.1% for location 3 for a west wall, and 27.5% for location 4 for a ceiling. The PCM boards were installed in a single location over the internal surface of the indoor surface that bound the walls of the institutional building. The results indicated that the addition of the PCM boards to a standard wall panel would produce reductions in peak heat flux of 67.0% for a south wall panel and 80.2% for a west wall panel. In terms of total heat transfer, the integration of the PCM boards produced average daily reductions of 27.4% in the south wall and 10.5% in the west wall. For evaluating overall energy savings produced by the integration of PCM shields into building walls and ceilings, simulations of a typical residential building with and without PCM shields were carried out for a building located in four cities, which were selected according to the DOE Climate Zone Map and included climate zones 1 - 4. The simulations predicted that the optimal installation location of the PCM shield would be location 2 for both the walls and ceilings of the residential building regardless of city location. Furthermore, it was discovered that PCM installation at location 1 in any enclosure component should be avoided because the heat transfer, and thus the energy consumption, in the cooling and heating seasons would both increase

A path analytical approach to parents and teacher expectation effects on achievement for middle school students

The purpose of the research was twofold: One was to identify the nature of relationships of selected structural, attitudinal, and process variables of the home and school while the other was to test the hypothetical path models of parents and teacher expectation effects on pre-adolescents school learning. It was hypothesized that parent expectations for the child\u27s achievement might be mediated by parent involvement, student expectations, and effort to achievement as well as teacher expectations might be mediated by teacher clarity, student expectations, and effort;The data were obtained from the responses of 115 sixth grade and 109 eighth grade students, their parents, and English and mathematics teachers from two public school districts in the State of Iowa;Parent and teacher variables were found to be correlated with student attitudes, effort, and achievement as measured by the ITBS language and mathematics tests. Among them, SES of the family, parent expectations and aspiration, and teacher expectations revealed relatively high correlations with not only achievement, but also with student attitudes (expectations) regardless of grade level. Student expectations were also significantly related to achievement;When statistically controlled for the effects of the student previous learning ability as measured by the CAT, the relationships between expectations and achievement became weakened. The relationships between SES and achievement controlled for ability were greatly weakened leading to practical insignificance. Despite these somewhat weakened relations, path analyses revealed that exogenous variables included in the proposed models accounted for a meaningful proportion of the variance in achievement (residual). In addition, parent and teacher expectations were related to both achievement and intermediating variables (in particular, student expectations) between teacher or parent expectations and achievement for certain models. These results indicate that parent and teacher expectations influence student achievement but that these efforts are mediated to some extent by the mediatory variables. The causal relations of the variables included in the models tended to vary with the group of students (grade level, gender, and subject area)