Designing an innovative educational toolbox to support the transition to new technologies

Our economies and societies are becoming more and more knowledge based which implies that increasing numbers of people need to be educated and trained on new subjects and processes. Thus, the reduction of the effort needed to design and prepare educational and training programmes that meet the needs of the society and the market is of paramount importance. To achieve this goal, first, we define a learning programme model so that programme designers can easily exchange and re-use programme structures and learning materials. The proposed model additionally enables easier creation of interdisciplinary programmes which is another need of today’s market. Second, we deploy a web-based tool that adopts this model towards facilitating the re-use of structures and materials. Third, to reduce the time required for the training actors to sense the market needs, we propose the establishment of an educational programme marketplace. All three endeavours have been validated in the energy transition sector and (positively) evaluated by experts during an international workshop

Contribution of a power multivector to distorting load identification

The identification of harmonic generating loads and the assignation of responsibility for harmonic pollution is an important first step for harmonic control in modern power systems. In this paper, a previously introduced power multivector is examined as a possible tool for the identification of such loads. This representation of power is based on the mathematical framework of Geometric Algebra (GA). Components of the power multivector derived at the point of connection of a load are grouped into a single quantity, which is a bivector in GA and is characterized by a magnitude, direction and sense. The magnitude of this bivector can serve as an indicator of the distortion at the terminals of the load. Furthermore, in contrast to indices based solely on magnitude, such as components derived from any apparent power equation, the proposed bivectorial representation can differentiate between loads that enhance distortion and those with a mitigating effect. Its conservative nature permits an association between the distortion at specific load terminals and the common point of connection. When several loads connected along a distribution line are considered, then an evaluation of the impact of each one of these loads on the distortion at a specific point is possible. Simulation results confirm that information included in the proposed bivector can provide helpful guidance when quantities derived from apparent power equations deliver ambiguous results

An overview to current status of waste generation, management and potentials for waste-to-energy (Case study: Rasht City, Iran)

This paper presents an overview of the current municipal solid waste (MSW) management in Rasht City, Guilan Province, Iran, followed by evaluating the potential for waste-to-energy. The data of different MSW functional elements were collected from previous works, available reports, interviews and meetings with specialists in the field. About 800 tons MSWs are generated in Rasht per day, of those, over 75% are organic wastes followed by paper and cardboard comprising 5.9%. The daily theoretical energy contained in the city MSWs was estimated to be over 591.62 megawatt hour (MWh, over 215942.54 MWh per year). Almost 500 tons of daily MSWs are directly transferred to Saravan as the biggest landfill in north of Iran with an area of about 30 ha, while the remaining portion is treated in the Guilan composting plant. Landfill mining calculations showed that we could recycle about 3008947, 36793, 61443 and 18366  tons of plastics, textile, wood and  rubbers collected from Saravan landfill respectively. A simple assessment of waste-to-energy potentials from organic wastes using operational conversion coefficients revealed that by employing the combination of waste-to-energy and gas turbine technology, an estimated energy of 227.668 MWh can be produced from the Rasht daily food wastes. Although MSW management in Rasht  has been improved over the last decade owing to the establishment of waste recycling and composting organization, however it is still far from the standard situation due to lack of comprehensive waste management planning, financial resources and infrastructure

Data Discovery Paradigms: User Requirements and Recommendations for Data Repositories

As data repositories make more data openly available it becomes challenging for researchers to find what they need either from a repository or through web search engines. This study attempts to investigate data users’ requirements and the role that data repositories can play in supporting data discoverability by meeting those requirements. We collected 79 data discovery use cases (or data search scenarios), from which we derived nine functional requirements for data repositories through qualitative analysis. We then applied usability heuristic evaluation and expert review methods to identify best practices that data repositories can implement to meet each functional requirement. We propose the following ten recommendations for data repository operators to consider for improving data discoverability and user’s data search experience: 1. Provide a range of query interfaces to accommodate various data search behaviours. 2. Provide multiple access points to find data. 3. Make it easier for researchers to judge relevance, accessibility and reusability of a data collection from a search summary. 4. Make individual metadata records readable and analysable. 5. Enable sharing and downloading of bibliographic references. 6. Expose data usage statistics. 7. Strive for consistency with other repositories. 8. Identify and aggregate metadata records that describe the same data object. 9. Make metadata records easily indexed and searchable by major web search engines. 10. Follow API search standards and community adopted vocabularies for interoperability

Future opportunities and trends for e-infrastructures and life sciences: Going beyond the grid to enable life science data analysis

With the increasingly rapid growth of data in life sciences we are witnessing a major transition in the way research is conducted, from hypothesis-driven studies to data-driven simulations of whole systems. Such approaches necessitate the use of large-scale computational resources and e-infrastructures, such as the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI). EGI, one of key the enablers of the digital European Research Area, is a federation of resource providers set up to deliver sustainable, integrated and secure computing services to European researchers and their international partners. Here we aim to provide the state of the art of Grid/Cloud computing in EU research as viewed from within the field of life sciences, focusing on key infrastructures and projects within the life sciences community. Rather than focusing purely on the technical aspects underlying the currently provided solutions, we outline the design aspects and key characteristics that can be identified across major research approaches. Overall, we aim to provide significant insights into the road ahead by establishing ever-strengthening connections between EGI as a whole and the life sciences community