The New Neighbors: A User's Guide to Data on Immigrants in U.S. Communities

Provides a guide for identifying characteristics, contributions, and needs of immigrant populations. Discusses national immigration trends, and addresses public policy questions. Includes a profile of the immigrant population in Providence, Rhode Island

National Incentive Programs for CSP – Lessons Learned

AbstractAcknowledging that Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) stands out among other renewable technologies for technical features such as dispatchability - through storage and hybridization - and its potential for higher macroeconomic impact on the local economy, national and regional governments have set up incentive programs to promote the development of large scale solar thermal plants in recent years. These support mechanisms have largely contributed to the rapid growth of the global market since 2007. While Spain and USA remain leaders, representing most of the current ∼2.5 GW in operation, other countries have emerged within a short time as very ambitious players.In our research, we reviewed some of the most relevant national incentive programs introduced worldwide: Spain, India, South Africa, Morocco and Australia. The paper will give an overview of the mechanics of the different markets, covering key aspects such as: capacity allocation, phases and timelines, qualification criteria, technical and financial requirements, local content requirements, etc, and how these elements affected competition, tariffs and the global outcome of the programs.The lessons learned from the analysis constitute a useful set of guidelines for policy makers and developers, and could contribute to the design of future effective support mechanisms that will pave the way for the further uptake of CSP technologies.The research presented in the paper has been undertaken in the framework of a technical assistance to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy of India on the preparation of the Utility Scale Concentrated Solar Power Program

Enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination Challenges in Heterogeneous Networks

3GPP LTE-Advanced has started a new study item to investigate Heterogeneous Network (HetNet) deployments as a cost effective way to deal with the unrelenting traffic demand. HetNets consist of a mix of macrocells, remote radio heads, and low-power nodes such as picocells, femtocells, and relays. Leveraging network topology, increasing the proximity between the access network and the end-users, has the potential to provide the next significant performance leap in wireless networks, improving spatial spectrum reuse and enhancing indoor coverage. Nevertheless, deployment of a large number of small cells overlaying the macrocells is not without new technical challenges. In this article, we present the concept of heterogeneous networks and also describe the major technical challenges associated with such network architecture. We focus in particular on the standardization activities within the 3GPP related to enhanced inter-cell interference coordination.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

Trajectory Tracking Error Using Fractional Order PID Control Law for Two‐Link Robot Manipulator via Fractional Adaptive Neural Networks

The problem of trajectory tracking of unknown nonlinear systems of fractional order is solved using fractional order dynamical neural networks. For this purpose, we obtained control laws and laws of adaptive weights online, obtained using the Lyapunov stability analysis methodology of fractional order. Numerical simulations illustrate the obtained theoretical results

High spatial resolution and high contrast optical speckle imaging with FASTCAM at the ORM

In this paper, we present an original observational approach, which combines, for the first time, traditional speckle imaging with image post-processing to obtain in the optical domain diffraction-limited images with high contrast (1e-5) within 0.5 to 2 arcseconds around a bright star. The post-processing step is based on wavelet filtering an has analogy with edge enhancement and high-pass filtering. Our I-band on-sky results with the 2.5-m Nordic Telescope (NOT) and the lucky imaging instrument FASTCAM show that we are able to detect L-type brown dwarf companions around a solar-type star with a contrast DI~12 at 2" and with no use of any coronographic capability, which greatly simplifies the instrumental and hardware approach. This object has been detected from the ground in J and H bands so far only with AO-assisted 8-10 m class telescopes (Gemini, Keck), although more recently detected with small-class telescopes in the K band. Discussing the advantage and disadvantage of the optical regime for the detection of faint intrinsic fluxes close to bright stars, we develop some perspectives for other fields, including the study of dense cores in globular clusters. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time that high contrast considerations are included in optical speckle imaging approach.Comment: Proceedings of SPIE conference - Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy III (Conference 7735), San Diego 201

EuroTravNet: imported Chagas disease in nine European countries, 2008 to 2009.

In recent years, Chagas disease has emerged as a disease of importance outside of endemic areas, largely as a result of migration. In Europe, clinicians may have to treat infected migrants from endemic areas as well as people with acute infections transmitted congenitally, through organ donation or blood transfusion. We describe here the characteristics of patients diagnosed with chronic Chagas disease at the core clinical sites of the EuroTravNet network during 2008 and 2009. Of the 13,349 people who attended the sites, 124 had chronic Chagas disease. Most (96%) were born in Bolivia and the median number of months in the country of residence before visiting a EuroTravNet core site was 38 months (quartile (Q)1-Q3: 26-55). The median age of the patients was 35 years (Q1-Q3: 29-45) and 65% were female. All but one were seen as outpatients and the most frequent reason for consultation was routine screening. Considering that Chagas disease can be transmitted outside endemic regions and that there is effective treatment for some stages of the infection, all migrants from Latin America (excluding the Caribbean) should be questioned about past exposure to the parasite and should undergo serological testing if infection is suspected.

Fault detection based on ROCOV in a multi-terminal HVDC grid

Protection of a meshed VSC-HVDC grid is a challenge due to the behaviour of DC current and voltage signals during fault conditions. Protection systems must operate in a very short time range. Since fault detection should be very fast, local measurement based algorithms are mostly used; communication based algorithms lack the needed speed as a result of the communication time delay. This way, a ROCOV algorithm is proposed in this paper. This algorithm is analysed for different fault conditions.The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (project ENE2016-79145-R AEI/FEDER, UE), the Basque Government (GISEL research group IT1191-19), as well as from the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU (research group funding GIU18/181)