The integration of social concerns into electricity power planning : a combined delphi and AHP approach

The increasing acceptance of the principle of sustainable development has been a major driving force towards new approaches to energy planning. This is a complex process involving multiple and conflicting objectives, in which many agents were able to influence decisions. The integration of environmental, social and economic issues in decision making, although fundamental, is not an easy task, and tradeoffsmust be made. The increasing importance of social aspects adds additional complexity to the traditional models that must now deal with variables recognizably difficult to measure in a quantitative scale. This study explores the issue of the social impact, as a fundamental aspect of the electricity planning process, aiming to give a measurable interpretation of the expected social impact of future electricity scenarios. A structured methodology, based on a combination of the Analytic Hierarchy Process and Delphi process, is proposed. The methodology is applied for the social evaluation of future electricity scenarios in Portugal, resulting in the elicitation and assignment of average social impact values for these scenarios. The proposed tool offers guidance to decision makers and presents a clear path to explicitl

Seeing versus Doing: How Businesses Manage Tensions in Pursuit of Sustainability

Management of organizational tensions can facilitate the simultaneous advancement of economic, social, and environmental priorities. The approach is based on managers identifying and managing tensions between the three priorities, by employing one of the three strategic responses. Although recent work has provided a theoretical basis for such tension acknowledgment and management, there is a dearth of empirical studies. We interviewed 32 corporate sustainability managers across 25 forestry and wood-products organizations in Australia. Study participants were divided into two groups: (1) those considered effective at corporate sustainability and (2) a status-quo group. Contrary to current theory, our findings showed that acknowledgment of organizational tensions was widespread in the Australian forestry and wood-products industry and not limited to those managers who are effective at managing corporate sustainability. What differed was the degree to which managers did something about the perceived tensions—with the effective group more consistently acting to manage and resolve paradoxical scenarios. Our findings suggest that existing theoretical constructs of tension management may not adequately capture the individual-level complexity involved with managing tensions in practice

Decision making under uncertainty using a qualitative TOPSIS method for selecting sustainable energy alternatives

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13762-016-0982-7Multi-criteria decision-making methods support decision makers in all stages of the decision-making process by providing useful data. However, criteria are not always certain as uncertainty is a feature of the real world. MCDM methods under uncertainty and fuzzy systems are accepted as suitable techniques in conflicting problems that cannot be represented by numerical values, in particular in energy analysis and planning. In this paper, a modified TOPSIS method for multi-criteria group decision-making with qualitative linguistic labels is proposed. This method addresses uncertainty considering different levels of precision. Each decision maker’s judgment on the performance of alternatives with respect to each criterion is expressed by qualitative linguistic labels. The new method takes into account linguistic data provided by the decision makers without any previous aggregation. Decision maker judgments are incorporated into the proposed method to generate a complete ranking of alternatives. An application in energy planning is presented as an illustrative case example in which energy policy alternatives are ranked. Seven energy alternatives under nine criteria were evaluated according to the opinion of three environmental and energy experts. The weights of the criteria are determined by fuzzy AHP, and the alternatives are ranked using qualitative TOPSIS. The proposed approach is compared with a modified fuzzy TOPSIS method, showing the advantages of the proposed approach when dealing with linguistic assessments to model uncertainty and imprecision. Although the new approach requires less cognitive effort to decision makers, it yields similar results.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Clinical and laboratory profile of dengue fever: a retrospective study

Background: The global incidence of dengue has grown dramatically in recent decade. Half of world’s population is now at risk. India represents significantly a larger burden, accounting for nearly 34% of the global burden of dengue infection. Dengue infection needs to be addressed as a single disease with different clinical presentations ranging from asymptomatic conditions to severe clinical courses that may lead to high morbidity and mortality.Method: This was retrospective observational study carried out during period of July 2017 to April 2018, to study clinical profile and laboratory parameters in dengue fever patients. Confirmed dengue cases having NS1 positive or IgM positive or having both NS1 and IgM positive or dengue ELISA reactive, having minimum one CBC reports done and not having other confounding factor such as co-infection, bone marrow diseases etc. that may altered clinical and laboratory results are included in study. Statistical analysis was done by SPSS software version 18.0.Results: Out of 48 confirmed dengue cases maximum patients 58.33% was from young age group (21 to 40 years) with M:F ratio was 2.43:1. Fever was found in 100% patients, in order of frequency followed by headache, bodyache, abdominal pain, weakness, retro-orbital pain, anorexia, dry cough, back pain, nausea, diarrhoea, vomiting, rash, joint pain, itching and malena.NS1was positive in 41.67% cases, dengue ELISA in 31.25%, IgM was positive in 20.83% cases, and both NS1 and IgM positive were in 4.17% cases. TLC count was low 35.42%, high in 12.50% of cases and remaining had normal TLC count. Platelet count was ranged between normal platelet counts to thrombocytopenia. One case had platelet count less than 20000. Out of 48 patients, 2 (4.17%) had malena.Conclusion: In this study, fever was found in all patients, and headache, body ache and weakness were common symptoms, but significant number of patients also had gastroentstinal and respiratory symptoms like abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting and dry cough. TLC count ranging from normal TLC, leukopenia to leucocytosis. Large number of patients had low platelet count that shows dengue fever had varied clinical presentation. </jats:p

CREATING CORNEAL STEM CELLS WITH A THEROREVERSIBLE GELATION POLYMER

Introduction: Recent technological advancements in single-cell RNA sequencing and single-cell quantitative real-time PCR have enabled researchers to conduct single-cell analyses of limbal epithelial cells. Aim of the study: the main aim of the study is to Cultivating corneal stem cells with a thermoreversible gelation polymer Material and method: Each human limbal biopsy were placed in 1 mL of TC medium containing 3% FCS, antibiotics (penicillin, gentamicin, and amphotericin B), and DMEM, and then transported to a cell biology lab. Conclusion: The thermoreversible gelation polymer facilitates the growth of limbal epithelial cells. The limbal characteristic could still be seen in the grown cells</jats:p

Performance enhancement in latent heat thermal storage system: A review

Phase change material (PCM) based latent heat thermal storage (LHTS) systems offer a challenging option to be employed as an effective energy storage and retrieval device. The performance of LHTS systems is limited by the poor thermal conductivity of PCMs employed. Successful large-scale utilization of LHTS systems thus depends on the extent to which the performance can be improved. A great deal of work both experimental and theoretical on different performance enhancement techniques has been reported in the literature. This paper reviews the implementation of those techniques in different configurations of LHTS systems. The influence of enhancement techniques on the thermal response of the PCM in terms of phase change rate and amount of latent heat stored/retrieved has been addressed as a main aspect. Issues related to mathematical modeling of LHTS systems employing enhancement techniques are also discussed.Latent heat thermal energy storage Phase change material Heat transfer rate Performance enhancement

Application of multi-criteria decision making to sustainable energy planning--A review

Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques are gaining popularity in sustainable energy management. The techniques provide solutions to the problems involving conflicting and multiple objectives. Several methods based on weighted averages, priority setting, outranking, fuzzy principles and their combinations are employed for energy planning decisions. A review of more than 90 published papers is presented here to analyze the applicability of various methods discussed. A classification on application areas and the year of application is presented to highlight the trends. It is observed that Analytical Hierarchy Process is the most popular technique followed by outranking techniques PROMETHEE and ELECTRE. Validation of results with multiple methods, development of interactive decision support systems and application of fuzzy methods to tackle uncertainties in the data is observed in the published literature.Multi-objective optimization Multi-criteria decision making Decision support systems Sustainable energy planning