The Renewable Energy Target: a quick guide

This quick guide provides a brief background to the Commonwealth’s Renewable Energy Target – what it is, what it costs, how it operates, and whether it is achieving its aims. What is the Renewable Energy Target? The Renewable Energy Target is a Commonwealth Government scheme to increase the proportion of electricity generated in Australia from renewable sources, to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases from electricity generation and to promote the development of a renewable energy industry in Australia. The ‘target’ of the scheme is to generate an additional 20 per cent of electricity from renewable sources by 2020, compared with 1997 levels. (Originally, the target was an additional two per cent by 2010.) The ‘Renewable Energy Target’ also refers to the legislated scheme that provides the mechanism for achieving the target through the creation and trading of renewable energy certificates. This certificate-trading scheme allows generators of renewable energy to earn additional income for the electricity that they generate, above the market price

Reducing variability in along-tract analysis with diffusion profile realignment

Diffusion weighted MRI (dMRI) provides a non invasive virtual reconstruction of the brain's white matter structures through tractography. Analyzing dMRI measures along the trajectory of white matter bundles can provide a more specific investigation than considering a region of interest or tract-averaged measurements. However, performing group analyses with this along-tract strategy requires correspondence between points of tract pathways across subjects. This is usually achieved by creating a new common space where the representative streamlines from every subject are resampled to the same number of points. If the underlying anatomy of some subjects was altered due to, e.g. disease or developmental changes, such information might be lost by resampling to a fixed number of points. In this work, we propose to address the issue of possible misalignment, which might be present even after resampling, by realigning the representative streamline of each subject in this 1D space with a new method, coined diffusion profile realignment (DPR). Experiments on synthetic datasets show that DPR reduces the coefficient of variation for the mean diffusivity, fractional anisotropy and apparent fiber density when compared to the unaligned case. Using 100 in vivo datasets from the HCP, we simulated changes in mean diffusivity, fractional anisotropy and apparent fiber density. Pairwise Student's t-tests between these altered subjects and the original subjects indicate that regional changes are identified after realignment with the DPR algorithm, while preserving differences previously detected in the unaligned case. This new correction strategy contributes to revealing effects of interest which might be hidden by misalignment and has the potential to improve the specificity in longitudinal population studies beyond the traditional region of interest based analysis and along-tract analysis workflows.Comment: v4: peer-reviewed round 2 v3 : deleted some old text from before peer-review which was mistakenly included v2 : peer-reviewed version v1: preprint as submitted to journal NeuroImag

The violence of bearing witness in Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy

Les études présentées dans ce thèse, The Violence of Bearing Witness in Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy, portent sur les représentations narratives de l’acte de témoigner dans les textes des écrivains américains Flannery O'Connor et Cormac McCarthy. Plus précisement, j'identifie l'acte de témoigner comme étant une fonction essentielle du prophète et situe ensuite la représentation narrative de cet acte dans la tradition de la jérémiade américaine. Je débute alors mon étude de O’Connor en examinant son interprétation du rôle du prophète aussi bien dans ses textes que dans la société en générale et sa culture en particulier. Je place ensuite son corpus dans le contexte du mouvement des droits civiques des 1950s-60s et retrace l’évolution de ses personnages noirs à travers la progression d’un groupe de récits que je term « The Geranium Variations ». Mon analyse herméneutique de Blood Meridian emploie la typologie de la violence de Slavoj Žižek pour affirmer que, bien que le roman soit rempli de représentations vives de la violence, McCarthy démontre que la violence structurelle est à l’origine des flambées individuelles – c’est-à-dire de guerre, d’expansion territoriale agressive et de génocide sanctionné par l’État. De plus, mes études démontre que les descriptions excessives de violence du roman sont juxtaposées à une pénurie de description narrative dans la mesure où les représentations incessantes de violence tout au long du roman aboutissent à la mort non décrite du protagoniste, the kid. Enfin, je conclus que les allusions aux Écritures au tout début du roman prédit que the kid aura un rôle liminal dans le texte en tant que prophèt maudit qui a pour fonction de témoigner les horreurs indescriptibles de la nuit des temps.This dissertation, The Violence of Bearing Witness in Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy, investigates the narrative expressions of bearing witness in the fiction of two writers of the American South: Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy. I identify the act of bearing witness as an essential function of the prophet and locate the narrative representation of this act within the tradition of the American jeremiad. I begin my study of O’Connor’s works by investigating her understanding of the significance of the role of the prophet in her writing as well as in modern society. I then situate O’Connor’s literary art within the context of the civil rights movement and trace the evolution of her treatment of Black characters through the progress of a group of stories I have termed the “Geranium Variations.” My hermeneutic analysis of Blood Meridian employs Slavoj Žižek’s typology of violence to argue that though the novel is replete with vivid portrayals of violence, the true horror with which McCarthy reckons is the structural violence that fosters the individual outbreaks of brutality, i.e. warfare, aggressive territorial expansion, and state-sanctioned genocide. I demonstrate that the novel’s excessive descriptions of violence are juxtaposed with an absence of description insofar as the relentless representations of gratuitous violence throughout the novel culminate in the unnarrated death of the protagonist, the kid. I conclude that the allusions to scripture in the opening sentences of the novel foretells the kid’s liminal role in the text as a cursed prophet whose function is to witness the unspeakable horrors of history

Customer selection within competitive consumable commodity markets : an investigation of the video cassette, DVD, high definition video markets

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 27-28).Proper product design plays in important role in the success within a marketplace. In order for a product to succeed within a competitive consumable commodity market, the product must focus on specific attributes. This paper examines three historical case studies - the video cassette, the DVD, and the high definition markets. Through these three examples, trends amongst product features, consumer knowledge, brand, and the quality of technology were explored. To further examine what influences consumers' decision within a consumable commodity market a survey was designed to evaluate consumer choice. The survey consisted of a fictitious product that shares many of the same traits as a consumable commodity device. Correlation amongst the data was examined to help discern what might drive such markets. While numerous factors were observed within this study, the most significant results were observed regarding consumer knowledge and technology's role. Consumers tended to pick the products which they felt were most useful. Such a choice often did not correspond to the technologically superior product. As such, within a competitive consumable commodity market, it is important to design a product to focus on features that the consumers believe to be the most valuable.by Alexander F. St. Claire.S.B

Family Environment Externalizing and Internalizing Behaviors Among Adolescents in St. Lucia

The family is uniquely positioned either to positively or negatively influence the well-being, development, and adjustment of adolescents. There is a considerable body of research in the general literature associating the family environment with adolescent externalizing and internalizing behaviors of adolescents. St. Lucia, and the rest of the Caribbean, have distinctive cultural and familial habits and patterns that may influence adolescents\u27 behavior. However, little or no attention has been given to assessing empirically the role that family dynamics may play in adolescents\u27 behavior on the island of St. Lucia. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the family environment and internalizing or depression withdrawn, and somatic symptoms and externalizing behaviors or rule breaking and aggression among adolescents in St. Lucia. The sample was drawn from nine secondary schools and a total of 597 students and their parents also participated in the study. Result of multiple regression analysis revealed that family environment plays a complex role in its impact on adolescents internalizing and externalizing behaviors. That is, while system maintenance is inversely related to internalizing behaviors, relationship and personal growth are unrelated to this outcome. In contrast, relationship, personal growth, and systems maintenance are all unrelated to externalizing behaviors. Additional analyses of the subscales for the predictor and outcome variables suggest relationships that were not indicated by the composite variables. Future research might include variables that are descriptive of the family environment, such as number of siblings and family structure that were not included in this study. The results of this study points to the importance of a comprehensive assessment of family environment in predicting adolescents\u27 behaviors in St. Lucia, and offer important implications for theory, research, and practice

Presenting the cohomology of a Schubert variety: Proof of the minimality conjecture

A minimal presentation of the cohomology ring of the flag manifold $GL_n/B$ was given in [A. Borel, 1953]. This presentation was extended by [E. Akyildiz-A. Lascoux-P. Pragacz, 1992] to a non-minimal one for all Schubert varieties. Work of [Gasharov-Reiner, 2002] gave a short, i.e. polynomial-size, presentation for a subclass of Schubert varieties that includes the smooth ones. In [V. Reiner-A. Woo-A. Yong, 2011], a general shortening was found; it implies an exponential upper bound of $2^n$ on the number of generators required. That work states a minimality conjecture whose significance would be an exponential lower bound of $\sqrt{2}^{n+2}/\sqrt{\pi n}$ on the number of generators needed in worst case, giving the first obstructions to short presentations. We prove the minimality conjecture. Our proof uses the Hopf algebra structure of the ring of symmetric functions.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures, to appear in J. London. Math. So

Letter from Alexander St. Clair Hunter to James B. Finley

Hunter was charged by circuit rider Burroughs Westlake (Mad River Circuit) with falsehood, a charge that he adamantly denies. Following his conviction, he decided that he would appeal the decision. He asks Presiding Elder James B. Finley (Lebanon District) for his help. Abstract Number - 64https://digitalcommons.owu.edu/finley-letters/1062/thumbnail.jp