Understanding usage patterns of electric kettle and energy saving potential

The availability of smart metering and smart appliances enables detecting and characterising appliance use in a household, quantifying energy savings through efficient appliance use and predicting appliance-specific demand from load measurements is possible. With growing electric kettle ownership and usage, lack of any efficiency labelling guidelines for the kettle, slow technological progress in improving kettle efficiency relative to other domestic appliances, and current consumer attitudes, urgent investigation into consumer kettle usage patterns is warranted. From an efficiency point of view, little can be done about the kettle, which is more efficient than other methods of heating water such as the stove top kettle. However, since a majority households use the kettle inefficiently by overfilling, in order to meet energy targets, it is imperative to quantify inefficient usage and predict demand. For the purposes of scalability, we propose tools that depend only on load measurement data for quantifying and visualizing kettle usage and energy consumption, assessing energy wastage through overfilling via our proposed electric kettle model, and predicting kettle-specific demand, from which we can estimate potential energy savings in a household and across a housing stock. This is demonstrated using data from a longitudinal study across a sample of 14 UK households for a two-year period

Near-capacity dirty-paper code design : a source-channel coding approach

This paper examines near-capacity dirty-paper code designs based on source-channel coding. We first point out that the performance loss in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in our code designs can be broken into the sum of the packing loss from channel coding and a modulo loss, which is a function of the granular loss from source coding and the target dirty-paper coding rate (or SNR). We then examine practical designs by combining trellis-coded quantization (TCQ) with both systematic and nonsystematic irregular repeat-accumulate (IRA) codes. Like previous approaches, we exploit the extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart technique for capacity-approaching IRA code design; but unlike previous approaches, we emphasize the role of strong source coding to achieve as much granular gain as possible using TCQ. Instead of systematic doping, we employ two relatively shifted TCQ codebooks, where the shift is optimized (via tuning the EXIT charts) to facilitate the IRA code design. Our designs synergistically combine TCQ with IRA codes so that they work together as well as they do individually. By bringing together TCQ (the best quantizer from the source coding community) and EXIT chart-based IRA code designs (the best from the channel coding community), we are able to approach the theoretical limit of dirty-paper coding. For example, at 0.25 bit per symbol (b/s), our best code design (with 2048-state TCQ) performs only 0.630 dB away from the Shannon capacity

Nested turbo codes for the costa problem

Driven by applications in data-hiding, MIMO broadcast channel coding, precoding for interference cancellation, and transmitter cooperation in wireless networks, Costa coding has lately become a very active research area. In this paper, we first offer code design guidelines in terms of source- channel coding for algebraic binning. We then address practical code design based on nested lattice codes and propose nested turbo codes using turbo-like trellis-coded quantization (TCQ) for source coding and turbo trellis-coded modulation (TTCM) for channel coding. Compared to TCQ, turbo-like TCQ offers structural similarity between the source and channel coding components, leading to more efficient nesting with TTCM and better source coding performance. Due to the difference in effective dimensionality between turbo-like TCQ and TTCM, there is a performance tradeoff between these two components when they are nested together, meaning that the performance of turbo-like TCQ worsens as the TTCM code becomes stronger and vice versa. Optimization of this performance tradeoff leads to our code design that outperforms existing TCQ/TCM and TCQ/TTCM constructions and exhibits a gap of 0.94, 1.42 and 2.65 dB to the Costa capacity at 2.0, 1.0, and 0.5 bits/sample, respectively

Different Approaches to Assess the Welfare of Dairy Cows with Some Results in Serbia

In this paper, different methodologies for assessing the welfare of dairy cows, such as Animal Needs Index, system of welfare indicators, system of behaviour indicators and the Welfare Quality® assessment protocol for cattle were discussed. Also, the results of the usage of these methodologies in Serbia were analyzed. In the last several years in the country, numerous studies have been conducted about welfare of dairy cattle. State of welfare of dairy cows, on farms with tied and free system estimated by mentioned methodologies was generally acceptable. The major problems in the welfare of cows are insufficient amounts of floor litter, lack of cow access to outdoor runs or pasture, occurrence of lameness, dystocia, downer cow syndrome and mortality, the manifestation of aggression between the animals and improper relationship between stockmen and animals. On the basis of the results, it can be stated that in Serbia only recently enough attention has been paid to monitoring and understanding the current welfare state of dairy cows, which are the first important steps to achieve improvements in practical terms

Animal Models in Peritoneal Dialysis

Over the last decades peritoneal dialysis (PD) has become a successful and widely used treatment for endstage  renal disease patients worldwide. Together with the increasing number of uremic patients successfully  treated with PD has grown an interest in physiological, pathophysiological and clinical aspects of this  therapeutic method. This article provides an overview of the current status on animal models used in studying  the histology and physiology of the peritoneum, as well as the process of peritoneal dialysis itself. We  discuss species of experimental animals, methods of peritoneal access, sampling for histology, different  techniques and methodologies, and complications of experimental models of PD.

Gamma process model for timber-concrete composite beam deterioration prediction

This paper presents the application of the advanced probabilistic slope stability model with precipitation effects (APSMP) developed to assess the performance of small homogeneous earthfill embankment dam slopes, when exposed to future seasonal precipitation scenarios. Here, the UKs latest probabilistic climate model known as UKCP09 is applied. To reflect the critical conditions conducive to slope failure, a benchmark has been developed to identify the change, if any, in the risk classification of the slope’s performance level due to precipitation. Thus, enabling the reassessment of the dam’s risk classification, as categorized by the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. Such an approach could therefore be well placed to support and enhance the decision making process, its impact on the public, especially in relation to future climate effects

Concentrations of heavy metals in soil and leaves of plant species Paulownia elongata S.Y.Hu and Paulownia fortunei Hemsl

This paper sums up the results of the research on heavy metals contents (Pb, Ni, Fe, Zn and Mn) in soil and leaves of the plant species, Paulownia elongata S.Y. Hu and Paulownia fortunei Hemsl. at the plantation established on the eutric brown soil in Banat (Vojvodina). The plantation, which served asthe control field is at the municipality of Bela Crkva, far away from the main traffic lines. Concentrations of analyzed heavy metals in the leaves of the tree species, Paulownia growing in urban and suburban conditions were compared with the concentration of polluters in the leaves of the tree species, P. elongata and P. fortunei in the experimental field in Bela Crkva