Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity

Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity attempts to make the study of literature more than simply another school subject that students have to take. At a time when all subjects seem to be valued only for their testability, this book tries to show the value of reading and studying literature, even earlier literature. It shows students, some of whom will themselves become teachers, that literature actually has something to say to them. Furthermore, it shows that literature is meant to be enjoyed, that, as the Roman poet Horace (and his Renaissance disciple Sir Philip Sidney) said, the functions of literature are to teach and to delight. The book will also be useful to teachers who want to convey their passion for literature to their students. After an introductory chapter that offers advice on how to read (and teach) literature, the book consists of a series of chapters that examine individual literary works ranging from The Iliad to Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. These chapters can not substitute for reading the actual works. Rather they are intended to help students read those works. They are attempts to demystify the act of reading and to show that these works, whether they are nearly three thousand or less than two hundred years old, still have important things to say to contemporary readers.https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/oer-ost/1015/thumbnail.jp

Heat Effects of Promoters and Determination of Burn Criterion in Promoted Combustion Testing

Promoted ignition testing (NASA Test 17) [1] is used to determine the relative flammability of metal rods in oxygen-enriched atmospheres. A promoter is used to ignite a metal sample rod, initiating sample burning. If a predetermined length of the sample burns, beyond the promoter, the material is considered flammable at the condition tested. Historically, this burn length has been somewhat arbitrary. Experiments were performed to better understand this test by obtaining insight into the effect a burning promoter has on the preheating of a test sample. Test samples of several metallic materials were prepared and coupled to fast-responding thermocouples along their length. Thermocouple measurements and test video were synchronized to determine temperature increase with respect to time and length along each test sample. A recommended flammability burn length, based on a sample preheat of 500 F, was determined based on the preheated zone measured from these tests. This length was determined to be 30 mm (1.18 in.). Validation of this length and its rationale are presented

A Stochastic-MILP dispatch optimization model for Concentrated Solar Thermal under uncertainty

Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST) offers a promising solution for large-scale solar energy utilization as Thermal Energy Storage (TES) enables electricity generation independently of daily solar fluctuations, shifting to high-priced electricity intervals. The development of dispatch planning tools is mandatory to account for uncertainties associated with solar irradiation and electricity price forecasts as well as limited storage capacity. This study proposes the Stochastic Mixed Integer Linear Program (SMILP) to maximize expected profit within a specified scenario space. The SMILP scenario space is generated by different Empirical Cumulative Distribution Function percentiles of the potential solar energy to accumulate in storage and the expected profit is estimated using the Sample Average Approximation (SAA) method. SMILP exhibits robust performance, however, its computational time poses a challenge. Thus, three heuristic solutions are developed which run a set of deterministic optimizations on different historical weather profiles to generate candidate dispatching plans (DPs). The candidate DP with the best average performance on all profiles is then selected. The new methods were applied to a case study for a 115 MW CST plant in South Australia. When the historical database has a limited set of historical weather profiles, the SMILP achieves 6% to 9% higher profit than the closest benchmark when the DP is applied to novel weather conditions. With a large historical weather data, the performance of SMILP and Heuristic-2 becomes nearly identical because the SMILP can only utilize a limited number of trajectories for optimization without becoming computationally infeasible. In this case, Heuristic-2 emerges a practical alternative, since it provides similar average profit in a reasonable time (saving about 7 hours in computing time).Comment: This paper is going to be submitted to "Energy Conversion and Management" for publication in Elsevier journa

Determination of Pass/Fail Criteria for Promoted Combustion Testing

Promoted ignition testing is used to determine the relative flammability of metal rods in oxygen-enriched atmospheres. In these tests, a promoter is used to ignite each metal rod to start the sample burning. Experiments were performed to better understand the promoted ignition test by obtaining insight into the effect a burning promoter has on the preheating of a test sample. Test samples of several metallic materials were prepared and coupled to fast-responding thermocouples along their length. Various ignition promoters were used to ignite the test samples. The thermocouple measurements and test video was synchronized to determine temperature increase with respect to time and length along each test sample. A recommended length of test sample that must be consumed to be considered a flammable material was determined based on the preheated zone measured from these tests. This length was determined to be 30 mm (1.18 in.). Validation of this length and its rationale are presented

Ultrasonic in-situ determination of the regression rate of the melting interface in burning metal rods

Results of tests in which metallic rods are burned in oxygen enriched atmospheres often include the determination of the regression rate of the melting interface for the burning test specimen. This regression rate is used as an indication of a metallic material's relative flammability and its general ability to sustain burning under the test conditions. This paper reports on the development and first application of an ultrasonic measurement system that enables in situ measurement of the regression rate of the melting interface in burning metal rods. All other methods currently used for determining this parameter are based on posttest, visual interrogation, which is costly and often inaccurate. The transducer and associated equipment used to drive and record the transducer's output signal are described and typical results for iron rods burning in pure oxygen at different gauge pressures are given along with a comparison of these results with regression gates obtained from visual interrogation. The excellent sensitivity, accuracy and reliability of the new ultrasonic transducer are demonstrated, thus indicating the transducer's great potential. (C) 1999 Acoustical Society of America. [S0001-4966(99)00702-X]

Heliostat-field soiling predictions and cleaning resource optimization for solar tower plants

This paper presents a novel methodology for characterizing soiling losses through experimental measurements. Soiling predictions were obtained by calibrating a soiling model based on field measurements from a 50 MW modular solar tower project in Mount Isa, Australia. The study found that the mean predicted soiling rate for horizontally fixed mirrors was 0.12 percentage points per day (pp/d) during low dust seasons and 0.22 pp/d during high seasons. Autoregressive time series models were employed to extend two years of onsite meteorological measurements to a 10-year period, enabling the prediction of heliostat-field soiling rates. A fixed-frequency cleaning heuristic was applied to optimise the cleaning resources for various operational policies by balancing direct cleaning resource costs against the expected lost production, which was computed by averaging multiple simulated soiling loss trajectories. Analysis of resource usage showed that the cost of fuel and operator salaries contributed 42 % and 35 % respectively towards the cleaning cost. In addition, stowing heliostats in the horizontal position at night increased daily soiling rates by 114 % and the total cleaning costs by 51 % relative to vertically stowed heliostat-field. Under a simplified night-time-only power production configuration, the oversized solar field effectively charged the thermal storage during the day, despite reduced mirror reflectance due to soiling. These findings suggest that the plant can maintain efficient operation even with a reduced cleaning rate. Finally, it was observed that performing cleaning operations during the day led to a 7 % increase in the total cleaning cost compared to a night-time cleaning policy. This was primarily attributed to the need to park operational heliostats for cleaning

Neural Responses to Complex Auditory Rhythms: The Role of Attending

The aim of this study was to explore the role of attention in pulse and meter perception using complex rhythms. We used a selective attention paradigm in which participants attended to either a complex auditory rhythm or a visually presented word list. Performance on a reproduction task was used to gauge whether participants were attending to the appropriate stimulus. We hypothesized that attention to complex rhythms – which contain no energy at the pulse frequency – would lead to activations in motor areas involved in pulse perception. Moreover, because multiple repetitions of a complex rhythm are needed to perceive a pulse, activations in pulse-related areas would be seen only after sufficient time had elapsed for pulse perception to develop. Selective attention was also expected to modulate activity in sensory areas specific to the modality. We found that selective attention to rhythms led to increased BOLD responses in basal ganglia, and basal ganglia activity was observed only after the rhythms had cycled enough times for a stable pulse percept to develop. These observations suggest that attention is needed to recruit motor activations associated with the perception of pulse in complex rhythms. Moreover, attention to the auditory stimulus enhanced activity in an attentional sensory network including primary auditory cortex, insula, anterior cingulate, and prefrontal cortex, and suppressed activity in sensory areas associated with attending to the visual stimulus

Institutions, power and para-state alliances : a critical reassessment of HIV/AIDS politics in South Africa, 1999-2008

From 1999 to 2008, delays in the adoption of a comprehensive treatment and prevention programme shortened the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa. While the slow implementation of antiretroviral therapy has been attributed to a lack of institutional capacity, dissident views on HIV/AIDS and the effects of fiscal austerity, it was also an expression of power. This article analyses how the South African HIV/AIDS movement overcame this exercise of power by the AIDS dissident faction of the African National Congress (ANC) by building an alliance with the South African labour movement and moderate elements within the ruling party. The ANC’s dissident faction responded to this by developing para-state partnerships with non-state organisations to support the AIDS dissident agenda. This study highlights the need to expand the para-state concept to take into account a wider range of social formations and the historically particular conditions under which they emerge.http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=MOAam201

On the private provision of public goods

We consider a general model of the non-cooperative provision of a public good. Under very weak assumptions there will always exist a unique Nash equilibrium in our model. A small redistribution of wealth among the contributing consumers will not change the equilibrium amount of the public good. However, larger redistributions of wealth will change the set of contributors and thereby change the equilibrium provision of the public good. We are able to characterize the properties and the comparative statics of the equilibrium in a quite complete way and to analyze the extent to which government provision of a public good `crowds out' private contributions.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/26264/1/0000348.pd