Improving energy modeling of large building stock through the development of archetype buildings

12th Conference of International Building Performance Simulation Associatio

La cultura popular, la poesía popular y la décima

En este artículo exploro, en primer lugar, el origen, características, estructura y usos de la décima, tal como aparece en los versos de la poesía popular en América Latina y, más específicamente, en Chile. Luego, examino la suspicaz interrogante de algunos estudiosos de la literatura acerca del proceso por el cual una expresión como la décima, proveniente de una fuente literaria culta, se traspasa a la poesía popular y adquiere tal relevancia en ella, sobre todo en el contexto latinoamericano. Desarrollando ese anterior punto, en la última parte de este texto, intento proyectar esa interrogante (acerca de lo culto en lo popular) examinando los alcances culturales de ese fenómeno y, puntualmente, la reflexión que éste promueve (y, de algún modo, hace estallar) acerca de la definición misma de “cultura popular”

Can’t stop coyote

I work hard to keep language out of my studio. Language reminds me of my mom’s voice, people telling me what to do, not having the right accent, critiques, criticism in general, mis-truths, and never being good enough. Language is the material of my thoughts, and most of my thoughts, or the ones on a constant loop anyhow, are all those voices over and over again. Painting is where I get to be me, with myself, and in my body. Painting is my home, family, refuge, and best friend. I’m not looking at myself from the outside, no one can fucking tell me what to do, and I don’t have to explain myself. Naturally writing a “thesis” feels counterintuitive and is absolute last thing I want to do. It’s a messed up hierarchy, where after two years of material investigations and dialogue, “schooling” is only complete with a written component. It feels like beating a dead horse or killing the whole damn thing. I’ve thought of a lot of ways to do this part of my education without actually doing it: 1. Commission essays about my work 2. Conduct interviews and use transcripts 3. Provide a quick abstract stating my position followed up by a curated reading list 4. Write an exhaustive list of all the voices in my head that I have to shut down before I paint 5. Type up the notes from my Can’t Stop Coyote book 6. Include other manifestos or make my own 7. Smoke a final pack of cigarettes one last time and “write a thesis” whatever that means 8. Try to get an exemption 9. Submit the exemption letter as my thesis. The bottom line is I’m not ready to write and have no desire to. As I lay here on my stomach and think about forcing myself to sit, reflect, and name stuff, I feel like I want to kill myself and smoke till I die. I don’t know what the following pages that make up my “thesis” will contain. It might be linear, impressionistic, or fragmented. They might be my words or the words of others. It may describe my paintings or not. My compromise is that I am willing to try, for the sake of my “education”, to explore some other possibilities for language in relation to my practice

Fiscal, deficit, inflation, money supply and exchange rate in South Africa

This study empirically investigates the relationship between fiscal deficit, inflation, M3 money supply and the exchange rate in South Africa. The study makes use of quarterly macroeconomic time-series data sets comprising 84 observations, covering the period from 1994Q1 to 2015Q4. The unit root tests conducted employed the Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) and Phillips-Perron (PP) tests. The results reveal that the variables become stationary at first difference. The Johansen co-integration technique suggests that there is at least one co-integrating equation among the variables. The results of the Engle-Granger approach, which is residual based, show that the residuals are stationary, thus validating the existence of a long-run relationship between the model variables. The study carried out a Granger causality test. The results indicate that there is a strong Granger causal relationship between the variables (IF) and (FD). Another strong causal relationship emerges between inflation and money supply. The ECM model was employed to identify the speed of adjustment as a response to the departures from the long-run equilibrium path. The estimated coefficient of the ECM error term has the required sign and is statistically significant at the five per cent level of significance. The error term indicates a quick convergence to equilibrium. The study concludes that the dependent variable (FD) is jointly caused by all the independent variables in the long-run. The results of the variance decomposition of the variable (FD) to innovations resulting from IF, MS and RER indicate that own shocks remain the dominant source of total fluctuations in the forecast error of the variables. The findings of the study are efficient and reliable as the estimated model passed all the major diagnostic tests. By implication the findings suggest that the estimated model show high goodness of fit and is thus reliable for policy making. The study recommends a fiscal adjustment that will enhance economic growth. Additionally, a fiscal policy that will aim at identifying and mitigating other possible leakages that narrow the tax base should be considered

Out of the Gutter, Into the Gram: A Comical Message and a Digital Medium

By analyzing three different comics on Instagram by the Lebanese political cartoonist, the Art of Boo, this essay argues that comics generate political meaning through emulating the medium of Instagram on the one hand, and by inviting the audience to become active participants on the other. Although a lot has been written about digital activism and political cartoons in the Arab world, little has been theorized about what makes this form of political artistic expression and dissent powerful on digital platforms. By drawing on Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, this essay demonstrates that the medium of comics operates as a multifold mirror: it reflects the medium of Instagram while also enabling the audience to observe, detect, and perceive themselves vis-à-vis what they are not. The simple, repetitive, stylistic attributes of cartooning prompt the viewer’s imagination and encourage political meaning production. Here, I contend that it is exactly in this simplicity that the comics ascend from solely being the medium of political protest to the message itself

An Energy Integrated Approach to Design Supercritical Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis Products Separation and Solvent Recovery System

Extensive research has been done in the advancement of gas-to-liquid (GTL) technology for producing a cleaner source of energy through the conversion of natural gas into ultra-clean fuels and value-added chemicals. The Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis, which is a catalytic process that converts synthesis gas (or syngas, which is a mixture of CO and H2) into longer chain hydrocarbons is considered to be the heart of the GTL process. Conventional FT processes are currently utilizing two most common types of reactors: the multi-tubular fixed bed reactor (in which the reaction takes place in a gas phase medium) and the slurry bubble column reactor (where the reaction takes place in a liquid phase medium). However, they possess heat transfer and mass transfer limitations, respectively. In order to avoid the challenges, the application of a supercritical fluid (SCF) solvent in the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis was introduced. The SCF-FT process, in essence, combines the benefits of the two major reactor technologies used in conventional GTL processes due to the SCF’s gas-like diffusivity, liquid-like solubility and heat transfer. The SCF-FT synthesis involves co-feeding the SCF solvent along with the syngas into the reactor at a specific solvent to syngas ratio (set as 3:1 in this work). Introducing the supercritical solvent (which was selected to be n-hexane in this work) requires adjustments in the SCF-FT products’ separation sequence due to the significantly large amount of solvent available in the process. The major additional costs associated with the SCF-FT synthesis is in the product separation and solvent recovery. For SCF-FT to be adopted on a large-scale, the economics from operation under high pressure supercritical conditions must exceed the additional cost required for the separation of the solvent. The aim of this work is to construct an optimum separation design to target the separation of synthetic crude oil (or syncrude) obtained from SCF-FT synthesis while recovering the supercritical solvent. Aspen Plus® was used as the process simulator to determine the energy consumption and quantify the sensitivity of the various parameters on the solvent recoverability, purity, product yield, and operation feasibility while comparing it to the typical FT process. Three separation sequences were developed using existing GTL plants as references. The three scenarios were compared with regards to their energy requirements. The simulation results showed that despite the addition of a large amount of solvent, the separation of the products, water, and the recovery of the solvent was achieved