Emerging from Anonymity: The First Generation of Writers of Songs and Drama in Mid-Ming Nanjing

This article traces the first generation of writers of songs and drama in Nanjing who emerged from the anonymous context of early Ming court entertainment and established their name and reputation in the second half of the fifteenth century. These writers—Shi Zhong (1437-after 1516), Chen Duo (1454?-1507?), and Xu Lin (1462-1538)—represented a different mode of writing songs and drama. For them it was no longer a professional occupation, as in the case of the court performers, but became part of their cultural and social life. The extent to which our knowledge of these first generation qu writers depends on local sources and on acts of remembrance by later Nanjing authors is also examined

A review of solar collectors and thermal energy storage in solar thermal applications

Thermal applications are drawing increasing attention in the solar energy research field, due to their high performance in energy storage density and energy conversion efficiency. In these applications, solar collectors and thermal energy storage systems are the two core components. This paper focuses on the latest developments and advances in solar thermal applications, providing a review of solar collectors and thermal energy storage systems. Various types of solar collectors are reviewed and discussed, including both non-concentrating collectors (low temperature applications) and concentrating collectors (high temperature applications). These are studied in terms of optical optimisation, heat loss reduction, heat recuperation enhancement and different sun-tracking mechanisms. Various types of thermal energy storage systems are also reviewed and discussed, including sensible heat storage, latent heat storage, chemical storage and cascaded storage. They are studied in terms of design criteria, material selection and different heat transfer enhancement technologies. Last but not least, existing and future solar power stations are overviewed.Peer reviewe

Numerical investigations of heat transfer in phase change materials using non-equilibrium model

Phase change materials (PCMs) are drawing increasing attention of researchers nowadays, and they play a pivotal role in thermal energy storage (TES) used in renewable energy resources applications, since these renewable energy, such as solar energy, wind energy and tidal energy, are intermittent and not available at any time. However, most of PCMs suffer from low thermal conductivities prolonging the charging and discharging processes. Metal foams with relatively high thermal conductivities, are believed to be able to enhance heat transfer performance of PCMs for those applications. In this paper, a two-equation non-thermal equilibrium model has been employed to tackle the phase change heat transfer problem in PCMs composites embedded into metal foams. Numerical results show good agreement with experimental data, and indicate that a better heat transfer performance can be achieved by using the metal foams of smaller pore size and smaller porosity, and heat transfer performance of PCMs can be enhanced by up to 10 times by embedded metal foams into PCMs.Peer reviewe

On the Smarandache LCM dual function

The main purpose of this paper is using the elementary method to study the calculating problem of a Dirichlet series involving the Smarandache LCM dual function SL*(n) and the mean value distribution property of SL*(n), obtain an exact calculating formula and a sharper asymptotic formula for it