Village Power scaling rural electrification in Uganda

This paper discusses Village Power’s role in the “Light Lwengo” project in Uganda’s Lwengo District. Key learnings from this project focus on the design and implementation of subsidy schemes and the implications of becoming a Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) provider to increase roll-out speed

Seasonality of Antarctic sea-ice and snow properties from autonomous systems

Studying seasonally varying snow and sea-ice properties in the ice-covered oceans is a key element for investigations of processes between atmosphere, sea ice, and ocean. A dominant characteristic of Antarctic sea ice is the year-round snow cover, which substantially impacts the sea-ice energy and mass budgets by, e.g., preventing surface melt in summer, and amplifying sea-ice growth through extensive snow-ice formation. However, substantial observational gaps in the description of year-round Antarctic pack ice and its snow cover lead to a limited understanding of important processes between atmosphere, sea ice and ocean. Here, we introduce a unique observational dataset comprised of a number of critical parameters relevant to the snow/ice and ice/ocean interface, recorded by a suite of snow and ice-mass balance buoys (IMBs) deployed in the Weddell Sea between 2013 and 2018. From these data we infer seasonal snow accumulation rates, which allow to describe the spatial distribution and temporal evolution of the Antarctic snowpack. Vertical temperature profiles from co-deployed IMBs are used to validate these findings, and to calculate energy budgets across the atmosphere-ocean boundary. Our results highlight that data from autonomous, ice-based platforms are a key element in better understanding sea-ice and snow properties, processes and their seasonal evolution

The Cult Statues of the Pantheon

This article reconsiders the possible statuary of the Pantheon in Rome, both in its original Augustan form and in its later phases. It argues that the so-called ‘Algiers Relief’ has wrongly been connected with the Temple of Mars Ultor and is in fact evidence of the association of the Divus Julius with Mars and Venus in the Pantheon of Agrippa, a juxtaposition which reflects the direction of Augustan ideology in the 20s b.c. and the building's celestial purpose. This triple statue group became the focus of the later Pantheon, and its importance is highlighted by the hierarchized system of architectural ornament of the present building