An Empirical Analysis of Energy Demand in Namibia

Using a unique database of end-user local energy data and the recently developed Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration, we estimate the long-run elasticities of the Namibian energy demand function at both aggregated level and by type of energy (electricity, petrol and diesel) for the period 1980 to 2002. Our main results show that energy consumption responds positively to changes in GDP and negatively to changes in energy price and air temperature. The differences in price elasticities across fuels uncovered by this study have significant implications for energy taxation by Namibian policy makers. We do not find any significant cross-price elasticities between different fuel types.Energy demand; ARDL; Cointegration

The ~11 yr Solar Cycle

Sunspot numbers and shifts in their distribution display a period of approximately 11 yr, a value sometimes uncritically applied to other measures of solar activity, direct and indirect, including the 10.7 cm radio flux, the inflow of galactic cosmic rays, solar flare frequency, terrestrial weather, and components of space climate, with a possible resulting loss of information. The ruling (Babcock) hypothesis and its derivatives link the sunspot cycle to dynamo processes mediated by differential solar rotation, but despite 60 years of observation and analysis the ~11 yr periodicity remains difficult to model; the possible contribution of planetary dynamics is also still controversial. The various solar sequences that genuinely display an ~11 yr cycle stand to benefit from an understanding of its periodicity that goes beyond statistical rigour. The outcome could ironically prompt the demotion of sunspots from their dominant historical role in favour of other possible indicators of solar cyclicity, such as the solar wind flux and its isotopic signatures, even if they are less accessible

Core to solar wind: a stepwise model for heating the solar corona

Operating experience from fusion research shows how Spitzer resistivity may render ohmic heating in the chromosphere self limiting and thus serve to define the lower margin of the transition region. Its upper margin is at about 6000 K, where radiative cooling of He:H plasma decelerates sharply. The third and last stage in the proposed scheme is expansion into the tenuous plasma of space, which leads to the acceleration of ions to high energies, long recorded by spacecraft instruments. There is thus dynamic continuity all the way from the solar interior, the energy source for spinning columns in the Rayleigh Benard setting of the convection zone, to the coronal exhalation of the solar wind, a finding which should benefit the analysis of space weather, witness the association between helium in the solar wind and the incidence of coronal mass ejections

Vector and scalar form factors for K- and D-meson semileptonic decays from twisted mass fermions with Nf = 2

We present lattice results for the form factors relevant in the K -> pion and D -> pion semileptonic decays, obtained from simulations with two flavors of dynamical twisted-mass fermions and pion masses as light as 260 MeV. For K -> pion decays we discuss the estimates of the main sources of systematic uncertainties, including the quenching of the strange quark, leading to our final result f+(0) = 0.9560 (57) (62). Combined with the latest experimental data, our value of f+(0) implies for the CKM matrix element |Vus| the value 0.2267 (5) (20) consistent with the first-row CKM unitarity. For D -> pion decays the application of Heavy Meson Chiral Perturbation Theory allows to extrapolate our results for both the scalar and the vector form factors at the physical point with quite good accuracy, obtaining a nice agreement with the experimental data. In particular at zero-momentum transfer we obtain f+(0) = 0.64 (5).Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, proceedings of the XXVII Int'l Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (LAT2009), July 26-31 2009, Peking University, Beijing (China

The effects of individual differences in native perception on discrimination of a novel non-native contrast

Native (L1) phonetic categories can constrain the perception of non-native contrasts which deviate from the listener’s L1 (Best & Tyler, 2007; Flege, 1995). Yet, some individuals are remarkably successful at accurately perceiving non-native sounds (e.g., Bongaerts, van Summeren, Planken, & Schils, 1997). We hypothesize that compact L1 categories give an initial advantage in distinguishing non-native contrasts. Sixty-eight Spanish monolinguals were tested on the degree of compactness of their native category /i/, measured through a goodness-of-fit rating task. Participants listened to synthesized variants of the Spanish /i/ vowel (differing in F1, F2, or both) and rated them as either good or bad exemplars of their representation of this category. An individual /i/ compactness index was calculated for each participant and related to the individual perceived dissimilarity score for the novel Russian contrast /i – ɨ/. The Russian contrast /i – ɨ/ is a problematic contrast to perceive for Spanish speakers due to the absence of /ɨ/ in the Spanish vowel inventory, a sound acoustically very similar to /i/. In this study, the compactness of the L1 category /i/ weakly predicted perceptual sensitivity (dissimilarity scores) for the Russian contrast /i – ɨ/

AURA_ A MEDIA DEVICE FOR NEW NARRATION SPACES IN MUSEUM CONTEXTS

The long months of social distance to which the pandemic has forced us have certainly accelerated the idea that the remediation of the concept of distance in a digital horizon can open up new spaces of negotiation for many social and cultural practices in the future. But it has also, dramatically, highlighted the limits and risks contained in the very idea that the experience of the meta-universe can really do without the mediation of physical reality and human direct intervention. The reflections and design experience proposed here therefore aim to reflect on the role that the new technologies and traditional professionals are playing in relation with the phygital cultural experience. The idea of the contemporary museum is indagated, questioning, however, the quality of the 'relationship' between the work of art and the user and the ways in which design can respond creatively to the demand for cultural consumption by activating new processes of attribution of meaning