1,495 research outputs found
The Impact of Occupancy Energy Use Behaviour of High-Rise Dwellings In Southeast China
\ua9 2021 CUE. Reducing building energy use and the associated greenhouse gas emissions is becoming increasingly important. Since occupantsâ behaviour has significant impacts on building energy performance and occupant comfort, and it varies with an individualâs age, sex, background, and other personal factors, it is important to understand the critical links between peopleâs lifestyles and energy consumption. Most studies of the relationship between occupancy behaviour and energy consumption focus on public buildings like office buildings and commercial buildings. Research for dwellings is limited since the information is difficult to collect, and detailed knowledge of individual homes is needed. This paper conducted a detailed survey to gain information on thermal satisfaction levels, occupancy equipment ownership and their using patterns of 112 urban households who lived in a typical booming city in southeast China. Based on the collected data, an energy simulation software program was used to investigate the main factors of occupancy behaviour, which affect energy consumption. The results lead to the internal gains profiles and window-opening profiles, which reflect the lifestyle in the target area who lived in an urban highrise building. The simulation of typical households indicated that occupancy behaviour only occupied a small scale compared to equipment but still significant to improve
Generating expressive speech for storytelling applications
Work on expressive speech synthesis has long focused on the expression of basic emotions. In recent years, however, interest in other expressive styles has been increasing. The research presented in this paper aims at the generation of a storytelling speaking style, which is suitable for storytelling applications and more in general, for applications aimed at children. Based on an analysis of human storytellers' speech, we designed and implemented a set of prosodic rules for converting "neutral" speech, as produced by a text-to-speech system, into storytelling speech. An evaluation of our storytelling speech generation system showed encouraging results
The Relevance of ATR-FTIR Spectroscopy in Semiconductor Photocatalysis
Attenuated total reflection Fourier-transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy has a high potential for investigating a wide range of samples and systems. In photocatalysis, various interfacial phenomena can be studied using this technique, including pH-dependent adsorption and photodegradation of probe molecules. The analysis of the processes occurring at the interface of thin particle films deposited on the surface of an ATR crystal, either in the liquid or the gas phase, is perhaps the best way to elucidate the mechanism of adsorption and heterogeneous photocatalytic reactions. This chapter summarizes the recent advances and applications of ATR-FTIR techniques in semiconductor photocatalysis. A brief outlook at some of the possible investigations in this area is provided and the different proposed adsorption and photocatalytic degradation mechanisms are discussed
Correlated Markov Quantum Walks
We consider the discrete time unitary dynamics given by a quantum walk on
performed by a particle with internal degree of freedom, called coin
state, according to the following iterated rule: a unitary update of the coin
state takes place, followed by a shift on the lattice, conditioned on the coin
state of the particle. We study the large time behavior of the quantum
mechanical probability distribution of the position observable in for
random updates of the coin states of the following form. The random sequences
of unitary updates are given by a site dependent function of a Markov chain in
time, with the following properties: on each site, they share the same
stationnary Markovian distribution and, for each fixed time, they form a
deterministic periodic pattern on the lattice.
We prove a Feynman-Kac formula to express the characteristic function of the
averaged distribution over the randomness at time in terms of the nth power
of an operator . By analyzing the spectrum of , we show that this
distribution posesses a drift proportional to the time and its centered
counterpart displays a diffusive behavior with a diffusion matrix we compute.
Moderate and large deviations principles are also proven to hold for the
averaged distribution and the limit of the suitably rescaled corresponding
characteristic function is shown to satisfy a diffusion equation.
An example of random updates for which the analysis of the distribution can
be performed without averaging is worked out. The random distribution displays
a deterministic drift proportional to time and its centered counterpart gives
rise to a random diffusion matrix whose law we compute. We complete the picture
by presenting an uncorrelated example.Comment: 37 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with
arXiv:1010.400
Characterization of Coolia spp. (Gonyaucales, Dinophyceae) from Southern Tunisia: first record of Coolia malayensis in the Mediterranean Sea.
This study provides the first report of the presence of Coolia malayensis in the Mediterranean Sea, co-occurring with C. monotis. Isolated strains from the Gulf of Gabes, Tunisia (South-eastern Mediterranean) were identified by morpho-logical characterization and phylogenetic analysis. Examination by light and scanning electron microscopy revealed no significant morphological differences between the Tunisian isolates and other geographically distant strains of C. monotis and C. malayensis. Phylogenetic trees based on ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 and D1-D3/28S rDNA sequences showed that C. monotis strains clustered with others from the Mediterranean and Atlantic whereas the C. malayensis isolate branched with isolates from the Pacific and the Atlantic, therefore revealing no geographical trend among C. monotis and C. ma-layensis populations. Ultrastructural analyses by transmission electron microscopy revealed the presence of numerous vesicles containing spirally coiled fibers in both C. malayensis and C. monotis cells, which we speculate to be involved in mucus production
Photooxidation of Fulvenes in a Continuous Flow Photoreactor using Carbon Dioxide as a Solvent
A range of 3âsubstituted oxepinones have been synthesised by the photooxidation of fulvenes with photochemically generated singlet oxygen (1O2) using carbon dioxide (CO2) as a solvent and a CO2âsoluble porphyrin photosensitizer. The reactive intermediates generated in this reaction decompose to yield a range of useful and underutilized building blocks that are not easily accessible using more traditional reaction setups. Fulvenes containing an exocyclic allylic hydrogen are shown to form three products through potentially competing intramolecular pathways, which can be tuned to some extent by adjusting the conditions in the flow reactor. A range of substrates containing a variety of functional groups was examined; this led to lower yields of the desired lactones being observed in the case of compounds containing polar electronâdonating groups. We also demonstrate that one of the lactones can be further hydrogenated over a Pd/C catalyst to the unsaturated 7âmembered ring in high yield
Spatial patterns and links between microbial community composition and function in cyanobacterial mats
We imaged reflectance and variable fluorescence in 25 cyanobacterial mats from four distant sites around the globe to assess, at different scales of resolution, spatial variabilities in the physiological parameters characterizing their photosynthetic capacity, including the absorptivity by chlorophyll a (Achl), maximum quantum yield of photosynthesis (Ymax), and light acclimation irradiance (Ik). Generally, these parameters significantly varied within individual mats on a sub-millimeter scale, with about 2-fold higher variability in the vertical than in the horizontal direction. The average vertical profiles of Ymax and Ik decreased with depth in the mat, while Achl exhibited a sub-surface maximum. The within-mat variability was comparable to, but often larger than, the between-sites variability, whereas the within-site variabilities (i.e., between samples from the same site) were generally lowest. When compared based on averaged values of their photosynthetic parameters, mats clustered according to their site of origin. Similar clustering was found when the community composition of the mats' cyanobacterial layers were compared by automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis (ARISA), indicating a significant link between the microbial community composition and function. Although this link is likely the result of community adaptation to the prevailing site-specific environmental conditions, our present data is insufficient to identify the main factors determining these patterns. Nevertheless, this study demonstrates that the spatial variability in the photosynthetic capacity and light acclimation of benthic phototrophic microbial communities is at least as large on a sub-millimeter scale as it is on a global scale, and suggests that this pattern of variability scaling is similar for the microbial community composition. © 2014 Al-Najjar, Ramette, KĂŒhl, Hamza, Klatt and Polerecky
Random Time-Dependent Quantum Walks
We consider the discrete time unitary dynamics given by a quantum walk on the
lattice performed by a quantum particle with internal degree of freedom,
called coin state, according to the following iterated rule: a unitary update
of the coin state takes place, followed by a shift on the lattice, conditioned
on the coin state of the particle. We study the large time behavior of the
quantum mechanical probability distribution of the position observable in
when the sequence of unitary updates is given by an i.i.d. sequence of
random matrices. When averaged over the randomness, this distribution is shown
to display a drift proportional to the time and its centered counterpart is
shown to display a diffusive behavior with a diffusion matrix we compute. A
moderate deviation principle is also proven to hold for the averaged
distribution and the limit of the suitably rescaled corresponding
characteristic function is shown to satisfy a diffusion equation. A
generalization to unitary updates distributed according to a Markov process is
also provided. An example of i.i.d. random updates for which the analysis of
the distribution can be performed without averaging is worked out. The
distribution also displays a deterministic drift proportional to time and its
centered counterpart gives rise to a random diffusion matrix whose law we
compute. A large deviation principle is shown to hold for this example. We
finally show that, in general, the expectation of the random diffusion matrix
equals the diffusion matrix of the averaged distribution.Comment: Typos and minor errors corrected. To appear In Communications in
Mathematical Physic
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