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Enabling sustainable user interaction with domestic heating controls
Copyright @ 2011 University of BathThe way we live greatly effects the carbon emissions of our homes; heating accounts for nearly 60% of domestic energy consumption in the UK. This consumption is directly influenced by occupants through the use of their control systems. Using realworld data from buildings and observational data from users this research proposes guidelines for the design of more inclusive domestic heating controls. Two usercentred studies have been completed to date; one using controls under lab conditions and the other in a low-carbon housing development. In both studies controls were found to exclude users due to the cognitive demands placed on them, therefore creating an unnecessary barrier to reducing heat energy consumption in the home. The design principles proposed aim to help designers consider user needs when designing the interfaces of heating controls and energy management systems. By designing more inclusive and usable controls considerable energy savings could be made in the domestic context.This work is funded by the EPSRC and Buro Happold
Automatically assembling a full census of an academic field
The composition of the scientific workforce shapes the direction of
scientific research, directly through the selection of questions to
investigate, and indirectly through its influence on the training of future
scientists. In most fields, however, complete census information is difficult
to obtain, complicating efforts to study workforce dynamics and the effects of
policy. This is particularly true in computer science, which lacks a single,
all-encompassing directory or professional organization. A full census of
computer science would serve many purposes, not the least of which is a better
understanding of the trends and causes of unequal representation in computing.
Previous academic census efforts have relied on narrow or biased samples, or on
professional society membership rolls. A full census can be constructed
directly from online departmental faculty directories, but doing so by hand is
prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. Here, we introduce a topical web
crawler for automating the collection of faculty information from web-based
department rosters, and demonstrate the resulting system on the 205
PhD-granting computer science departments in the U.S. and Canada. This method
constructs a complete census of the field within a few minutes, and achieves
over 99% precision and recall. We conclude by comparing the resulting 2017
census to a hand-curated 2011 census to quantify turnover and retention in
computer science, in general and for female faculty in particular,
demonstrating the types of analysis made possible by automated census
construction.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 2 table
Localised Black Holes
We numerically construct asymptotically global black holes that are localised on the . These are
solutions to type IIB supergravity with horizon topology that
dominate the theory in the microcanonical ensemble at small energies. At higher
energies, there is a first-order phase transition to
-Schwarzschild. By the AdS/CFT
correspondence, this transition is dual to spontaneously breaking the
R-symmetry of super Yang-Mills down to . We extrapolate
the location of this phase transition and compute the expectation value of the
resulting scalar operators in the low energy phase.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure
Lumpy AdS S Black Holes and Black Belts
Sufficiently small Schwarzschild black holes in global AdSS are
Gregory-Laflamme unstable. We construct new families of black hole solutions
that bifurcate from the onset of this instability and break the full SO
symmetry group of the S down to SO. These new "lumpy" solutions are
labelled by the harmonics . We find evidence that the branch
never dominates the microcanonical/canonical ensembles and connects through a
topology-changing merger to a localised black hole solution with S
topology. We argue that these S black holes should become the dominant
phase in the microcanonical ensemble for small enough energies, and that the
transition to Schwarzschild black holes is first order. Furthermore, we find
two branches of solutions with . We expect one of these branches to
connect to a solution containing two localised black holes, while the other
branch connects to a black hole solution with horizon topology which we call a "black belt".Comment: 20 pages (plus 17 pages for Appendix on Kaluza-Klein Holography), 14
figure
Viewpoints: A high-performance high-dimensional exploratory data analysis tool
Scientific data sets continue to increase in both size and complexity. In the
past, dedicated graphics systems at supercomputing centers were required to
visualize large data sets, but as the price of commodity graphics hardware has
dropped and its capability has increased, it is now possible, in principle, to
view large complex data sets on a single workstation. To do this in practice,
an investigator will need software that is written to take advantage of the
relevant graphics hardware. The Viewpoints visualization package described
herein is an example of such software. Viewpoints is an interactive tool for
exploratory visual analysis of large, high-dimensional (multivariate) data. It
leverages the capabilities of modern graphics boards (GPUs) to run on a single
workstation or laptop. Viewpoints is minimalist: it attempts to do a small set
of useful things very well (or at least very quickly) in comparison with
similar packages today. Its basic feature set includes linked scatter plots
with brushing, dynamic histograms, normalization and outlier detection/removal.
Viewpoints was originally designed for astrophysicists, but it has since been
used in a variety of fields that range from astronomy, quantum chemistry, fluid
dynamics, machine learning, bioinformatics, and finance to information
technology server log mining. In this article, we describe the Viewpoints
package and show examples of its usage.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, PASP in press, this version corresponds more
closely to that to be publishe
Depressed mood in a theological perspective
The symptoms of depression and those of accidie as described by the Desert Fathers overlap, in that feelings of despair, guilt, poor estimates of self-worth, lack of energy and self-absorption predominate. Tillich adds to these symptoms a sense of meaninglessness and purposelessness. A new model of depressed mood is proposed which incorporates a variety of different aetiological factors, integrating those from the body and the mind which are found in clinical practice, with others which have a spiritual origin. The need for reconciliation with God, the world and the self means that discernment of spiritual problems can be fundamental in finding an answer to disturbed mood. The psychological aspects of guilt and self-hatred and lethargy are explored through the work of Karen Homey, mainly in a discussion of the compulsions caused by an inflated ego-ideal. The work of Carl Jung emphasises the integration of the shadow, stressing the importance of reconciling polarities in the psyche so as to generate a creative tension which can replenish spiritual and mental energy. Many theologians, including Tillich, also emphasise that opposites must come together, so that God can be found at the centre of all things. Hans Urs von Balthasar is " outstanding because of his understanding of Christ's kenosis in balance with His plerosis These polarities point to the way in which Christ, through His Passion and Resurrection redeems us from godforsakermess, and also suggest a helpful way of understanding the Trinity as Love. Nicholas de Cusa and Ignatius of Loyola, from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, have a common strand of finding God in the midst of opposite and fragmenting influences. Miguel de Unamuno at the beginning of this century adds a dimension of God's involvement in tragedy and suffering, and Charles Williams stresses our co-inherence vyith God, and the need for forgiveness in bearing each otherās burdens. The convergence of psychological and theological insights concerning polarities is applied to a recovery model for depressed mood through cognitive therapy, art, and prayer - methods which search, respectively, for truth, beauty and goodness. The process of healing is part of redemption, in that the 'Fruits of the Spirit' are the antithesis of some of the symptoms of depression, such as guilt, anger, self-absorption and fear. We may feel helpless and vulnerable because of negative feelings, but in His total self-giving, Christ suffered the helplessness and agony of the Passion in order to transform our disorders and bring us to His Kingdom of service and praise
MTF Analysis of an Emulsion Used for Color Paper
This thesis studied the relationship between the MTF\u27s of a color emulsion used for photographic paper but coated on clear base. Analysis of the MTF curves show differences that can be attributed to interimage effects. The effects in the red and blue sensitive layers caused a decrease in the overall MTF of the film
Prestige drives epistemic inequality in the diffusion of scientific ideas
The spread of ideas in the scientific community is often viewed as a
competition, in which good ideas spread further because of greater intrinsic
fitness, and publication venue and citation counts correlate with importance
and impact. However, relatively little is known about how structural factors
influence the spread of ideas, and specifically how where an idea originates
might influence how it spreads. Here, we investigate the role of faculty hiring
networks, which embody the set of researcher transitions from doctoral to
faculty institutions, in shaping the spread of ideas in computer science, and
the importance of where in the network an idea originates. We consider
comprehensive data on the hiring events of 5032 faculty at all 205
Ph.D.-granting departments of computer science in the U.S. and Canada, and on
the timing and titles of 200,476 associated publications. Analyzing five
popular research topics, we show empirically that faculty hiring can and does
facilitate the spread of ideas in science. Having established such a mechanism,
we then analyze its potential consequences using epidemic models to simulate
the generic spread of research ideas and quantify the impact of where an idea
originates on its longterm diffusion across the network. We find that research
from prestigious institutions spreads more quickly and completely than work of
similar quality originating from less prestigious institutions. Our analyses
establish the theoretical trade-offs between university prestige and the
quality of ideas necessary for efficient circulation. Our results establish
faculty hiring as an underlying mechanism that drives the persistent epistemic
advantage observed for elite institutions, and provide a theoretical lower
bound for the impact of structural inequality in shaping the spread of ideas in
science.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl
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