CO2 mitigation opportunities in China

Over the past thirty years China has focused on urbanization and economic growth through rapid development and modernization of its manufacturing capability. Much of this growth was achieved though massive adoption of coal based power generation with industry and manufacturing accounting for over 70% of all electricity consumption. Although the use of coal and other hydrocarbons have successfully fueled China into an era of prosperity and global recognition, it has come at a cost to the environment and quality of life. Significant efforts to reduce coal based generation emissions have recently been achieved through the development and adoption of world leading clean coal technologies developed by China’s coal industry and backed by government initiatives. Although these new technologies are competitive with natural gas based generation emission standards, CO2 from coal based generation remains an issue and its reduction is the focus of current policy and research efforts. These efforts can broadly be reduced into two categories. The first, includes a national strategy to reduce CO2 emission by implementing increased amounts of hydro and renewable generation technologies, such as wind and solar, onto the grid. The development of energy storage to address the intermittency of renewables along with the adoption of distributed resources will significantly contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions in China. The second category involves a strategy based on the capture of CO2 for sequestration, a near term solution, and a longer term solution based on conversion and reutilization of CO2 for high valued products and processes. NICE, the central R&D institute of Shenhua Group, has successfully executed the first full-ranged CCS project in China, from CO2 capture, to transporting, to injection and storage. The primary goal of the study was to determine the feasibility to safely store CO2 and 300,000 tonnes of CO2 had been injected as of the end of 2015. The site is currently under continuously monitoring for leakage and safety. This presentation will focus on the ongoing and future research and technology development efforts for CO2 mitigation strategies at NICE that will lead to significant reductions of CO2 emissions in China

Mimicking Portfolios with Conditioning Information

Mimicking portfolios have long been useful in asset pricing research. In most empirical applications, the portfolio weights are assumed to be fixed over time, while in theory they may be functions of the economic state. This paper derives and characterizes mimicking portfolios in the presence of predetermined state variables, or conditioning information. The results generalize and integrate multifactor minimum variance efficiency (Fama, 1996) with conditional and unconditional mean variance efficiency (Hansen and Richard (1987), Ferson and Siegel, 2001). Empirical examples illustrate the potential importance of time-varying mimicking portfolio weights and highlight challenges in their application.

Two-Stage Maximum Score Estimator

This paper considers the asymptotic theory of a semiparametric M-estimator that is generally applicable to models that satisfy a monotonicity condition in one or several parametric indexes. We call the estimator two-stage maximum score (TSMS) estimator since our estimator involves a first-stage nonparametric regression when applied to the binary choice model of Manski (1975, 1985). We characterize the asymptotic distribution of the TSMS estimator, which features phase transitions depending on the dimension and thus the convergence rate of the first-stage estimation. We show that the TSMS estimator is asymptotically equivalent to the smoothed maximum-score estimator (Horowitz, 1992) when the dimension of the first-step estimation is relatively low, while still achieving partial rate acceleration relative to the cubic-root rate when the dimension is not too high. Effectively, the first-stage nonparametric estimator serves as an imperfect smoothing function on a non-smooth criterion function, leading to the pivotality of the first-stage estimation error with respect to the second-stage convergence rate and asymptotic distributio

Ultrasensitive spectrophotometer

The invention concerns improvements in spectrophotometry. Aspects of the invention may be used independently or together to increase the sensitivity of spectrophotometry. One aspect of the invention is a spectrophotometer detection circuit. In this aspect of the invention, currents attributable to reference and sample beams are cancelled in the current mode. The detection circuit produces a first voltage proportional to the difference in currents and a second voltage proportional to one of the reference or sample beams. Both voltages are available to allow simultaneous measurement and analysis. Another aspect of the invention concerns thermal stability. According to the invention, thermal conductivity is established among the housing and optical system components to promote equilibrium. Another preferred embodiment has a unitary solid metal housing with a hollowed portion defined to mount and place optical system components. Recognition and identification of important noise sources in spectrophotometers forms an aspect of the invention contributing to the features and combinations of features in preferred embodiments. Many noise sources would not normally be considered in conventional spectrophotometry because the magnitude of particular noise sources dominates device performance. For the most up-to-date information about these patents, including the availability of Certificates of Correction, be sure to check the United States Patent and Trademark Office\u27s free, publicly accessible database: Patent Public Search https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/static/pages/landing.htmlhttps://irl.umsl.edu/patents/1036/thumbnail.jp

Organizational Disaster Communication Ecology: Examining Interagency Coordination on Social Media During the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Interagency coordination is crucial for effective multiagency disaster management. Viewing government and emergency management organizations as vital components of citizens’ disaster communication ecology, this study examines how a group of Texas-based public health departments and emergency management offices engaged in interagency coordination during different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. By analyzing coronavirus-related agency tweets between early February and the end of August 2020, the study assesses two types of interagency coordination: (1) contentlevel coordination in the form of semantic similarity among the selected public agencies serving different jurisdictions and (2) relational-level coordination in terms of referencing common stakeholders through retweeting coronavirus-related information. Using a granular, four-stage construct of a crisis, results identify stage-based variation with regard to peer-to-peer and federal-to-local coordination. We conclude with theoretical and practical implications for communication ecology and disaster management

The Berardenga Antependium and the Passio Ymaginis Office

Table S1. Signatures summary. A summary of 33 signatures about the platforms derived from, the subtypes used for, the gene number included, and the function terms involved. Table S8. The number of function terms in each signature. (PDF 82 kb

Uncovering the Arabidopsis thaliana nectary transcriptome: investigation of differential gene expression in floral nectariferous tissues

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Many flowering plants attract pollinators by offering a reward of floral nectar. Remarkably, the molecular events involved in the development of nectaries, the organs that produce nectar, as well as the synthesis and secretion of nectar itself, are poorly understood. Indeed, to date, no genes have been shown to directly affect the <it>de novo </it>production or quality of floral nectar. To address this gap in knowledge, the ATH1 Affymetrix^®GeneChip array was used to systematically investigate the Arabidopsis nectary transcriptome to identify genes and pathways potentially involved in nectar production.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this study, we identified a large number of genes differentially expressed between secretory lateral nectaries and non-secretory median nectary tissues, as well as between mature lateral nectaries (post-anthesis) and immature lateral nectaries (pre-anthesis). Expression within nectaries was also compared to thirteen non-nectary reference tissues, from which 270 genes were identified as being significantly upregulated in nectaries. The expression patterns of 14 nectary-enriched genes were also confirmed via RT PCR. Upon looking into functional groups of upregulated genes, pathways involved in gene regulation, carbohydrate metabolism, and lipid metabolism were particularly enriched in nectaries versus reference tissues.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>A large number of genes preferentially expressed in nectaries, as well as between nectary types and developmental stages, were identified. Several hypotheses relating to mechanisms of nectar production and regulation thereof are proposed, and provide a starting point for reverse genetics approaches to determine molecular mechanisms underlying nectar synthesis and secretion.</p

The graph distance game

In the graph distance game, two players alternate in constructing a maximal path. The objective function is the distance between the two endpoints of the path, which one player tries to maximize and the other tries to minimize. In this note, we examine the distance game for various graphs, and provide general bounds, exact results for special graphs, and an algorithm for trees. Computer calculations suggest interesting conjectures for grids