Power Source Characterization for Microgrid Systems

Our project aims to develop an affordable and versatile device for testing and analyzing solar panels, batteries, and other voltage sources. The primary objective is to create a portable, cost-effective, and space-efficient device that can be used in various scenarios, including the evaluation of remote microgrids and specialized systems. The device will enable users to gather crucial information about the voltage-current relationship, voltage-power relationship, and other power characteristics of each test source across a range of load currents. One key aspect of the device is its configurability, allowing users to easily modify device parameters and components to accommodate different use cases. This includes supporting lower or higher power sources, adapting to sources with different characteristic curves, and accommodating a wide input source voltage range. By providing users with digestible and valuable data, the device will facilitate the characterization and design of diverse energy systems that utilize these energy sources

The Impact of Short Breaks on Families with a Disabled Child: Report One of the Quantitative Phase

This document reports on a cross-sectional sample of families with a disabled child using short breaks in England; it describes the characteristics of children and families using short breaks, the nature and quantity of the short breaks they are using, their experiences of and satisfaction with short breaks and which factors are associated with a range of outcomes for family carers, disabled children and their siblings. This report uses both quantitative data derived from standardised questions and qualitative data from family members’ written responses to open-ended questions in the survey instruments

The impacts of short break provision on disabled children and families: an international literature review

For over 30 years, short breaks have been part of the landscape of support provision for families with a disabled child. Historically, the term ‘respite care’ has been used in much of the research literature concerning short breaks for families with a disabled child. However, ‘short breaks’ has become the preferred term, partly due to the negative connotations of family carers requiring ‘respite’ from their children, and partly because short breaks now encompass a much wider range of supports than out-of-home placement in specialist residential facilities (Cramer and Carlin, 2008). As such, the term ‘short breaks’ will be used throughout this review, with the exception of direct quotes from research studies where the term ‘respite’ is used by study participants or study authors

Do the short helices exist in the nematic TB phase?

Dimeric compounds forming twist-bend nematic, Ntb, phase show unusual optical textures related to the formation of arrays of focal conic defects (FCDs). Some of the focal conics exhibit submicron internal structure with 8 nm periodicity, which is very close to that found in the crystalline phase of the material, that might suggest surface freezing

Soft modes of the dielectric response in the twist-bend nematic phase and identification of the transition to a nematic splay bend phase in the CBC7CB dimer

The dielectric spectra of the twist-bend nematic phase (NTB) of (the bent-shaped) achiral liquid-crystal dimer 1′′-,7′′-bis(4-cyanobiphenyl-4′-yl)heptane (CB7CB) are studied for the determination of the different relaxation modes. Two molecular processes and one collective process were observed in the megahertz frequency range. Two molecular processes were assigned: One to the precessional rotation of the longitudinal components of the cyanobiphenyl groups and the second one to the spinning rotation of the transverse component of the CB7CB dimer. The peak, at a frequency of about 1 MHz, shows a peculiar temperature behavior at the NTB to N transition, reminiscent of the soft mode at the transition from the SmA to the SmC phase. This peak can be assigned to a collective fluctuation of the tilt angle of the coarse grained director N with respect to the pseudo-layer normal. This corresponds well with the electro-clinic effect observed as a response to an electric field in electro-optic experiments. The low frequency relaxation process, observed in the frequency range of 1 Hz-102 Hz can be identified as a Goldstone mode, related to long-scale fluctuation of the cone phase. The frequency drop of the mode on increasing the bias field is interpreted as unwinding of a helix and an indication of the formation of a field induced nematic splay bend phase (NSB). This finding is also confirmed by birefringence data in the presence of strong bias fields

epinet: An R Package to Analyze Epidemics Spread across Contact Networks

We present the R package epinet, which provides tools for analyzing the spread of epidemics through populations. We assume that the relationships among individuals in a population are modeled by a contact network described by an exponential-family random graph model and that the disease being studied spreads across the edges of this network from infectious to susceptible individuals. We use a susceptible-exposed-infectiousremoved compartmental model to describe the progress of the disease within each host. We describe the functionality of the package, which consists of routines that perform simulation, plotting, and inference. The main inference routine utilizes a Bayesian approach and a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm. We demonstrate the use of the package through two examples, one involving simulated data and one using data from an actual measles outbreak