End-use load control for power system dynamic stability enhancement

Faced with the prospect of increasing utilization of the transmission and distribution infrastructure without significant upgrade, the domestic electric power utility industry is investing heavily in technologies to improve network dynamic performance through a program loosely referred to as Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS). Devices exploiting recent advances in power electronics are being installed in the power system to offset the need to construct new transmission lines. These devices collectively represent investment potential of several billion dollars over the next decade. A similar development, designed to curtail the peak loads and thus defer new transmission, distribution, and generation investment, falls under a category of technologies referred to as demand side management (DSM). A subset of broader conservation measures, DSM acts directly on the load to reduce peak consumption. DSM techniques include direct load control, in which a utility has the ability to curtail specific loads as conditions warrant. A novel approach has been conceived by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to combine the objectives of FACTS and the technologies inherent in DSM to provide a distributed power system dynamic controller. This technology has the potential to dramatically offset major investments in FACTS devices by using direct load control to achieve dynamic stability objectives. The potential value of distributed versus centralized grid modulation has been examined by simulating the western power grid under extreme loading conditions. In these simulations, a scenario is analyzed in which active grid stabilization enables power imports into the southern California region to be increased several hundred megawatts beyond present limitations. Modeling results show distributed load control is up to 30 percent more effective than traditional centralized control schemes in achieving grid stability

Self-reported psychopathy in the Middle East: a cross-national comparison across Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United States

Background: The construct of psychopathy is sparsely researched in the non-Western world, particularly in the Middle East. As such, the extent to which the psychopathy construct can be generalized to other cultures, including Middle Eastern Arab cultures, is largely unknown. Methods: The present study investigated the cross-cultural/national comparability of self-reported psychopathy in the United States (N = 786), Egypt (N = 296), and Saudi Arabia (N = 341). Results: A widely used psychopathy questionnaire demonstrated largely similar properties across the American and Middle Eastern samples and associations between Five Factor Model (FFM) personality and psychopathy were broadly consistent. Nevertheless, several notable cross-cultural differences emerged, particularly with regard to the internal consistencies of psychopathy dimensions and the correlates of Coldheartedness. Additionally, in contrast to most findings in Western cultures, associations between psychopathy and FFM personality varied consistently by gender in the Egyptian sample. Conclusions: These findings lend preliminary support to the construct validity of self-reported psychopathy in Arabic-speaking cultures, providing provisional evidence for the cross-cultural generalizability of certain core characteristics of psychopathy

FlashCam: A fully digital camera for CTA telescopes

The future Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will consist of several tens of telescopes of different mirror sizes. CTA will provide next generation sensitivity to very high energy photons from few tens of GeV to >100 TeV. Several focal plane instrumentation options are currently being evaluated inside the CTA consortium. In this paper, the current status of the FlashCam prototyping project is described. FlashCam is based on a fully digital camera readout concept and features a clean separation between photon detector plane and signal digitization/triggering electronics.Comment: In Proceedings of the 2012 Heidelberg Symposium on High Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy. All CTA contributions at arXiv:1211.184

Precursor flares in OJ 287

We have studied three most recent precursor flares in the light curve of the blazar OJ 287 while invoking the presence of a precessing binary black hole in the system to explain the nature of these flares. Precursor flare timings from the historical light curves are compared with theoretical predictions from our model that incorporate effects of an accretion disk and post-Newtonian description for the binary black hole orbit. We find that the precursor flares coincide with the secondary black hole descending towards the accretion disk of the primary black hole from the observed side, with a mean z-component of approximately z_c = 4000 AU. We use this model of precursor flares to predict that precursor flare of similar nature should happen around 2020.96 before the next major outburst in 2022.Comment: to appear in the Astrophysical Journa

Elastic Properties and the Band Gap of AlN

Structural and elastic properties of AlNxP1-x, a novel semiconductor alloy, are studied from the first principles in both zinc-blende and wurtzite structures. Performances of the finite difference (FD) method and the density functional perturbation theory (DFPT) are tested and compared. Both of these methods are applied to two different approaches of alloy simulation, a supercell of 16 and 32 atoms (for zinc-blende and wurtzite structures, resp.) and the alchemical mixing (AM) method, where the pseudopotentials are mixed in an appropriate way to form an alloy. All elastic properties, including the elastic tensors, elastic moduli, Poisson’s ratio, B/G, and relaxation coefficient, as well as lattice parameters are calculated using all said methods. Conclusions about the use of the approaches investigated in this paper and about their performance are drawn. In addition, in both crystal structures, the band gap is studied in the whole composition range using the MBJLDA functional. The band gap bowings are unusually high, which confirms earlier reports

Growth, Crystal Structure and Magnetic Characterization of Zn-Stabilized CePtIn4

The growth and characterization of CePtIn4, stabilized by 10% Zn substitution for In, is reported. The new material is orthorhombic, space group Cmcm (No. 63), with lattice parameters a = 4.51751(4) {\AA}, b = 16.7570(2) {\AA}, and c = 7.36682(8) {\AA}, and the refined crystal composition has 10% of Zn substituted for In, i.e. the crystals are CePt(In3.6Zn0.1)4. Crystals were grown using a self-flux method: only growths containing Zn yielded CePtIn4 crystals, while Ce3Pt4In13 crystals formed when Zn was not present. Anisotropic temperature-dependent magnetic susceptibilities for single crystals show that Zn-stabilized CePtIn4 orders magnetically at ~1.9 K. High-temperature Curie-Weiss fits indicate an effective moment of ~2.30 muB/ Ce and a directionally averaged Weiss-temperature of approximately - 9 K. Specific heat data shows a peak consistent with the ordering temperature seen in the magnetic susceptibility data. Zn-stabilized CePtIn4 is metallic and displays no superconducting transition down to 0.14 K.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl