Flat-plate solar array project. Volume 1: Executive summary

In 1975, the U.S. Government contracted the Jet Propulsion Lab. to develop, by 1985, in conjunction with industry, the photovoltaics (PV) module and array technology required for widespread use of photovoltaics as a significant terrestrial energy source. As a result, a project that eventually became known as the Flat Plate Solar Array (FSA) Project was formed to manage an industry, university, and Government team to perform the necessary research and development. The original goals were to achieve widespread commercial use of PV modules and arrays through the development of technology that would allow them to be profitably sold for $1.07/peak watts (1985 dollars). A 10% module conversion efficiency and a 20 year lifetime were also goals. It is intended that the executive summary provide the means by which one can gain a perspective on 11 years of terrestrial photovoltaic research and development conducted by the FSA Project

FSAs future role

The latest thinking about how the Flat-Plate Solar Array Project (FSA), will redirect activities away from recent product-oriented technology development efforts and toward longer-term research on technical problems that could limit future large-scale use of photovoltaics is addressed. With the emphasis on research, the Project is now organizing a series of workshops addressing the key basic technological questions by specific topic. Intervals between Project Integration Meetings are being extended because there are fewer contracts within ESA and because work under those contracts has been attenuated

Statistical stopping criteria for automated screening in systematic reviews

Active learning for systematic review screening promises to reduce the human effort required to identify relevant documents for a systematic review. Machines and humans work together, with humans providing training data, and the machine optimising the documents that the humans screen. This enables the identification of all relevant documents after viewing only a fraction of the total documents. However, current approaches lack robust stopping criteria, so that reviewers do not know when they have seen all or a certain proportion of relevant documents. This means that such systems are hard to implement in live reviews. This paper introduces a workflow with flexible statistical stopping criteria, which offer real work reductions on the basis of rejecting a hypothesis of having missed a given recall target with a given level of confidence. The stopping criteria are shown on test datasets to achieve a reliable level of recall, while still providing work reductions of on average 17%. Other methods proposed previously are shown to provide inconsistent recall and work reductions across datasets

New distributional record of Anthrenus dorsatus Mulsant & Rey, 1868 (Coleoptera, Dermestidae) on the island of Mallorca, Spain

The carpet beetle Anthrenus dorsatus has previously been recorded from North Africa and Malta. During a recent visit to the island of Mallorca several Anthrenus species were collected which included a number of Anthrenus dorsatusspecimens. This record adds a new species both to the island of Mallorca and to the Spanish checklist. These records extend our knowledge of the distribution of A. dorsatus and provide more evidence of range expansion in the pimpinel-lae species group across Europe, possibly because of global climate change

In search of a future strategy for market research services: clients' views on market research suppliers

The market research environment is transforming rapidly and research suppliers may not be keeping up with changing research client needs. This paper examines research client perceptions of current research supplier performance and future competencies. The key findings are that research suppliers need to move their staffing profiles beyond technical expertise in conducting research (generating outputs) to functional expertise in understanding research outcomes within internal and external organizational contexts. The transition from data collector to expert advisor may involve anew business model and new pricing strategies based on intellectual expertise rather than margins on data collection services

Is Community-based Work Compatible with Data Collection?

Although community-based projects have introduced a successful model for addressing many social problems, less consideration has been given to how such projects should be evaluated. This paper considers whether the philosophy underlying community-based practice is compatible with data collection. Specifically at issue is whether empirical indicators are helpful to summarize a project. Although having valid knowledge is important, this paper makes a distinction between merely collecting data versus understanding the course of a project. The key point is that community participation requires a unique perspective on how knowledge is negotiated and interpreted

‘Publish or perish’: Family life and academic research productivity

Research purpose: The influence of work-to-family and family-to-work spillovers is well documented in the human resources literature. However, little is known of the relationships between the pressures faced by academics to publish and the potential family life consequences of being a highly productive academic. Research design, approach and method: This research sought to investigate these relationships within the context of a large South African university by testing associations between family life variables such as marriage and dependent children against measures of the following specific types of research publication: (1) South African Department of Higher Education and Training–accredited journal publications; (2) Thompson Reuters Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and ProQuest’s International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS)– indexed journal article publications; (3) conference proceedings publications; (4) conference paper presentations; (5) book chapter publications; (6) book publications; and (7) gross research productivity, reflecting a volume or quantity measure of research publication. Main findings: ISI and/or IBSS journal article publication is found to be negatively associated with dependent children, but only for male academics, and to be negatively associated with female gender over and above the effect of family life variables in testing. Practical/managerial implications: Human resources managers in universities need to be cognisant of the specific pressures faced by staff that are required to produce ever more research publications, in order to help them achieve work–life balance. Contribution: In a global context of increasing pressures for research publication, and for higher and higher numbers of publications, it is necessary to identify the potential costs involved for high-volume–producing academics, particularly in terms of family versus work. Keywords: research productivity; family-work life balanc

A test of satisfaction, experience and hours of work as mediators of the relationship between education and informal earnings

At the heart of policies aimed at eliminating informal street trading seems to be a ‘marginalist’ perspective of the sector which does not see it as contributing to socio-economic development. What is not clear, however, is what underlies the financial dysfunctionality associated with the sector. Using a sample of 303 inner city street traders drawn from Johannesburg, a large South African city, tests of regression and mediated regression were used to test theory that predicts the existence of certain human capital relationships that may contribute to increased earnings for these traders. Findings suggest that certain human capital relationships in this sector may differ from those normally found in formal working contexts, in that although education is significantly associated with earnings, continuance satisfaction, experience and expenditure of effort, or hours worked per day, all do not mediate relationships between education and earnings. It is suggested that current policies might be keeping traders in a state of ‘flux’, where human capital transmission to financial performance might be unable to take root through seeking to ‘crack down’ on the sector instead of investing in the sector to enable its functionality, and hence its potential contribution to economic development