Stand-alone flat-plate photovoltaic power systems: System sizing and life-cycle costing methodology for Federal agencies

A simple methodology to estimate photovoltaic system size and life-cycle costs in stand-alone applications is presented. It is designed to assist engineers at Government agencies in determining the feasibility of using small stand-alone photovoltaic systems to supply ac or dc power to the load. Photovoltaic system design considerations are presented as well as the equations for sizing the flat-plate array and the battery storage to meet the required load. Cost effectiveness of a candidate photovoltaic system is based on comparison with the life-cycle cost of alternative systems. Examples of alternative systems addressed are batteries, diesel generators, the utility grid, and other renewable energy systems

Negotiating the educational spaces of urban multiculture: Skills, competencies and college life

This paper contributes to research on urban multiculture and debates as to how people routinely live and experience ethnic diversity in their everyday lives. This research takes an ‘unpanicked’ approach to multiculture that sits differently to, although not unaffected by, multiculturalism as policy objective and those debates around multiculturalism that variously celebrate cultural difference or construct it through crisis talk. Critical to this paper are the routine phenomenologies of multiculture and the everyday practices, competencies and skills of young people attending college. Because of their diverse intakes and the openness of young people to difference, colleges are key sites within which urban multiculture is experienced and through which it is defined. Based on participant observation, repeat in-depth discussion groups and interviews, the focus of this paper is young adults attending post-16 colleges and schools in three ethnically diverse urban locations. Colleges and schools are urban spaces that mediate sociality and student experience but are also woven into the wider urban setting in which they are placed. The paper explores the skills and competencies that young adults develop to negotiate college and we particularly focus on their use of jokes and the exercise of restraint to get along with others

Component-aware Orchestration of Cloud-based Enterprise Applications, from TOSCA to Docker and Kubernetes

Enterprise IT is currently facing the challenge of coordinating the management of complex, multi-component applications across heterogeneous cloud platforms. Containers and container orchestrators provide a valuable solution to deploy multi-component applications over cloud platforms, by coupling the lifecycle of each application component to that of its hosting container. We hereby propose a solution for going beyond such a coupling, based on the OASIS standard TOSCA and on Docker. We indeed propose a novel approach for deploying multi-component applications on top of existing container orchestrators, which allows to manage each component independently from the container used to run it. We also present prototype tools implementing our approach, and we show how we effectively exploited them to carry out a concrete case study

Consumer and carer consultants in mental health: The formation of their role identity

Following the introduction of the first National Mental Health Plan in 1992 consumer participation was and continues to be identified as a key component of the reform of Australia's mental health services. One strategy to achieve participation has been the creation of the role of consumer and carer consultants (CCCs) who have been employed in public mental health services since the early 1990s. Despite over two decades of service by CCCs there seems to be little consensus between the CCCs and mental health professionals regarding the roles and function of these positions. This qualitative study sought to explore the question of 'what is the role of consultants?' from the perspective of CCCs, focusing in particular on the formation of CCCs' role identity. Four themes were identified, namely: role motivation; role preparation; role practice/focus; and role ambiguity/conflict. This paper explores these themes and their implications, and finally makes recommendations regarding clinical practice

Effects of carbon incorporation on doping state of YBa2Cu3Oy

Effects of carbon incorporation on the doping state of YBa2Cu3Oy (Y-123) were investigated. Quantitative carbon analysis revealed that carbon could be introduced into Y-123 from both the precursor and the sintering gas. Nearly carbon-free (< 200 ppm) samples were prepared from a vacuum-treated precursor by sintered at 900 &#730;C and cooling with 20 &#730;C /min in flowing oxygen gas. The lower Tc (= 88 K) and higher oxygen content (y = 6.98) strongly suggested the overdoping state, which was supported by the temperature dependence of resisitivity and thermoelectric power. The nuclear quadrapole resonance spectra and the Raman scattering spectra indicated that there was almost no oxygen defect in the Cu-O chain in these samples. On the other hand, in the same cooling condition, the samples sintered in air stayed at optimal doping level with Tc = 93 K, and the intentionally carbon-doped sample was in the underdoping state. It is revealed that about 60% of incorporated carbon was substituted for Cu at the chain site in the form of CO32+, and the rest remains at the grain boundary as carbonate impurities. Such incorporation affected the oxygen absorption process in Y-123. It turned out that the oxygen content in Y-123 cannot be controlled only by the annealing temperature and the oxygen partial pressure but also by the incorporated carbon concentration.Comment: 16pages, 9figure

Delayed onsets are not necessary for generating distractor quitting thresholds effects in visual search

Acknowledgments This research is supported by a National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant awarded to J.P (2016-06359). Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member InstitutionsPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Emphasizing responder speed or accuracy modulates but does not abolish the distractor-induced quitting effect in visual search

Acknowledgements This research project was initially presented at the 2023 Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference (Lawrence et al., 2023c April 12–14). The authors would like to acknowledge the feedback and insights provided by Professor Allison Waters throughout the conceptualization and execution of this project. Funding This research was supported by a Griffith University New Researcher Grant awarded to RKL.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Teleportation-based number state manipulation with number sum measurement

We examine various manipulations of photon number states which can be implemented by teleportation technique with number sum measurement. The preparations of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen resources as well as the number sum measurement resulting in projection to certain Bell state may be done conditionally with linear optical elements, i.e., beam splitters, phase shifters and zero-one-photon detectors. Squeezed vacuum states are used as primary entanglement resource, while single-photon sources are not required.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, Misprints are corrected. 3 figures for number sum measurement are added. Discussion on manipulations are expanded. Calculations for success probabilities are added. Fig.4 is adde

Use of modified U1 snRNAs to inhibit HIV-1 replication

Control of RNA processing plays a central role in regulating the replication of HIV-1, in particular the 3′ polyadenylation of viral RNA. Based on the demonstration that polyadenylation of mRNAs can be disrupted by the targeted binding of modified U1 snRNA, we examined whether binding of U1 snRNAs to conserved 10 nt regions within the terminal exon of HIV-1 was able to inhibit viral structural protein expression. In this report, we demonstrate that U1 snRNAs complementary to 5 of the 15 regions targeted result in significant suppression of HIV-1 protein expression and viral replication coincident with loss of viral RNA. Suppression of viral gene expression is dependent upon appropriate assembly of a U1 snRNP particle as mutations of U1 snRNA that affect binding of U1 70K or Sm proteins significantly reduced efficacy. However, constructs lacking U1A binding sites retained significant anti-viral activity. This finding suggests a role for these mutants in situations where the wild-type constructs cause toxic effects. The conserved nature of the sequences targeted and the high efficacy of the constructs suggests that this strategy has significant potential as an HIV therapeutic

Field measurements of trace gases and aerosols emitted by peat fires in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, during the 2015 El Nino

Abstract. Peat fires in Southeast Asia have become a major annual source of trace gases and particles to the regional–global atmosphere. The assessment of their influence on atmospheric chemistry, climate, air quality, and health has been uncertain partly due to a lack of field measurements of the smoke characteristics. During the strong 2015 El Niño event we deployed a mobile smoke sampling team in the Indonesian province of Central Kalimantan on the island of Borneo and made the first, or rare, field measurements of trace gases, aerosol optical properties, and aerosol mass emissions for authentic peat fires burning at various depths in different peat types. This paper reports the trace gas and aerosol measurements obtained by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, whole air sampling, photoacoustic extinctiometers (405 and 870 nm), and a small subset of the data from analyses of particulate filters. The trace gas measurements provide emission factors (EFs; grams of a compound per kilogram biomass burned) for up to  ∼  90 gases, including CO2, CO, CH4, non-methane hydrocarbons up to C10, 15 oxygenated organic compounds, NH3, HCN, NOx, OCS, HCl, etc. The modified combustion efficiency (MCE) of the smoke sources ranged from 0.693 to 0.835 with an average of 0.772 ± 0.053 (n  =  35), indicating essentially pure smoldering combustion, and the emissions were not initially strongly lofted. The major trace gas emissions by mass (EF as g kg−1) were carbon dioxide (1564 ± 77), carbon monoxide (291 ± 49), methane (9.51 ± 4.74), hydrogen cyanide (5.75 ± 1.60), acetic acid (3.89 ± 1.65), ammonia (2.86 ± 1.00), methanol (2.14 ± 1.22), ethane (1.52 ± 0.66), dihydrogen (1.22 ± 1.01), propylene (1.07 ± 0.53), propane (0.989 ± 0.644), ethylene (0.961 ± 0.528), benzene (0.954 ± 0.394), formaldehyde (0.867 ± 0.479), hydroxyacetone (0.860 ± 0.433), furan (0.772 ± 0.035), acetaldehyde (0.697 ± 0.460), and acetone (0.691 ± 0.356). These field data support significant revision of the EFs for CO2 (−8 %), CH4 (−55 %), NH3 (−86 %), CO (+39 %), and other gases compared with widely used recommendations for tropical peat fires based on a lab study of a single sample published in 2003. BTEX compounds (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes) are important air toxics and aerosol precursors and were emitted in total at 1.5 ± 0.6 g kg−1. Formaldehyde is probably the air toxic gas most likely to cause local exposures that exceed recommended levels. The field results from Kalimantan were in reasonable agreement with recent lab measurements of smoldering Kalimantan peat for “overlap species,” lending importance to the lab finding that burning peat produces large emissions of acetamide, acrolein, methylglyoxal, etc., which were not measurable in the field with the deployed equipment and implying value in continued similar efforts. The aerosol optical data measured include EFs for the scattering and absorption coefficients (EF Bscat and EF Babs, m2 kg−1 fuel burned) and the single scattering albedo (SSA) at 870 and 405 nm, as well as the absorption Ångström exponents (AAE). By coupling the absorption and co-located trace gas and filter data we estimated black carbon (BC) EFs (g kg−1) and the mass absorption coefficient (MAC, m2 g−1) for the bulk organic carbon (OC) due to brown carbon (BrC). Consistent with the minimal flaming, the emissions of BC were negligible (0.0055 ± 0.0016 g kg−1). Aerosol absorption at 405 nm was  ∼  52 times larger than at 870 nm and BrC contributed  ∼  96 % of the absorption at 405 nm. Average AAE was 4.97 ± 0.65 (range, 4.29–6.23). The average SSA at 405 nm (0.974 ± 0.016) was marginally lower than the average SSA at 870 nm (0.998 ± 0.001). These data facilitate modeling climate-relevant aerosol optical properties across much of the UV/visible spectrum and the high AAE and lower SSA at 405 nm demonstrate the dominance of absorption by the organic aerosol. Comparing the Babs at 405 nm to the simultaneously measured OC mass on filters suggests a low MAC ( ∼  0.1) for the bulk OC, as expected for the low BC/OC ratio in the aerosol. The importance of pyrolysis (at lower MCE), as opposed to glowing (at higher MCE), in producing BrC is seen in the increase of AAE with lower MCE (r2 =  0.65)