The Renewable Energy Target: a quick guide

This quick guide provides a brief background to the Commonwealth’s Renewable Energy Target – what it is, what it costs, how it operates, and whether it is achieving its aims. What is the Renewable Energy Target? The Renewable Energy Target is a Commonwealth Government scheme to increase the proportion of electricity generated in Australia from renewable sources, to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases from electricity generation and to promote the development of a renewable energy industry in Australia. The ‘target’ of the scheme is to generate an additional 20 per cent of electricity from renewable sources by 2020, compared with 1997 levels. (Originally, the target was an additional two per cent by 2010.) The ‘Renewable Energy Target’ also refers to the legislated scheme that provides the mechanism for achieving the target through the creation and trading of renewable energy certificates. This certificate-trading scheme allows generators of renewable energy to earn additional income for the electricity that they generate, above the market price

Remembering with your tongue: articulatory embodiment in memory and speech

Articulatory factors are typically relegated to a peripheral role in theoretical accounts of cognitive function. For example, verbal short-term memory functions are thought to be serviced by dedicated mechanisms that operate on abstract phonological (i.e., non-articulatory) items. An alternative tested here is that memory functions are supported by motor control processes that embody articulatory detail. To provide evidence for this viewpoint, this thesis focuses on the influence of articulatory effort-minimisation processes on memory and speech

Indigenism and Feminism in the Prose Fiction of Rosario Castellanos.

The novel of Indian concern has had a long vogue in Latin America, where it is known alternately as novela indianista or novela indigenista. This tradition in the novel has produced such well known works as Lopez y Fuentes\u27 El indio, Alcides Arguedas\u27 Raza de bronce, Jorge Icaza\u27s Huasipungo and Ciro Alegr(\u27)ia\u27s El mundo es ancho y ajeno, all published between 1919 and 1941. These novels seek to illustrate the deplorable conditions of life in Indian communities from Mexico to Bolivia. In so doing, however, the Indian characters of these novels are generally reduced to single dimensional characters devoid of individuality. They are objects acted upon by more powerful elements of society, usually landlords, political bosses and an indispensible priest. By mid-century several forces were at work to produce major changes in the novela indigenista. Changes in style allowed a break with the realistic-naturalistic tradition of the past. Increased anthropological studies of contemporary Indian communities and the publication and study of written documents of Indian composition called attention to aspects of Indian life other than that of exploitation. The psychological make-up of the Indian, his system of perceiving the world were now added to the prime element of social concern. The result was the creation of characters who stood out in relief against the background of their community; individual, full-dimensioned characters now emerged. In Mexico this new tradition in the indigenista novel is best represented by the works of Rosario Castellanos: two novels, Balun-Canan (1957) and Oficio de tinieblas (1962), and a collection of stories, Ciudad Real (1960). These works explore the psychology of both the Indian and his exploiting landowner, revealing considerable parallels between Indian and non-Indian societies and thus calling attention to the very human condition of both groups. Literature dealing with the condition and experience of women in Latin America has a history going back at least to the second half of the seventeenth century. In the works of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz we find concern for the exploited nature of women, for the poor education of women and for the lack of regard accorded the feminine mind. The twentieth century has witnessed a resurgence of concern for aspects of the feminine experience of life. Poets such as Juana de Ibarbouru, Alfonsina Storni, Delmira Agustini and Gabriela Mistral address problems of sensuality, sterility, isolation, lack of education and exploitation. Together with the achievement of the vote in Latin America and the increasing world-wide interest in the condition of women which followed World War II, these and other women have helped to spawn a new feminine consciousness. In Mexico Rosario Castellanos has addressed a wide range of feminine issues in poetry, in essay, in her Master\u27s thesis, and in fiction. In the two novels of indigenista concern, Castellanos introduces the element of concern for the condition of women in Indian and non-Indian societies, raising this concern to a level equal to that of concern for the condition of the Indian. Castellanos\u27 last two collections of stories, Los convidados de agosto (1964) and Album de familia (1971) abandon the Indian in order to concentrate solely on the existential dilemma facing women in Mexico both in the provinces and in the metropolis. This work examines the development of Castellanos\u27 Indian characters and the gradual evolution of her female characters, noting parallels in the condition of both the Indian and woman

Airborne measurements of western U.S. wildfire emissions: Comparison with prescribed burning and air quality implications

Wildfires emit significant amounts of pollutants that degrade air quality. Plumes from three wildfires in the western U.S. were measured from aircraft during the Studies of Emissions and Atmospheric Composition, Clouds and Climate Coupling by Regional Surveys (SEAC^4RS) and the Biomass Burning Observation Project (BBOP), both in summer 2013. This study reports an extensive set of emission factors (EFs) for over 80 gases and 5 components of submicron particulate matter (PM_1) from these temperate wildfires. These include rarely, or never before, measured oxygenated volatile organic compounds and multifunctional organic nitrates. The observed EFs are compared with previous measurements of temperate wildfires, boreal forest fires, and temperate prescribed fires. The wildfires emitted high amounts of PM_1 (with organic aerosol (OA) dominating the mass) with an average EF that is more than 2 times the EFs for prescribed fires. The measured EFs were used to estimate the annual wildfire emissions of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, total nonmethane organic compounds, and PM_1 from 11 western U.S. states. The estimated gas emissions are generally comparable with the 2011 National Emissions Inventory (NEI). However, our PM_1 emission estimate (1530 ± 570 Gg yr^(−1)) is over 3 times that of the NEI PM_(2.5) estimate and is also higher than the PM_(2.5) emitted from all other sources in these states in the NEI. This study indicates that the source of OA from biomass burning in the western states is significantly underestimated. In addition, our results indicate that prescribed burning may be an effective method to reduce fine particle emissions

Theory of photoionization-induced blueshift of ultrashort solitons in gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fibers

We show theoretically that the photoionization process in a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber filled with a Raman-inactive noble gas leads to a constant acceleration of solitons in the time domain with a continuous shift to higher frequencies, limited only by ionization loss. This phenomenon is opposite to the well-known Raman self-frequency redshift of solitons in solid-core glass fibers. We also predict the existence of unconventional long-range nonlocal soliton interactions leading to spectral and temporal soliton clustering. Furthermore, if the core is filled with a Raman-active molecular gas, spectral transformations between redshifted, blueshifted, and stabilized solitons can take place in the same fiber

Isoprene NO_3 Oxidation Products from the RO_2 + HO_2 Pathway

We describe the products of the reaction of the hydroperoxy radical (HO_2) with the alkylperoxy radical formed following addition of the nitrate radical (NO_3) and O_2 to isoprene. NO_3 adds preferentially to the C_1 position of isoprene (>6 times more favorably than addition to C_4), followed by the addition of O_2 to produce a suite of nitrooxy alkylperoxy radicals (RO_2). At an RO_2 lifetime of ∼30 s, δ-nitrooxy and β-nitrooxy alkylperoxy radicals are present in similar amounts. Gas-phase product yields from the RO_2 + HO_2 pathway are identified as 0.75–0.78 isoprene nitrooxy hydroperoxide (INP), 0.22 methyl vinyl ketone (MVK) + formaldehyde (CH_2O) + hydroxyl radical (OH) + nitrogen dioxide (NO_2), and 0–0.03 methacrolein (MACR) + CH_2O + OH + NO_2. We further examined the photochemistry of INP and identified propanone nitrate (PROPNN) and isoprene nitrooxy hydroxyepoxide (INHE) as the main products. INHE undergoes similar heterogeneous chemistry as isoprene dihydroxy epoxide (IEPOX), likely contributing to atmospheric secondary organic aerosol formation