Sustainability and the Development of an Energy Efficient Housing Stock: a review of some theoretical issues

Global stabilisation of carbon emissions may require emission reductions of 60 percent in the first half of the next century and governments are placing increasing importance on energy efficiency in carbon abatement policies. However a large gap exists between what is possible and what has been achieved to date. This paper seeks to discuss the fundamental issues which should be addressed in the definition and application of energy efficiency policy designed to close the gap. It also addresses the likely impact of take-back effects (the Brookes-Khazzom postulate). The paper argues that despite the considerable work on the problem, the mechanisms which determine the propensity of individuals and organisations to invest in efficiency improvements are not well understood and that greater attention should be paid to motivational factors if a more complete understanding is to emerge

Learning to Tango: Sustainable development and the multidisciplinary dream

It is widely accepted that the creation of a sustainable future will require considerable collaboration between a range of academic and professional disciplines. This need is usually expressed in calls for the formation of multidisciplinary teams that are designed to explore the issues and develop our understanding of the problem space. However, there would appear to be few attempts to understand how such teams operate and how they should be managed. This paper explores collective music making as a useful metaphor for understanding the role of specialist skills, of generalist, management and support skills and the way they could be harnessed so that each is able to provide the right contribution at the right time ensuring that all contributions intertwine to create a powerful song. In unpacking the multidisciplinary bag, the paper draws on the author’s experience and observations in both collective music making and the development of regulatory structures and technologies for sustainable housing. It provides a reflective reassessment of the nature of multidisciplinary working and how, with a much deeper understanding of the difficulties involved, multidisciplinary approaches can be enabled so as to deliver the solutions required for a more sustainable world

Electronic states of trans-polyacetylene, poly(p-phenylene vinylene) and sp-hybridised carbon species in amorphous hydrogenated carbon probed by resonant Raman scattering

Inclusions of sp-hybridised, trans-polyacetylene [trans-(CH)x] and poly(p-phenylene vinylene) (PPV) chains are revealed using resonant Raman scattering (RRS) investigation of amorphous hydrogenated carbon (a-C:H) films in the near IR - UV range. The RRS spectra of trans-(CH)x core Ag modes and the PPV CC-H phenylene mode are found to transform and disperse as the laser excitation energy \hbar{\omega}L is increased from near IR through visible to UV, whereas sp-bonded inclusions only become evident in UV. This is attributed to \hbar{\omega}L probing of trans-(CH)x chain inhomogeneity and the distribution of chains with varying conjugation length; for PPV to the resonant probing of phelynene ring disorder; and for sp segments, to \hbar{\omega}L probing of a local band gap of end-terminated polyynes. The IR spectra analysis confirmed the presence of sp, trans-(CH)x and PPV inclusions. The obtained RRS results for a-C:H denote differentiation between the core Ag trans-(CH)x modes and the PPV phenylene mode. Furthermore, it was found that at various laser excitation energies the changes in Raman spectra features for trans-(CH)x segments included in an amorphous carbon matrix are the same as in bulk trans-polyacetylene. The latter finding can be used to facilitate identification of trans-(CH)x in the spectra of complex carbonaceous materials.Comment: 31 page, 9 figure

Exact General Solutions to Extraordinary N-body Problems

We solve the N-body problems in which the total potential energy is any function of the mass-weighted root-mean-square radius of the system of N point masses. The fundamental breathing mode of such systems vibrates non-linearly for ever. If the potential is supplemented by any function that scales as the inverse square of the radius there is still no damping of the fundamental breathing mode. For such systems a remarkable new statistical equilibrium is found for the other coordinates and momenta, which persists even as the radius changes continually.Comment: 15 pages, LaTeX. Accepted for publication in Proc. Roy. Soc.

Relaxation to a Perpetually Pulsating Equilibrium

Paper in honour of Freeman Dyson on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Normal N-body systems relax to equilibrium distributions in which classical kinetic energy components are 1/2 kT, but, when inter-particle forces are an inverse cubic repulsion together with a linear (simple harmonic) attraction, the system pulsates for ever. In spite of this pulsation in scale, r(t), other degrees of freedom relax to an ever-changing Maxwellian distribution. With a new time, tau, defined so that r^2d/dt =d/d tau it is shown that the remaining degrees of freedom evolve with an unchanging reduced Hamiltonian. The distribution predicted by equilibrium statistical mechanics applied to the reduced Hamiltonian is an ever-pulsating Maxwellian in which the temperature pulsates like r^-2. Numerical simulation with 1000 particles demonstrate a rapid relaxation to this pulsating equilibrium.Comment: 9 pages including 4 figure

The York Energy Demonstration Project: Final Report

In the early to mid 1990s the UK government funded a series of demonstration projects in local authority housing designed to implement a wide range of energy saving measures which could be incorporated into modernisation programmes. This programme (the Greenhouse Programme) ran from 1991 to 1994 and funded some 183 schemes (over 50,000 dwellings) of which the York project was one. In common with many energy demonstration projects, the York Project had two main aims. The first was to confirm that the application of readily available technology could deliver significant energy benefits within the context of a routine local authority housing modernisation programme. The second was to extract lessons for the operation of future energy conscious modernisation schemes

Between social policy and Union citizenship: the Framework Directive on equal treatment in employment

In December 2000, the Council adopted the Framework Directive forbidding discrimination on grounds of religion or belief, disability, age and sexual orientation in the field of employment. The Directive adopted Article 13 EC as its legal basis. However, there are strong arguments suggesting that this was not the correct choice of legal basis; in particular, the Social Chapter of the EC Treaty (Title XI) provided an alternative legal foundation, including different legislative processes (co-decision and the social dialogue). This article first examines the legal grounds requiring a different legal basis for the Directive and then explores the wider political imperatives that may explain the preference of the EU institutions for relying instead on Article 13 EC.</p