Hierarchical Ambiguities in Copula Coordinate Structures in Slovene and Other Slavic Languages

SLOVENE: Lastnosti prirednosti so vroča tema v sodobni lingvistiki. Mnogi problemi, ki so še danes v ospredju jezikoslovnega raziskovanja, so pritegovali pozornost avtorjev že v času antike. Tako že Aristotel in Dionizij Traški razpravljata o derivaciji in članstvu v prirednih strukturah. V tem stoletju najdemo podobno razpravljanje v delih Bloomfielda in Chomskega. Identificirati je mogoče nekaj vrst priredja. Vezalno priredje, ki izraža pomen 'in' s priredjem (dostavljanje tipa A B), sestavljanjem (spojitev tipa A B) in vezanjem (besedno povezovanje z veznikom tipa A in B), je glavna tema članka.Priredje in vezanje sta najpogostejša mehanizma prirednosti v slovanskih jezikih. Po van Oirsouwu je vezanje mogoče deliti na zaporedno, identično, hkratno in naključno. Vse štiri vrste seuporabljajo v slovanskih jezikih z večjo ali manjšo stopnjo besedne različnosti. Dvoumnost v teh vezalnih prirednih strukturah je funkcionalna,odnosna ali hierarhična. Nekateri avtorji so pokazali besednorazdvoumljenje teh dvoumnosti za klasične jezike, npr. staroperzijščino, latinščino, grščino in sanskrt. Čeprav se domneva, da današnji indoevropski jeziki takih struktur besedno nerazdvoumljajo več, nekateri slovanski jeziki vendarle lahko besedno razlikujejo članstvo na višji in nižji ravni v prirednih strukturah. Slovenščina je v tem pogledu posebno bogata, saj ima tri vezalne veznike: ter, in, pa. Ti izražajo članstvo vprirednih strukturah od strukturno najvišjega do najnižjega, čeprav vnjihovi rabi obstajajo stilistične omejitve. Drugi slovanski jeziki sov zmožnosti, da bi besedno razdvoumili priredne strukture, bolj omejeni. Slovenščina in nekateri drugi slovanski jeziki imajo za izražanje prirednosti na še nižji ravni dodatni mehanizem s predlogom z(s), npr. midva s Petrom. Vendar v različnih slovanskih jezikih opazimo variacije v slovničnosti in številu udeležencev v teh strukturah. Zlasti slovenščina je v rabi priredja s predlogom z(s) bolj omejena kot ruščina. ENGLISH: The nature of coordination is a current topic of debate in linguistic research. Many of the issues being discussed today, including derivation and constituency in coordinate structures, were debated by earlier writers, such as Aristotle and Dionysius Thrax, and have been paralleled in this century by linguists such as Bloomfield and Chomsky. A number of coordination types are recognized. Copulativecoordination, expressing and' is achieved through parataxis (juxtaposition of the type A B), composition (fusion of the type A B) and conjunction (lexical linkage of the type A and B), is the focus of this article. Parataxis and conjunction arethe most frequently employed coordinate mechanisms in the Slavic languages. This latter can be subdivided, à la van Oirsouw, intoordered, identity, concomitant and coincidental conjunction. All four types occur in Slavic with varying degrees of lexical distinction. Ambiguity in these copula coordinate structures is functional, relational or hierarchical. Lexical disambiguation of these ambiguities has been demonstrated or posited for classical languages such as Old Persian, Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. Although it has been assumed that the modern Indo-European languages no longer lexically disambiguate such constructions, some Slavic languages are able lexically to differentiate higher- and lower-level constituency within coordinate structures. Slovene is particularly capable in this regard, employing three copulative conjunctions: ter, in and pa. These express structurally highest to lowest constituency in coordinate structures,although there are stylistic limitations on their use. Other Slavic languages are more limited in their ability lexically to disambiguate coordinate structures. A further coordination mechanism, expressed with the prepositionz (s) (e.g., midva s Petrom), can express yet alower level of coordination in Slovene and some other Slavic languages.However, there is cross-linguistic variation in the grammaticality and number of participants of these constructions. In particular, Slovene is more limited than Russian in its use of coordination with the preposition z (s)

Operation of Cool Thermal Energy Storage to Increase Renewable Energy Utilization

Recent international agreements on climate change aim to increase the production of electricity derived from renewable energy resources. Renewable energy generation can be pursued on both an individual building and utility scale. Due to the intermittent nature of renewables, some form of energy storage is essential to bridge diurnal mismatches between generation and demand. Air-conditioning loads associated with commercial buildings dominate peak electricity demand on the utility grid in some areas and climates. Therefore, Cool Thermal Energy Storage (CTES) is a relatively technically mature and inexpensive means of providing this “storage†and balancing supply/demand mismatches, thereby enabling the success of increased renewable energy penetration. Electrical energy generated by renewables during periods of higher availability can be used to run chillers that charge CTES systems. The stored thermal energy can subsequently be used to meet air-conditioning demand during periods of low renewable energy resource availability.  In this work, the U.S. Department of Energy Commercial Reference Building Model for a secondary school is used to obtain simulated cooling loads that are met by a combination of two chillers and a stratified chilled water thermal storage system. Control strategies are designed to charge the thermal storage system when renewable resources are available and discharge storage to meet building cooling loads during periods with low or no renewable energy resource. One optimization target is the fraction of the chiller energy consumption met by renewable power. This metric is one that may be of interest to electric utilities trying to manage a grid with increasing renewable penetration. An alternative optimization target is the net economic benefit to the building owner assuming on-site, small scale renewable generation and thermal storage. This metric is based on equipment costs, net electric demand after wind and/or solar generation offsets the chiller electric demand, and time-of-use electricity rate structures.  The results show that there is a trade-off between maximizing the use of renewable power and life-cycle cost, but a storage system designed to optimize either variable will be more cost effective and utilize the renewable resource better than a system without storage. The analysis is carried out for locations in Texas and California. These results suggest that CTES may be a technology enabling utilities to reach higher penetration of renewables while avoiding the so-called “duck curve†generation ramp caused by the time mismatch between the renewable generation and demand peaks

Cepheid Distances to SNe Ia Host Galaxies based on a Revised Photometric Zero-Point of the HST-WFPC2 and New P-L Relations and Metallicity Corrections

With this paper we continue the preparation for a forthcoming summary report of our experiment with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to determine the Hubble constant using type Ia supernovae as standard candles. Two problems are addressed. (1) We examine the need for, and determine the value of, the corrections to the apparent magnitudes of our program Cepheids in the eleven previous calibration papers due to sensitivity drifts and charge transfer effects of the HST WFPC2 camera over the life time of the experiment from 1992 to 2001. (2) The corrected apparent magnitudes are applied to all our previous photometric data from which revised distance moduli are calculated for the eight program galaxies that are parents to the calibrator Ia supernovae. Two different Cepheid P-L relations are used; one for the Galaxy and one for the LMC. These differ both in slope and zero-point at a fixed period. The procedures for determining the absorption and reddening corrections for each Cepheid are discussed. Corrections for the effects of metallicity differences between the program galaxies and the two adopted P-L relations are derived and applied. The distance moduli derived here for the eight supernovae program galaxies, and for 29 others, average 0.20 mag fainter (more distant) than those derived by Gibson et al. and Freedman et al. in their 2000 and 2001 summary papers for reasons discussed in this paper. The effect on the Hubble constant is the subject of our forthcoming summary paper.Comment: 73 pages, 16 figures, 8 tables, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Highly indistinguishable single photons from incoherently and coherently excited GaAs quantum dots

Semiconductor quantum dots are converging towards the demanding requirements of photonic quantum technologies. Among different systems, quantum dots with dimensions exceeding the free-exciton Bohr radius are appealing because of their high oscillator strengths. While this property has received much attention in the context of cavity quantum electrodynamics, little is known about the degree of indistinguishability of single photons consecutively emitted by such dots and on the proper excitation schemes to achieve high indistinguishability. A prominent example is represented by GaAs quantum dots obtained by local droplet etching, which recently outperformed other systems as triggered sources of entangled photon pairs. On these dots, we compare different single-photon excitation mechanisms, and we find (i) a "phonon bottleneck" and poor indistinguishability for conventional excitation via excited states and (ii) photon indistinguishablilities above 90% for both strictly resonant and for incoherent acoustic- and optical-phonon-assisted excitation. Among the excitation schemes, optical phonon-assisted excitation enables straightforward laser rejection without a compromise on the source brightness together with a high photon indistinguishability