Project SPACE: Solar Panel Automated Cleaning Environment

The goal of Project SPACE is to create an automated solar panel cleaner that will address the adverse impact of soiling on commercial photovoltaic cells. Specifically, we hoped to create a device that increases the maximum power output of a soiled panel by 10% (recovering the amount of power lost) while still costing under $500 and operating for up to 7.0 years. A successful design should operate without the use of water. This will help solar panel arrays achieve a production output closer to their maximum potential and save companies on costs associated energy generation. The current apparatus utilizes a brush cleaning system that cleans on set cleaning cycles. The device uses the combination of a gear train (with 48 pitch Delrin gears) and a 12V DC motor to spin both a 5.00 foot long, 0.25 inch diameter vacuum brush shaft and drive two sets of two wheels. The power source for the drive train is a 12V deep cycle lead-acid battery. Our light weight design eliminates water usage during cleaning and reduces the potential dangers stemming from manual labor. Our design’s retail price was estimated to be around$700 with a payback period of less than 3.5 years. To date, we have created a device that improves the efficiency of soiled solar panels by 3.5% after two runs over the solar panel. We hope that our final design will continue to expand the growth of solar energy globally

An Examination of Grid Stability as it Relates to the Increased Integration of Inverter-Based Resources

There is currently a growing interest in increasing the amount of renewable energy resources connected to the bulk electric system (BES) that stems from various environmental, political, and social concerns. However, the differences between conventional generation resources and inverter-based resources (IBR)—namely wind and solar—pose new issues that make this increased integration a larger problem. In other studies, the increased penetration of renewable energy resources has resulted in weak-grid systems that are more susceptible to collapse. This comes as a result from the inability for IBRs to effectively provide enough reactive power, an effect especially apparent during fault conditions, which the National Electric Reliability Council (NERC) requires utility companies simulate and test. This paper seeks to examine the problems surrounding the stability of the grid as increased renewable integration changes the impedance profile of the system as a whole. By beginning with a minimized 6-bus system based on the standard IEEE 14-bus system model, a comparison between current grid topologies and IBR-rich topologies is made and preliminary conclusions drawn. These conclusions are followed by a discussion of potential future work and possible other solutions to the problems faced during the study

Health and security: why the containment of infectious diseases alone is not enough

The Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) highlights the urgent need to strengthen cooperation between security, health, and development actors. As the disease spreads, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared an international health emergency. In crisis situations like these, the interdependencies between health and security are highly complex. Which population groups and which diseases are perceived as suspected health risks, and why, is a normative question for donor countries. It has political consequences above all for affected developing countries. Where health and security are common goals, it is not enough to contain infectious diseases in developing countries. Instead, resilient, well-functioning, and accessible health systems must be established. This fosters the implementation of the human right to health, creates trust in state structures, and takes into account the security interests of other states. In the United Nations (UN) Security Council, the German government could advocate for policies based on the narrative "stability through health". (Autorenreferat

Control of Error Rates in Adaptive Analysis of Orthogonal Saturated Designs

Individual and simultaneous confidence intervals using the data adaptively are constructed for the effects in orthogonal saturated designs under the assumption of effect sparsity. The minimum coverage probabilities of the intervals are equal to the nominal level 1 - α

Bending Art and Culture Towards Justice: The Ford Foundations Creativity and Free Expression Arts and Culture Program Investments in Diverse Creative Communities

What lessons can we learn about how change happens for arts organizations and networks that center People of Color and disabled artists, cultural producers, and executive leaders, especially those who have been further marginalized by sexism, heterosexism and xenophobia? What is the influence of a $230 million investment in their stability, their ability to expand their base of support and their lasting impact on the artists whose voices and cultural contributions they lift up?The Ford Foundation's Creativity and Free Expression Arts and Culture (CFE A&C) strategy discussion began in the Fall of 2015 and targeted goals of shifting "entrenched cultural narratives" that were embedded in and driving cultural norms. The early theory of change was to actually expand the scope of mainstream ideals to include content by underrepresented creators – shifting their status from the margins into the realm of being visible and seen in the mainstream. The 'margins to the mainstream' strategy has evolved over time to center the empowerment of People of Color creators and those with disabilities. The construct of 'mainstream ideals' has shifted from including content by these artists as part of the mainstream to influencing who has voice and who is widely recognized and valued as the mainstream.This report, based on research conducted from December 2021 to April 2022, summarizes key observations and strategic considerations from an in-depth evaluation of the strategy implemented by the Ford Foundation to support CFE A&C grantees, a strategy set in motion pre-pandemic. The purpose of Ford's evaluations is not focused on holding individual grantees accountable for complex social change outcomes, and instead seeks to prioritize learning; and, more specifically, to learn about how change happens and share lessons externally. Part of that learning centers not only on whether current approaches are having the desired impact, but also on whether modifications to the approaches or other internal factors might yield even greater impact

How does music performance anxiety relate to other anxiety disorders?

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank all students and administrative staff of participating music universities. The authors would also like to express their appreciation to Professor Katja Beesdo-Baum and Dr Manfred Nusseck for general support, to Birgit Maicher for programming the basic version of the questionnaires and to Professor Hans-Christian Jabusch for helping to recruit participants as well as for discussions at later stages of the project. Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Katastrophen und Katastrophenvorsorge in Jena aus Sicht der Bevölkerung

Das Working-Paper „Katastrophen und Katastrophenvorsorge in Jena aus Sicht der Bevölkerung“ stellt Ergebnisse einer Studie zur Wahrnehmung von Katastrophen und Katastrophenvorsorge in Jena vor, die im Rahmen des vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) finanzier-ten Projekts „INVOLVE – Verringerung sozialer Vulnerabilität durch freiwilliges Engagement“ durch-geführt wurde. Es werden qualitative Ergebnisse aus Expert*inneninterviews, Workshops und Gruppendiskussionen, v.a. aber die Ergebnisse einer quantitativen Bevölkerungsbefragung darge-stellt. Im Mittelpunkt der Forschung stand sowohl in der qualitativen wie quantitativen Befragung die Wahrnehmung und Einschätzung von Katastrophen, Katastrophenschutz sowie Vorsorgemaß-nahmen gegenüber den Szenarien Starkregen/Hochwasser, Hitzewellen sowie sozioökonomische Krise. Es zeigt sich, dass „Katastrophe“ von Katastrophenschutzexpert*innen anders definiert wird als von den Befragten, die potenziell von einer Katastrophe betroffen sein könnten. Zugleich wird deutlich, dass „klassische Naturkatastrophen“ als Gefahr im Bewusstsein und dem daraus resultie-renden Vorsorgeverhalten deutlich weniger präsent sind als sozioökonomische Aspekte, wie bspw. Angst vor gesellschaftlicher Spaltung oder Existenzsicherungsängsten. Derweil ist das Gefühl sozia-ler Kohäsion in der direkten Nachbarschaft sehr hoch, ebenso wie das Vertrauen in Organisationen des Katastrophenschutzes wie das Technische Hilfswerk (THW), Feuerwehren oder Hilfsorganisati-onen.The working paper "Disasters and Disaster Risk Reduction in Jena" provides an overview of a case study conducted within the framework of the INVOLVE project "INitiate VOLunteerism to counter VulnErability" funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Primarily the results of a quantitative survey of the population, but also qualitative results from expert inter-views, workshops and group discussions are presented. Central to the research in the qualitative and quantitative survey were the perception and assessment of disasters, disaster management as much as preventive measures for heavy rain/flood, heatwaves as well as socio-economic crisis. As it turns out, the definition of a disaster varies greatly between civil protection experts and those potentially affected. At the same time, it can be shown that “natural disasters” are much less per-ceived as a risk in the public awareness – and therefore less considered within precautionary be-havior – than socio-economic aspects such as the fear of social division or for a secure livelihood. Simultaneously, though, the feeling of social cohesion in the direct neighborhood is very strong, as is the trust in civil protection organizations like the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW), fire brigades or aid organizations

Research report of the quantitative survey

Im Sommer 2013 wurde die Verbandsgemeinde Elbe-Havel-Land in Sachsen-Anhalt während des Elbehochwassers nach einem Deichbruch weiträumig überflutet: Häuser, Straßen und Grundstücke wurden zerstört. Der Bericht beleuchtet die Folgen des Hochwassers 2013 und ihre Bewältigung aus Sicht der Bewohner*innen, basierend auf Ergebnissen einer quantitativen Bevölkerungsbefragung drei Jahre nach dem Ereignis. Ausgehend von erlebten materiellen und immateriellen Auswirkun-gen und dem Stand der Verarbeitung des Ereignisses, wird der Bedarf an Unterstützung aufgezeigt, fehlende Hilfeleistungen identifiziert und die Bedeutung verschiedener Akteure im Verlauf der Katastrophe dargestellt. Dabei zeigen sich insbesondere zeitliche Variationen der Hilfebedarfe und ein anhaltender Bedarf an Unterstützung sowie Nachwirkungen des Ereignisses bis zum Zeitpunkt der Befragung.During the 2013 European floods, the municipalities of the Elbe-Havel-Land in Saxony-Anhalt were flooded after the water masses of the Elbe River caused a levee to break; houses, streets and plots of land were destroyed. This report, based on the results of a quantitative survey carried out three years after the event, shines light on the effects of the 2013 Flood, and how well, according to the perception of residents, the disaster has been dealt with. Based on personally experienced materi-al and immaterial impacts and on the state of psychological recuperation, we highlight the need for further support needed, identify what kinds of aid have been missing, and illustrate the relative importance of different actors throughout the disaster. The results indicate that the need for assis-tance varies especially with regard to time, that after-effects continued to linger at the time of questioning, and that accordingly there is a continued need for support

Mere Expectation to Move Causes Attenuation of Sensory Signals

When a part of the body moves, the sensation evoked by a probe stimulus to that body part is attenuated. Two mechanisms have been proposed to explain this robust and general effect. First, feedforward motor signals may modulate activity evoked by incoming sensory signals. Second, reafferent sensation from body movements may mask the stimulus. Here we delivered probe stimuli to the right index finger just before a cue which instructed subjects to make left or right index finger movements. When left and right cues were equiprobable, we found attenuation for stimuli to the right index finger just before this finger was cued (and subsequently moved). However, there was no attenuation in the right finger just before the left finger was cued. This result suggests that the movement made in response to the cue caused ‘postdictive’ attenuation of a sensation occurring prior to the cue. In a second experiment, the right cue was more frequent than the left. We now found attenuation in the right index finger even when the left finger was cued and moved. This attenuation linked to a movement that was likely but did not in fact occur, suggests a new expectation-based mechanism, distinct from both feedforward motor signals and postdiction. Our results suggest a new mechanism in motor-sensory interactions in which the motor system tunes the sensory inputs based on expectations about future possible actions that may not, in fact, be implemented