Disaggregate energy consumption and industrial production in South Africa

This paper tries to assess the relationship between disaggregate energy consumption and industrial output in South Africa by undertaking a cointegration analysis using annual data from 1980 to 2005. We also investigate the causal relationships between the various disaggregate forms of energy consumption and industrial production. Our results imply that industrial production and employment are long-run forcing variables for electricity consumption. Applying the [Toda, H.Y., Yamamoto, T., 1995. Statistical inference in vector autoregressions with possibly integrated processes. Journal of Econometrics 66, 225–250] technique to Granger-causality, we find bi-directional causality between oil consumption and industrial production. For the other forms of energy consumption, there is evidence in support of the energy neutrality hypothesis. There is also evidence of causality between employment and electricity consumption as well as coal consumption causing employment.     

Optimal design of conical springs

Mechanical systems often use springs to store energy though their axial length must sometimes be significantly reduced. This leads to the use of conical springs as they are able to telescope. Designers of mechanical systems can call on a large number of tools to assist them though most of these are merely validation tools requiring concomitant trial and error strategies. Optimization strategies can be applied to provide synthesis assistance tools for which the designer simply specifies his requirement. Thus the tool directly indicates the spring best suited to standards and requirements. Recent advances in the study of constant pitch conical springs have provided analytical expressions of their behavior even in the non-linear phase. Considering this, we have used optimization strategies to provide a synthesis tool for conical spring design. An example of application is presented. The tool introduced here is thus a synthesis assistance tool that can be of considerable interest for designers who require a conical spring in their design.     

Reynolds stress and turbulence estimates in bottom boundary layer of Fall of Warness

A broadband acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) moored on the seabed at 42 m depth has been used to observe the mean and turbulent flow components in the tidally energetic Fall of Warness channel over two tidal cycles. The Reynolds stress has been estimated from the difference in variance between the along-beam velocities of opposing acoustic beams. Near bed stress at 2.63 m above seabed (mab) exceeds 7.5 Pa at the time of mean flow (speed of ~ 1.3 m s^− 1) while the ebb stresses are limited to ~ 3.31 Pa during the peak ebb, mean, flow of ~ 1.3 m s^− 1. The production of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE), P was found to be negative below 2 × 10^− 9 W m^− 3 and up to 6 × 10^− 4 W m^− 3 was estimated during flood flows and decreasing to 3 × 10^− 4 W m^− 3. The TKE dissipation rate ε was estimated by inertial dissipation method (IDM) with the greatest value of 2.43 × 10^− 2 W m^− 3 observed near the seabed around maximum ebb, falling to 5.75 × 10^− 5 W m^− 3 around slack water. The comparison between P and ε was performed by calculating individual ratios of P corresponding to ε using a bootstrap resampling technique. The study shows that the ratio ε/P averaged over whole flood and ebb were found to be ~ 0.4138 and ~ 0.4177, respectively, indicating that production exceeded dissipation. The uncertainties in Reynolds stress estimates due to instrument noise were found to be 3 × 10^− 4 Pa while 4.52 × 10^− 2 Pa can be attributed to the uncertainties due to the increase in the flow-related component.     

Experimental comparison of classical PID and model-free control: Position control of a shape memory alloy active spring

Shape memory alloys (SMA) are being more frequently integrated into engineering applications. These materials with their shape memory effect enable the simplification of mechanisms and the reduction in size of actuators. SMA parts can easily be activated by Joule effect but their modeling and consequently their control remains difficult. It is principally due to their non-linear hysteretic thermomechanical behavior. Most of successful control strategies applied to SMA actuators are not often suitable for industrial applications: they are particularly heavy and use the Preisach model or neural networks to model the hysteretic behavior of these materials; this kind of model is difficult to identify and to use in real time. This paper deals with an application of the new framework of model-free control (MFC) of an SMA-spring based actuator. This control strategy relies on new results for fast derivative estimation of noisy signals. Their main advantages are: its simplicity and its robustness. Experimental results and comparisons with PI control are presented that demonstrate the efficiency of this new control strategy.     

Experimental investigation on the combustion behaviour of pre-dried Greek lignite

The present paper includes the results of the combustion tests with Greek dried lignite performed at a 1 MWth semi industrial scale pulverized coal combustion facility. Scope of the campaign is the investigation of the combustion behaviour of Greek lignite, i.e. temperature fields, ignition, burnout, emissions, as well as slagging and fouling tendency, while firing with varying levels of recirculated flue gas. Dry coal co-firing conditions in a large scale boiler are simulated by adjusting the volume flow of recirculated flue gas.Two test series representing different boiler operation modes are performed. During the first series the maximum flue gas temperature increase, when co-firing dry coal, is determined, while in the second test series the needed load decrease, in order to keep constant furnace outlet temperature in dry coal co-firing conditions is recorded. A detailed measurement set is carried out including temperature profiles, emissions, fuel, fly ash sampling and slagging and fouling investigations through the installation of dedicated deposition probes.The anticipated increase of the furnace temperature profiles by decreasing the inserted recirculated flue gas is confirmed by the experimental results. No clear trend of dry coal co-combustion on the emissions' behaviour is noticed, while dry coal firing appears to have a moderate effect on the deposition behaviour of Greek lignite. These preliminary investigations indicate that no significant operational problems are expected during a potential future demonstration of dry lignite co-firing in a Greek large scale boiler.     

Field-scale analysis of water and nutrient use efficiency for vegetable production in a West African urban agricultural system

Urban agriculture increasingly supplies food and non-food services to the rapidly growing West African cities. However, with its typically heavy use of fertilizers and uncontrolled use of water, it bears severe risks of soil and groundwater pollution. This study was carried out in Bobo Dioulasso (Burkina Faso, West Africa) at two commercial gardening sites. It aimed at performing a detailed characterization of farmer’s water and nutrient management strategies. Four vegetable crops were monitored (tomato, cabbage, carrot and lettuce). Water inputs (rainfall and irrigation), nutrient inputs (organic and mineral fertilizers and nutrients in irrigation water) and crop uptake were monitored over a 1–2-year period. In addition, pan lysimeters allowed monitoring drainage. Depending on the site, 3–8% of the input water was lost by drainage, i.e., as much as 293 mm/year at one of the sites. During the dry season, when the farmer has full control over the water supply, water application exceeded plant requirements by as much as 40%, which reveals inefficient water use. Up to 800 kg N ha⁻¹, 140 kg P ha⁻¹ and 500 kg K ha⁻¹ were applied for a single crop cycle. With few exceptions, crops tended to be strongly over-fertilized, except for K at one of the two sites. Nutrient supply exceeded crop requirements by 109 to 2,012 kg N, 66 to 450 kg P and 0 to 393 kg K per year. These results, in combination with the large observed rates of drainage, are indicative of a high risk of nutrient leaching and groundwater contamination. The partial factor productivity of nutrients tended to be low. These results therefore suggested that there is scope to substantially reduce nutrient application rates in these systems without adverse effects on yields, which would be beneficial for groundwater resources and improve the economic returns.     

Aequorin-based functional assays for G-protein-coupled receptors,ion channels,and tyrosine kinase receptors

Aequorin is a photoprotein originating from jellyfish, whose luminescent activity is dependent on the concentration of calcium ions. Due to the high sensitivity and low background linked to luminescent assays, as well as to its absence of toxicity and its large linear dynamic range, aequorin has been used as an intracellular calcium indicator since its discovery in the early 1960s. The first applications of aequorin involved its microinjection in cells. The cloning of its gene in 1985 opened the way to the stable expression of aequorin in cell lines or even entire organisms. Here we present the validation of aequorin as a functional assay for the screening of G-protein-coupled receptors, ion channels, and tyrosine kinase receptors, as well as for their pharmacological characterization in agonist and antagonist detection assays. We optimized our cell suspension-based assay and determined that the most sensitive assay was performed at room temperature, with mitochondrially expressed aequorin and using coelenterazine derivative h for reconstitution of aequorin. The robustness of the assay and the current availability of luminometers with integrated injectors allow aequorin to fit perfectly with high throughput functional assays requirements.     

Population computation of vectorial transformations

Many neurons of the central nervous system are broadly tuned to some sensory or motor variables. This property allows one to assign to each neuron a preferred attribute (PA). The width of tuning curves and the distribution of PAs in a population of neurons tuned to a given variable define the collective behavior of the population. In this article, we study the relationship of the nature of the tuning curves, the distribution of PAs, and computational properties of linear neuronal populations. We show that noise-resistant distributed linear algebraic processing and learning can be implemented by a population of cosine tuned neurons assuming a nonuniform but regular distribution of PAs. We extend these results analytically to the noncosine tuning and uniform distribution case and show with a numerical simulation that the results remain valid for a nonuniform regular distribution of PAs for broad noncosine tuning curves. These observations provide a theoretical basis for modeling general nonlinear sensorimotor transformations as sets of local linearized representations.