Strategic homogenisation of energy efficiency measures: an approach to improve the efficiency and reduce the costs of the quantification of energy savings

With the ongoing efforts on the European level to promote energy efficiency, the need for the development of harmonised evaluation criteria for energy efficiency measures arises. Such criteria will allow extensive comparisons of the success or failure of the implementation of energy efficiency measures throughout Europe and will support the development of a first–best strategy for the realisation of energy savings targets in Europe. Two fundamental evaluation possibilities exist: bottom-up and top-down quantifications of energy savings. Bottom-up calculations give a more detailed view of the impact of energy efficiency measures but are much more costly and time consuming than top-down calculations. In our opinion, this effort can be reduced without losing precision in the savings calculations by the homogenisation of these energy efficiency measures. In this paper, we develop a framework specifying how such a homogenisation could look.     

Evaluation of Performance of Diesel Particulate Filters Through Integrated Multi-Scale Computer Calculations

Wall-flow channel models and soot deposition models based on micro scale considerations are integrated into global 3D diesel particulate filter simulations. In addition, transient and steady-state simulations are combined to understand at the same time short- and long-time behaviour of the diesel particulate filter (DPF). The functionality of the simulation tool is achieved and correlations with measured data encourage the use of the model as a tool to predict DPF behaviour.     

The importance of incorporating reliability of supply criteria in a regulatory system of electricity distribution: An empirical analysis for Austria

Grid tariffs are the main source of income for distribution system operators (DSOs). Reductions of tariffs increase the cost pressure on DSOs; assuming they work efficiently, tariff reductions potentially lead to a decrease of the electricity system's quality if no reliability of supply criteria are incorporated in the regulatory system. Our statistical analysis shows that the correlation between grid tariffs and electricity supply interruptions in a regulatory regime neglecting this incorporation is significant and that furthermore decreasing tariffs harm the reliability of supply even in the short run. Our econometric analysis of the influence of tariffs on reliability of supply shows a significant correlation between the grid tariffs and the duration of power outages in the Austrian electricity grid; an annual average interruption duration per installed capacity of a specific grid increases ceteris paribus by 1.36 min if the grid tariff of this specific grid is decreased in the previous year by 1€/MWh.     

Auf dem Weg zu idealen Programmierwerkzeugen – Bestandsaufnahme und Ausblick

Zusammenfassung  Angeregt durch Robert W. Floyds Turing-Award-Lecture ,,The Paradigms of Programming“ von 1979 [6] und motiviert durch die Unzufriedenheit des Praktikers mit dem Stand der Softwaretechnik aus vielen Industrieprojekten, versucht dieser Beitrag eine Bestandsaufnahme der Programmiertechnik und identifiziert die Defizite aus Sicht der Grundprinzipien des Konstruktionsprozesses. Mit der Objektorientierung sind, besonders in den letzten Jahren, viele neue Programmiersprachen entstanden, die sowohl Wert auf schnelle Entwicklungszyklen als auch auf Erweiterbarkeit legen. Die heute haupts?chlich verwendeten Sprachen und Umgebungen sind von diesen Zielen weit entfernt. Das Entwickeln von Software ist zum einen zu kompliziert und zum anderen schmerzt die ,,semantische Lücke“ zwischen den ausdrückbaren und den erforderlichen Konzepten. Neue, viel versprechende Programmiersprachen, die sich durchweg auf Metaprogrammierung stützen, um die erforderliche semantische Erweiterbarkeit der Sprachen zu erreichen, deuten die Richtung zukünftiger Entwicklungen an.     

Feedback consistency effects in visual and auditory word recognition: Where do we stand after more than a decade?

The role of phonology-to-spelling consistency (i.e., feedback consistency) was investigated in 3 lexical decision experiments in both the visual and auditory modalities in French and English. No evidence for a feedback consistency effect was found in the visual modality, either in English or in French, despite the fact that consistency was manipulated for different kinds of units (onsets and rimes). In contrast, robust feedback consistency effects were obtained in the auditory lexical decision task in both English and French when exactly the same items that produced a null effect in the visual modality were used. Neural network simulations are presented to show that previous demonstrations of feedback consistency effects in the visual modality can be simulated with a model that is not sensitive to feedback consistency, suggesting that these effects might have come from various confounds. These simulations, together with the authors' results, suggest that there are no feedback consistency effects in the visual modality. In contrast, such effects are clearly present in the auditory modality. Given that orthographic information is absent from current models of spoken word recognition, the present findings present a major challenge to these models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

作为生态产品和服务提供者的乡村居民

有一位教授说，我们必须依靠经济的发展来解决问题，我想引用一句中国人熟知的口号，那就是“向前看”。人口的剧增意味着自然的退缩和缩减，这就意味着因为缺乏共同的自然资源，本来是免费的产品现在变成商品了，原来都认为水是上天给的，为什么要付钱呢？但是现在却成为了贸易的目标，贸易不见得是自由的市场。根据历史的情况来看，大的城市作为购买者常处于强势的地位。那些生长在广阔的农村的农民常处于弱势地位。     

Cross-language computational investigation of the length effect in reading aloud.

The authors examined whether 2 computational models of reading, the dual-route cascaded model (M. Coltheart, K. Rastle, C. Perry, R. Langdon, and J. C. Ziegler, 2001) and the connectionist 2-layer model (M. Zorzi, G. Houghton, and B. Butterworth, 1998), were able to predict the pattern that the length effect found in reading aloud is larger in German than in English (J. C. Ziegler, C. Perry, A. M. Jacobs, and M. Braun, 2001). The results showed that the dual-route cascaded model, which uses a serial mechanism for assembling phonology, successfully predicted this cross-language difference. In contrast, the connectionist model of Zorzi et al. (1998) predicted the opposite: a larger length effect in English than in German. Both the success of one model and the failure of the other highlight fundamental differences between 2 major classes of computational models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)