New approaches for household energy conservation—In search of personal household energy budgets and energy reduction options

Large-scale energy reduction campaigns focusing on households generally have two shortcomings. First, an energy reduction campaign is either personalized but time intensive or time extensive but generalized. Second, because only the direct energy requirements are addressed, only 50% of the total household energy requirement is subject to reduction. The other 50%, the indirect energy requirement, is much more difficult to calculate and address and therefore not subject to reduction.

In this paper, we describe a web-based tool that has the potential to overcome both of these shortcomings. The tool addresses direct as well as indirect energy requirements. By means of a simple expert system participants obtain personalized reduction options and feedback on the energy reduced. The tool was tested in Groningen (the Netherlands) with a sample of 300 households, resulting in a direct energy reduction of about 8.5% compared to a control group. The reduction in indirect energy was not statistically significant.     

High‐Efficiency InP‐Based Photocathode for Hydrogen Production by Interface Energetics Design and Photon Management

The solar energy conversion efficiency of photoelectrochemical (PEC) devices is usually limited by poor interface energetics, limiting the onset potential, and light reflection losses. Here, a three‐pronged approach to obtain excellent performance of an InP‐based photoelectrode for water reduction is presented. First, a buried p–n⁺ junction is fabricated, which shifts the valence band edge favorably with respect to the hydrogen redox potential. Photoelectron spectroscopy substantiates that the shift of the surface photovoltage is mainly determined by the buried junction. Second, a periodic array of InP nanopillars is created at the surface of the photoelectrode to substantially reduce the optical reflection losses. This device displays an unprecedented photocathodic power‐saved efficiency of 15.8% for single junction water reduction. Third, a thin TiO₂ protection layer significantly increases the stability of the InP‐based photoelectrode. Careful design of the interface energetics based on surface photovoltage spectroscopy allows obtaining a PEC cell with stable record performance in water reduction.     

Effect of length on the fundamental resonance frequency of arterial models having radial dilatation

The pressure wave moving along an elastic artery filled with blood was examined as a moving Windkessel having a natural oscillation angular frequency nu 0 and a damping coefficient b. The radial directional motion for an element of the wall segment and the adherent fluid was considered. This equation was solved with conditions at both ends of an artery of length L. An external impulse force was applied at one end and a static pressure Po at the other. Analytic solution allowed only certain oscillation modes of resonance frequencies fn, where fn2 = a + cnL-2 with [formula: see text] and V infinity is the high frequency phase velocity. The relationship between f0 and L was examined experimentally for tubes constructed of latex, rubber, or dissected aorta. The effect of raising the static pressure P0 or increasing the tension in the tube was consistent with the prediction. The hypertension that accompanies an augmentation in arterial wall and the association between the heart rate and the mean blood pressure were discussed.     

Superradiant Emission from Coherent Excitons in van Der Waals Heterostructures

Recent advancements in isolation and stacking of layered van der Waals materials have created an unprecedented paradigm for demonstrating varieties of 2D quantum materials. Rationally designed van der Waals heterostructures composed of monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) and few-layer hBN show several unique optoelectronic features driven by correlations. However, entangled superradiant excitonic species in such systems have not been observed before. In this report, it is demonstrated that strong suppression of phonon population at low temperature results in a formation of a coherent excitonic-dipoles ensemble in the heterostructure, and the collective oscillation of those dipoles stimulates a robust phase synchronized ultra-narrow band superradiant emission even at extremely low pumping intensity. Such emitters are in high demand for a multitude of applications, including fundamental research on many-body correlations and other state-of-the-art technologies. This timely demonstration paves the way for further exploration of ultralow-threshold quantum-emitting devices with unmatched design freedom and spectral tunability.     

A unified approach to superresolution and multichannel blind deconvolution.

This paper presents a new approach to the blind deconvolution and superresolution problem of multiple degraded low-resolution frames of the original scene. We do not assume any prior information about the shape of degradation blurs. The proposed approach consists of building a regularized energy function and minimizing it with respect to the original image and blurs, where regularization is carried out in both the image and blur domains. The image regularization based on variational principles maintains stable performance under severe noise corruption. The blur regularization guarantees consistency of the solution by exploiting differences among the acquired low-resolution images. Several experiments on synthetic and real data illustrate the robustness and utilization of the proposed technique in real applications.     

Standby supply voltage minimization for deep sub-micron SRAM

Suppressing the leakage current in memories is critical in low-power design. By reducing the standby supply voltage (V_DD) to its limit, which is the data retention voltage (DRV), leakage power can be substantially reduced. This paper models the DRV of a standard low leakage SRAM module as a function of process and design parameters, and analyzes the SRAM cell stability when V_DD approaches DRV. The DRV model is verified using simulations as well as measurements from a 4 KB SRAM chip in a 0.13 μm technology. Due to a large on-chip variation, DRV of the 4 KB SRAM module ranges between 60 and 390 mV. Measurements taken at 100 mV above the worst-case DRV show that reducing the SRAM standby V_DD to a safe level of 490 mV saves 85% leakage power. Further savings can be achieved by applying DRV-aware SRAM optimization techniques, which are discussed at the end of this paper.     

The Role of Test Protocols in Automated Test Generation for Embedded-Core-Based System ICs

Modular testing is an attractive approach to testing large system ICs, especially if they are built from pre-designed reusable embedded cores. This paper describes an automated modular test development approach. The basis of this approach is that a core or module test is dissected into a test protocol and a test pattern list. A test protocol describes in detail how to apply one test pattern to the core, while abstracting from the specific test pattern stimulus and response values. Subsequent automation tasks, such as the expansion from core-level tests to system-chip-level tests and test scheduling, all work on test protocols, thereby greatly reducing the amount of compute time and data involved. Finally, an SOC-level test is assembled from the expanded and scheduled test protocols and the (so far untouched) test patterns. This paper describes and formalizes the notion of test protocols and the algorithms for test protocol expansion and scheduling. A running example is featured throughout the paper. We also elaborate on the industrial usage of the concepts described.     

Determination of PCBs in fatty tissues by means of several detection techniques

Difficulties with harmonization of analytical procedures and consequently poor comparability of generated data represent in the Czech Republic the main reason for the delay in issuing of updated legislation for polychlorobiphenyls (PCBs) in foodstuffs. This study draws attention to possible errors (overestimations) that can occur during routine determination of these residues in the fat portion of biotic matrices. We demonstrate the gas Chromatographic (GC) conditions under which interfering contaminants such as phthalates and/or chlorinated pesticides can be separated from analytes. Discussion is focused on the advantages and drawbacks of GC with an electron capture detector, GC mass spectrometry and GC with an atomic emission detector. Various approaches used for calculation of PCBs contents are compared.

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Bestimmung der PCB in Fettgeweben mittels verschiedener Detektionstechniken

Zusammenfassung Das Problem mit der Harmonisierung der analytischen Verfahren und der geringen Vergleichbarkeit der Angaben ist ein Hauptgrund der Verspätung in der neuen Legislative für PCB in Lebensmitteln in der Tschechischen Republik. Die Arbeit beschreibt die möglichen Fehler (Falsch-positive Fehler), die durch die routinierte Bestimmung von PCB-Rückständen in Fettanteilen der biologischen Materialien auftreten können. Es werden die gaschromatographischen Bedingungen beschrieben, unter denen die Interferenzen, wie z. B. Phthalaten und chlorierten Pesticiden, von Stoffen abgetrennt werden können. Die Vorteile und Nachteile der Methoden GC-ECD, GC-MS und GC-AED werden diskutiert. Die verschiedenen für die Kalkulation des PCB-Gehaltes angewendeten Annäherungen werden miteinander verglichen.