The impact of a novel educational curriculum for first-time DUI offenders on intermediate outcomes relevant to DUI recidivism

The Preventing Alcohol-Related Convictions (PARC) program is a novel educational curriculum for first-time DUI offenders, with the ultimate goal of reducing DUI recidivism. It differs from traditional DUI education and prevention programs in that it does not suggest to DUI offenders that they must abstain from alcohol entirely or control their drinking to prevent a future DUI; rather, it teaches students to prevent a future DUI by not driving their cars to drinking events. Thus, the emphasis of the curriculum is on controlling driving rather than controlling drinking to avoid future DUI convictions. The implementation of the program is ongoing throughout the state of Florida. The current randomized study focused on intermediate outcomes relevant for DUI recidivism; specifically, individuals' readiness for change regarding drinking and driving, and their endorsement of a PARC planning and action approach (controlling driving) versus a traditional approach (controlling drinking). The current research demonstrated that the PARC program is effective in moving participants toward more readiness for change and toward a strategy of planning ahead to avoid driving to any venue in which drinking may occur. Future research will assess the ultimate effect on DUI recidivism.     

Electroanalytical behavior of poly-L-lysine dendrigrafts at the interface between two immiscible electrolyte solutions

In this work, the electrochemical behavior of nonredox-active poly-L-lysine dendrigraft molecules of four different generations was investigated at the interface between two immiscible electrolyte solutions (ITIES). The influence of the dendrigraft generation on the electrochemical response, sensitivity of the calibration curves, and limit of detection was studied. Cyclic voltammetry at the ITIES revealed that the sensitivity increased (1840 to 25?800 nA μM(-1)) and the limit of detection decreased (11.10 to 0.65 μM) as the dendrigraft generation increased from generation G2 through to generation G5, respectively. The results are compared to those for protein voltammetry at the ITIES. Our studies suggest that the sensitivity expected for a synthetic ionized macromolecule can be predicted on the basis of its net charge and its diffusion coefficient. However, electrochemistry at the ITIES demonstrates a greater sensitivity toward proteins, which is attributed to their tertiary structure.     

Sensitivity of Shallow Foundation Response to Model Input Parameters

From a predictive point of view, it is desirable to characterize the effect of varying model input parameters on the seismic response of soil-foundation systems. In this paper, this issue is studied for shallow foundation systems in dry dense sand with varying vertical factors of safety, embedment depths, demand levels, and moment to shear ratios. Response parameters considered are the moment, shear, sliding, settlement, and rotation demands of the foundation. First-order sensitivity analyses indicate that among the soil input parameters, the friction angle has the most significant effect on capturing the foundation force and displacement demands. Furthermore, the uncertainty in friction angle contributes 80% of the variance of the settlement demand and 40% of the variance of the moment demand. It is also found that the uncertainty in Poisson’s ratio has a marginal effect in predicting the studied foundation response. Although the findings of this study are limited to the parameter space considered herein and care should be taken for broader applicability, it does shed light on which parameters uncertainty should be minimized.     

The impact of increased interconnection on electricity systems with large penetrations of wind generation: A case study of Ireland and Great Britain

Increased interconnection has been highlighted as potentially facilitating the integration of wind generation in power systems by increasing the flexibility to balance the variable wind output. This paper utilizes a stochastic unit commitment model to simulate the impacts of increased interconnection for the island of Ireland with large penetrations of wind generation. The results suggest that increased interconnection should reduce average prices in Ireland, and the variability of those prices. The simulations also suggest that while increased interconnection may reduce carbon dioxide emissions in Ireland, Great Britain would experience an increase in emissions, resulting in total emissions remaining almost unchanged. The studies suggest that increased interconnection would not reduce excess wind generation. This is because under unit commitment techniques which incorporate wind power forecasts in the scheduling decisions, wind curtailment is minimal even with low levels of interconnection. As would be expected an increase in interconnection should improve system adequacy considerably with a significant reduction in the number of hours when the load and reserve constraints are not met.     

A simplified approach for the thermoelastic large deflection in the thin clamped annular sector plate

The present article is concerned with analysis of large deflection of a heated thin annular sector plate with clamped edges under transient temperature distribution using Berger’s approximate methods. The prescribed surface temperature is at the top face of the plate whereas the bottom face is kept at zero temperature. In this study, the Laplace transform as well as the classical method have been used for the solution of heat conduction equation. The thermal moment is derived on the basis of temperature distribution, and its stresses are obtained using resultant bending moment and resultant forces per unit length. The calculations are obtained for the aluminium plate in the form of an infinite series involving Bessel functions, and the numerical results for temperature, deflection, resultant bending moments, and thermal stresses have been illustrated by graphs.     

Demand side resource operation on the Irish power system with high wind power penetration

The utilisation of demand side resources is set to increase over the coming years with the advent of advanced metering infrastructure, home area networks and the promotion of increased energy efficiency. Demand side resources are proposed as an energy resource that, through aggregation, can form part of the power system plant mix and contribute to the flexible operation of a power system. A model for demand side resources is proposed here that captures its key characteristics for commitment and dispatch calculations. The model is tested on the all island Irish power system, and the operation of the model is simulated over one year in both a stochastic and deterministic mode, to illustrate the impact of wind and load uncertainty. The results illustrate that demand side resources can contribute to the efficient, flexible operation of systems with high penetrations of wind by replacing some of the functions of conventional peaking plant. Demand side resources are also shown to be capable of improving the reliability of the system, with reserve capability identified as a key requirement in this respect.     

Direct Comparison between Five Different Microchannels,Part 2: Experimental Description and Flow Friction Measurement

Abstract

Part one of this paper ^[1] Eason, C., Dalton, T., O'Mathúna, C., Slattery, O. and Davies, M. 2005. Direct Comparison between Five Different Microchannels, Part 1: Channel Manufacture and Measurement. Heat Transfer Engineering Journal, vol. 26(no. 3): pp. 00–00.  [Google Scholar] investigates the manufacture of five types of microchannels produced by wet and dry etching in silicon and precision mechanical sawing in silicon and thermoset plastic. This paper describes the experimental equipment and methods used to measure the pressure flow characteristics of the manufactured channels. A test system has been built to test each sample using the same inlet and outlet manifolds, pressure tappings, pumping system, and instrumentation. The measured pressure flow behavior was compared with theoretical values calculated from macroscale theory. Error analysis was carried out in order to determine the overall accuracy of the experimental work and determine the significance of any experimental deviation from theoretical values. An area compensation term is introduced to account for the difference in cross-section between the measured actual channels and the rectangles/trapeziums that share their overall dimensions.     

Parallel terrain rendering using a cluster of computers

This article presents a distributed parallel processing technique for rendering massive terrain using a cluster of machines consisting of one designated rendering node and 20 computing nodes. With a novel approach, the presented technique achieves an increase in rendering speed and an improvement in rendering capability. Adaptive terrain mesh constructions are done in parallel at computing nodes and the resulting meshes are combined and subsequently rendered at the rendering node. This study uses a height field of the United States at 30-m resolution spacing. It is divided into smaller blocks consisting of 4096?×?4096 vertices. Each computing node is assigned one or four blocks and tasked with creating the level-of-detail mesh that corresponds to view-dependent parameters provided by the rendering node. These individual terrain meshes are subsequently combined and rendered as seamless terrain meshes with a continuous terrain surface. The high rendering capacity of the presented technique is essential to the high-resolution large display system.