An advective-dispersive transport model for residential water consumption

This work applies an advective-dispersive framework to simulate utility-wide residential water consumption using the analogy of a continuum transport process. In this context, the advective-dispersive process describes how changes in real water price and seasonal weather variability influence water consumption distribution, which ultimately governs mean and total water consumption values. Water consumption response is measured using histogram data optimally fit using parametric probability density functions (PDF) that have consistent parametrization over the entire observation period. Median statistic denotes advection and prescribes location of the measurement-space PDF, while standard deviation combined with standard-score PDF denotes dispersion which provides the measurement-space PDF with scale and shape. Combining location, scale, and shape components produces a measurement-space PDF that represents the solution to advective-dispersive transport phenomena. We use a Taylor series expansion of the statistics that define the PDF along with curvilinear regression to develop constitutive relationships that define how location, scale, and shape of the PDF respond to price and weather information. This results in a fully parametrizing advective-dispersive process represented by a partial differential equation that provides a tool for anticipating the probability that households will experience water poverty or use excess amounts as price, weather, and policy considerations change through time. This approach is conducive to automation when combined with smart water metering.

What does the reform do? How dungeon became prison

The paper examines the meanings of the notion of reform. Is reform an act or a process; what is an object of reform and how is it performed; is the scope of its performance limited or does it permeate deeper social structures? The approach to reform in this paper is genealogical, through the analysis of the processes of institutionalisation of the prison in Great Britain in 18th and 19th centuries. Although the elaboration of these processes revolves around a particular era and place, this micro-sample gives rise to conclusions that surpass historically conditioned analysis. The aim of this paper is to show that reform has to be understood as an expression and effect of a profound transformation of the political, as well as the complex, multilateral and dispersive process which penetrates into and alters extant social relations.

The Creation and Annealing Kinetics of Fast Light Induced Defect States created by 1 Sun Illumination in a-Si:H

Preliminary results are presented on the kinetics of fast states at 25°C created by 1 sun illumination in protocrystalline hydrogen diluted a-Si:H films. The results are for the bulk properties of the a-Si:H films which was confirmed by the similarity of results obtained on corresponding intrinsic layers in p-i-n solar cells. It is found that the kinetics exhibit two regimes. The first regime is in the form of a delay before the onset of an A·log(t) time dependence indicative of a dispersive process. Despite the unexpected effect of a dependence of this first regime on the degradation/annealing history of the samples, it was possible to characterize the highly reproducible logarithmic dependences for different illumination times as well as in the presence of different carrier generation/recombination rates. It is found that for the degradation times studied, the annealing kinetics associated with the second regime are independent of the 1 sun illumination time but are dependent on the recombination introduced by illuminations as low as ∼0-5 of 1 sun. These fast states are located close to midgap, similar to the position of dangling bond defects. The results presented raise interesting questions that still need to be answered about the nature and origin of the fast defects in order to assess their contribution to the long term degradation and the overall stability a-Si:H materials.