1522 research outputs found
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Assessment of the wind energy potential at Bausch + Lomb Waterford
Get PDFIn recent years, renewable energy has come to prominence due to worldwide concern over greenhouse gases, energy supply issues and increasing economic volatility, and this, coupled with the ever-increasing price of fossil fuels, has led to an increased emphasis being placed on alternative sources of energy. These energy issues are attributable to a number of factors, typically, dependence on fossil fuel reserves, increase in energy demand and the current economic climate. As a result of the factors mentioned above, a greater reliance has been placed on alternative energy sources. Wind is an abundant potential source of energy in Ireland. Wind is, however, extremely variable in nature, as is also, albeit to a lesser extent, the national demand for electrical energy. Harnessing and predicting the electrical power from wind is the challenge, especially as Ireland’s electrical power from wind is going to significantly (more than 70-fold by 2050, according to one roadmap) increase over the next few years. Allied to the abundant nature of wind resources in Ireland and the increasing levels of national grid penetration that wind energy is currently experiencing, electricity auto production, where the wind generated electricity is for local, private use, is becoming ever more prevalent. Furthermore, electricity auto production will form a key component in the distributed generation of future smart electrical grids and is even now an attractive option for users with large energy demands, primarily to reduce their energy costs with a small generation surplus to on-site demand being exported to the grid
The practical SoundLab for architects: sound parameters as a design tool
Get PDFThe experience gained from exploring the subject of Acoustics with architectural students in Waterford Institute of Technology (Ireland) suggests that a studio situation can be exploited and used as a case study for young designers to become familiar with basic sound phenomena. From phase 1 of previous research, the student "audiovisual design workshop" concluded that class rooms, that perform poorly acoustically, can help to strengthen the students' understanding of the sonic environment, in a way that the students were exposed day after day to high reverberation, low speech intelligibility, and the "Lombard" effect in their own studio. However, becoming aware of poor acoustics necessitates a creative follow-up: how to design and create good acoustics, or how to develop the environment as a "soundscape"? Consequently, phase 2 of our audiovisual design workshop introduced the practical sound lab: our students were required to design and to build acoustic panels for their own studio environment. These "prototypes" would be analyzed as part of an Acoustic Laboratory, with specialist advise
Towards a Maturity Model for Service Innovation Capabilities: Identifying the Research Imperative
Get PDFDue to the growing significance of services to modern economies in terms of GDP, employment, growth, and recovery, service innovation has been emerging as an important area in business research, industry, policy, and to academics (Szczygielski, 2011). When successfully managed, service innovation has the potential to grow and enhance individual businesses, the service sector, and the economy as a whole (Aizcorbe et al., 2009). However, innovation research has been historically biased towards manufacturing, resulting in a knowledge deficit regarding our understanding of the capabilities required to effectively manage service innovation within an organisation (Adams et al., 2006). A clear understanding of these capabilities has consequences which facilitate effective service innovation and increase positive returns.
In order to accurately measure service innovations and inform targeted improvement initiatives, this project will draw upon and innovatively develop a capability maturity model framework (Wendler, 2012) as a structured way of describing, prescribing, and comparing the innovativeness of service firms (Röglinger et al., 2012). Additionally, the measurement of a company's capabilities on a micro level will be facilitated through integrating the resource-based view to embed improvement processes within their operations (Adams et al., 2006). While maturity model successes have been widely documented; this will be the first model of its kind, developed and tested in practice (Essmann and du Preez, 2010). As such, this project addresses current research gaps and simultaneously approaches the discipline with a novel methodology and serves to complement and significantly upscale existing research in the field
eBooks - Impacts on Libraries (at The Digital Landscape: The Library Perspective, CorkPAL)
No full textOverview of eBooks for libraries, DRM, models of delivery, library cultur
Einstein’s cosmology review of 1933: a new perspective on the Einstein-de Sitter model of the cosmos
Get PDFWe present a first English translation and analysis of a little-known review of relativistic cosmology written by Albert Einstein in late 1932. The article, which was published in 1933 in a book of Einstein papers translated into French, contains a substantial review of static
and dynamic relativistic models of the cosmos, culminating in a discussion of the Einstein-de Sitter model. The article offers a valuable contemporaneous insight into Einstein’s cosmology in the early 1930s
and confirms that his interest lay in the development of the simplest model of the cosmos that could account for observation. The article also confirms that Einstein did not believe that simplified relativistic models could give an accurate description of the early universe
TOWARD A CONCEPTUALISATION OF A SERVICE INNOVATION MATURITY MODEL
Get PDFFollowing best practice detailed by Jochem et al. (2011), this paper evaluates existing research concerned with the assessment and development of capabilities for effective service innovation in Irish SMEs and proposes a maturity model framework comprising of stages presented in an evolutionary framework that sequentially and incrementally describes the development of capabilities in a logical order. Our service innovation maturity levels range from low to high illustrating the increasing sophistication of the outlined attributes as firms grow and mature capabilities to achieve their service innovation goals.
Due to the research deficit, it is anticipated that the on-going study will make a substantial contribution to both academic knowledge and practice by expanding the service innovation literature and identifying and detailing the specific innovation maturity levels that can be used to enhance service innovativeness. The paper also highlights essential aspects of the discipline which warrant further investigation in the future
Cooperative Multi-Channel Wireless Networks and Their Applications
Get PDFGrowing popularity of wireless networks calls for their continuous evolution and
improvement. Wireless devices are expected to be constantly decreasing in size
and price. Meanwhile applications and services provided via wireless networks
are expected to increase in popularity. We envision a Future Wireless Network
(FWN) to consist of a large amount of miniature inexpensive autonomous devices
spread in various location (e.g. hospitals, hotels etc). Along with the miniature
devices the FWN may incorporate a set of WiFi access points (AP) which provide
users with local Internet access. This thesis addresses some of the challenges of
the FWN design. We consider how a FWN should use its available resources to
ensure their efficient utilization. We examine how the FWN should adapt to various
load heterogeneities within the network. These heterogeneities may by in
icted,
for example, by the activity of the users or the network layout. We consider the
necessity of the FWN to exhibit a certain degree of
exibility that will allow the
FWN to accustom to diverse requirements of possible application scenarios. And
finnally we consider how users should control and fine-tune the performance of the
FWN.
Node cooperation serves as a foundation of autonomous wireless network design
in general. The cooperation increases intelligence of the nodes, makes them more
aware of each other's activities. Research presented in this thesis is divided into two
parts. The first part considers cooperation between miniature devices of a FWN,
where we address the FWN design challenges by applying explicit multi-channel
node cooperation. In particular we focus on sensor environments for health-care
applications, where the devices are equipped with only single half-duplex transcei-
vers and could be either on-body (e.g. Body Sensor Networks) or environmental.
The second part of the thesis considers the implicit cooperation between a WiFi
AP and its users
Is a population-level physical activity legacy of the London 2012 Olympics likely?
Get PDFOrganizing committees for Olympic Games often
promise a diverse range of long-term health and other
legacies emanating directly from having hosted the
Games. Some of these legacies appear supported by
evidence, whereas others may be part of the rhetoric
surrounding the initial bids for the Games