The amount of electrical energy produced over the lifetime of DTand DHe-fusion power plants is compared to the total amount of energy required to procure the fuel, build, operate, and decommission the power plants. The energy payback ratio is similar for the two quite different fuel cycles, 31 for DHe-fusion and 27 for DT-fusion, even though there is a significant difference in the source of in...

BACKGROUND The Health and Health Services Research Fund (HHSRF) is dedicated to support research related to all aspects of health and health services in Hong Kong. We evaluated the fund's outcomes and explored factors associated with the translation of research findings to changes in health policy and provider behaviour. METHODS A locally suitable questionnaire was developed based on the "pay...

Biofuels have gained increasing attention as an alternative to fossil fuels for several reasons, one of which is their potential to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the transportation sector. Recent studies have questioned the validity of claims about the potential of biofuels to reduce GHG emissions relative to the liquid fossil fuels they are replacing when emissions owing to di...

The present study evaluates the environmental profile of a PV-green roof (PV panels over a soil/plant layer) and other roofing systems (PV-bitumen, PV-gravel, gravel, extensive green and intensive green). The analysis is based on multiple life-cycle impact assessment methodologies (ReCiPe, etc), several scenarios (for example with and without recycling) and it provides a deeper analysis as well...

Pre-read: Client/Server Software Architectures--An Overview 1. Complete this sentence and include up to a one-paragraph answer-Mainframe architecture is not a client/server architecture because 2. What is more effective a two tier or three tied architecture? A one-paragraph answer will be sufficient. 3. What is the purpose of an ORB and what is the role of the OMG? 4. Why is CASE considered a c...

ORTEC is a Netherlands-based software company selling decision support systems based on operations research models. One of her products is HARMONY, a workforce scheduling package. We developed a model to predict its return on investment for a specific customer. The model uses a database of reference implementations to find organizations that are similar to the prospective customer’s organizatio...

This article will present the differences between restructuring, reengineering, and reinventing. It will identify a process for developing a leadership position that is difficult or impossible to duplicate and show how to develop a business strategy that leads to correctly identifying the core value-added processes of your business--the right ones to reengineer.

An analytic model for optimizing thermoelectric power generation system is developed and utilized for parametric studies. This model takes into account the external thermal resistances with hot and cold reservoirs. In addition, the spreading thermal resistance in the module substrates is considered to find the impact of designing small fraction of thermo elements per unit area. Previous studies...

Anaerobic co-digestion technology is increasingly used to simultaneously treat solid and liquid organic waste to balance nutrient content, to reduce the negative effects of toxic compounds in the process, and to increase biogas yield. The aim of this study was to analyze the economic performance of co-digestion plants fed with agro-industrial wastes as a function of installed power, with a meth...