This article revisits an analysis by Frondel, Ritter and Schmidt (2008) of Germany’s Renewable Energy Act, which legislates a system of feed-in tariff s to promote the use of renewable energies. As in the original article, we argue that Germany’s support scheme subsidizes renewable energy technologies not based on their long-term market potential, but rather on their relative lack of competitiv...

electrospinning was applied to nitrocellulose (nc) solutions  in dmf, dmso  and  ethyl  methyl  keton  to  obtain  nc  nanofibers. electrospraying  process  was  observed  when  dmf  was  used  as solvent.  in  comparison  to nc/dmf, nc/dmso  solution  resulted  in the  formation  of  a  coating  film  as  indicate  by  sem.  two  different electrospun  nanofibers,  smooth  nanofibers  with  90...

The development of a portable and easy-to-use device for the detection of explosives with high sensitivity and selectivity is in high demand for homeland security and public safety. In this study, we demonstrate miniaturized devices depending on the upconversion ratiometric luminescent probe for point-of-care (POC) assay of explosives with the naked-eye. When the PEI-coated upconversion nanopar...

Activation energy for the decomposition of explosives is a crucial parameter of performance. The dramatic suppression of activation energy in condensed phase decomposition of nitroaromatic explosives has been an unresolved issue for over a decade. We rationalize the reduction in activation energy as a result of a mechanistic change from unimolecular decomposition in the gas phase to a series of...

All power generation technologies leave their particular imprint on the power system that they belong to. Wind and solar power have only recently reached significant levels of penetration in some countries, but they are expected to grow much during the next few decades, and contribute substantially to meeting future electricity demand, see e.g. European Commission (2011). Wind, photovoltaic (PV...

The possibility of understanding natural processes leading to explosive events in volcanic systems provides advantages for a better management of possible volcanic crises. On account of the possibility of the occurrence of other phenomena, such as tsunamis, the explosions driven by submarine volcanic systems are of particular interest, although little investigated. The recent sudden increase in...

Energy harvesting for the purpose of powering low power electronic sensor systems has received explosive attention in the last few years. A common device uses the piezoelectric effect for a cantilever beams at resonance to harvest ambient vibration energy. However most of these devices have a rectangular piezoelectric patch covering all or part of the beam. This paper considers the optimum desi...

To detect the presence of explosives in packages, automated systems are required. Energy dispersive X-ray diffraction (EDXRD) represents a powerful non invasive tool providing information on the atomic structure of samples. In this paper, EDXRD is investigated as a suitable technique for explosive detection and identification. To this end, a database has been constructed, containing measured X-...

A quantum-mechanically-based potential energy function that describes interactions of dimers of the explosive cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine (RDX) is used to predict polymorphic structures of crystalline RDX. The potential was first used in crystal structure prediction methods which generate polymorphs of RDX and provide a 0 K ordering in energy. The 13 low energy-structures generated by crystal...

For explosive detection purposes, it is assumed that the person preparing or carrying the explosive will inadvertently contaminate him/herself or the exterior of the package. To detect such traces of explosive materials, we show the use of differential reflectometry (DR) as an alternative system to the existing techniques. With DR, explosives show characteristic behaviours at specific wavelengt...