Search results for "RESOURCES"
showing 10 items of 1614 documents
District heating networks: enhancement of the efficiency
2019
International audience; During the decades the district heating's (DH) advantages (more cost-efficient heat generation and reduced air pollution) overcompensated the additional costs of transmission and distribution of the centrally produced thermal energy to consumers. Rapid increase in the efficiency of low-power heaters, development of separated low heat density areas in cities reduce the competitiveness of the large centralized DH systems in comparison with the distributed cluster-size networks and even local heating. Reduction of transmission costs, enhancement of the network efficiency by optimization of the design of the DH networks become a critical issue. The methodology for determ…
Predictive pumping based on sensor data and weather forecast
2019
In energy production, peat extraction has a significant role in Finland. However, protection of nature has become more and more important globally. How do we solve this conflict of interests respecting both views? In peat production, one important phase is to drain peat bog so that peat production becomes available. This means that we have control over how we can lead water away from peat bog to nature without water contamination with solid and other harmful substances. In this paper we describe a novel method how fouling of water bodies from peat bog can be controlled more efficiently by using weather forecast to predict rainfall and thus, minimize the effluents to nature. peerReviewed
English Language Policy in Relation to Teachers and Teacher Educators in Latvia: Insights from Activity Systems Analysis
2020
The ambitious objectives of European language policy and the strive for competitiveness have led to an increasing emphasis on foreign language competence at the level of national education systems. Using Spolsky’s onion model of language policy (2004) and Engeström’s Expansive Learning theory (1987, 2008), the study attempts to determine the formative influence of the existing multilayered language policy on the professional development of Latvian educators with the aim to compare the situation for teachers and teacher educators in respect of their English language proficiency.Given the prioritisation of English and strategic differences in foreign language management in relation to teacher…
GOBERNANZA DEL AGUA Y TERRITORIOS HIDROSOCIALES: DEL ANÁLISIS INSTITUCIONAL A LA ECOLOGÍA POLÍTICA
2018
[ES] En las últimas décadas han surgido diversos enfoques para dar respuesta a los desafíos que plantea la gestión del agua. Este artículo presenta, de manera introductoria, las principales aproximaciones teóricas desde las cuales se está analizando en la actualidad el uso y la gobernanza del agua: las corrientes neoinstitucionalistas, la teoría de los recursos comunes y la perspectiva del empoderamiento que se relaciona con la ecología política. La descripción de estos enfoques sirve para contextualizar las distintas aportaciones que se presentan en este monográfico sobre el estudio de los territorios hidrosociales, cuyos principales resultados se exponen sucintamente.
Preventive maintenance versus cost of repairs in asset management: An efficiency analysis in wastewater treatment plants
2020
Abstract The operation and management of Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) is of paramount importance to guarantee the sustainability of water resources. Just like any other production process, wastewater treatment process involves different costs, such as: energy, personnel, maintenance and reagents. Regarding maintenance costs, they have become an issue of great concern to many operators in the last years. Maintaining the facilities in good condition ensures the proper performance of these infrastructures and reduces the risk of failures. It should be known that equipment breakdowns imply an increase in operating costs, with a high risk of generating an environmental damage due to the m…
Towards a Security Competence of Software Developers
2020
Software growth has been explosive as people depend heavily on software on daily basis. Software development is a human-intensive effort, and developers' competence in software security is essential for secure software development. In addition, ubiquitous computing provides an added complexity to software security. Studies have treated security competences of software developers as a subsidiary of security engineers' competence instead of software engineers' competence, limiting the full knowledge of the security competences of software developers. This presents a crucial challenge for developers, educators, and users to maintain developers' competences in security. As a first step in pushi…
Different food sources elicit fast changes to bacterial virulence
2016
Environmentally transmitted, opportunistic bacterial pathogens have a life cycle that alternates between hosts and environmental reservoirs. Resources are often scarce and fluctuating in the outside-host environment, whereas overcoming the host immune system could allow pathogens to establish a new, resource abundant and stable niche within the host. We tested if short-term exposure to different outside-host resource types and concentrations affect Serratia marcescens —(bacterium)'s virulence in Galleria mellonella (moth). As expected, virulence was mostly dictated by the bacterial dose, but we also found a clear increase in virulence when the bacterium had inhabited a low (versus high) re…
Improving risk assessments in conservation ecology
2019
Conservation efforts and management decisions on the living environment of our planet often rely on the results from statistical models. Yet, these models are imperfect and quantification of risk associated with the estimate of management-relevant quantities becomes crucial in providing robust advice. Here we demonstrate that estimates of risk themselves could be substantially biased but by combining data fitting with an extensive simulation–estimation procedure, one can back-calculate the correct values. We apply the method to 627 time series of population abundance across four taxa using the Gompertz state-space model as an example. We find that the risk of large bias in population status…
iDamIDseq and iDEAR: an improved method and computational pipeline to profile chromatin-binding proteins
2016
DNA adenine methyltransferase identification (DamID) has emerged as an alternative method to profile protein-DNA interactions; however, critical issues limit its widespread applicability. Here, we present iDamIDseq, a protocol that improves specificity and sensitivity by inverting the steps DpnI-DpnII and adding steps that involve a phosphatase and exonuclease. To determine genome-wide protein-DNA interactions efficiently, we present the analysis tool iDEAR (iDamIDseq Enrichment Analysis with R). The combination of DamID and iDEAR permits the establishment of consistent profiles for transcription factors, even in transient assays, as we exemplify using the small teleost medaka (Oryzias lati…
What drives athletes toward dietary supplement use: objective knowledge or self-perceived competence? Cross-sectional analysis of professional team-s…
2019
Background Issues related to knowledge of nutrition and dietary supplementation (DS) are understudied in professional athletes. This study aimed to examine the possible association between knowledge of nutrition and DS (KN&DS) and dietary supplement use (DSU) among professional athletes involved in team sports. Methods The sample comprised professional team-sport athletes (N = 912, age: 22.11 ± 3.37 years, 356 females) involved in four Olympic sports: basketball (N = 228), soccer (N = 324), volleyball (N = 154), and handball (N = 206). The participants were tested by previously validated questionnaires to examine their self-perceived competence on nutrition and DS (S/KN&DS), their objective…