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Unsettling Anthropocentrism

What does it mean to position anthropos in the center? Questioning anthropocentrism is far more than an academic exercise of debating the dominant cultural motif of placing humans at the center of material and ethical concerns. It is a fertile way of shifting the focus of attention away from the problem-symptoms of our time (be these symptoms as far-reaching as rapid climate change or as inconvenient as “just” jellyfish jamming the machine) to the investigation of root causes. And certainly the dominant beliefs, values, and attitudes guiding human action constitute a significant driver of the pressing problems of our day. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-014-9362-1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/

Harness the Power of a Fluid Identity with 3 Simple Strategies

Don’t mind me while I drive through your neighborhood taking photo’s of your house, gathering your emails, passwords and other private information from your wifi network. It’s nothing personal, I’m doing it to everyone, in every street, in over 30 countries. Perhaps you can also excuse me while I give access to data you and your friends shared with me and each other, to individuals and companies I have no relation to or control over at all, and while leaking your data, again it’s nothing personal, I’m doing it to 87 million others, you probably won’t mind me showing you and 126 million others some political disinformation, there’s an election coming and I could really use the money. It’s not as if we don’t know each other, I’ve been following your every move online for years now, and it’s no secret that I’m worth hundreds of billions because I sell access to you, promising my customers influence over your voting and purchasing behavior. I’ve got power. Monopolies are rare lol. If all this makes you uncomfortable, you can always cut ties with me and everyone you work and communicate online with, but what would that solve? Your friends are totally oversharing…

MSP Challenge 2050 - Ecopath Link Design Document

Current status and grand challenges for small wind turbine technology

While modern wind turbines have become by far the largest rotating machines on Earth with further upscaling planned for the future, a renewed interest in small wind turbines (SWTs) is fostering energy transition and smart grid development. Small machines have traditionally not received the same level of aerodynamic refinement as their larger counterparts, resulting in lower efficiency, lower capacity factors, and therefore a higher cost of energy. In an effort to reduce this gap, research programs are developing worldwide. With this background, the scope of the present study is 2-fold. In the first part of this paper, an overview of the current status of the technology is presented in terms of technical maturity, diffusion, and cost. The second part of the study proposes five grand challenges that are thought to be key to fostering the development of small wind turbine technology in the near future, i.e. (1) improving energy conversion of modern SWTs through better design and control, especially in the case of turbulent wind; (2) better predicting long-term turbine performance with limited resource measurements and proving reliability; (3) improving the economic viability of small wind energy; (4) facilitating the contribution of SWTs to the energy demand and electrical system integration; (5) fostering engagement, social acceptance, and deployment for global distributed wind markets. To tackle these challenges, a series of unknowns and gaps are first identified and discussed. Based on them, improvement areas are suggested, for which 10 key enabling actions are finally proposed.

Jiskefet, a bookkeeping application for ALICE

A new bookkeeping system called Jiskefet is being developed for A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) during Long Shutdown 2, to be in production until the end of LHC Run 4 (2029). Jiskefet unifies two function- alities: a) gathering, storing and presenting metadata associated with the oper- ations of the ALICE experiment and b) tracking the asynchronous processing of the physics data. It will replace the existing ALICE Electronic Logbook and AliMonitor, allowing for a technology refresh and the inclusion of new fea- tures based on the experience collected during Run 1 and Run 2. The front end leverages web technologies much in use nowadays such as TypeScript and NodeJS and is adaptive to various clients such as tablets, mobile devices and other screens. The back end includes an OpenAPI specification based REST API and a relational database. This paper will describe the organization of the work done by various student teams who work on Jiskefet in sequential and parallel semesters and how continuity is guaranteed by using guidelines on coding, documentation and development. It will also describe the current status of the development, the initial experience in detector stand-alone commissioning setups and the future plans.

Energy matching: exploring the value of demand flexibility in educational office buildings

This research presents a case study exploring the potential for demand side flexibility at a cluster of university buildings. The study investigates the potential of a collection of various electrical devices, excluding heating and cooling systems. With increasing penetration of renewable electricity sources and the phasing out of dispatchable fossil sources, matching grid generation with grid demand will become difficult using traditional grid management methods alone. Additionally, grid congestion is a pressing problem. Demand side management in buildings may contribute to a solution to these problems. Currently demand response is, however, not yet exploited at scale. In part, this is because it is unclear how this flexibility can be translated into successful business models, or whether this is possible under the current market regime. This research gives insight into the potential value of energy demand flexibility in reducing energy costs and increasing the match between electricity demand and purchased renewable electricity. An inventory is made of on-site electrical devices that offer load flexibility and the magnitude and duration of load shifting is estimated for each group of devices. A demand response simulation model is then developed that represents the complete collection of flexible devices. This model, addresses demand response as a ‘distribute candy’ problem and finds the optimal time-of-use for shiftable electricity demand whilst respecting the flexibility constraints of the electrical devices. The value of demand flexibility at the building cluster is then assessed using this simulation model, measured electricity consumption, and data regarding the availability of purchased renewables and day-ahead spot prices. This research concludes that coordinated demand response of large variety of devices at the building cluster level can improve energy matching by 0.6-1.5% and reduce spot market energy cost by 0.4-3.2%.