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Beam Down Receivers (BDR) are a promising alterative for small-to-medium tower-based Concentrating Solar Thermal (CST) plants. A novel particle receiver Solar Expanding Vortex Receiver (SEVR), that has been proposed to be configurated into a BDR for solarization of high temperature industrial applications, such as calcination process. This type of receiver might benefit from beam down optics via a ground-based receiver, a simplified tower, and key operational advantages (e.g., reduced pumping requirements, co-located receiver-storage, reduced particle egress). This study lays the groundwork for such a design via an optimization tool which uses the Monte Carlo Ray Tracing (MCRT) method. It was found that for a 50 MWth, system the optimal tower height is 75m and that this system can provide a LCOH of ∼34 USD/MWh. The radiation flux distribution on receiver aperture and the optical efficiency throughout the year were also studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A frame of reference is needed in educating information professionals to grow and be effective in the future. Information professionals need sensitivity to information, its organization, and technological impacts on society, as well as the abilities to diffuse information and perceive analogy across the information field. Six subject areas to guide in curriculum design are suggested, based on the assumptions that librarianship is part of the whole information structure, not tied to an institution, and that more attention to users and their needs should be encouraged: (1) information organization and retrieval; (2) the information environment; (3) information media; (4) systems and technologies; (5) research methods; and (6) management. Information organization and sources must relate more to information seeking processes and utilization. Typologies and taxonomies of information transfer, agencies, users, and needs must be developed. The organization of visual, aural, and linguistic messages must be studied. Information professionals need the abilities to analyze, design, and evaluate operating and potential systems; to critically evaluate research results; and to effectively develop and conduct research. Management-- concerned with human behavior and organizations--links these areas. An attitude change is needed by information educators and professionals to break from the library as an institution and seek alliances with other fields. (KP)

These 19 papers from the second annual Policy Forum on Employability Development explore the responsiveness of various educational and training institutions to changing labor market demands. The first three papers provide an overview of the forum. They summarize the proceedings and policy considerations and address how vocational education and training can be responsive to change. The next four papers focus on occupational projections. Specific topics are accuracy and utilization of occupational forecasts, labor market models for college-trained workers, and reactor comments on occupational forecasting and projections. The third section on early warning systems contains four papers that address preparation of staffing requirements data at the micro- or plant level, a descriptive survey of the employment effects of the defense budget, and reactor comments on these two presentations. Seven papers deal with state and local adjustments to changing labor market demands, specifically the states' human resource development role, local coordination and linking efforts among employment and training programs, vocational education's response to skilled industrial worker shortaqes, factors influencing vocational education program decisions, and two papers with reactor comments. A paper on the experiences of other countries in responding to changes in the demand for skilled workers and reactor comments conclude the volume. (YLB)

This paper analyzes the relative funding model developed as part of the reorganization resulting from the 1988 Australian Government's White Paper on Higher Education Policy. This reorganization created the Unified National System which has resulted in fewer but larger higher education institutions. The relative funding model is described in terms of its origins and principles, including: objectivity, simplicity, fairness, relative funding, applicability to total operating grants, relationship to direct costs, teaching and research components, discipline cost clusters, tolerance band, and special factors. The model's teaching and research components are then explained in more detail. Application of the model at the Footscray Institute of Technology (Victoria, Australia) is detailed, including tables using student load as the basis of resource distribution and planned course enrollment as the measure of student load. Includes four references. (DB)

Sustainable electricity generation plants can be coupled with energy-intensive desalination processes, but does this pose an attractive — and sustainable — solution for the energy-water nexus? Previous work by the co-authors has identified that among all desalination technologies, multi-effect distillation (MED) is the most promising technology for integration with concentrating solar thermal plants, because it can re-use 'free' waste heat from turbine exhaust, albeit at the cost of reduced electricity output. This study investigates if this approach can be beneficially extended to a solar-driven supercritical CO2 (sCO2) cycle. It was found that for low water production levels (i.e.,<500 m3/h), the sCO2 cycle's thermal efficiency is not markedly reduced (an inherent advantage over integration with steam cycles). In addition, negative specific energy consumption values were achieved at low sCO2 minimum temperature, indicating that a MED unit would consume less energy than a dry cooler for a solar thermal sCO2 plant operating in an arid region. Furthermore, economic sustainability was evaluated by considering plant's distance and elevation from the coast and its impact with respect to the levelized cost of electricity and water and the payback period. It was found that the plant's payback period is dominated by the cost of electricity and the direct normal irradiance (DNI) resources, such that the seawater pumping costs (infrastructure plus energy inputs) have little impact. This can be explained by the fact that only small-sized MED plants are feasible, so very little of the plant's revenue comes from selling water due to limited water production. Overall, it was found that sCO2− MED cogeneration plants do indeed represent a promising sustainable technological solution for the energy-water nexus IF they are: a) sized/designed to replace air coolers, mostly for internal plant water usage (e.g., mirror cleaning), b) installed with available access to seawater, and c) placed in a location with a high DNI resource (> 6 kWh/m2 · day). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]