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Located deep in the Kelabit Highlands in Malaysian Borneo, the remote town of Bario offers us a natural laboratory of rural electrification projects through which to understand end-user perceptions of success and failure, and the factors that contribute to these perceptions. We use a case-study based approach and focus on three off-grid energy projects: a 110 kW mini-hydro power plant; a 12 kW wind turbine system; and a 1.59 MW solar-diesel hybrid system. We find that end-users primarily see the success or failure of a project in technical terms, but that this narrow conceptualization masks important interactions between technical, economic and institutional factors. We further find that end-user perceptions of newer projects are heavily affected by their perceptions of previous projects. Our findings suggest several ways forward to improve the effectiveness of rural electrification initiatives. Firstly, we should expect complex interactions between technical, economic and institutional factors and build-in the necessary capacity into rural electrification projects to identify and address these interactions. Secondly, there is no one size fits all solution to creating the requisite capacity to deal with interactions among technical, economic and institutional factors. Thirdly, ongoing qualitative or mixed-methods evaluations of rural electrification initiatives can help unravel what would otherwise be hidden interactions between technical, economic and institutional factors.

The impounding level of 175m for the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR) is of vital importance for efficient flood control, power generation and convenient navigation in China. However, little is known about the spatial distribution and toxicological risks of major pollutants in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area (TGRA) at that stage. The aim of this study is to probe the ubiquitous polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) contamination and toxicological impacts in the surface water of the TGRA at the highest water impoundment level of 175m. Our results showed that the ƩPAHs levels ranged from 83 to 1631ng/L in the upper reaches, 354 to 1159ng/L in the middle reaches, and 23 to 747ng/L in the lower reaches of the TGRA. Source apportionment of PAHs indicated that coal combustion, industrial emissions, heavy traffic, agriculture and shipping activities were the primary sources. Compositional pattern highlighted >85% dominancy of low molecular weight (LMW) PAHs in the reservoir. Risk assessment based on risk quotients (RQs) implied moderate to high ecological risks: the upper reaches>the middle reaches>the lower reaches. However, gene expression profiles portrayed contrary scenario because of the presence of relatively higher footprints of high molecular weight (HMW) PAHs in the middle and the lower reaches, which was confirmed by Cox hazard proportional model. Moreover, the transgenic zebrafish Tg(cyp1a:gfp) induced by PAHs also expressed stronger fluorescent signals in the middle and lower reaches. Taken together, different approaches were employed to firstly reveal the real status of ecological toxicity of PAHs and explore the underlying mechanisms at the highest impounding level of 175m in the TGRA.

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), the pollutants of emerging concerns, present potential risks to the ecological environment. This study focused on the prioritization of widely used selected PPCPs belonging to two categories:personal care products (PCPs) and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). We predicted the toxicogenetic endpoints of PPCPs and then confirmed them using experimental approaches. Our results revealed a significant similarity in the findings obtained through both approaches, indicating NSAIDs with relatively high environmental impacts and in vitro/vivo toxicity. Experimental approach revealed that musk xylene (MX) from PCPs and DIC from NSAIDs as individual chemicals of priority concern showed elevated environmental impacts and significantly induced pi3k-akt-mTOR in vitro. Similarly, propyl paraben (PP) from PCPs and diclofenac (DIC) from NSAIDs caused significant cytotoxicity and DNA damage in vitro. Moreover, PP and MX from the PCPs group and naproxen (NAP) and DIC from the NSAIDs group induced developmental toxicity and perturbations to phases I, II, and III detoxification pathways in vivo. In addition, MX and DIC as priority PPCPs inhibited hematopoiesis and hepatogenesis in vivo. Apart from the specific effects, PPCPs can be ranked as: MX > PP > methylparaben (MP) for PCPs, and DIC > NAP > ibuprofen (IBU) for NSAIDs, regarding their toxic and environmental concerns.

Take water hydraulic slide valve core as the research object. Laser surface texturing (LST) technology was used to improve the valve core carrying capacity and hydrodynamic lubrication characteristics, which can process micro-texture on the surface of the core. And CFD method was taken to calculate flow field of smooth and laser surface texturing core respectively. For studying the influence of valve core micro-texture and valve core overlap lengths on hydrodynamic lubrication characteristic and carrying capacity of the core, core surface pressure distribution, surface pressure and friction force curves were drawn. Results show: The smooth valve core does not produce hydrodynamic lubrication effect, but textured valve core can bring the oil film load capacity, so as to make the effect of mixed friction between valve core and sleeve weaken. And along with the decrease of the core overlap length, the carrying capacity on the surface of the textured valve core does not decrease but increase when the valve core overlap length amount is greater than 2.5mm.The results provide important theoretical reference of studying and applying LST process technology to the valve core friction pair’s lubrication performance.

This research is focused on dynamic performance of water hydraulic single hydraulic prop, the mathematical and AMESim model of single hydraulic prop are established. And the drop hammer is introduced to simulate the impact load of the surrounding rock acting on the prop. The performance parameters of prop retract displacement and cavity pressure are used as the research objects. The working process of single hydraulic prop is reproduced by the simulation. And the influence of safety valve parameters on the support system is analyzed. The results show that: increasing maximal valve core stroke and dead volume or reducing valve damping hole diameter can improve the support performance of the single hydraulic prop. But the influence of equivalent damping has two sides. For support system, decrease damping can improve the support performance, but for the safety valve, reduce the damping make the valve core stability decline. In addition, the pressure overshoot of the optimized system is 18.3%, adjusting time is 0.5s and the retract displacement is 10mm. The dynamic performances meet the technology requirements of the coal mine safety production of China.

This paper uses a political ecology approach to unpack the experience of local governments and displaced communities in Sarawak, Malaysia, with Chinese dam construction at the Bakun Hydroelectric Dam. Data for the study was collected over 32 months from 2014 to 2016. The field site offered a unique insight into how recipient countries of aid are also often at the receiving end of domestic politics of donor countries. The paper finds that Chinese and Australian enterprises involved in the dam construction and resettlement of indigenous communities displayed different understandings with regards to social and environmental safeguards, resulting in a dysfunctional handover of the project from Australian to Chinese leadership. Consequently, indigenous communities were dispossessed from their land, affecting their ability to successfully reconstruct their livelihoods, with their attempts to do so causing further damage to the environment around the reservoir of the dam.

Advantages, disadvantages, and drilling adaptability of several rigs earlier used in domestic coal mine are analyzed. CMS1-800/30 crawler jumbo is reconstructed from standing pillar rig according to specific condition of long bedding borehole at coal face which possesses rockburst trend. Wide blade spiral drill pipe and Φ65mm diamond compact bit are used to drill long bedding borehole at headentry and tailentry. Drilling efficiency of long bedding borehole is greatly improved, and effect of relieving stress is very good. Safe and quick mining is ensured, and economic benefit is remarkable.

According to the Eleventh China Intelligent Robot Contest of fire-fighting rules, modified the AS-MF09 fire-fighting robot and had made an overall debug. From the problems arising in the debugging process for the hardware platform based on AS-MF09, this paper made a targeted analysis in the practice, the key technologies such as the strategies of finding the fire, the choice of fire-fighting mode and the efficiency to ensure fire-fighting had been optimized. As the result, the AS-MF09 fire-fighting robot found the fire quickly at the lower scores fire-fighting mode and extinguished the fire with the success rate of one hundred percent. The result shows that the optimization of the AS-MF09 fire-fighting robot can achieve rapid and efficient fire-fighting effects.

Due to special physical and chemical properties of water medium, three-way water hydraulic valve has many key technical problems that could seriouly affect the operating performance. Safety valve in three-way hydraulic valve is seen as a research object, which is aiming at studying the effect of flow field distribution with surface micro modeling in three-way hydraulic valve cavity based on FLUENT. The simulation results show that, proper surface micro modelling help to improve the three-way water hydraulic valve cavity flow field distribution, different structural parameters affecting different flow field distribution, as for micro modelling design, careful consideration of the selection of structure parameters is necessary.

Major recent developments of gear pump with external mesh is introduced in this paper, In order to enlarge the application range of the gear pump, a kind of variable type gear pump is designed. The whole design process is described in detail, the entire structure use a triplet, The driven gear can move through variable stem, it result in the change of displacement, it can refer to design of variable gear pump.

The Fukushima disaster was a wake-up call for the nuclear industry as well as a shocking revelation of the inner workings of the Japanese power sector. The political fallout from the event was far-reaching, pushing governments into abandoning nuclear expansion, turning instead to fossil fuels and renewable energy alternatives. While the move away from nuclear energy was deemed a move critical to political survival in Europe, we find that political candidates running on anti-nuclear platforms did not win elections, while the pro-nuclear Liberal Democratic Party won government in the 2012 elections. Against this backdrop, we analyse the energy conflict in Japan using a framework of values versus interests and consider the regulatory and cultural conditions that contributed to the disaster. A number of considerations lie in the way of an organised phase-out of nuclear power in Japan. We also consider the possible policy paths Japan may take.

Local perceptions of climate anomalies influence adaptation behaviour. Specifically, perceptions that are more accurate and homogenous at the community-level are more likely to facilitate the collective action required to adapt to the local effects of climate anomalies experienced by many indigenous communities. We combine primary data on perceptions of climate anomalies from 200 individuals in six Penan villages in Sarawak, Malaysia with instrumental climate data. We find that perceptions of climate anomalies vary substantially in terms of occurrence and magnitude, and do not generally correlate with instrumental climate data. We operationalise the Penan forest sign language (Oroo’) as a measure of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and find only weak evidence of a systematic statistical association with perceptions of climate anomalies among our sampled respondents. Our findings suggest caution in advancing adaptation strategies in indigenous communities that are predominantly premised on TEK. Instead, our findings suggest that in designing adaptation measures, indigenous communities may benefit by engaging in forums where community members and external stakeholders can come together, share their perceptions and observations of climate change, and reach a collective consensus on the community-level effects of climate change and pathways towards adaptation.

Numerical simulation of vector wave scattering from three-dimensional (3-D) target and rough surface composite model is investigated with a 3-D multilevel UV method. Due to the adoption of RWG basis functions for accurate modeling of vector current, the oscillation of the interaction matrix elements brings difficulty to directly apply the UV decomposition method. Based on the reordering of the interaction strength and the sampling according to the characteristics distribution of the interaction, an EM-interaction-based sampling algorithm is developed for the accurate reconstruction of the far interaction submatrix with UV decomposition method. Combined with multilevel division of the total composite model, the 3-D multilevel UV method incorporating the new sampling algorithm is developed for vector wave scattering from 3-D complex target above or on a random rough surface. The 3-D multilevel UV method yields a complexity of O(N log N) for the setup time of the impedance matrix, the solve time of the matrix iterative solution and also for the memory requirements. The accuracy and the efficiency of the 3-D multilevel UV method is compared and validated with the full MOM method and the ACA method in the tested cases. Finally, the applications of a target above or on the rough surface, for example, a ship on the sea surface, have been accomplished and analyzed.

In this paper, 1-D range profiles of a 2-D perfect electric conductor (PEC) target above a 2-D PEC rough surface are investigated with numerical solutions for the electric field integral equations (EFIEs) of the combined scattering model. The backscattering is computed accurately by the reradiation of the induced surface currents on the target and the rough surface. Using a stepped frequency waveform (SFW), 1D high-resolution range profiles (HRRPs) of the target above a rough surface are obtained by performing the inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT) on the wideband backscattered field. Plots of range profiles show that the multiple interactions between the target and the bottom surface lead to a series of equivalent range profiles, especially when the bottom surface is smooth. Range locations of the equivalent range profiles are in good agreement with the results expected from the ray theory. The range profiles could be understood and analyzed based on the knowledge of the scattering mechanisms. Thus, the connection between the numerically simulated range profiles and the scattering mechanisms is established.

Through datas acquisition, processing the data and signal, to achieve full, real-time monitoring of running state of endless rope continuous tractor. Research and analysis the software and hardware of the endless rope continuous tractor monitoring, it has the function of the winch position and speed of real-time display, leakage communication, language broadcaster, fault logging, winch driver identification, fault masking, two-speed winch speed selection. It can be comprehensive protected for emergency stop to lockout, overwinding protection in the head and tail in running, and remote monitoring through the host computer.

a numerical matching method (NMM) based on the framework of the uniform geometrical theory of diffraction (UTD) is proposed to build the spectral functions for computing the diffraction field by anisotropic impedance wedge at an arbitrary skew incidence. The NMM starts from the coupled integral equations before they are converted into the coupled difference equations as the classic Maliuzhinets methods. Then, the spectral function in the Sommerfeld integral representation of the longitudinal components of the EM field is expanded by a series about the spectrum and the skew incident angle with unknown coefficients. With respect to the oblique incident angle based on normal to the edge incidence or grazing to the edge incidence, the spectral function is derived numerically by solving a system of algebraic equations constructed from the coupled integral equations, after choosing the numerical matching regions on the wedge faces and setting a Sommerfeld numerical integration path. On the basis of the sampled incidences, the asymptotic waveform evaluation (AWE) technique is employed to deduce the spectral function at any other skew incidence in the whole angle space (0°-90°) rapidly. Finally, the UTD solutions are provided far beyond the applicability of the perturbation approach and the numerical examples provide a uniform behavior of the field with respect to the observation angle.

Outreach and education on conservation issues are crucial elements of successful conservation programmes. Big screen animations have a global reach, yet are not fully capitalised by conservationists and there remains great potential in developing them into powerful biodiversity and conservation education outreach tools despite known shortfalls and limitations in scientific value. We reviewed recent major animated features with multiple conservation themes (e.g. extinction, wildlife trade, ex-situ conservation) and that especially feature tropical biodiversity, especially endemics, charismatic flagships or threatened species in authentic natural settings. We acknowledge that while the potential to develop them into effective biodiversity and conservation education tools is undoubted and there are recent examples, there is a crucial need to complement them with supporting educational materials, campaigns and activities. Partnerships between the animation studios, conservation NGOs and local stakeholders will be integral to effect this.