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The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), adopted by the UN in 2006, represents the coming of age of a human rights approach to disability. In doing so, it provides answers to the questions what ‘disability’ is, who ‘persons with disabilities’ are and what entitlements are legitimate and relevant in relation to ‘disability’. Partly, these answers flow from the heritage of international human rights law: individual rights and principles such as equality, dignity, liberty and autonomy and choice. An equally important part of the heritage of the CRPD is that of models of disability which have developed within disability research and activism. This book explores the CRPD through its ideological antecedents. It provides a comparative analysis of the CRPD, the negotiations through which it was developed, four different models of disability (ICIDH, the Social Model of Disability, ICF and the Minority Group Model of Disability), and critical points that have been made against these models. Against this backdrop, the choices made by the negotiators of the CRPD in relation to the named questions emerge as paths chosen at cross-roads, rather than as self-evident. Through this comparison, the book illuminates central choices that were made in the negotiations and their effects for which entitlements are protected for whom, as well as the challenges facing the monitoring and implementation of the CRPD, with a particular focus on the right to health. There is an ambiguous relationship between the right to health in human rights law and the model which had the strongest influence on the negotiations of the CRPD: the Social Model of Disability. This book shows that while there is considerable common ground between the CRPD and the Social Model of Disability (as delineated for the purposes of this book and as it was understood in the negotiations of the CRPD), the former departs from the latter on central points, which has implications for the monitoring and implementation of the right to health. In conclusion, I argue that the relationship between the Social Model of Disability and the right to health needs to be clarified in order for this right to materialise equally for the entire constituency of the CRPD.

I arbetet för Vikan AB var uppgiften att undersöka två olika delningsmetoder för mikrofibrer. Vikan AB är ett företag som utvecklar och framställer textila rengöringsredskap i mikrofibrer och tror sig ha kommit på en ny delningsmetod som förhoppningsvis ger en rad fördelar mot den nuvarande metoden. Den nya framställningsmetoden går under arbetsnamnet Easy Split och har ännu inte introducerats på marknaden.Studien har gått ut på att i fyra olika avseenden utvärdera de olika metodernas för- och nackdelar. De olika aspekterna har således varit processgång, utseende, hållbarhet och funktion. Utvärderingen utfördes med hjälp av en rad undersökningar där bland annat tester i absorption, kvadratmetervikt och fläckreduktion ingick.Många av egenskaperna undersöktes med hjälp av befintliga standarder medan undersökningen av fläckreduktionen skedde med en egenutvecklad testmetod. Till denna metod användes en Martindale vars rörelsemönster och tryck är valdes utifrån att göra testmetoden så verklighetstrogen som möjligt. Resultaten visar att det finns en skillnad på de olika metoderna och att de önskvärda egenskaperna finns starkast representerade hos den Easy split- baserade mikrofiberdelningen. De besparingar Vikan kan göra i och med att byta delningsmetod kan ha inverkan på energi- och vattenförbrukningen vilket resulterar i tidsbesparingar och minskade kostnader. In collaboration with Vikan AB the task has been to examine the different splitting types for microfibers. The company Vikan AB develops and produces textile cleaning products in microfibers and they now seem to have come up with a new splitting method that hopefully will give a range of advantages compared to the present method. The new method goes under the name Easy split and has not yet been introduced to the market.The study consisted of an analysis of the pros and cons of the methods in four different aspects. The different points of view were processing, appearance, durability and function. The investigation was made with a variety of tests including absorption, weight per square meter and stain reduction. Many of the properties were examined with help of existing standard tests while the stain reduction was analyzed with a method developed for this specific purpose. To represent the real environment a Martindale was used because of its uniform moving pattern. The conclusion indicates that the new splitting method not only results in advantages in adsorption, weight and stain reduction but also in water and energy consumption as well as time and expenses.Program: Textilingenjörsutbildningen

The PV Rebate Program (now the Solar Homes and Communities Program) operated from 2000 to mid 2009. Over this time, more than 40,000 PV systems were installed, about half of which were installed in the first half of 2009, and about a quarter of which were in NSW. This paper presents analysis of the characteristics of NSW PV rebate recipients, using surveys carried out by the NSW Government between 2000 and 2007, and a 2008 survey undertaken for the Commonwealth Government after it took over Program management. The surveys included questions about customer demographics, energy use and awareness, as well as PV information sources and reason for purchasing PV. The analysis in this paper is limited to grid-connected, residential rebate recipients in NSW, but the findings can be considered representative of the situation in Australia as a whole. Over the life of the Program both the grants and the customer base have changed. The most recent changes to the Program include the doubling of the grant in 2007 and the imposition of a means test in 2008. Variations to customer demographics and investment decisions are evident following these changes. The data provides a useful glimpse into Australian energy knowledge, attitudes and behaviour and hence provides useful guidance for future programs. This paper summarises a much larger report for the Commonwealth Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, funded through the Low Emissions Technology and Abatement Program., Solar09, the 47th ANZSES Annual Conference; Townsville

Australia leads the world in some areas of photovoltaic technology development, yet current innovation system limitations have seen local innovation overtaken by more rapid international development, or local product development moving offshore for commercialisation. Innovation is traditionally viewed as a linear progression through phases of early research, demonstration, commercialisation and market uptake, and this traditional view strongly emphasises the importance of the early phases. The latest thinking on innovation suggests that technological learning occurs not only through R&D, but also through manufacturing and marketing activities and through the interactions of actors within networks. In this paradigm, technology diffusion, as well as invention and adoption, plays a role in determining the direction of technological change. Organisational change and institutional change, which are critical in determining which technologies become established, are considered to be as important as technical change. This paper proposes the use of an innovation systems framework to assess the characteristics of the Australian PV innovation system, such as the type and number of actors, their linkages, and the resources available to them. Where much of the past support for the PV industry in Australia has been directed towards early research or market development, this research will provide information that could enable the design of policies that better facilitate innovation throughout the value chain and thus improve the impact of future policies on innovation., Solar09, the 47th ANZSES Annual Conference; Townsville

Low quality charge controllers and lamps are common sources of failure in solar home systems in developing countries. It is often assumed that components manufactured at a small scale in developing countries are of lower quality than imported ones. On the other hand, a number of authors have suggested that small-scale, local manufacture has the potential to improve the installation, maintenance and use of PV technology. This paper aims to identify the extent to which these different claims are warranted by documented experiences and to provide a summary of barriers to and advantages of small scale manufacture of balance of system (BOS) electronics for small PV systems in developing countries. The PV literature has been reviewed for any accounts of small-scale manufacture of PV system components in developing countries. The review was further informed by case studies, site inspections and personal communications undertaken by the author, as described in (Bruce 2007). The implications of local manufacture for the successful commercialisation of the technology, and the implications of both project-based and cash-based implementation models for the success of local manufacture have been examined. The results of the literature review are presented in this paper., ISES-AP - 3rd International Solar Energy Society Conference – Asia Pacific Region (ISES-AP-08); Sydney, Australia

The manufacture of photovoltaic (PV) system components has a role to play in the industrialisation and poverty reduction strategies of developing countries. It has also been suggested that small scale local manufacture of balance of systems components has the potential to improve the maintenance, installation and use of the technology. However, PV is a complex technology and most developing countries have not been able to build the capabilities required to manufacture PV system components of an appropriate quality and price, either in the modern or small scale sectors. The factors that determine the success of PV manufacturers in developing countries are therefore of interest. Previous studies on learning in the PV industry have been focused on industry-wide concerns and have not explicitly addressed enterprise-level capability building or challenges specific to developing countries. In particular, there has been very little published about small scale PV manufacture. This thesis therefore aims to improve understanding of the factors that influence capability building, with a view to assisting decision making in relation to PV manufacture in developing countries. The aims of the study have been fulfilled by the development and assessment of a software simulation training tool for PV cell production line engineers, the development of an analysis framework, and application of it to several case study PV enterprises. Through the application of the framework to the case studies, it has been possible to assess the role of software simulations, the suitability of countries with different types of infrastructure for hosting PV manufacturing and the institutional arrangements or interventions that could be used to promote capability building for PV manufacturers in developing countries. While further case studies are required to make more than tentative conclusions, the framework developed and tested in this thesis may now be used as a tool to systematically and rapidly analyse the appropriateness of different types of PV manufacture in particular countries, to identify the weaknesses in their PV technological systems and therefore to suggest where resources should be invested and where appropriate institutional changes could be made. The simulation software has been demonstrated to be an effective capability building tool, thus providing one of the key elements required for successful manufacturing.

Australia's electricity networks are experiencing low demand during the day due to excessive residential solar export and high demand during the evening on days of extreme temperature due to high air conditioning use. Pre-cooling and solar pre-cooling are demand-side management strategies with the potential to address both these issues. However, there remains a lack of comprehensive studies into the potential of pre-cooling and solar pre-cooling due to a lack of data. In Australia, however, extensive datasets of household energy measurements, including consumption and generation from rooftop solar, obtained through retailer-owned smart meters and household-owned third-party monitoring devices, are now becoming available. However, models presented in the literature which could be used to simulate the cooling energy in residential homes are temperature-based, requiring indoor temperature as an input. Temperature-based models are, therefore, precluded from being able to use these newly available and extensive energy-based datasets, and there is a need for the development of new energy-based simulation tools. To address this gap, a novel data-driven model to estimate the cooling energy in residential homes is proposed. The model is temperature-independent, requiring only energy-based datasets for input. The proposed model was derived by an analysis comparing the internal free-running and air conditioned temperature data and the air conditioning data for template residential homes generated by AccuRate, a building energy simulation tool. The model is comprised of four linear equations, where their respective slope intercepts represent a thermal efficiency metric of a thermal zone in the template residential home. The model can be used to estimate the difference between the internal free-running, and air conditioned temperature, which is equivalent to the cooling energy in the thermal zone. Error testing of the model compared the difference between the estimated and AccuRate air conditioned temperature and gave average CV-RMSE and MAE values of 22% and 0.3 degrees C, respectively. The significance of the model is that the slope intercepts for a template home can be applied to an actual residential home with equivalent thermal efficiency, and a pre-cooling or solar pre-cooling analysis is undertaken using the model in combination with the home's energy-based dataset. The model is, therefore, able to utilise the newly available extensive energy-based datasets for comprehensive studies on pre-cooling and solar pre-cooling of residential homes. Refereed/Peer-reviewed