Impacts of integration of wind and solar PV in a typical power network

Integration of solar PV and wind in to the distribution network is one of the most promising challenges of the modern power system networks to meet the growing demand of energy. Analysis of the effects of solar and wind intermittencies in the network are vital to maintain the power quality. Keeping this in view, this research paper focuses on impact analysis study of a typical power network with hybrid generation: solar PV and wind integration to quantify the level of impacts like power variation and voltage variation in the network through load flow analysis. Initially, a typical network model is developed using PSS-SINCAL and load profile analysis has been carried out based on the typical daily load profile and wind/solar profile to verify the power and voltage variations extensively in the network considering different scenarios. Results of this research analysis can be used as guidelines for utility grid to provide regulated and improved quality of energy supply by implementing appropriate planning of generation reserve and other control measures in the network

The animation of psychology

This thesis investigates 'Frankenstein', in the light of Cultural Poetic practices and modern psychological theories, illustrating the pivotal role it played in the transition of developmental psychology from philosophy to science. Drawing on Locke, Rousseau and Godwin, Shelley presents the monster as an exaggerated case study of the danger of ineffective nurturing.

Older women crafting ethical subjectivities in rural places

Over the last two years my colleagues and I conducted research conversations with older women living in rural Victoria about the meaning of craft in their lives. These conversations are the basis for our speculations on how women constitute ethical subjectivities through specific craft activities and through their engagement with Country Women Association (CWA) craft groups. The CWA is recognised as a ‘community of practice’ with local, regional, state, national and global networks, aiming to improve the lives of rural people. The focus of this paper, however, is on how ethical subjectivities by rural women are fashioned through specific involvements in craft activities and craft groups. I aim to elaborate on how Foucault’s later work on the ‘Care of the Self’ may open possibilities, even if limited, for understanding the complex ways women take up subject positions in interaction with historical, political, economic and social arrangements, and through engagement with specific institutions. For Foucault, ‘care of the self’ is an inherently social practice. Currently, modern power relations incite us to relate to our selves through self confessional and self-disciplining technologies. Could a differently constituted mode of self-care be drawn from the Ancient Greeks to offer us ideas for enacting personal and social transformations today?

Robust adaptive backstepping controller design for DC-DC buck converters with external disturbances

In modern power electronic systems, DC-DC converter is one of the main controlled power sources for driving DC systems. But the inherent nonlinear and time-varying characteristics often result in some difficulties mostly related to the control issue. This paper presents a robust nonlinear adaptive controller design with a recursive methodology based on the pulse width modulation (PWM) to drive a DC-DC buck converter. The proposed controller is designed based on the dynamical model of the buck converter where all parameters within the model are assumed as unknown. These unknown parameters are estimated through the adaptation laws and the stability of these laws are ensured by formulating suitable control Lyapunov functions (CLFs) at different stages. The proposed control scheme also provides robustness against external disturbances as these disturbances are considered within the model. One of the main features of the proposed scheme is that it overcomes the over-parameterization problems of unknown parameters which usually appear in some conventional adaptive methods. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is verified through the simulation results and compared to that of an existing adaptive backstepping controller. Simulation results clearly indicate the performance improvement in terms of a faster output voltage tracking response.

The plague and the Panopticon

Albert Camus's 1947 novel La Peste and 1948 drama L'État de Siège, allegories of totalitarian power using the figure of the plague (Part I), remarkably anticipate Foucault's celebrated genealogical analyses of modern power (Part II). Indeed, reading Foucault after Camus highlights a fact little-remarked in Discipline and Punish: namely, that the famous chapter on the 'Panopticon' begins by analysing the measures taken in early modern Vincennes following the advent of plague. Part III argues that, although Camus was cited as an inspiration by the nouveaux philosophes, he does not accept the reactionary motif of the total bankruptcy of the modern cultural and political worlds as hopelessly implicated in the totalitarian crimes. Indeed, Part IV highlights how Camus defends modern, descriptive scientific rationality against its totalitarian appropriations, alongside 'the power of passion, doubt, happiness, and imaginative invention' - positions which Part V suggests as Camus's continuing poignancy and relevance in the period after post-structuralism (Camus, 1952: 301).

Modern enhancements in teaching design theories to mechanical engineering students

This paper describes the application of computer aided design (CAD) in teaching advanced design methodologies to fourth-year undergraduate students majoring in mechanical engineering. This involves modern enhancements in teaching strategies for subjects such as design-for-X (DFx) and failure mode effect analysis (FMEA) concepts, which are traditionally categorised as advanced design methodologies. The main subsets of DFx including design-for-assembly (DFA), design-for-disassembly (DFD), design-for-manufacturing (DFM), design-for-environment (DFE) and design-for-recyclability (DFR) were covered by studying various engineering and consumer products. The unit was designed as a combination of practical hands-on workshop-based classes along with a software-based evaluation of different products. In addition to CAD, finite element modelling techniques were utilised to enhance the students’ understanding of design faults and failures. The inquiry into teaching practice and design of this fourth-year unit was carried out during past two years and it revealed some interesting outcomes from our teaching practice in terms of students’ learning experiences. Finally, the paper discusses some critical factors in the context of teaching advanced design methodologies to the undergraduates in mechanical engineering and even manufacturing engineering.

Abuse of power, oppression and the struggle for human rights in modern indonesian short fiction

 Across the 1990s, Indonesian writers used the short story genre to represent human rights abuses in Indonesia.These rights included freedom of speech, right to life and right to assembly. The short story had great impact, depicting dramatically both perpetrators and victims, and exposing the social, economic and political conditions which bred such abuses.

Maintaining optimal co-channel interference for power efficient wireless communication

Maintaining QoS (quality of service) guaranteed communication links, and improving the energy consumption; are two aspects that received a significant consideration in the modern wireless sensor network research. This paper formulates a transmission power control problem which satisfies both considerations mentioned above. Moreover, a class of functions for an iterative controller was introduced and analyzed for its convergence. The experimental evaluation of the controller justifies the theoretical assertions as well as the applicability of the control scheme in wireless nodes with minimum measurement capabilities.

Pick, mix or match? A discussion of theories for management accounting research

This paper presents a review on applications of four types of theories for management accounting (MA) research (contingency theory, agency theory, sociological theories and psychological theories) and comments on prospects of combining multiple theories in future MA research. Based on a review of studies that adopted the four types of theories, the authors argue that multiple theories can be applied jointly in future research to enrich our understandings on MA practices from multiple perspectives. However, theories should maintain their distinctiveness in their applications. Blending multiple theories into a single all-purpose theory can be counterproductive due to loss of explanatory power.

Nursing work and nursing knowledge : exploring the work of women's health nurses, patterns of power and praxis

The majority of women's health nurses in this study work in generalist community health centres. They have developed their praxis within the philosophy and policies of the broader women's health movement and primary health care principles in Australia. The fundamental assumption underlying this study is that women's health nurses possess a unique body of knowledge and clinical wisdom that has not been previously documented and explored. The epistemological base from which these nurses' operate offers important insights into the substantive issues that create and continually shape the practice world of nurses and their clients. Whether this represents a (re)construction of the dominant forms of health care service delivery for women is examined in this study. The study specifically aims at exploring the practice issues and experience of women's health service provision by women's health nurses in the context of the provision of cervical cancer screening services. In mapping this particular group of nurses practice, it sets out to examine the professional and theoretical issues in contemporary nursing and women's health care. In critically analysing the powerful discourses that shape and reshape nursing work, the study raises the concern that previous analyses of pursing work tend to universalise the structural and social subordination of nurses and nursing knowledge. This universalism is most often based on examples of midwifery and nursing work in hospital settings, and subsequently, because of these conceptualisations, all of nursing is too often deemed as a dependent occupation, with little agency, and is analysed as always in relation to medicine, to hospitals, to other knowledge forms. Denoting certain discourses as dominant proposes a relationship of power and knowledge and the thesis argues that all work relations and practices in health are structured by certain power/knowledge relations. This analysis reveals that there IX are many competing and complimentary power/knowledge relations that structure nursing, but that nursing, and in particular women's health nurses, also challenge the power/knowledge relations around them. Through examining theories of power and knowledge the analysis, argues that theoretical eclecticism is necessary to address the complex and varied nature of nursing work. In particular it identifies that postmodern and radical feminist theorising provide the most appropriate framework to further analyse and interpret the work of women's health nurses. Fundamental to the position argued in this thesis is a feminist perspective. This position creates important theoretical and methodological links throughout the whole study. Feminist methodology was employed to guide the design, the collection and the analysis. Intrinsic to this process was the use of the 'voices' of women's health nurses as the basis for theorising. The 'voices' of these nurses are highlighted in the chapters as italicised bold script. A constant companion along the way in examining women's health nurses' work, was the reflexivity with feminist research processes, the theoretical discussions and their 'voices'. Capturing and analysing descriptive accounts of nursing praxis is seen in this thesis as providing a way to theorise about nursing work. This methodology is able to demonstrate the knowledge forms embedded in clinical nursing praxis. Three conceptual threads emerge throughout the discussions: one focuses on nursing praxis as a distinct process, with its own distinct epistemological base rather than in relation to 'other' knowledge forms; another describes the medical restriction and opposition as experienced by this group of nurses, but also of their resistance to medical opposition. The third theme apparent from the interviews, and which was conceptualised as beyond resistance, was the description of the alternative discourses evident in nursing work, and this focused on notions of being a professional and on autonomous nursing praxis. This study concludes that rather than accepting the totalising discourses about nursing there are examples within nursing of resistance—both ideologically and X in practice—to these dominant discourses. Women's health nurses represent an important model of women's health service delivery, an analysis of which can contribute to critically reflecting on the 'paradigm of oppression' cited in nursing and about nursing more generally. Reflecting on women's health service delivery also has relevance in today's policy environment, where structural shifts in Commonwealth/State funding arrangements in community based care, may undermine women's health programs. In summary this study identifies three important propositions for nursing: • nursing praxis can reconstruct traditional models of health care; • nursing praxis is powerful and able to 'resist' dominant discourses; and • nursing praxis can be transformative. Joining feminist perspectives and alternative analyses of power provides a pluralistic and emancipatory politics for viewing, describing and analysing 'other' nursing work. At the micro sites of power and knowledge relations—in the everyday practice worlds of nurses, of negotiation and renegotiation, of work on the margins and at the centre—women's health nurses' praxis operates as a positive, productive and reconstructive force in health care.

Giuseppe Pagano: a rationalist caught between theories & practices of fascist Italy

The architecture of a modern building is viewed and defined as a whole: the so-called decorative detail does not exist, only the intelligent and strictly controlled technical detail. The aesthetic basis—both social and technical at the same time—of modern architecture is reproduced in the three-dimensional composition.

Subversive jewellery : challenges to conservative power from the Victorian goldfields

 This paper analyses a small group of pieces of gold jewellery in order to explore the digger challenge to the colonial culture of conservative deference in 1850s gold rush Victoria. In spending on lavish gold ornaments, lucky diggers asserted the value of their hard, manual labour to subvert the hegemonic respectability of the colonial elite. The brooches offer evidence of values that informed the digger population in its transformation from optimistic transnational transients into civilians who originated the modern form of the Australian middle class.

'Catastrophic failure' theories and disaster journalism : evaluating media explanations of the Black Saturday bushfires

 In recent decades, academic researchers of natural disasters and emergency management have developed a canonical literature on ‘catastrophe failure’ theories such as disaster responses from US emergency management services (Drabek, 2010; Quarantelli, 1998) and the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant (Perrow, 1999). This article examines six influential theories from this field in an attempt to explore why Victoria’s disaster and emergency management response systems failed during Australia’s Black Saturday bushfires. How well, if at all, are these theories understood by journalists, disaster and emergency management planners, and policy-makers? In examining the Country Fire Authority’s response to the fires, as well as the media’s reportage of them, we use the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires as a theory-testing case study of failures in emergency management, preparation and planning. We conclude that journalists can learn important lessons from academics’ specialist knowledge about disaster and emergency management responses.

Censorship, resistance and transformation in modern Indonesian literature

This paper investigates the way in which Indonesian literature has reflected violations of human rights in Indonesia in the last decade of the New Order (1990-1998). The regime was authoritarian and responded harshly to any challenge which could cause trouble to national stability. Some writers, such as Seno Gumira Ajidarma, used the power of allegory to resist this oppression. The three works examined here – ‘Saksi Mata’, ‘Pelajaran Sejarah’, and ‘Misteri Kota Ninggi’ – can be considered as a form of resistance literature.