Construction teams are usually complex, interdisciplinary and temporary, and, as such, the need for effective communication is crucial. However, published data regarding the manner in which individuals interact within the temporary project team is scarce, with little other than anecdotal evidence available. Recognizing this gap, Communication in Construction Teams provides a comprehensive overview of the literature on interpersonal communication and delivers a critical review of various research methods previously used in and outside the construction management field. Making use of Bales' interaction process analysis (IPA), a tool used successfully in many fields to collect interaction data, the text investigates the link between successful projects and the effectiveness of communication, finding that participants in the construction process exhibit regular patterns of interaction and, most significantly, that there are different patterns of interaction associated with successful and unsuccessful projects. Putting forward a number of practical suggestions to assist all actors involved in construction projects, this insightful publication will be of interest to researchers in the fields of building design and construction management.

Englische Ubersetzung der 13. Auflage der Warmetechnischen Arbeitsmappe. Wichtiges Arbeitsmittel fur warmetechnische Berechungen in Kraftwerken und anderen Warmeenergiebetrieben, in Verfahrenstechnik und Heiztechnik. Die Arbeitsdiagramme ermoglichen eine muhelose und schnelle Ermittlung wichtiger warmetechnischer Grossen in Energiebetrieben. Der Einfluss einzelner Parameter und deren Zusammenhange sind auf einen Blick zu erkennen. Zusatzlich sind die zugrundeliegenden Gleichungen fur Berechnungen mit dem Taschenrechner angegeben."

Christian Rockenhauser adresses phase formation and cation interdiffusion of the GdxCe1-xO2-x/2-and SmxCe1-xO2-x/2-material systems at temperatures ranging from 970 to 1270 DegreesC. Diffusion couples with CeO2/Sm2O3 and CeO2/Gd2O3 interfaces were fabricated for the investigations. The resulting reaction phases were investigated utilizing transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and allow conclusions regarding the phase diagrams in the examined temperature range. A miscibility gap can be ruled out for GdxCe1-xO2-x/2 across the whole composition range. Cation interdiffusion coefficients were determined for both material systems by measuring and evaluating concentration profiles at the material interfaces. The activation enthalpies for interdiffusion were calculated using the temperature dependence of the interdiffusion coefficients. The study for the first time compiles comprehensively the previous results regarding the phase diagrams of the two material systems since 1923.

This book provides a concise review of the thermo-physical phenomena which regulate heat and moisture transportation in Nearly Zero Energy Buildings envelopes, and their relationship with the growth of biological organisms.

It describes the main microorganisms proliferating on contemporary building elements and within buildings. It also states the consequences of biological growth on durability, aesthetics and human health; and provides the main methods for the analytical and experimental evaluation of proliferation.

Finally, through the review of recent developments, remedial actions to counter the biological phenomenon are examined, and an outline is provided for future innovations in a field not yet widely investigated.

This book sets the questions of energy and the environment in the North in the global context and further addresses historical developments, views on energy taxation and tariffs, and effects of EU energy policy. Climate change appears more frequently than ever on the top of global and national policy agendas. In the current situation traditional environmental concern and environmental policy may not suffice in the face of the global challenge as manifested by climate change and the depletion of fossil energy resources. But as new data comes to light, new energy policies and changes in economic structures are crucial for putting into action global climate policy. Crucial tasks in environmental policy are the sustainable utilisation of natural resources and the conservation of natural and human-made habitats. One of the areas of the world where this comes into play the most is in the Nordic countries. Northern societies are predominantly high tech, high consumption and high energy supply societies. And with the transition from older energy sources (wood for heating and stream water for power production) to newer ones (oil and nuclear energy) discussions on the environmental impact have led to public and corporate action. The Northern countries have been at the forefront in finding sustainable alternatives to solve conflicts arising from the rise in energy needs. However, these countries have taken different pathways with different policies in attempting to achieve this. As the needs and concerns from climate change arise, a Northern dimension, involving policies that contrast to European and global trends, emerges. Energy, Policy, and the Environment: Modeling Sustainable Development for the North explores that dimension.

The future of modern societies depends on their ability to deal with the challenge of climate change in the coming decades. One essential component is a better understanding of innovation processes in the energy sector. This book focuses on sustainability innovations in renewable energies, combined heat and power, and energy service contracting, and analyses the institutions, actors and functions within the innovation system. Of particular interest is the question of whether the joint effect of EU-driven market liberalization and climate policies will succeed in establishing market forces that will drive actors towards more climate-friendly energy production. A special focus is on the role of local utilities in the electricity sector as opposed to large transmission net operators or regional net operators. The countries covered in the contributions include Germany, Denmark, the UK, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

The Handbook of CO2in Power Systems' objective is to include the state-of-the-art developments that occurred in power systems taking CO2emission into account. The book includes power systems operation modeling with CO2emissions considerations, CO2market mechanism modeling, CO2regulation policy modeling, carbon price forecasting, and carbon capture modeling. For each of the subjects, at least one article authored by a world specialist on the specific domain is included.

Climate change is mainly caused by emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels, which provides over 85% of the world's energy. Strategies for mitigating climate change are connected with handling economic and social activities through their effects on the use of energy. Climate Change Mitigation investigates the costs of mitigation measures in comparison to their benefits, and compares the effects of implementing mitigation measures on various areas such as energy security and energy economy. "For 20 years, diplomats have struggled to make progress on climate change, mostly because global diplomacy is not well-linked to the realities of how nations and firms control emissions and adapt to the impacts of a changing climate. In this excellent book, Dr Yamaguchi has assembled experts to guide the redesign of global policy. The authors underscore how global warming efforts must resonate with other policy goals." David G. Victor, Director, Laboratory on International Law and Regulation and Professor, University of California San Diego "Climate Change Mitigation clarifies that climate change cannot be controlled by sacrificing economic growth or other global problems; however, action to control climate change cannot be delayed.Climate policy is pervasive and affects all dimensions of international policy;but it cannot be too ambitious: a balanced approach between mitigation and adaptation, economic growth and resource management, and short term development and long term investments, should be adopted. I recommend its reading." Carlo Carraro,President, Ca' Foscari University of Venice "The International Energy Agency estimates for every $1 of investment now toward sustainable energy, $4 of future spending can be saved. There is a business case for companies to reduce energy use. Companies in the energy and resource intensive industries must lead the way." Chad Holliday, Chairman. World Business Council for Sustainable Development and former Chair and CEO, DuPont

Control of Solar Energy Systems details the main solar energy systems, problems involved with their control, and how control systems can help in increasing their efficiency. Thermal energy systems are explored in depth, as are photovoltaic generation and other solar energy applications such as solar furnaces and solar refrigeration systems. This second and updated edition of Advanced Control of Solar Plants includes new material on: solar towers and solar tracking; heliostat calibration, characterization and offset correction; solar radiation, estimation, prediction, and computation; and integrated control of solar plants. This new edition contains worked examples in the text as well as proposed exercises and simulation models and so will be of great use to the student and academic, as well as the industrial practitioner.

Nothing happens in the world without energy conversion and entropy production. These fundamental natural laws are familiar to most of us when applied to the evolution of stars, biological processes, or the working of an internal combustion engine, but what about industrial economies and wealth production, or their constant companion, pollution? Does economics conform to the First and the Second Law of Thermodynamics? In this important book, Reiner Kummel takes us on a fascinating tour of these laws and their influence on natural, technological, and social evolution. Analyzing economic growth in Germany, Japan, and the United States in light of technological constraints on capital, labor, and energy, Professor Kummel upends conventional economic wisdom by showing that the productive power of energy far outweighs its small share of costs, while for labor just the opposite is true. Wealth creation by energy conversion is accompanied and limited by polluting emissions that are coupled to entropy production. These facts constitute the Second Law of Economics. They take on unprecedented importance in a world that is facing peak oil, debt-driven economic turmoil, and threats from pollution and climate change. They complement the First Law of Economics: Wealth is allocated on markets, and the legal framework determines the outcome. By applying the First and Second Law we understand the true origins of wealth production, the issues that imperil the goal of sustainable development, and the technological options that are compatible both with this goal and with natural laws. The critical role of energy and entropy in the productive sectors of the economy must be realized if we are to create a road map that avoids a Dark Age of shrinking natural resources, environmental degradation, and increasing social tensions.

This book presents techniques for energy reduction in adaptive embedded multimedia systems, based on dynamically reconfigurable processors. The approach described will enable designers to meet performance/area constraints, while minimizing video quality degradation, under various, run-time scenarios. Emphasis is placed on implementing power/energy reduction at various abstraction levels. To enable this, novel techniques for adaptive energy management at both processor architecture and application architecture levels are presented, such that both hardware and software adapt together, minimizing overall energy consumption under unpredictable, design-/compile-time scenarios.

Is there a chance that public or private research and development institutions can improve the efficiency of the R&D process? This book gives a positive answer by designing an integrated concept of the science technology cycle and the innovation system of each technology. The position of a new technology in the sciencetechnology cycle is identified by several indicators from patent analysis, citations and market information data. The innovation system supports the search for a comprehensive understanding of all important stakeholders of an innovation, possible obstacles and related policies. The application of the methodology leads to convincing results: the hype of the PEM fuel cell activities could have been identified at the end of the 1990s as the phase of euphoria, but not as a situation close to market entry in the car or boiler markets.

In this book, the term "electrochemical nanotechnology" is defined as nanoprocessing by means of electrochemical techniques. This introductory book reviews the application of electrochemical nanotechnologies with the aim of understanding their wider applicability in evolving nanoindustries. These advances have impacted microelectronics, sensors, materials science, and corrosion science, generating new fields of research that promote interaction between biology, medicine, and microelectronics. This volume reviews nanotechnology applications in selected high technology areas with particular emphasis on advances in such areas. Chapters are classified under four different headings: Nanotechnology for energy devices - Nanotechnology for magnetic storage devices - Nanotechnology for bio-chip applications - Nanotechnology for MEMS/Packaging.

This book constitutes the refereed post-proceedings of the 10th European Performance Engineering Workshop, EPEW 2013, held in Venice, Italy, in September 2013.

The 16 regular papers presented together with 8 short papers and 2 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 33 submissions. The Workshop aims to gather academic and industrial researchers working on all aspects of performance engineering.

Original papers related to theoretical and methodological issues as well as case studies and automated tool support are solicited in the following areas: performance modeling and evaluation, system and network performance engineering, and software performance engineering.

This book combines two areas of intense interest: nanotechnology, and energy conversion and storage devices. In particular, Li-ion batteries have enjoyed conspicuous success in many consumer electronic devices and their projected use in vehicles that will revolutionize the way we travel in the near future. For many applications, Li-ion batteries are the battery of choice. This book consolidates the scattered developments in all areas of research related to nanotechnology and lithium ion batteries.

The production and consumption of energy carriers in complex buildings take place within the network of interconnected energy processes. For this reason, a change carried out in one energy process influences other energy processes. Therefore, all balance equations of energy carriers should be investigated as a whole, and energy management of complex buildings creates a large energy system with internal relationships between energy installations and the equipment, as well as external relationships with the environment. Energy Systems of Complex Buildings presents the system approach to the energy-ecological analysis of energy management in complex buildings. Mathematical models of balancing the direct energy consumption, as well as cumulative energy consumption and cumulative emission of noxious substances are based on input-output analysis. Algorithms devoted to system analysis in the exploitation of energy management of complex buildings are included. In the case of ecological analysis, a new approach is presented basing on the idea of thermoecological costs. In this way, two groups of noxious influence (depletion of non-renewable energy resources and emissions of noxious substances) are taken into account. The LCA energy-ecological analysis of complex buildings has also been presented. Students, building designers, energy auditors, and researchers will learn the methodology of evaluating the energy and ecological effects by applying new technologies and devices in buildings, which influence future investigations concerning the energy and ecological analysis of complex buildings.

With energy consumption set to become one of the biggest issues in the daily lives of householders around the world, this book could not be more relevant - despite the fact that it focuses on India. Pachauri adopts a socio-economic approach to analyzing the energy system and energy consumption in India from a household perspective. The work also incorporates two crucial aspects often ignored: namely, the importance of non-commercial sources of energy, and diversity in the patterns of energy usage.

This book explores a novel technique for processing biodiesel using lipase immobilization by encapsulation and its physical properties, stability characteristics, and application in stirred tank and re-circulated packed bed immobilized reactors for biodiesel production. The enzymatic processing of biodiesel addresses many of the problems associated with chemical processing. It requires only moderate operating conditions and yields a high-quality product with a high level of conversion and the life cycle assessment of enzymatic biodiesel production has more favourable environmental consequences. The chemical processing problems of waste water treatment are lessened and soap formation is not an issue, meaning that waste oil with higher FFA can be used as the feedstock. The by product glycerol does not require any purification and it can be sold at higher price. However, soluble enzymatic processing is not perfect. It is costly, the enzyme cannot be recycled and its removal from the product is difficult. For these reasons, immobilized enzymatic process has been developed which retains the advantages of the soluble enzymatic process and reuse of the enzyme is possible which decreases the enzyme cost, the biodiesel produced does not contain any enzyme residue and the activity of the enzyme can be increased by immobilization. The drawbacks of the immobilized enzyme process are mass transfer limitation, enzyme leakage, the lack of a versatile commercial immobilized enzyme and some of immobilization methods involve toxic chemicals. To overcome the drawbacks of the immobilized enzyme, an attempt is made to use a degradable biopolymer ( -carrageenan) as a carrier for lipase immobilization.

This book constitutes revised selected papers from the Conference on Energy Efficiency in Large Scale Distributed Systems, EE-LSDS, held in Vienna, Austria, in April 2013. It served as the final event of the COST Action IC0804 which started in May 2009. The 15 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 31 contributions. In addition, 7 short papers and 3 demo papers are included in this book. The papers are organized in sections named: modeling and monitoring of power consumption; distributed, mobile and cloud computing; HPC computing; wired and wireless networking; and standardization issues.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to embedded systems for smart appliances and energy management, bringing together for the first time a multidisciplinary blend of topics from embedded systems, information technology and power engineering. Coverage includes challenges for future resource distribution grids, energy management in smart appliances, micro energy generation, demand response management, ultra-low power stand by, smart standby and communication networks in home and building automation.

This volume analyzes and summarizes recent developments and breakthroughs in several key interfacial electrochemical systems in fuel cell electrocatatalysis. The chapters are written by internationally recognized experts or rising stars in electrocatatalysis addressing both the fundamental and practical aspects of several emerging key electrochemical technologies.

This book makes a case for a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to energy research-one that brings more of the social sciences to bear. Featuring eight studies from across the spectrum of the social sciences, each applying multiple disciplines to one or more energy-related problems, the book demonstrates the strong analytical and policy-making potential of such a broadened perspective. Case studies include: energy transitions of households in developing countries, the 'curse of oil', politics and visions for renewables, economics and ethics in emissions trading, and carbon capture and storage.

Thin Film Metal-Oxides provides a representative account of the fundamental structure-property relations in oxide thin films. Functional properties of thin film oxides are discussed in the context of applications in emerging electronics and renewable energy technologies. Readers will find a detailed description of deposition and characterization of metal oxide thin films, theoretical treatment of select properties and their functional performance in solid state devices, from leading researchers. Scientists and engineers involved with oxide semiconductors, electronic materials and alternative energy will find Thin Film Metal-Oxides a useful reference.

The papers in this collection have originated from Britain, Eastern and Western Europe and India, with the delegates coming from fifteen countries, including a strong contingent from Japan. This indicates a widespread interest in the application of heat pumps. The heat pump suffers from an environmental dichotomy. On the one hand it saves fossil fuel energy, thereby reducing CO emissions. On the other hand, in the vapour compression form, 2 it generally employs CFCs which are destructive to our protective ozone layer as well as contributing to the greenhouse effect. Taking the first, heat pumps, perhaps have the widest application numerically in the heating (and cooling) of buildings and an excellent paper describes case studies concerning three large Norwegian hotels. In these, heat was pumped from the adjacent river or sea when heating was required, and during the summer, when cooling became necessary, to generate domestic hot water. The heat pumps were installed by SINTEF Refrigeration Engineering, Norway, and have demonstrated payback periods of about two years. The fractional total energy saving of the three hotels was 30% as a result, an impressive figure, indeed. A similar paper by a Belgian architectural consortium shows how this technique can be successfully applied to the cooling of a large television complex where considerable quantities of heat were being generated by the luminaries. In this exercise the cooling load was successfully pumped to provide hot water.

Given the widespread use of real-time multitasking systems, there are tremendous optimization opportunities if reconfigurable computing can be effectively incorporated while maintaining performance and other design constraints of typical applications. The focus of this book is to describe the dynamic reconfiguration techniques that can be safely used in real-time systems. This book provides comprehensive approaches by considering synergistic effects of computation, communication as well as storage together to significantly improve overall performance, power, energy and temperature.