By 2011 little is known about the economic rationale of public fast chargers for electric vehicles (EV). This paper aims at providing an insight into the business case of this technology in a case ...study for Germany. The estimated Return on Investment (ROI) of a public fast charging station constitutes the main contribution. Potential users and organization structures are investigated as well as different tariff types. According to the estimations, the current market outlook seems too uncertain for triggering a large-scale roll-out of fast charging infrastructure. Approximations suggest that investment is hardly profitable at low EV adoption rates, unless investment cost can be severely lowered. Besides competition with alternative charging solutions, the general EV adoption rate is detected as being a main risk factor for investment in public charging infrastructure.
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► Private investment into public fast charging infrastructure appears to be driven by other than pure project prospects at current EV penetration rates. ► High cost markups are needed to refinance investment, unless grid tariffs are exempted or constant high demand is assured. ► Investment into public fast charging remains risky and incentives can be contained by the spreading of alternative home-charging devices and alternative propulsion technologies.
The concept of servitization is well established in the literature, and yet the processes of organisational change that manufacturers undergo to compete through services have received much less ...attention. Therefore, this paper develops a model that enables a description of the servitization processes, the principal stages of organisational change, and the forces impacting these processes. It is based on a series of 14 case studies of the process of servitization over time in multinational manufacturers. Evidence and analysis from these cases are used to establish that manufacturers undergo four stages of organisational maturity (Exploration, Engagement, Expansion and Exploitation), through which an organisation progresses according to the pressures of five principal forces (customer pull, technology push, value network positioning, organisational readiness, and organisational commitment). This progression can be characterised as a business growth model with multiple crises or tipping points. This research contributes to our understanding of the process of servitization and proposes a model which can be used to explain progression. It also forms the basis to better prepare manufacturers as to what to expect as they embark on a servitization journey.
Achieving a low mean transverse energy or temperature of electrons emitted from the photocathode-based electron sources is critical to the development of next-generation and compact x-ray free ...electron lasers and ultrafast electron diffraction, spectroscopy, and microscopy experiments. In this Letter, we demonstrate a record low mean transverse energy of 5 meV from the cryo-cooled (100) surface of copper using near-threshold photoemission. Further, we also show that the electron energy spread obtained from such a surface is less than 11.5 meV, making it the smallest energy spread electron source known to date: more than an order of magnitude smaller than any existing photoemission, field emission, or thermionic emission based electron source. Our measurements also shed light on the physics of electron emission and show how the energy spread at few meV scale energies is limited by both the temperature and the vacuum density of states.
A one-step photoemission analysis is developed, using the exact one-dimensional quantum solution for transmission over and through a triangular barrier presented by Forbes and Deane (2011 Proc. R. ...Soc. A 467 2927), to evaluate the emission properties of a photocathode in an electron gun. The analysis, which employs transverse momentum conservation in electron emission, includes the physical attributes (density of states and energy-momentum dispersion) of both the bulk band emission states and the recipient vacuum states in its evaluation of the mean transverse energy and relative quantum efficiency of the emitted electrons.
Single-photon photoemission of electrons for incident photon energies below the surface work function is reported for a single-crystal Cu(111) photocathode. Spectral characterization of the quantum ...efficiency and mean transverse energy of the emitted electrons is shown to be consistent with emission from a thermalized hot electron distribution photoexcited on sub-picosecond time scales into an upper conduction band at the L-point of the Brillouin zone of copper. To our knowledge, this is the first time that such excited-state thermionic emission has been observed from a planar metal photocathode, and then from a commonly used photocathode material. The results, therefore, indicate the potential importance of such band structure dependent sub-threshold photoemission mechanisms on the performance of photocathodes employed for the generation of short electron pulses using sub-picosecond laser pulses. Consequently, the combined experimental and theoretical work presented in this paper contributes to solid-state photocathode-based research aimed at our understanding and selection (or discovery) of high brightness photo-electron sources required for many electron-based diffraction, imaging, and accelerator applications.
The integrity of RNA molecules is of paramount importance for experiments that try to reflect the snapshot of gene expression at the moment of RNA extraction. Until recently, there has been no ...reliable standard for estimating the integrity of RNA samples and the ratio of 28S:18S ribosomal RNA, the common measure for this purpose, has been shown to be inconsistent. The advent of microcapillary electrophoretic RNA separation provides the basis for an automated high-throughput approach, in order to estimate the integrity of RNA samples in an unambiguous way.
A method is introduced that automatically selects features from signal measurements and constructs regression models based on a Bayesian learning technique. Feature spaces of different dimensionality are compared in the Bayesian framework, which allows selecting a final feature combination corresponding to models with high posterior probability.
This approach is applied to a large collection of electrophoretic RNA measurements recorded with an Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer to extract an algorithm that describes RNA integrity. The resulting algorithm is a user-independent, automated and reliable procedure for standardization of RNA quality control that allows the calculation of an RNA integrity number (RIN).
Our results show the importance of taking characteristics of several regions of the recorded electropherogram into account in order to get a robust and reliable prediction of RNA integrity, especially if compared to traditional methods.
Aims Humanin (HN) is a 24-amino acid peptide that has been shown to have an anti-apoptotic function against neuronal cell death caused by Alzheimer's disease. Increased oxidative stress, one of the ...major factors contributing to this cell death, also plays an important role in the inflammatory process of atherosclerosis. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that HN is expressed in the human vascular wall and may protect against oxidative stress. Methods and results HN expression in the vascular wall was detected by immunostaining in the endothelial cell layer of human internal mammary arteries (n = 5), atherosclerotic coronary arteries (n = 17), and sections of the greater saphenous vein (n = 3). HN mRNA was expressed in the human aortic endothelial cells (HAECs). Cytoprotective effects of HN against oxidative stress were tested in vitro in HAECs. Pre-treatment with 0.1 µM HN reduced oxidized LDL (Ox-LDL)-induced (i) formation of reactive oxygen species by 50%, (ii) apoptosis by ∼50% as determined by TUNEL staining, and (iii) formation of ceramide, a lipid second messenger involved in the apoptosis signalling cascade, by ∼20%. Conclusion The current study demonstrates for the first time the expression of HN in the endothelial cell layer of human blood vessels. Exogenous addition of HN to endothelial cell cultures was shown to be effective against Ox-LDL-induced apoptosis. These findings suggest that HN may play a role and may have a protective effect in early atherosclerosis in humans.
In this paper the construction of Ck basis functions on meshes with hanging nodes for hp-finite element methods is proposed. The construction is limited to axis-parallel, rectangular meshes, which ...can, however, be of any dimension. The basis functions are composed by using hierarchical tensor product shape functions which are defined on patches of so-called constraining nodes and combine univariate Hermite interpolation polynomials and Gegenbauer polynomials. The paper discusses how to integrate the constructed Ck basis functions into the assembling process of stiffness matrices and load vectors by using connectivity matrices. Numerical examples illustrate the applicability of the proposed concept.
The model informs an optimal investment sizing decision as regards specific ‘smart grid’ applications such as storage facilities and meters enabling load control. Results indicate that central ...storage facilities are a more promising option for generation cost reductions as compared to demand management.
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► Stochastic versus deterministic model increases investment efficiency up to 5%. ► Deterministic model under-estimates value of load control and storage. ► Battery storage is beneficial at investment cost below 850
EUR/MW
h. ► Demand management equipment is not beneficial at cost beyond 200
EUR. ► The stylized 10
kV grid constitutes no shortage factor.
Storage devices and demand control may constitute beneficial tools to optimize electricity generation with a large share of intermittent resources through inter-temporal substitution of load. This paper quantifies the related cost reductions in a simulation model of a simplified stylized medium-voltage grid (10
kV) under uncertain demand and wind output. Benders Decomposition Method is applied to create a two-stage stochastic optimization program. The model informs an optimal investment sizing decision as regards specific ‘smart’ applications such as storage facilities and meters enabling load control. Model results indicate that central storage facilities are a more promising option for generation cost reductions as compared to demand management. Grid extensions are not appropriate in any of the scenarios. A sensitivity analysis is applied with respect to the market penetration of uncoordinated Plug-In Electric Vehicles which are found to strongly encourage investment into load control equipment for ‘smart‘ charging and slightly improve the case for central storage devices.
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