Application of Sustainable Habitat: What is the Appropriation and Utilisation of Equipment After Energy‐Saving Renovations in Social Housing?

To reduce energy consumption, technical equipment alone is not sufficient. Adjustment of behaviours so that equipment is used appropriately is also necessary. Numerous studies have shown how difficult it is to change behaviours and how many factors are involved. The aim of this study is to identify the psychosocial factors facilitating or inhibiting energy‐saving behaviours in the appropriation of energy‐saving equipment by residents. Forty‐one semi‐directive interviews were conducted with tenants of terraced houses (12 people) and flats (29 people) located in the same residential area in a French city. The blocks of flats and terraced houses are managed by a proprietor of social housing. The results of a categorical content analysis highlight the importance of the relationship between tenants and proprietor and tenants' low motivation concerning the energy‐saving renovations. Consequently, we argue for the importance of favouring active participation by tenants in order to promote acceptance and appropriation of the new equipment. Furthermore, both the social and physical contexts of residents must be taken into account and energy saving must be integrated into other types of environmental behaviours in the neighbourhood in order to improve coherence and credibility. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Semiclassical Theism and the Passage of Planck Times

This paper models God and time in the framework of modern physics. God bridges and simultaneously exists in (1) a universe with infinite tenseless time and (2) a created parallel universe with tensed time and a point origin. The primary attributes of God are inexhaustible love, inexhaustible perception, and inexhaustible force. The model also incorporates modern physics theories that include relativity, the conservation of energy, quantum mechanics, and multiverse geometry. For example, creation out of nothing and divine intervention are subject to physical processes and likewise nomological possibility. I will call this model semiclassical theism.     

Global and Local Feature Distinctiveness Effects in Language Acquisition

Various aspects of semantic features drive early vocabulary development, but less is known about how the global and local structure of the overall semantic feature space influences language acquisition. A feature network of English words was constructed from a large database of adult feature production norms such that edges in the network represented feature distances between words (i.e., Manhattan distances of probability distributions of features elicited for each pair of words). A word's global feature distinctiveness is measured with respect to all other words in the network and a word's local feature distinctiveness is measured relative to words in sub-networks derived from clustering analyses. This paper investigates how feature distinctiveness of individual words at local and global scales of the network influences language acquisition. Regression analyses indicate that global feature distinctiveness was associated with earlier age of acquisition ratings, and was a stronger predictor of age of acquisition than local feature distinctiveness. These results suggest that the global structure of the semantic feature network could play an important role in language acquisition, whereby globally distinctive concepts help to structure vocabulary development over the lifespan.     

Making Nature,Making Energy,Making Humans: Two Exhibitions at the Wellcome Trust

This article reviews the Wellcome Collection exhibitions ‘Making Nature: How We See Animals’ and ‘Electricity: The Spark of Life’. While the two exhibitions appear to have disparate topics—one exhibition speaks about our co-existence with animals, the other about energy futures—they speak to each other in thought-provoking ways around the questions: how are we human in these times, and what possible trajectories are available to us?     

Storifying Samsø’s Renewable Energy Transition

Through a joint community effort Denmark’s Renewable Energy Island Samsø became self-sufficient with renewable energy over a period of 10 years from 1997 to 2007. Today, the story about Samsø’s successful energy transition has become a global export and a widely known model of community building, public participation and shared ownership in renewable energy technologies and transition processes. What has allowed the Samsø narrative to travel so widely has been the effective ‘transition story’ created about the islanders’ efforts. This transition story, however, has become fixed with the years and has assumed an ideal-typical character. Meanwhile, the challenges and costs inherent in the complicated socio-material process of transition are underestimated and largely forgotten. While such transition stories are indeed inspiring, the ideal-typical narrative may stand in the way of the development of further local energy transitions, as challenging elements of the process are downplayed to strengthen the narrative power of the story. Ethnographic stories about Samsø complicate the island’s transition narrative and add nuance to the Samsø story, highlighting its discrepancies and problematizing the effects of such well-crafted transition narratives. This tendency toward the ‘storification’ of transition processes is not restricted to Samsø; it is employed as a tactics by environmental organizations operating globally.     

A Decision Support System for Prioritizing Investments in an Energy Efficiency Program in Favelas in the City of Rio de Janeiro

This study proposes an integrated qualitative and quantitative assessment of expert opinions aiming at ranking a set of five shantytowns (favelas) located in the city of Rio de Janeiro. These communities are candidates for investments in an energy efficiency program implemented by the local electric utility company. The city, state, and federal governments want to eliminate domination of these areas by organized criminal gangs and present the city as a peaceful metropolis while hosting two big sports events: the soccer World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016. In recent years, some favelas were chosen to be prototypes for an ambitious project to reshape Rio de Janeiro. This involves first sending in special tactics police to drive drug gangs out, then installing the Pacifying Police Unit in the favela. Once security has been established, it is possible to improve general living conditions in these areas, including by providing public services such as health clinics, formal electricity connections and cable television. The core of the energy efficiency program was to convert informal customers to formal ones, because such communities were responsible for approximately 40% of the commercial losses (stolen energy) in the city. The model specification presented in this paper was set up with ten relevant criteria for decision making, identified through an in‐depth interview with the decision maker. The relative importance of the criteria and the performance of each favela regarding each criterion were measured by the Simos method. The preferences resulting from this method were translated into a nine‐point scale. The imprecision of subjective judgment was partially compensated by using a fuzzy analytical hierarchy process. Some criteria were ordinal, such as ‘Fair Relationship with the Community’ and ‘Complexity to Rebuild the Distribution Lines’, whereas other were cardinal, like ‘Percentage of Clients in Default’ and ‘Commercial Loss Due to Energy Theft’. At the end, the model was efficient in ranking the five favelas, therefore contributing to a rational and transparent approach for capital investment in social projects. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

社交媒体使用对执行功能的影响：有益还是有害?

社交媒体使用对执行功能的影响尚存争议, 这与社交媒体使用强度起到的调节作用有关。中等强度的社交媒体使用会产生社交媒体心流体验, 使注意集中于目标信息, 并为个体提供了持续不断的社会奖励和情感支持, 对执行功能有益, 但高、低强度社交媒体使用则会损害执行功能。今后该领域的研究应该探讨社交媒体使用影响执行功能的“剂量效应”以及社交媒体使用类型对执行功能的具体影响, 还应关注不同认知水平的个体, 以进一步明确社交媒体使用与执行功能发展的关系。     

A new orthorhombic approximant of the icosahedral Al–Cu–Fe quasicrystal

We report on the formation of a new crystalline approximant phase of the icosahedral (i-)Al–Cu–Fe quasicrystal. This phase is formed during sintering of Al-based composites reinforced with i-AlCuFeB quasicrystalline particles. The structure of this phase has been characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and high-resolution electron microscopy (HREM). TEM revealed that it is a B-centred orthorhombic phase with lattice parameters a = 1.166 nm, b = 1.195 nm and c = 3.44 nm. Its chemical composition, as determined by electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS), is close to Al_76.9Cu_2.7Fe_20.4, with an average number of valence electrons per atom e/a of 1.92, similar to the value in all other approximants of the i-phase discovered thus far. Initial results on local atomic arrangements along one of its pseudo-5-fold axes are also presented.     

Structure of Al–Co–Ni pentagonal quasicrystal studied by HAADF-STEM and ab initio calculations

Using a combination of atomic-resolution high-angle annular dark-field (HAADF) Z-contrast imaging and ab initio calculations, atomic models of clusters 2 nm in diameter and 0.8 nm in height are proposed for the Al–Co–Ni pentagonal quasicrystal. This quasicrystal has 5-fold symmetry (the so-called 5f state) without superstructures, and is one of numerous modifications of the Al–Co–Ni decagonal quasicrystal. HAADF results reveal that the two-dimensional quasi-periodic lattice contains mainly Penrose pentagonal tiling. The centres within the decorated pentagonal tiles, i.e. the so-called pentagonal super-clusters, show structural characteristics having both a satellite-orbit shape and a pentagon-symmetry shape. The proposed atomic models, based directly on the HAADF images, are subjected to ab initio total energy calculations. After relaxation, the calculations demonstrate that the models with 5-fold symmetry are energetically more favourable than those with 10-fold symmetry.