Simple, almost obvious as this may be, the idea that crime is partly caused by physical environment has been a controversial one among criminologists. In my presentation I will argue that the controversy is based on a misunderstanding about causes and will review what is now a large body of evidence that the physical environment plays an important part in crime. I will then review current appro...

This article presents modelling and control of a climatic chamber with on/off actuators. Controlled environmental variables in the chamber are temperature, relative humidity and illumination. The system is first decoupled by nonlinear transformation and a linear model is identified using subspace methods; further, a model predictive control strategy for processes with on/off actuators is presen...

Microgrids have become a hot topic driven by the dual pressures of environmental protection concerns and the energy crisis. In this paper, a challenge for the distributed control of a modern electric grid incorporating clusters of residential microgrids is elaborated and a hierarchical multi-agent system (MAS) is proposed as a solution. The issues of how to realize the hierarchical MAS and how ...

Variable speed wind turbines are designed to follow wind speed variations in low winds in order to maximize aerodynamic efficiency. Unfortunately, uncertainty in the aerodynamic parameters may lead to sub-optimal power capture in variable speed turbines. Adaptive generator torque control is one method of eliminating this suboptimality; however, before adaptive control can become widely used in ...

Edi tor ’s Note : NEHA strives to provide up-to-date and relevant information on environmental health and to build partnerships in the profession. In pursuit of these goals, we feature a column from the Environmental Health Services Branch (EHSB) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in every issue of the Journal. In these columns, EHSB and guest authors share insights and inf...