The design of California's cap-and-trade and its impact on electricity markets

California is considering the adoption of a cap-and-trade regulatory mechanism for regulating the greenhouse gas emissions from electricity and perhaps other industries. Two options have been widely discussed for implementing cap-and-trade in the electricity industry. The first is to regulate the emissions from electricity at the load-serving entity (LSE) level. The second option for implementation of cap-and-trade has been called the ‘first-seller’ approach. Conceptually, under first-seller, individual sources (i.e. power plants) within California would be responsible for their emissions, as with traditional cap-and-trade systems. Emissions from imports would be assigned to the ‘importing firm’. An option that has not been as widely discussed is to implement a pure source-based system within California, effectively excluding imports from the cap-and-trade system altogether. This article examines these three approaches to implementing cap-and-trade for California's electricity sector. The article discusses many of the issues relating to measurement and the impacts on bidding and scheduling incentives that are created by the various regulatory regimes.     

Economics of climate change: risk and responsibility by world region

The impacts of predicted climate change will not be distributed evenly around the world. As post-Kyoto negotiations unfold, relating the geographical distribution of projected impacts to responsibility for emissions among world regions is essential for achieving an equitable path forward. This article surveys the current knowledge of regional climate consequences, and delves into the regional predictions of economic assessment models to date, examining how the uncertainties, assumptions and ethical dimensions influence the portrayal of risk at this scale. The few studies that quantitatively compared regional risk and responsibility are reviewed, and the analytical framework from one such study is applied to the 2006 Stern Review's projections to give the first regional comparison to take purchasing power and welfare considerations into account. Synthesizing burden and blame in this way is informative for policy makers; the world's most vulnerable communities—in Africa, the Indian subcontinent, Latin America, and small island states—accounted for less than 33% of global greenhouse gas emissions over the period 1961–2000, but may experience more than 75% of the ensuing climate damages this century. This analysis reinforces the call for industrialized nations to lead mitigation efforts, and to do so decisively and swiftly.     

Distribution of CMEs with Different Angular Widths and Comparison with the Phase of Sunspot Number in the 23rd Solar Cycle

The variation of the number of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) with different angular widths in the period of 1996-2008 is analyzed statistically in this paper, together with a comparison of the feature of time variation between the number of CMEs with some typical angular widths and the number of sunspots.     

Brief history of ground-based very high energy gamma-ray astrophysics with atmospheric air Cherenkov telescopes

The discovery of the Crab Nebula as the first source of TeV gamma rays in 1989, using the technique of ground-based imaging air Cherenkov telescope, has marked the birthday of observational gamma astronomy in very high energy range. The team led by Trevor Weekes, after twenty years of trial and error, success and misfortune, step-by-step improvements in both the technique and understanding of gamma shower discrimination methods, used the 10 m diameter telescope on Mount Hopkins in Arizona, and succeeded measuring a 9σ signal from the direction of Crab Nebula. As of today over 160 sources of gamma rays of very different types, of both galactic and extra-galactic origin, have been discovered due to this technique. This is a really fast evolving branch in science, rapidly improving our understanding of the most violent and energetic sources and processes in the sky.The study of these sources provides clues to many basic questions in astrophysics, astro-particle physics, physics of cosmic rays and cosmology. Today’s telescopes, despite the young age of the technique, offer a solid performance. The technique is still maturing, leading to the next generation large instrument. This article is devoted to outlining the milestones in a long history that step-by-step have made this technique emerge and have brought about today’s successful source hunting.     

Improvement in the performance of solar adaptive optics

Adaptive optics （AO）, which provides diffraction limited imaging over a field-of-view （FOV）, is a powerful technique for solar observation. In the tomographic approach, each wavefront sensor （WFS） is looking at a single reference that acts as a guide star. This allows a 3D reconstruction of the distorted wavefront to be made. The correction is applied by one or more deformable mirrors （DMs）. This technique benefits from information about atmospheric turbulence at different layers, which can be used to reconstruct the wavefront extremely well. With the assistance of the MAOS software package, we consider the tomography errors and WFS aliasing errors, and focus on how the performance of a solar telescope （pointing toward zenith） is related to atmospheric anisoplanatism. We theoretically quantify the performance of the to- mographic solar AO system. The results indicate that the tomographic AO system can improve the average Strehl ratio of a solar telescope in a 10＂ - 80＂ diameter FOV by only employing one DM conjugated to the telescope pupil. Furthermore, we discuss the effects of DM conjugate altitude on the correction achievable by the AO system by selecting two atmospheric models that differ mainly in terms of atmospheric prop- erties at ground level, and present the optimum DM conjugate altitudes for different observation sites.     

A new calibration model for pointing a radio telescope that considers nonlinear errors in the azimuth axis ＊

A new calibration model of a radio telescope that includes pointing error is presented, which considers nonlinear errors in the azimuth axis. For a large radio telescope, in particular for a telescope with a turntable, it is difficult to correct pointing errors using a traditional linear calibration model, because errors produced by the wheel-on-rail or center bearing structures are generally nonlinear. Fourier expansion is made for the oblique error and parameters describing the inclination direction along the azimuth axis based on the linear calibration model, and a new calibration model for pointing is derived. The new pointing model is applied to the 40 m radio telescope administered by Yunnan Observatories, which is a telescope that uses a turntable. The results show that this model can significantly reduce the residual systematic errors due to nonlinearity in the azimuth axis compared with the linear model.     

Optimization routine for identification of model parameters in soil plasticity

The paper presents an optimization routine especially developed for the identification of model parameters in soil plasticity on the basis of different soil tests. Main focus is put on the mathematical aspects and the experience from application of this optimization routine. Mathematically, for the optimization, an objective function and a search strategy are needed. Some alternative expressions for the objective function are formulated. They capture the overall soil behaviour and can be used in a simultaneous optimization against several laboratory tests. Two different search strategies, Rosenbrock's method and the Simplex method, both belonging to the category of direct search methods, are utilized in the routine. Direct search methods have generally proved to be reliable and their relative simplicity make them quite easy to program into workable codes. The Rosenbrock and simplex methods are modified to make the search strategies as efficient and user‐friendly as possible for the type of optimization problem addressed here. Since these search strategies are of a heuristic nature, which makes it difficult (or even impossible) to analyse their performance in a theoretical way, representative optimization examples against both simulated experimental results as well as performed triaxial tests are presented to show the efficiency of the optimization routine. From these examples, it has been concluded that the optimization routine is able to locate a minimum with a good accuracy, fast enough to be a very useful tool for identification of model parameters in soil plasticity. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modelling mechanical behaviour of limestone under reservoir conditions

High porosity and low permeability limestone has presented pore collapse. As fluid is withdrawn from these reservoirs, the effective stresses acting on the rock increase. If the strength of the rock is overcome, pore collapse may occur, leading to irreversible compaction of porous media with permeability and porosity reduction. It impacts on fluid withdrawal. Most of reservoirs have been discovered in weak formations, which are susceptible to this phenomenon. This work presents a study on the mechanical behaviour of a porous limestone from a reservoir located in Campos Basin, offshore Brazil. An experimental program was undergone in order to define its elastic plastic behaviour. The tests reproduced the loading path conditions expected in a reservoir under production. Parameters of the cap model were fitted to these tests and numerical simulations were run. The numerical simulations presented a good agreement with the experimental tests. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

八世纪前中国纪时日食观测和地球转速变化

本文对中国正史记载的八世纪前的３４次纪时日食观测作了分析，指出其中两次日食记载有重复，另一次纪日不确。对３２次日食观测记录的１４个食分和４５个见食时刻作了考查，其中除一次食甚时刻误差较大（约１＾ｈ）外，余皆准确可靠。本文据此对地球自转速率的长期变化趋势作了探讨。     

研究太阳分离活动体光谱不对称轮廓的“多云模型”方法和应用

本文提出了处理分离的太阳活动体光谱不对称轮廓的一种方法──“多云模型”方法。在某些假设和一定的近似条件下利用本文提出的方法可同时得到太阳多个分离活动体的视向速度Ｖ，多普勒线宽△λ_Ｄ和线心光学深度τ_０，源函数Ｓ的近似值。文章给出了该方法的几个应用实例并进行了讨论。研究表明，计算所得的Ｖ和△λ_Ｄ的值是较为可靠的，二云模型是处理由两个分离活动体沿视线重叠而产生的不对称轮廓较为有效的方法。