Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV)

Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) are photovoltaic materials that are used to replace conventional building materials in parts of the building envelope such as the roof, skylights, or facades. They are increasingly being incorporated into the construction of new buildings as a principal or ancillary source of electrical power, although existing buildings may be retrofitted with BIPV modules as well. The advantage of integrated photovoltaics over more common non-integrated systems is that the initial cost can be offset by reducing the amount spent on building materials and labor that would normally be used to construct the part of the building that the BIPV modules replace.

Toxicity of Metabolites

Many substances regarded as poisons are toxic only indirectly. An example is "wood alcohol," or methanol, which is chemically converted to formaldehyde and formic acid in the liver. It is the formaldehyde and formic acid that cause the toxic effects of methanol exposure. Many drug molecules are made toxic in the liver, a good example being acetaminophen (paracetamol), especially in the presence of alcohol. The genetic variability of certain liver enzymes makes the toxicity of many compounds differ between one individual and the next. Because demands placed on one liver enzyme can induce activity in another, many molecules become toxic only in combination with others.

Transreflective liquid crystal display

A transreflective liquid crystal display is a liquid crystal display (LCD) that reflects most of the sunlight it is exposed to, and automatically increases or decreases the light emanating from the screen depending on how much light shines on it. Therefore, it reduces the need for manual light adjustment of the screen.

Transreflective liquid crystal displays use a retroreflector to transmit light when external sources of light are available, such as the sun or a lamp, and illuminate the screen well. When these sources are available but do not illuminate well, the display transmits its own light from a backlight at the rear of the display.

Materials intelligence and Air Sampling

Nuclear tests, including underground tests that vent into the atmosphere, produce fallout that not only indicates that a nuclear event has taken place, but, through radiochemical analysis of radionuclides in the fallout, characterize the technology and source of the device. For example, a pure fission device will have different fallout products from a boosted fission device, which, in turn, differ from various types of thermonuclear devices.

One real-world example is a review of how xenon by-product levels could be used to distinguish if air sampling from a North Korean test, either atmospheric testing or leakage from an underground test, could be used to determine if the bomb was nuclear, and, if so, whether the Primary was plutonium or highly-enriched uranium (HEU)

Integral action

The integral term magnifies the effect of long-term steady-state errors, applying ever-increasing effort until they reduce to zero. In the example of the furnace above working at various temperatures, if the heat being applied does not bring the furnace up to setpoint, for whatever reason, integral action increasingly moves the proportional band relative to the setpoint until the time-integral of the MV error is reduced to zero and the setpoint is achieved.

Systems engineering

Systems Engineering is an interdisciplinary approach and means for enabling the realization and deployment of successful systems. It can be viewed as the application of engineering techniques to the engineering of systems, as well as the application of a systems approach to engineering efforts. Systems Engineering integrates other disciplines and specialty groups into a team effort, forming a structured development process that proceeds from concept to production to operation and disposal. Systems Engineering considers both the business and the technical needs of all customers, with the goal of providing a quality product that meets the user needs.

Marxism-Leninism

Marxism-Leninism, strictly speaking, refers to the version of Marxism developed by Vladimir Lenin known as Leninism[citation needed]. However, in various contexts, different (and sometimes opposing) political groups have used the term "Marxism-Leninism" to describe the ideologies that they claimed to be upholding. The core ideological features of Marxism-Leninism are those of Marxism and Leninism, that is to say, belief in the necessity of a violent overthrow of capitalism through communist revolution, to be followed by a dictatorship of the proletariat as the first stage of moving towards communism, and the need for a vanguard party to lead the proletariat in this effort.

It involves subscribing to the teachings and legacy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Marxism), and that of Lenin, as carried forward by Joseph Stalin. Those who view themselves as Marxist-Leninists, however, vary with regards to the leaders and thinkers that they choose to uphold as progressive (and to what extent). Maoists tend to downplay the importance of all other thinkers in favour of Mao Zedong, whereas Hoxhaites repudiate Mao.

Legal psychology

Legal psychology involves the application of empirical psychological research to legal institutions and people who come into contact with the law. Legal psychology is a field that takes basic social and cognitive theories and principles and applies them to issues in the legal system such as eyewitness memory, jury decision-making, investigations and interviewing. The term "legal psychology" has only recently come into usage, primarily as a way to differentiate the non-clinical focus of legal psychology from the clinically-oriented forensic psychology. Unlike forensic psychology, legal psychology's primary focus is in the application of topics of experimental research in social psychology as well as in developmental psychology, perception and memory, and areas related to these topics.

Social psychology

Social psychology is the study of the nature and causes of human social behavior, with an emphasis on how people think towards each other and how they relate to each other. Social Psychology aims to understand how we make sense of social situations. For example, this could involve the influence of others on an individual's behavior (e.g., conformity or persuasion), the perception and understanding of social cues, or the formation of attitudes or stereotypes about other people. Social cognition is a common approach and involves a mostly cognitive and scientific approach to understanding social behavior.

Comte's positivism

According to Auguste Comte, society undergoes three different phases in its quest for the truth according to the aptly named Law of three stages. These three phases are the theological, the metaphysical and the positive phases.

The theological phase of man is based on whole-hearted belief in all things with reference to God. God, he says, had reigned supreme over human existence pre-Enlightenment. Humanity's place in society was governed by his association with the divine presences and with the church. The theological phase deals with humankind accepting the doctrines of the church (or place of worship) and not questioning the world. It dealt with the restrictions put in place by the religious organization at the time and the total acceptance of any “fact” placed forth for society to believe.

Boeing X-50A

Boeing X-50 Dragonfly, formerly known as the Canard Rotor/Wing Demonstrator, is a gyrodyne unmanned aerial vehicle that was being developed by Boeing and DARPA to demonstrate the principle that a helicopter's rotor can be stopped in flight and act as a fixed wing. The X-50A builds upon the work of the Sikorsky X-Wing program of the 1980s by designing the vehicle as a multi-mode aircraft from the ground up. The X-50A is one of two projects funded by DARPA in its "Heliplane" program.

Wide area network

A wide area network is a network where a wide variety of resources are deployed across a large domestic area or internationally. An example of this is a multinational business that uses a WAN to interconnect their offices in different countries. The largest and best example of a WAN is the Internet, which is a network comprised of many smaller networks. The Internet is considered the largest network in the world. The PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) also is an extremely large network that is converging to use Internet technologies, although not necessarily through the public Internet.

A Wide Area Network involves communication through the use of a wide range of different technologies. These technologies include Point-to-Point WANs such as Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) and High-Level Data Link Control (HDLC), Frame Relay, ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) and Sonet (Synchronous Optical Network). The difference between the WAN technologies is based on the switching capabilities they perform and the speed at which sending and receiving bits of information (data) occur.

For more information on WANs, see Frame Relay, ATM and Sonet.

Molecular nanotechnology

Molecular nanotechnology, sometimes called molecular manufacturing, is a term given to the concept of engineered nanosystems (nanoscale machines) operating on the molecular scale. It is especially associated with the concept of a molecular assembler, a machine that can produce a desired structure or device atom-by-atom using the principles of mechanosynthesis. Manufacturing in the context of productive nanosystems is not related to, and should be clearly distinguished from, the conventional technologies used to manufacture nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes and nanoparticles.

When the term "nanotechnology" was independently coined and popularized by Eric Drexler (who at the time was unaware of an earlier usage by Norio Taniguchi) it referred to a future manufacturing technology based on molecular machine systems. The premise was that molecular-scale biological analogies of traditional machine components demonstrated molecular machines were possible: by the countless examples found in biology, it is known that sophisticated, stochastically optimised biological machines can produce.

Cellular telephony

The most common example of a cellular network is a mobile phone (cell phone) network. A mobile phone is a portable telephone which receives or makes calls through a cell site (base station), or transmitting tower. Radio waves are used to transfer signals to and from the cell phone. Large geographic areas (representing the coverage range of a service provider) are split up into smaller cells to deal with line-of-sight signal loss and the large number of active phones in an area. In cities, each cell site has a range of up to approximately ½ mile, while in rural areas, the range is approximately 5 miles. Many times in clear open areas, a user may receive signal from a cell 25 miles away. Each cell overlaps other cell sites. All of the cell sites are connected to cellular telephone exchanges "switches", which in turn connect to the public telephone network or another switch of the cellular company.

As the phone user moves from one cell area to another, the switch automatically commands the handset and a cell site with a stronger signal (reported by the handset) to go to a new radio channel (frequency). When the handset responds through the new cell site, the exchange switches the connection to the new cell site.

What do you mean by Java platform?

The Java platform was urbanized at Sun in the early 1990s with the objective of permitting programs to function apart from of the device they were used on, sparking the slogan "Write once, run anywhere" (WORA). While this intention has not been completely achieved (prompting the riposte "Write once, debug everywhere"), Java is regarded as being mainly hardware- and operating system-independent.

Java was primarily promoted as a platform for client-side applets running within web browsers. This positioning was never very booming. While browser-based applications have had substantial success in displacing standalone applications on the desktop, in 2006 they were not time and again implemented as Java applets. The platform has been more doing well on the server side of the Internet.

The platform contains three major parts, the Java programming language, the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), and numerous Java Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). The design of the Java platform is managed by the vendor and user community throughout the Java Community Process (JCP).

Constructors in C++

A constructor in c++ programming language is a function that initializes the members of an object. A constructor only knows how to construct an object of its own class.
Constructors are not automatically inherited between base and the derived classes. If you don't give one in the derived class, a default will be supplied but this may not do what you want.

If we don’t use constructor then a default one is created by the compiler not including any parameters. There must always be a constructor, though it is the default and empty. If you provide a constructor with parameters then a default will not be created.

Some points about constructors to remember

1. Constructors are just functions with the same name as the class.
2. Constructors are intended to initialize the members of the class when an instance or the object of that class is created.
3. Constructors are not called directly (except for through initializer lists)
4. Constructors will not be virtual.
5. Multiple constructors for the similar class can be defined. They must have different parameters to differentiate them.

What are the Differences between the touring cars and sports cars?

For the careless viewer, there can be a great deal of confusion when it comes to classifying closed-wheel racing cars as the 'touring cars' or the 'sports cars' (as well known as GT cars). In fact, there is often extraordinarily little technical difference between the two classifications, and nomenclature is often a matter of tradition.

Generally, on the other hand, touring cars are based upon 4-door 'family' sedans or, more rarely, 2-door coupe cars, while GT racing cars are based upon more striking vehicles, like Ferrari's or Lamborghini's. Underneath the bodywork, a Touring Car is sometimes more directly associated to its road-going origins, using numerous original components and mountings, while a top-flight GT car is often a purpose-built tube-frame racing chassis underneath a decorative body shell. Numerous Touring Car series, like the BTCC and the now-defunct JTCC differentiate themselves from sports-car racing by featuring front-wheel drive cars with less important engines.

On the other hand, while generally Touring Cars have a lower technical level than sports cars; there are famous exceptions to the rule. The Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM) is believed to be one of the most technologically highly developed racing series in the world, with cars that, underneath their four-door shells, are more purebred racing machines than the majority FIA-GT vehicles.

What is Road running race game?

The Road running or road racing is the sport of running on a measured course larger than an established road (as opposite to track and the cross country running). Such a race or competition is called a road race. The Road racing provides competitors a variety of challenges to triumph over such as hills, sharp bends, varied roadway, inclement weather, and a large group to try to win against- or with. The Aerobic fitness, or the ability of the body to make use of oxygen, is essential to have to complete the long distances. The Anaerobic fitness, that is, the body's capacity at responding when there isn't sufficient oxygen for the muscle, is essential to charge up hills and past competitors on the finish line. The Road running is unique along with athletic events for the reasons that in many cases first time amateurs are welcome to take part in the same happening as members of running clubs and even in the existing world-class champions.

Mounting of traffic lights

A typical exemplar of how traffic lights are mounted in California. Wealthy cities like Cerritos frequently have elaborate traffic light gantries. There are important differences from place to place in how traffic lights are mounted or placed so that they are visible to drivers. Depending upon the place, traffic lights may be mounted on poles positioned on street corners, hung from wires strung over the roadway, or even hung from horizontal poles or installed within large horizontal gantries that make bigger out from the corner and over the right-of-way. In the previous case, such poles or gantries frequently have a lit sign with the name of the cross-street.

In some places mount lights with their multiple faces set horizontally and others vertically. California is particularly fastidious in ensuring that drivers can see the current state of a traffic light. One entrance to a typical large intersection, with three through lanes, two dedicated left-turn lanes, and a crosswalk, may have as many as three traffic lights for the left-turn lanes, three for the through lanes, and a pedestrian signal for the crosswalk. And those numbers must be multipled by four to cover all four ways to enter a typical intersection. Additionally to being positioned and mounted for preferred visibility for their personal traffic, some traffic lights are also meant, louvered, or shaded to reduce mis-interpretation from other lanes. For instance, a Fresnel lens on a neighboring through-lane signal may be intended to prevent left-turning traffic from anticipating its individual green arrow.

The Traffic signals in Germany are placed at the stop line on same side of the intersection as the forthcoming traffic and are often mounted overhead with on the right and left sides of the road. The stop line position is done to stop crosswalk blocking and permit for better pedestrian traffic flow.

The History of glass

Naturally occurring glass, like obsidian, has been used ever since the Stone Age. The first accepted instructions for glass making are in Egypt about 1500 BC, when glass was used as a glaze for pottery and additional items. In the first century BC the method of blowing glass was developed and what had once been a tremendously rare and expensive item became much more common. During the Roman Empire numerous forms of glass were created, generally for use in vases and bottles.

The Glass was made from sand, plant ash and lime. The most primitive use of glass was as a colored, opaque, or clear glaze applied to ceramics before they were fired. Small pieces of colored glass were considered costly and often rivaled valuable gems as jewelry items. As time passed, it was revealed (most likely by a potter) that if glass is heated in anticipation of it becomes semi-liquid, it can be shaped and left to cool in a new , solid, separately standing shape. In the first century BC, someplace at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, a new discovery caused a true revolution in the glass industry. This was the invention of glassblowing, both free-blowing and mold-blowing. The color of "natural glass" is green to bluish green glass. This color is caused by the changeable amounts of naturally occurring iron impurities in the sand. Common glass at present usually has a slight green or blue tint, arising from these same impurities.

The Glassmakers learned to make colored glass by adding metallic compounds and mineral oxides to make brilliant hues of red, green, and blue - the colors of gemstones. When gem cutters learned to cut glass, they create that clear glass was an outstanding refractor of light, the attractiveness of cut clear glass soared, that of colored glass diminished.

The Glass objects from the 7th and 8th centuries have been found on the island of Torcello close to Venice. These form an essential link between Roman times and the later on importance of that city in the production of the material. About 1000 CE, an essential technological breakthrough was made in Northern Europe when soda glass was replaced by glass made from a much more readily obtainable material: potash obtained from wood ashes. From this point on, northern glass differed considerably from that made in the Mediterranean area, where soda remained in general use.