[en] The purpose of this project was to create an interactive game to expose high school students to concepts in laser amplification by demonstrating the National Ignition Facility's main amplifier at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. To succeed, the game had to be able to communicate effectively the basic concepts of laser amplification as accurately as possible and to be capable of exposing as many students as possible. Since concepts need to be communicated in a way that students understand, the Science Content Standards for California Public Schools were used to make assumptions about high school students knowledge of light. Effectively communicating a new concept necessitates the omission on terminology and symbolism. Therefore, creating a powerful experience was ideal for communicating this material. Various methods of reinforcing this experience ranging from color choice to abstractions kept the student focused on the game to maximize concept retention. The program was created in Java to allow the creation of a Java Applet that can be embedded onto a webpage, which is a perfect medium for mass exposure. Because a game requires interaction, the game animations had to be easily manipulated to enable the program to respond to user input. Image sprites, as opposed to image folders, were used in these animations to minimize the number of Hypertext Transfer Protocol connections, and thus, significantly reduce the transfer time of necessary animation files. These image sprites were loaded and cropped into a list of animation frames. Since the caching of large transition animations caused the Java Virtual Machine to run out of memory, large animations were implemented as animated Graphics Interchange Format images since transitions require no interaction, and thus, no frame manipulation was needed. This reduced the animation's memory footprint. The first version of this game was completed during this project. Future work for the project could include the creation of focus groups to assess the effectiveness of communicating material through an interactive game. Numerical assessments programmed into the game could also be used to collect statistics that reflect difficulty or level of frustration that students experience

[en] This paper presents analysis of full power generator load rejection transient initiated in start-up test at Chinshan Nuclear Power Plant unit 1 (BWR) of Taiwan Power Company. This is a beginning of a series of analysis work planned for both BWR and PWR units. The purpose of this analysis is to evaluate the RETRAN code capability. Application to safety analysis and operations is the goal

[en] This article describes the state of the automobile industry and urban road transportation management in China. It reviews how the automobile industry is evolving to respond to challenges in economic development, environmental regulations, and technological change. The dynamics and barriers resulting from technological change of automobiles in response to reduction of exhaust emissions and energy-efficiency improvement are analyzed. It is argued that consideration of externality costs should be integrated in automobile industrial policymaking and transportation management. Efforts need to be made to use more economic incentives for emissions reduction, and to promote technological change for cleaner vehicle development. This paper questions the current government policy of encouraging private car ownership, and suggests that improvement in public transportation systems, stronger emissions control, and technology innovation on environmental friendly automobile technologies would be relevant to China's drive toward sustainable transportation development. Social inequities resulted from automobile use is also stressed in the analysis

[en] Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) is the only utility supplying electricity to Taiwan. In 1991, six nuclear units shared 28% of the total installed capacity (5144MWe out of 18 382MWe), but produced 38% of the total electricity (33 878TWh out of 89 129TWh), with a 7% increase over 1990. The weighted average capacity factor reached a record high of 78.32%. Compared with 1990's weighted average capacity factor of 72.94%, the annual performance in 1991 reveals that Taipower nuclear power plants are in better shape than they were before. The major improvement efforts in 1992 will focus on shortening the duration of outages and enforcing safety culture training. This article also briefly describes existing and projected waste management plants and comments on the project to build two 1000MWe Light Water Reactor plants at Yenliao which are tentatively scheduled for commercial operation in 2000. (Author)

[en] We have studied the most general N=2 supergravity in five dimensions in context with the orbifold theory based on M₄ x S¹/Z₂. Various ways to treat the supersymmetry with singular sources placed in orbifold fixed points were proposed in past. Supersymmetric branes were consistently introduced in a bulk where a gauged supergravity was present. In this paper we find that in the N = 2,D = 5 supergravity with general gauging, the possibility to obtain a supersymmetric brane world is constrained. Imposing the compatibility of supersymmetry transformation rules with the orbifold condition, we find the necessary and sufficient condition to obtain supersymmetric branes and bulk independently. We comment that the same condition guarantees naturally the presence of singular BPS solutions. (author)

[en] After TMI-2 event, numerous investigation reports, recommendations, and action plans were published by regulatory authorities, industrial organizations and even by Congress in USA. One of the conclusions was that defect of administration program is the major cause that led to the TMI-2 event. Taiwan Power Company took actions in three phases to improve the safety design and administration programs for all plants, operating or under construction. In-house organization and capabilities, QC/QA system, operator retraining program and emergency plan are also reviewed, reevaluated or upgraded

[en] Full power generator load rejection transient initiated in startup test was simulated. The measured data were retrieved from STARTREC tape. The calculated and measured data especially for parameters of system pressure, core heat flux, feedwater flow rate, reactor water level, core flow, and normalized power, are compared. The results indicate that the RETRAN code can successfully predict the parameters. 2 refs

[en] Although China committed to reduce its energy and emission intensity, the allocation of such national targets in the provincial level is still a political negotiation process and lack of a systematic principle from the perspective of efficiency. This paper proposes an allocation principle based on the efficiency levels. The efficiency levels are estimated by employing a stochastic frontier analysis approach and the links between energy intensity and efficiency are constructed. The results show that energy efficiency change is not the major contributor to energy intensity reduction. Furthermore, this analysis indicates that (i) the efficiency-based allocation can distribute reduction burdens among regions smoothly compared to the intensity-based allocation; and (ii) the national target of emission intensity reduction can be achieved solely through efficiency measures. - Highlights: • This paper proposes an allocation principle based on efficiency levels. • The link between energy intensity and efficiency is constructed. • Efficiency-based allocation can distribute reduction burdens smoothly. • National emission reduction target can be achieved through efficiency measures.

[en] The tight-binding model is used to study the electronic and optical properties of armchair and zigzag boron nitride nanoribbons (ABNNRs and ZBNNRs) in electric field. Electric field could significantly change dispersion relations, degeneracy, edge-states, band crossings, and energy gaps. The field-modulation of energy gaps is more effective and covers wider energy range for BNNRs than graphene nanoribbons. The critical electric field that induces zero-gap transition strongly depends on geometric structures of BNNRs. At zero field, the selection rule and the absorption frequency range of spectral functions are different between ABNNRs and ZBNNRs. Electric field would change state functions that constructs new selection rule and further exhibits more absorption peaks

[en] Energy efficiency of buildings in the service sector is becoming increasingly important in China due to the structural shift of the economy from industry to services. This paper employs a bottom-up cohort model to simulate current energy saving policies and to make projections for future energy use and CO₂ emissions for the period 2000–2030 in the Chinese service sector. The analysis shows that energy demand in the service sector will approximately triple in 2030, far beyond the target of quadrupling GDP while only doubling energy use. However, it is feasible to achieve the target of emission reduction by 40% in 2020 even under the poor state of compliance rate of building standard. This paper also highlights four crucial aspects of designing optimal energy saving policies for China's service sector based on the model results. - Highlights: • Government energy saving target cannot realize with current policies in services. • Energy savings policies for new buildings are crucial than building retrofitting. • Cooling energy use increases significantly to reach equal weight as heating. • CO₂ tax can contribute to change in fuel mix, and thus emission reductions. • Low compliance rate limits further energy saving, hence green fund is required