Michigan Technological University

About: Michigan Technological University is a education organization based out in Houghton, Michigan, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Volcano. The organization has 8023 authors who have published 17422 publications receiving 481780 citations. The organization is also known as: MTU & Michigan Tech.

Forest carbon management in the United States: 1600-2100

Abstract: This paper reviews the effects of past forest management on carbon stocks in the United States, and the challenges for managing forest carbon resources in the 21st century. Forests in the United States were in approximate carbon balance with the atmosphere from 1600-1800. Utilization and land clearing caused a large pulse of forest carbon emissions during the 19th century, followed by regrowth and net forest carbon sequestration in the 20th century. Recent data and knowledge of the general behavior of forests after disturbance suggest that the rate of forest carbon sequestration is declining. A goal of an additional 100 to 200 Tg C/yr of forest carbon sequestration is achievable, but would require investment in inventory and monitoring, development of technology and practices, and assistance for land managers.

The effects of PLA color on material properties of 3-D printed components

Abstract: As the number of prosumer printers has expanded rapidly, they now make up the majority of the 3-D printer market and of these printers those in the open-source lineage of the RepRap also have expanded to dominate. Although still primarily used for prototyping or hobbyist production of low-value products, the RepRap has the capacity to be used for high-value distributed manufacturing. A recent study found that RepRap printed parts printed in realistic environmental conditions can match and even out perform commercial 3-D printers using proprietary FDM in terms of tensile strength with the same polymers. However, tensile strengths of the large sample set of RepRap prints fluctuated. In order to explain that fluctuation and better inform designers on RepRap print properties this study determines the effect of color and processing temperature on material properties of Lulzbot TAZ deposited PLA in various colors. Five colors (white, black, blue, gray, and natural) of commercially available filament processed from 4043D PLA is tested for crystallinity with XRD, tensile strength following ASTM D638 and the microstructure is evaluated with environmental scanning electron microscope. Results are presented showing a strong relationship between tensile strength and percent crystallinity of a 3-D printed sample and a strong relationship between percent crystallinity and the extruder temperature. Conclusions are drawn about the effects of color and processing temperature on the material properties of 3-D printed PLA to promote the open-source development of RepRap 3-D printing.

Consequences of cultural practices for entrepreneurial behaviors

Abstract: Although national culture is an important regulator of entrepreneurship, there is a dearth of studies that: (1) explore the effects of national cultural practices on entrepreneurial behaviors by individuals; (2) use appropriate multilevel research designs; (3) consider the effects of culture on different entrepreneurial behaviors, such as entry and post-entry growth aspirations. We combined Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) data from 42 countries for 2005–2008 to address these gaps, using a multilevel design. We found societal institutional collectivism practices negatively associated with entrepreneurial entry, but positively associated with entrepreneurial growth aspirations. Uncertainty avoidance practices were negatively associated with entry but not with growth aspirations, and performance orientation practices were positively associated with entry. Our analysis highlights the differential effects of cultural practices on entrepreneurial entry and growth aspirations, and demonstrates the value of multilevel techniques in analyzing the effect of culture on entrepreneurship.

Uncertainty-Aware Household Appliance Scheduling Considering Dynamic Electricity Pricing in Smart Home

Abstract: High quality demand side management has become indispensable in the smart grid infrastructure for enhanced energy reduction and system control. In this paper, a new demand side management technique, namely, a new energy efficient scheduling algorithm, is proposed to arrange the household appliances for operation such that the monetary expense of a customer is minimized based on the time-varying pricing model. The proposed algorithm takes into account the uncertainties in household appliance operation time and intermittent renewable generation. Moreover, it considers the variable frequency drive and capacity-limited energy storage. Our technique first uses the linear programming to efficiently compute a deterministic scheduling solution without considering uncertainties. To handle the uncertainties in household appliance operation time and energy consumption, a stochastic scheduling technique, which involves an energy consumption adaptation variable , is used to model the stochastic energy consumption patterns for various household appliances. To handle the intermittent behavior of the energy generated from the renewable resources, the offline static operation schedule is adapted to the runtime dynamic scheduling considering variations in renewable energy. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. Compared to a traditional scheduling scheme which models typical household appliance operations in the traditional home scenario, the proposed deterministic linear programming based scheduling scheme achieves up to 45% monetary expense reduction, and the proposed stochastic design scheme achieves up to 41% monetary expense reduction. Compared to a worst case design where an appliance is assumed to consume the maximum amount of energy, the proposed stochastic design which considers the stochastic energy consumption patterns achieves up to 24% monetary expense reduction without violating the target trip rate of 0.5%. Furthermore, the proposed energy consumption scheduling algorithm can always generate the scheduling solution within 10 seconds, which is fast enough for household appliance applications.