The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and nonpartisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established in 1783. As of 2021[update], there are around 1,800 Fellows.The Society covers a broader selection of fields than the Royal Society of London including literature and history. Fellowship includes people from a wide range of disciplines – science & technology, arts, humanities, medicine, social science, business, and public service.
With reference to the practice of Old Believer iconography in Romania, this essay explores craft as process rather than product. That emphasis aligns with UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, Drawing on the theoretical framework of Ingold. Hägerstrand, Luehrmann and others, we examine the dynamic nature of transmission as both innovative and conservative. The essay draws on original fieldwork conducted by Clopot among Old Believers in Romania. It explores the lack of opportunities to learn the craft and receive formal recognition, and engages with the role of icons in individual lives and in sacred spaces. A key dimension to our argument is the often neglected “energy flow” that is implicit in iconographic practice.
Nowadays, traditional power grids, conventionally designed with a centralized paradigm, are evolving toward more decentralized configurations with numerous smaller nodes (prosumers), leading to increased interactions and complexity. In this context, digital twins (DTs) come in handy to replicate the behavior of a physical process in a fast, virtual, and safe way. This paper introduces a novel DT of a battery energy storage system (BESS), designed as a general-purpose framework adaptable for employment in complex scenarios. In addition to the DT design, this work presents a practical implementation of the proposed framework, rigorously validated through an extensive experimental campaign using real-world data. Specifically, the model is tested on realistic datasets, including a photovoltaic (PV) power profile, an experimental microgrid setup, and aged battery data. The results demonstrate the DT's strong emulation capabilities, with a Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) consistently below 0.50% across all experiments.
This study assesses climate change’s impact on solar energy production in Italy until 2100, focusing on solar radiation, temperature, and photovoltaic (PV) energy production through capacity factor. Regional climate models (RCMs) coming from the European branch of the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (Euro-CORDEX), which incorporate time-evolving aerosols, are utilized for accurate future solar radiation trend estimations under various scenarios of greenhouse gas concentration evolution—the so-called Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP). Bias correction, employing the third edition of the Surface Solar Radiation Data Set—Heliosat (SARAH-3) and the MEteorological Reanalysis Italian DAtaset (MERIDA) for temperature data, enhances the capacity factor accuracy. Solar radiation exhibits a slight decline under the most optimistic emission scenario RCP 2.6, but a significant increase under other RCPs, particularly in central Italy’s mountains, with the Alps showing an opposite trend, especially under RCP 8.5. The temperature is projected to rise, particularly under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5, potentially affecting production efficiency and snow cover in the Alps. The decrease in snow cover may affect the diffuse component of solar radiation with a subsequent decrease predicted by Euro-CORDEX RCMs. Trend analysis reveals significant PV production decreases under RCP 8.5, especially in the Alps, due to reduced solar radiation. Despite the increase in solar radiation, most of Italy experiences decreased PV production due to rising temperatures, potentially reducing solar panel efficiency. RCP 4.5 and RCP 2.6 scenarios exhibit less pronounced capacity factor decreases, with RCP 2.6 showing the lowest climate signal magnitude. Seasonal cycle analysis reveals variations primarily linked to changes in solar radiation throughout the year. RCP 8.5 shows significant winter production decreases, followed by slight summer increases dampened by rising temperatures. RCP 4.5 exhibits similar characteristics, with a milder winter decrease and stable production in other months, while RCP 2.6 shows a slight spring increase and generally stable production throughout the year.
Botanic gardens and arboreta maintain globally important collections for conservation and education. Many organisations hold a reputation for excellence in propagation, cultivation and collection preservation. Learning from successes and challenges, and having the ability to disseminate that knowledge, is paramount for improving techniques and outcomes. However, the field of horticultural research is not well defined, and results of plant cultivation techniques are often only shared informally rather than published. This study was designed to explore how horticultural research practitioners perceive the field of horticultural research and excellence, how they and their institutions are involved, and what are the most urgent needs of future horticultural research among gardens and arboreta in the United States. An online survey was distributed to ascertain the status of horticultural research amongst the United States members of the American Society for Horticultural Science, the American Public Gardens Association, Botanic Gardens Conservation International and the Interactive Community of Arboreta, Level II, III and IV members. The survey was completed by 128 respondents from 34 US states across 116 institutions. The responses highlight the fact that horticultural excellence is holistic – focusing on species conservation, ecology and pest mitigation. The findings also touch on the status and involvement of respondents in horticultural research and their perceived needs for future research. These responses further highlight challenges such as funding, time and personnel shortfalls. Horticultural research also includes an emphasis on practical approaches, requiring better recognition and sharing methods. The findings introduce a new framework to support the horticulture community in conceptualising, communicating and implementing research. This framework proposes that horticultural research can be broadly categorised into two overarching approaches: practical and technical.
The increasing complexity of smart grid communication networks, driven by the integration of distributed energy resources and massive IoT sensor deployments, demands highly resilient and adaptive communication strategies. This paper proposes two high-resiliency management functions for 5G-enabled energy monitoring networks: an adaptive uplink power control mechanism and an adaptive multi-access traffic steering algorithm. The first dynamically reconfigures the transmission power of user equipment (UE) based on packet delay trends to mitigate interference and improve energy efficiency. The second leverages 3GPP's ATSSS (Access Traffic Steering, Switching, and Splitting) framework to redirect traffic between 5 G and Wi-Fi channels in response to SINR degradation. These functions were implemented and tested in a 5G-LENA based simulation platform. Experimental results show notable improvements in uplink throughput, latency reduction, and overall network stability.
