The continuous increase in the demand of energy and the high costs of fuels in many areas in the world are fostering improvements in energy efficiency in many sectors. Defrosting due to ice formation on the surface of cooling coils is a major source of inefficiencies in the refrigerated warehouse sector which, just in California, accounts for 1,800 million kWh of energy consumption per year. Liquid desiccants have been identified as a means of reducing latent loads in air conditioning and refrigeration systems. However, the interaction of liquid desiccant films and humid air is a subject that has not been analyzed in detail. In the past, significant efforts have been made in understanding liquid-film absorption processes in heat and mass exchangers for several flow configurations, using various numerical and experimental techniques. However, studies concerning liquid desiccant films near freezing conditions with coupled momentum, heat and mass transfer using non-isothermal thermo-physical properties are rare in the literature. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the effect of heat and mass transfer in the interaction of a liquid desiccant film in contact with a humid air stream. Velocity, temperature, and concentration distributions, as well as, film stability are studied experimentally and numerically. The results show a delay in the formation of the ice on the cooling coil due to the reduction of the dew point temperature of the evaporator inlet air, thus reducing operating costs. Moreover, the results show that an effectiveness of the internal heat exchanger less than 60\% leads to a desorption process which is opposite to the aims of the dehumidification system. The stability analysis of the liquid film is evaluated using the Orr-Sommerfeld equation with methodologies such as the small wavenumber technique and complete orthonormalization method. Most works found in the literature have focused on the particularly simplified cases of absorption with uniform properties, namely, isothermal systems. The techniques used to analyze film stability allow the inclusion of the effects of heat, mass, and temperature dependent properties, which constitutes a major contribution of this work. Stabilizing and de-stabilizing effects of different parameters are discussed in the results.

This paper will examine these issues based on a review of the existing literature and the analysis of a survey of forty-eight Los Angeles based API CBOs. The paper is organized into five sections. Section I provides an overview of API CBOs, describing their growth over the last two decades, the scope of services they provide and recent shifts in organizational service and constituency focus. Section II addresses efforts by CBOs under welfare reform to provide effective welfare-to-work and other related programs targeting API welfare recipients. Section III addresses efforts underway by CBOs with little or no experience in providing services targeting API welfare recipients. Section IV describes the collaborative efforts being undertaken by CBOs in assisting API welfare recipients and addressing the overall effects of welfare reform on the API community, including advocacy, planning and policy activities being undertaken collaboratively by CBOs in response to welfare reform. Section V discusses the strengths and limitations of CBOs in assisting API welfare recipients under welfare reform, concluding with a list of policy recommendations.

In this dissertation I argue that philosophical theorizing about moral responsibility has not paid sufficient attention to the epistemic dimensions of our practices of responsibility. This dissertation asks how we pursue justification and agreement about moral responsibility in our actual social practices, and, finding those pursuits often less than ideal, further asks how we ought to do so. In chapter one I seek to vindicate these claims by reviewing the extant moral responsibility literature, pointing out at various junctures what I call “paths not taken” and “epistemic lacunae.” In chapter two I engage with work in contemporary social, cognitive, and moral psychology to sketch a picture of how we actually pursue judgments about responsibility, psychologically speaking. With this “ping-pong” model in hand, I identify some particularly common and robust “epistemic disruptors” that undermine our ability to hold one another responsible in the ways which philosophical theories often imagine.

In particular, I focus on the way in which blame judgments are susceptible to these disruptions. Given this set up, chapters three and four of the dissertation deal with some practical upshots for the ethics of blame. In chapter three I argue for introducing the norm of Powerful Restraint, which suggests that in contexts where there are large gaps in social power, the powerful should refrain from blaming downward. In chapter four I further motivate this kind of revisionism and asymmetry, focusing on the ways in which our currently constituted practices of responsibility intersect with issues in the contemporary literatures on pragmatic encroachment and cultivated ignorance.