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Due to diverse reasons, energy production will move from centralized facilities to distributed networks of community-scale or smaller, independent producers. If such on-site energy producers are guided by sound engineering principles and safe practices, there is nothing to fear about Distributed Generation (DG) of power, energy or fuel. However, moving the production facilities closer to residences—whenever such facilities are operated with substandard equipment by poorly trained people- could be quite dangerous. The worst case is an improvised facility operated by non-professional staff that uses toxic chemicals. Home-based biodiesel production fits this model. Thus this paper documents the biodiesel production process. The chemicals of concern are described. A “what if” exercise follows to understand the various risk exposures. A Preliminary Hazard List is developed. Finally, the risks of each potential challenge are quantified and assessed to determine severity and policy implications. Recomme...

Peer review goes back to at least 1665 with the founding of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. However peer review did not become well established until the middle of the last century. For example, Einstein's 1905 papers in Annalen der Physik were not subjected to a peer review process. The purpose for which peer review was established is not clear. The probable motives include a combination of rationing of (then) very expensive journal pages, catching obvious errors, and at least some degree of quality control on what is published. The question now is "Do past models make sense in the world of the Internet?", as today, on-line published pages are essentially free and continuous on-line review and rebuttal is practical.

I wish to extend my deep appreciation to all those who have so generously volunteered their time and talents during 2015 to the peer review and publication of the IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting . Special thanks go to our BTS Publications Chair and Associate Editors who have shared their valuable time and broadcast engineering expertise in managing a steadily increasing flow of papers and evaluating manuscripts through the peer review process.

Over the last 15 years, the Internet has enabled new modes of authorship, new forms of open licensing and distribution, and new forms of collaboration and peer production to flourish. But in turn, new anxieties have arisen, especially concerning quality assurance, peer review, reuse, and modification. New innovations are appearing in peer review, endorsement, the measurement of trust, and the understanding of reputation, but without any systematic analysis of the general principles of quality assurance and peer review in this new era. In this paper, we propose a general set of principles for understanding what peer review was in the past and how it should be applied today to different kinds of content and in new platforms for managing quality. The principles stress an analysis not only on the content in materials but also on their context of use. Our focus is on open educational resources, and we present a case study of the open education project Connexions' lens system for quality assurance and review. However, the principles can be applied across multiple levels of knowledge production, including scholarship in engineering and science and reference materials in addition to educational publishing.