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Biology, Art And Sustainability, Linda Jolly, Jan Van Boeckel, Solveig Slåttli

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

How can the teaching of biology contribute to sustainability education? The authors of this article suggest that their approach has the potential to increase the students’ level of engagement with the natural environment. The scope of biology teaching can be widened by allowing room for more experience and art-based activities. Such a change may deepen and expand the learners’ insights in natural phenomena, which in turn might foster or enhance an attitude of care-taking for the natural environment.

Arts-Based Education For Enchanting, Embodied And Embedded Sustainability, Hans Dieleman

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article sketches two contrasting ideal-typical narratives of sustainability, a disenchanting and an enchanting one, and argues that current thinking in sustainability is mainly situated in the narrative of disenchantment. This narrative is based on various obsolete philosophical assumptions, and hampers the transformation process, as it distances the population from being part of this. It then sketches the narrative of enchanting sustainability and shows how this has the capacity to engage, intrigue and motivate people to be involved. It is rooted in an arts-based approach of connecting aesthetics, associative thinking, reflective practice, emotion-based working, aspiration and intentionality. The article moves …

Superconductivity At Т≈200 K In Bismuth Cuprates Synthesized Using Solar Energy, J. Chigvinadze, Juana Acrivos, S. Ashimov, D. Gulamova, G. Donadze

Faculty Publications, Chemistry

When investigating low-frequency (0.1 Hz) oscillations of multiphase high-temperature cuprate superconductors (HTCS) Bi1,7Pb0,3Sr2Ca(n-1)CunOy (n=2-30), a wide attenuation peak (ΔT~100 К) with a maximum at Т≈200 К was detected. This peak was particularly pronounced in field cooling (FC) experiments, i.e. after abrupt cooling of the sample in the external magnetic field at the temperature Т<Тс with subsequent slow warming up to room temperature with invariance of the applied field. The attenuation peak height depended on the preliminaryorientation (before cooling) of the samples θ in the measured permanent magnetic field Н. On the one hand, it is well known that, after the FC procedure and subsequent slow warming up, at the temperatures close to the critical temperature Тс, the attenuation peak associated with “melting” of the Abrikosov frozen vortex structure and its disappearance at Т >Тс is detected in monophase samples. At the same time, in most multiphase bismuth HTCS samples, synthesized using solar energy and superfast quenching of the melt, the attenuation peak with the maximum at Т≈200 К was observed.Depending on the conditions of synthesis, the attenuation peak could …

Special Issue On Supercapacitors, Xiao-Gang Zhang

Journal of Electrochemistry

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Electrochemical Capacitors Based On Anion-Graphite Intercalation Compounds, Hong-Yu Wang, Hui Fan, Xiao-Hong Wang, Li Qi

Journal of Electrochemistry

Anions can be electrochemically intercalated into a graphite electrode with a reversible capacity as high as 120 mAh·g^-1 at the high potential near 5 V vs. Li/Li⁺. Besides, graphite is environmentally benign, economic and abundant in China. Therefore, graphite is a very promising positive electrode material for asymmetric capacitors using non-aqueous electrolytes. However, the performance of graphite positive electrode is quite sensitive to various affecting factors, such as the compositions of electrolyte solutions, graphite type and ambient temperature, and so on. In the platform of activated carbon/graphite capacitors, the electrochemical behavior of anion-graphite intercalation compounds can be …

Strategies To Enhance Energy Density For Supercapacitors, Jun-Wei Lang, Xu Zhang, Ru-Tao Wang, Xing-Bin Yan

Journal of Electrochemistry

The biggest advantage of supercapacitor lies in not only the excellent pulse and fast charging-discharging performance, but also the characteristics of long cycle life and wide operating temperature window with no pollution. However, the energy density of supercapacitor is low. In this paper, the working principle, the development status, defects and improvement method of supercapacitors are introduced. Based on the research workes of the supercapacitors with high energy density in our group, combined with the literature reports in recent years, the strategies to promote the energy density of supercarpacitors will be focused. The strategies for the enhancement of energy density …

Attempts To Improve The Energy Capacity Of Capacitive Electrochemical Energy Storage Devices, Lin-Po Yu, George Z. Chen

Journal of Electrochemistry

This article reviews selected literatures from the authors’ research group on the development of capacitive electrochemical energy storage (EES) devices, focusing on supercapacitors and supercapatteries at both the electrode material level and device level. Electronically conducting polymers (ECPs) and transition metal oxides (TMOs) composited with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were found to be able to improve the capacitance performance as capacitive faradaic storage electrode. Carbon materials, like activated carbon (Act-C) and carbon black, were used to fabricate non-faradaic capacitive storage electrode. It was found that the electrode capacitance balance can effectively extend the maximum charging voltage (MCV) of the supercapacitor, and …

Porous Carbon Materials Produced By Koh Activation For Supercapacitor Electrodes, Jiang-Lin Ye, Yan-Wu Zhu

Journal of Electrochemistry

Porous carbon materials with high specific surface area and excellent conductivity have wide applications in supercapacitor electrodes. Much effort has been made to synthesize and tailor the microstructures of porous carbon materials via various activation procedures (physical and chemical activations). In particular, the chemical activation using potassium hydroxide (KOH) as an activating reagent is promising because of the well-defined micropore size distribution and ultrahigh specific surface area up to 3000 m²·g^-1 of the resulting porous carbons. Based mainly on the previous works taken by the authors and collaborators in the field, we have summarized the activation mechanism …

Recent Advances On Carbon And Transition Metallic Compound Electrodes For High-Performance Supercapacitors, Dun Lin, Xi-Yue Zhang, Yin-Xiang Zeng, Ming-Hao Yu, Xi-Hong Lu, Ye-Xiang Tong

Journal of Electrochemistry

Supercapacitors (SCs) have stimulated intensive interests for their promising applications in electric vehicles and portable electronics, etc. Electrode material is the most important key component of SCs, which vastly determines the performance of SCs. Carbon and transition metallic compound materials have attracted considerable attention and been widely explored as electrode materials. However, the insufficient capacitance of carbon materials and unsatisfactory conductivity and cyclic stability of transition metallic compounds severely limit their implementation as robust SC electrodes. Herein, we highlight our recent efforts to boost the capacitive performance of carbon and metal oxide/nitride electrodes by rationally structural and componential design. The …

Lithium Ion Hybrid Capacitor With High Energy Density, Xian-Zhong Sun, Xiong Zhang, Kai Wang, Yan-Wei Ma

Journal of Electrochemistry

Lithium ion hybrid capacitors are electrochemical energy storage devices combining the advantages of both Li-ion battery and electrochemical capacitor. They can be extensively used in many fields. However, the commercialization of lithium ion hybrid capacitor has been encountered several problems, e.g., the device structure design, the screening of materials, the pre-lithiation process, and the interface between electrolyte and electrode, etc. This review summarizes the recent research advances in lithium ion hybrid capacitor with high energy density, including the selection of the active materials in cathode/anode and the separator, the pre-lithiation method using the three-electrode structure, the high- and low-temperature performances, …

Template Induced Fabrication Of Nitrogen Doped Carbon Sheets As Electrode Materials In Supercapacitors, Tao Huang, Guang-Zhi Tao, Chong-Qing Yang, Deng Lu, Lie Ma, Dong-Qing Wu

Journal of Electrochemistry

Due to the good electrical conductivity, high specific surface area, and excellent chemical/mechanical stability, carbon nanomaterials with two-dimensional morphology have gradually become the hot topic of the research on supercapacitors. Herein, we report for the first time the fabrication of nitrogen doped carbon sheets (NCSs). In our approach, the sheet-like magnisum aluminum (MgAl) layered double hydroxide was used as the hard template, which was mixed with o-phenylene diamine and iron chloride. The following thermal treatment could render the polymerization and carbonization of o-phenylene diamine. The NCSs with ordered hexagonal architectures were formed by final etching process of the thermally treated …

Preparation And Characterization Of Cellulose Acetate-Based Separator For Lithium-Ion Batteries, Hua-Feng Luo, Yuan-Dong Qiao

Journal of Electrochemistry

To improve the electrolyte wettability and thermal resistance of separators used for lithium-ion battery, a novel cellulose acetate (CA)-based separator is facilely prepared by non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS) wet-process and investigated in lithium-ion batteries. Systematical investigations including morphological characterization, electrolyte wettability and thermal resistance testing were carried out. The results demonstrated that the CA-based separator exhibited well developed three-dimensional porous structures with porosity up to 65%, which is 1.5 times higher than that of PE separator. The CA separator also showed excellent electrolyte uptake (285%) and thermal stability at 150 ^oC for 30 min. Compared with the commercial …

An Aqueous Zn-Ion Capacitor, Jing-Wen Zhao, Jia-Jia Li, Peng-Xian Han, Guang-Lei Cui

Journal of Electrochemistry

We first present a new aqueous zinc-ion (Zn-ion) capacitor based on vanadium pentoxide (V₂O₅) cathode, activated carbon (AC) anode, and 2 mol·L^-1 zinc trifluoromethanesulfonate (Zn(TfO)₂) electrolyte. The Zn-ion capacitor possesses a wide electrochemical window of 1.4 V, good rate capability and cycling stability. The XRD data demonstrates that the Zn²⁺ ion serving as the charge carrier could be reversibly intercalated into the V₂O₅. This capacitor delivered a power density of 181 W·kg^-1 and an energy density of 4.5 Wh·kg^-1 at 1000 mA·g^-1. This work …

Research Progress Of Ohmic Heating For Food, Wang Xiaoyan, Pan Xiaoyang, Cheng Yudong, Jin Yinzhe

Food and Machinery

As an internal heating technology, ohmic heating is a method using the inherent electrical resistance of food materials to generate heat. Compared with other heating methods, ohmic heating is faster and more uniform in heating. In this review, the main components of ohmic heating equipment and its effects on electrical conductivity of food were discussed. The mathematical simulation of the temperature distribution of food during ohmic heating was also summarized. Moreover, the applications of ohmic heating for food including blanching, evaporation, dehydration, fermentation, extraction, thawing, and sterilization were classified. In addition, the research prospect of ohmic heating for food was …

Short And Medium-Term Effects Of Secundum Atrial Septal Defect Percutaneous Closure Using The Amplatzer Septal Occluder In The Elderly, A Broadley, L Gogola, C Roobottom, N Ring, Marshall A J

Peninsula Medical School

Aim: to assess the effects of percutaneous secundum atrial septal defect (ASD) closure in the elderly. Methods and results: Descriptive, retrospective study in a large Regional University Teaching Hospital. Subjects were 11 patients aged over 60 (mean age 72 [range 62 to 83], 3 male) at the time they underwent percutaneous closure of a secundum ASD using an Amplatzer septal occluder (ASO). Post-closure the following parameters were significantly reduced: heart size on serial chest X-ray, from a mean (standard deviation) of 16.7 (2.1) cm to 14.8 (1.3) cm (p=0.016) after 4.5 (2.1) months; pulmonary vascularity on serial chest X-ray; right …

Junction Trees Constructions In Bayesian Networks, Linda Smail

All Works

© Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd. Junction trees are used as graphical structures over which propagation will be carried out through a very important property called the ruining intersection property. This paper examines an alternative method for constructing junction trees that are essential for the efficient computations of probabilities in Bayesian networks. The new proposed method converts a sequence of subsets of a Bayesian network into a junction tree, in other words, into a set of cliques that has the running intersection property. The obtained set of cliques and separators coincide with the junction trees obtained by the …

Statistical And Technical Methodologies For Duplicated Multiple-Samples Preference And Attribute Intensity Sensory Ranking Test, Kennet Mariano Carabante Ordonez

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Ranking tests are important preference and attribute difference tools for sensory evaluation. Replicated testing is used widely to reduce the number of panelists required in other sensory methods such as discrimination. The information regarding replications sensory ranking is limited. This research evaluated important statistical and technical aspects for the development of the foundation for duplicated sensory ranking tests. Three studies were accomplished: 1) A study of nonparametric analyses on real preference ranked data; 2) a sensitivity study of two samples serving protocols for duplicated visual ranking, and 3) protocols comparison in taste. In study 1, 125 panelists ranked in duplicates …

Study Of The Power Consumption Of Pseudo Random Bit Generator Circuits Implemented On Fpga, Galia Marinova

UBT International Conference

Pseudo Random Bit and Number Generator (PRB/NG) circuits being very widely used for security, compressive sensing and diverse other applications in telecommunications are studies in different aspects in the laboratory of Computer-aided Design in Telecommunications in Technical University-Sofia. Some results of this study are published in [1] where tests for randomness from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) suit are applied on commonly used PRB/NGs. Other aspects of the PRB/NG circuits study is their power consumption in the aim of green communications as noticed in [2,3] and the concern about low power consuming devices for Internet of Things’ …

Computer Science: Application Of Technology/Iot In Hydropower Dams, Orjola Jaupi

UBT International Conference

As time passes by, we barely see how much time it costs people to stay at work, fixing problems that happen every day. As people we should do more about humanity and technology is the door that opens opportunities for us to do this. Technology today is transforming every human daily life routine and it’s only the beginning of what technology can bring. By 2020 we know that technology will connect the unconnected by introducing the real idea of Internet of Things. Every little, tiny thing all over the world will be connected, but also big and important projects like …

Review Of Artificial Intelligence Development, Its Impact And Its Challenges, Litvane Spahija, Festim Halili

UBT International Conference

The field of Artificial Intelligence, which started roughly half a century ago, has a turbulent history. In the 1980s there has been a major paradigm shift towards embodiment. While embodied artificial intelligence is still highly diverse, changing, and far from “theoretically stable”, a certain consensus about the important issues and methods has been achieved or is rapidly emerging. In this paper we briefly characterize the field, summarize its achievements, and identify important issues for future research.

With the popularization of the Internet, permeation of sensor networks, emergence of big data, increase in size of the information community, and interlinking and …

Characteristics And Temporal Behavior Of Internet Backbone Traffic, Artan Salihu, Muharrem Shefkiu, Arianit Maraj

UBT International Conference

With the rapid increase demand for data usage, Internet has become complex and harder to analyze. Characterizing the Internet traffic might reveal information that are important for Network Operators to formulate policy decisions, develop techniques to detect network anomalies, help better provision network resources (capacity, buffers) and use workload characteristics for simulations (typical packet sizes, flow durations, common protocols).

In this paper, using passive monitoring and measurements, we show collected data traffic at Internet backbone routers. First, we reveal main observations on patterns and characteristics of this dataset including packet sizes, traffic volume for inter and intra domain and protocol …

Positioning And Testing Of Inertial Measuring Units, Carter Mciver, Trevor Gahl

2017 Academic High Altitude Conference

This paper discusses our ongoing research into assessing the accuracy of inertial measuring units (IMU). We used three different IMU’s varying in price and performance. The utilization of the different models was explored over the recent August 21st, 2017 full solar eclipse high-altitude ballooning live stream project. The IMU’s were used on the ground tracking station for orientation. Understanding the precision and accuracy of different units was paramount to the ground station’s functionality. The results of our findings are presented in this paper; distinct configurations, including being near metallic materials and how that affected the inertial measuring unit’s performance are …

An Approach To Promoting Stem Occupations Via Near-Space Ballooning, Wookwon Lee, Nicholas B. Conklin, Ramakrishnan Sundaram

2017 Academic High Altitude Conference

In this paper, we describe an approach to promote STEM occupations to grades 6-12 students utilizing the state-of-the-art engineering design practices and technologies that we applied to developing a 2017 solar eclipse ballooning system. A collaborative effort for partnerships with regional school districts (SDs) is described. The core components of the state-of-the art technologies are 1) the ability to simultaneously live-stream videos via a single wireless link operating at the 5.8 GHz ISM band and 2) a robust balloon-tracking system that employs both line-of-sight and Iridium-based Internet payload position reporting. We present two stages of learning for grades 6-12 students, …

Applying A Revised Approach Of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps On A Hybrid Electrical Energy System, Ekavi Antoniou, Eleni S. Vergini, Peter P. Groumpos

UBT International Conference

Complex systems modeling is a rapidly developing research field which incorporates various scientific sectors from bio medicine and energy to economic and social sciences. However, as the systems’ complexity increases pure mathematical modeling techniques prove to be a rather laborious task which demands wasting many resources and in many occasions, could not lead to the desired system response. This realization led researchers turn their attention into the field of computational intelligence; Neural Networks and Fuzzy Logic etc. In this way scientists were able to provide a model of a system which is strongly characterized by fuzziness and uncertainties. Fuzzy Cognitive …

Permission-Based Privacy Analysis For Android Applications, Erza Gashi, Zhilbert Tafa

UBT International Conference

While Information and Communication Technology (ICT) trends are moving towards the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile applications are becoming more and more popular. Mostly due to their pervasiveness and the level of interaction with the users, along with the great number of advantages, the mobile applications bring up a great number of privacy related issues as well. These platforms can gather our very sensitive private data by only granting them a list of permissions during the installation process. Additionally, most of the users can find it difficult, or even useless, to analyze system permissions. Thus, their guess of app’s safety …

An Overview Of Zero Energy Buildings With An Emphasis On Energy Savings, Lazaros Aygeris, Peter P. Groumpos

UBT International Conference

The indiscriminate exploitation of the planet's energy sources has nowadays led to an uncontrolled form of climate change, with negative consequences for both humankind and the environment. In an effort to curb this situation, energy savings in both the building sector and other sectors of activity (industry, transport, etc.) is a primary objective and an indispensable component of any energy policy been planned today all around the world. As the building sector consumes 40% of the energy required at European level, the European Union (EU) has made considerable efforts to significantly reduce these consumption levels. In recent years, the European …

A Critical Overview Of Data Mining For Business Applications, George Telonis, Peter P. Groumpos

UBT International Conference

Everybody looks to a world that does not remain the same. Furthermore no one can deny that the world is changing, and changing very fast.

Technology, education, science, environment, health, communicating habits, entertainment, eating habits, dress - there is hardly anything in life that is not changing. Some changes we like, while others create fear and anxiety around us. Everywhere there is a feeling of insecurity.

What will happen to us tomorrow, or what will happen to our children, are questions we keep frequently asking. One thing, however, is clear.

It is no more possible to live in the way …

Decision Making Based On Data Analyses Using Data Warehouses, Valdrin Haxhiu

UBT International Conference

Data warehouses are a collection of several databases, whose goal is to help different companies and corporations make important decisions about their activities. These decisions are taken from the analyses that are made to the data within the data warehouse. These data are taken from data that companies and corporations collect on daily basis from their branches that may be located in different cities, regions, states and continents. Data that are entered to data warehouses are historical data and they represent that part of data that is important for making decisions. These data go under a transformation process in order …

Mobile Cloud Computing: A New Way Of Cloud Computing, Festim Halili, Verda Misimi, Rilinda Iseini, Mirije Salihi

UBT International Conference

Cloud Computing seems to be the most promising technology of the century we are living. It provides a new manner of sharing distributed resources and services that may be part of different organizations, geographically located in different places and different time zones. Mobile Cloud Computing offers partially the same functionality, with the only additional requirement that, at least, some of the devices are mobile. In this paper, we will try to provide a detailed explanation of Mobile Cloud Computing concept by providing different examples, figures and charts showing usage, accessibility, pros and cons and comparison of different cloud platforms.

Habpi: A Simple Extensible Framework For Hab Data Collection, Robert Lowe

2017 Academic High Altitude Conference

One of the obstacles facing beginning high altitude balloonists is the cost of the myriad sensors required to acquire usable data. In addition to this problem, aligning sensor data after a flight can prove tricky. Finally, there is a harsh reality we all face. Trees exist, and payload stacks are attracted to trees!

HabPI is an open source project which attempts to address these problems. This is a sensor array which is based on a raspberry pi, a sense hat, and several one-wire sensors. The sensors are all synchronized, so data registration is not a problem. HabPI also acts as …