scholarly journals Applying Biomimetic Principles to Thermoelectric Cooling Devices for Water Collection

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Kyle B Davidson ◽  
Bahram Asiabanpour ◽  
Zaid Almusaied

The shortage of freshwater resources in the world has developed the need for sustainable, cost-effective technologies that can produce freshwater on a large scale. Current solutions often have extensive manufacturing requirements, or involve the use of large quantities of energy or toxic chemicals. Atmospheric water generating solutions that minimize the depletion of natural resources can be achieved by incorporating biomimetics, a classification of design inspired by nature. This research seeks to optimize thermoelectric cooling systems for use in water harvesting applications by analyzing the different factors that affect surface temperature and water condensation in TEC devices. Further experiments will be directed towards developing a robust, repeatable system, as well as an accurate measurement system. Surface modifications, device structure and orientation, and power generation will also be studied to better understand the ideal conditions for maximum water collection in thermoelectric cooling systems.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-83
Author(s):  
Manjunatha S. ◽  
Suresh L.

Data center is a cost-effective infrastructure for storing large volumes of data and hosting large-scale service applications. Cloud computing service providers are rapidly deploying data centers across the world with a huge number of servers and switches. These data centers consume significant amounts of energy, contributing to high operational costs. Thus, optimizing the energy consumption of servers and networks in data centers can reduce operational costs. In a data center, power consumption is mainly due to servers, networking devices, and cooling systems, and an effective energy-saving strategy is to consolidate the computation and communication into a smaller number of servers and network devices and then power off as many unneeded servers and network devices as possible.


2011 ◽  
Vol 1323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Liu ◽  
F.D. Jiang ◽  
S. Wang ◽  
Y. Zeng ◽  
W. Shan

ABSTRACTSelective emitter structure has long been regarded as a good and relatively simple approach to improve the energy conversion efficiency of Si wafer-based single-junction photovoltaic (PV) cells. Recently emerged double printing method, on the other hand, potentially has the capability of improving the efficiency with no requirement for device structure modification. The manufacturability of these two approaches has been studied on a mass-production platform at JA Solar recently with large scale sampling. The experimental results collected from over two hundred thousand cells demonstrated that both approaches are capable of achieving significant conversion-efficiency gain in a cost-effective way with high yield rate on the PV industry commonly used mass production platform currently adopted by the vast majority of cell manufacturers


2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruibin Hu ◽  
Yi Chen

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are new potential biomarkers for early diagnosis and classification of cancer. This study is the first attempt to use biocatalytic amplification reactions combined with capillary electrophoresis to detect multiple miRNAs simultaneously. In this way, miRNAs, as catalysts, can catalyze two single strands of DNA to form double-strand DNA. Feasibility was demonstrated by non-gel capillary electrophoresis coupled with UV detection (NGCE-UV). The detection limit was improved down to 1.0 nM, having ca. 103-fold improvement. This method has a good linear range of between 3.0 nM and 300 nM, with R2 at 0.99, recovery at 88–115%, and peak area precision at 1–12.7%. Using three target miRNAs as a model can achieve the baseline separation and good selectivity. The proposed biocatalysis coupled with a capillary electrophoresis-based method is simple, rapid, multiplexed, and cost-effective, making it potentially applicable for simultaneous, large-scale screening for other nucleic acids biomarkers and related research.


2009 ◽  
pp. 27-53
Author(s):  
A. Yu. Kudryavtsev

Diversity of plant communities in the nature reserve “Privolzhskaya Forest-Steppe”, Ostrovtsovsky area, is analyzed on the basis of the large-scale vegetation mapping data from 2000. The plant community classi­fication based on the Russian ecologic-phytocoenotic approach is carried out. 12 plant formations and 21 associations are distinguished according to dominant species and a combination of ecologic-phytocoenotic groups of species. A list of vegetation classification units as well as the characteristics of theshrub and woody communities are given in this paper.


1996 ◽  
pp. 64-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nguen Nghia Thin ◽  
Nguen Ba Thu ◽  
Tran Van Thuy

The tropical seasonal rainy evergreen broad-leaved forest vegetation of the Cucphoung National Park has been classified and the distribution of plant communities has been shown on the map using the relations of vegetation to geology, geomorphology and pedology. The method of vegetation mapping includes: 1) the identifying of vegetation types in the remote-sensed materials (aerial photographs and satellite images); 2) field work to compile the interpretation keys and to characterize all the communities of a study area; 3) compilation of the final vegetation map using the combined information. In the classification presented a number of different level vegetation units have been identified: formation classes (3), formation sub-classes (3), formation groups (3), formations (4), subformations (10) and communities (19). Communities have been taken as mapping units. So in the vegetation map of the National Park 19 vegetation categories has been shown altogether, among them 13 are natural primary communities, and 6 are the secondary, anthropogenic ones. The secondary succession goes through 3 main stages: grassland herbaceous xerophytic vegetation, xerophytic scrub, dense forest.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Gaisl ◽  
Naser Musli ◽  
Patrick Baumgartner ◽  
Marc Meier ◽  
Silvana K Rampini ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND The health aspects, disease frequencies, and specific health interests of prisoners and refugees are poorly understood. Importantly, access to the health care system is limited for this vulnerable population. There has been no systematic investigation to understand the health issues of inmates in Switzerland. Furthermore, little is known on how recent migration flows in Europe may have affected the health conditions of inmates. OBJECTIVE The Swiss Prison Study (SWIPS) is a large-scale observational study with the aim of establishing a public health registry in northern-central Switzerland. The primary objective is to establish a central database to assess disease prevalence (ie, International Classification of Diseases-10 codes [German modification]) among prisoners. The secondary objectives include the following: (1) to compare the 2015 versus 2020 disease prevalence among inmates against a representative sample from the local resident population, (2) to assess longitudinal changes in disease prevalence from 2015 to 2020 by using cross-sectional medical records from all inmates at the Police Prison Zurich, Switzerland, and (3) to identify unrecognized health problems to prepare successful public health strategies. METHODS Demographic and health-related data such as age, sex, country of origin, duration of imprisonment, medication (including the drug name, brand, dosage, and release), and medical history (including the International Classification of Diseases-10 codes [German modification] for all diagnoses and external results that are part of the medical history in the prison) have been deposited in a central register over a span of 5 years (January 2015 to August 2020). The final cohort is expected to comprise approximately 50,000 to 60,000 prisoners from the Police Prison Zurich, Switzerland. RESULTS This study was approved on August 5, 2019 by the ethical committee of the Canton of Zurich with the registration code KEK-ZH No. 2019-01055 and funded in August 2020 by the “Walter and Gertrud Siegenthaler” foundation and the “Theodor and Ida Herzog-Egli” foundation. This study is registered with the International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Number registry. Data collection started in August 2019 and results are expected to be published in 2021. Findings will be disseminated through scientific papers as well as presentations and public events. CONCLUSIONS This study will construct a valuable database of information regarding the health of inmates and refugees in Swiss prisons and will act as groundwork for future interventions in this vulnerable population. CLINICALTRIAL ISRCTN registry ISRCTN11714665; http://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN11714665 INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT DERR1-10.2196/23973


Author(s):  
Mathieu Turgeon-Pelchat ◽  
Samuel Foucher ◽  
Yacine Bouroubi

Author(s):  
Yan Pan ◽  
Shining Li ◽  
Qianwu Chen ◽  
Nan Zhang ◽  
Tao Cheng ◽  
...  

Stimulated by the dramatical service demand in the logistics industry, logistics trucks employed in last-mile parcel delivery bring critical public concerns, such as heavy cost burden, traffic congestion and air pollution. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are a promising alternative tool in last-mile delivery, which is however limited by insufficient flight range and load capacity. This paper presents an innovative energy-limited logistics UAV schedule approach using crowdsourced buses. Specifically, when one UAV delivers a parcel, it first lands on a crowdsourced social bus to parcel destination, gets recharged by the wireless recharger deployed on the bus, and then flies from the bus to the parcel destination. This novel approach not only increases the delivery range and load capacity of battery-limited UAVs, but is also much more cost-effective and environment-friendly than traditional methods. New challenges therefore emerge as the buses with spatiotemporal mobility become the bottleneck during delivery. By landing on buses, an Energy-Neutral Flight Principle and a delivery scheduling algorithm are proposed for the UAVs. Using the Energy-Neutral Flight Principle, each UAV can plan a flying path without depleting energy given buses with uncertain velocities. Besides, the delivery scheduling algorithm optimizes the delivery time and number of delivered parcels given warehouse location, logistics UAVs, parcel locations and buses. Comprehensive evaluations using a large-scale bus dataset demonstrate the superiority of the innovative logistics UAV schedule approach.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 899
Author(s):  
Djordje Mitrovic ◽  
Miguel Crespo Chacón ◽  
Aida Mérida García ◽  
Jorge García Morillo ◽  
Juan Antonio Rodríguez Diaz ◽  
...  

Studies have shown micro-hydropower (MHP) opportunities for energy recovery and CO2 reductions in the water sector. This paper conducts a large-scale assessment of this potential using a dataset amassed across six EU countries (Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Spain, and Portugal) for the drinking water, irrigation, and wastewater sectors. Extrapolating the collected data, the total annual MHP potential was estimated between 482.3 and 821.6 GWh, depending on the assumptions, divided among Ireland (15.5–32.2 GWh), Scotland (17.8–139.7 GWh), Northern Ireland (5.9–8.2 GWh), Wales (10.2–8.1 GWh), Spain (375.3–539.9 GWh), and Portugal (57.6–93.5 GWh) and distributed across the drinking water (43–67%), irrigation (51–30%), and wastewater (6–3%) sectors. The findings demonstrated reductions in energy consumption in water networks between 1.7 and 13.0%. Forty-five percent of the energy estimated from the analysed sites was associated with just 3% of their number, having a power output capacity >15 kW. This demonstrated that a significant proportion of energy could be exploited at a small number of sites, with a valuable contribution to net energy efficiency gains and CO2 emission reductions. This also demonstrates cost-effective, value-added, multi-country benefits to policy makers, establishing the case to incentivise MHP in water networks to help achieve the desired CO2 emissions reductions targets.


Author(s):  
Paul Oehlmann ◽  
Paul Osswald ◽  
Juan Camilo Blanco ◽  
Martin Friedrich ◽  
Dominik Rietzel ◽  
...  

AbstractWith industries pushing towards digitalized production, adaption to expectations and increasing requirements for modern applications, has brought additive manufacturing (AM) to the forefront of Industry 4.0. In fact, AM is a main accelerator for digital production with its possibilities in structural design, such as topology optimization, production flexibility, customization, product development, to name a few. Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is a widespread and practical tool for rapid prototyping that also demonstrates the importance of AM technologies through its accessibility to the general public by creating cost effective desktop solutions. An increasing integration of systems in an intelligent production environment also enables the generation of large-scale data to be used for process monitoring and process control. Deep learning as a form of artificial intelligence (AI) and more specifically, a method of machine learning (ML) is ideal for handling big data. This study uses a trained artificial neural network (ANN) model as a digital shadow to predict the force within the nozzle of an FFF printer using filament speed and nozzle temperatures as input data. After the ANN model was tested using data from a theoretical model it was implemented to predict the behavior using real-time printer data. For this purpose, an FFF printer was equipped with sensors that collect real time printer data during the printing process. The ANN model reflected the kinematics of melting and flow predicted by models currently available for various speeds of printing. The model allows for a deeper understanding of the influencing process parameters which ultimately results in the determination of the optimum combination of process speed and print quality.


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