Porous evaporators with special wettability for low-grade heat-driven water desalination

Design of novel special wettable evaporators with robust stability for high-performances porous interface distillation.

Long-distance transfer of plasmonic hot electrons across the Au–Pt porous interface for the hydrogen evolution reaction

The hot electrons transfer from Au nanosphere to Pt interfaces is directly imaged by plasmon resonance light scattering microscopy. Remarkably, the hot electrons could persistently transfer across porous Au-Pt interfaces longer than 20 nm.

MAGNETIC FLUID-BASED SQUEEZE FILM BETWEEN CURVED POROUS ANNULAR PLATES CONSIDERING THE ROTATION OF MAGNETIC PARTICLES AND SLIP VELOCITY

The ferrofluid flow model of the Shliomis and continuity equation for the film and porous interface with the theory of Darcy, the modified Reynolds equation for ferrofluid squeeze film between curved annular plates is discussed with the impact of the rotation of Ferro-particles and slip velocity at the boundary. Beavers and Joseph’s slip conditions are adopted to study the impact of slip velocity. The generalized non-dimensional pressure equation is derived and expression for dimensionless load-carrying capacity is obtained for the same. The graphical representation suggests that the bearing's performance enhances due to ferrofluid, considering the appropriate values of parameters for slip velocity and porosity.

Rural geographies and the New Chinese Cinemas: Imaging progressive places in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Dust in the Wind and Jia Zhangke’s Platform

The New Chinese Cinemas were unprecedented in critiquing official narratives of progress through dramatic location-shot images of rural Taiwan and China. Much more than standing in as a picturesque backdrop, the rural was a site of complex ideological contestations. Yet, existing scholarship overlooks the richness of rural representations, reductively interpreting rural films as works of nostalgia and cultural salvage. Through a comparative analysis of representations of landscape, travel and visual perception in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Dust in the Wind (1986) and Jia Zhangke’s Platform (2000), this article brings into focus the important but largely ignored roles that Hou and Jia have played in envisioning new frameworks for thinking about rural geographies. Drawing from Doreen Massey’s notion of the ‘progressive place’, I investigate how Jiufen and Fenyang – the films’ shooting locations – are stages upon which the directors experimented with imaging and imagining communities. Jiufen is represented in Dust as a porous interface between the urban and rural, a metonym for the film’s representation of Taiwan as a contact zone with China. Platform, by contrast, fashions an image of Fenyang as a non-place, a microcosm of China as it undergoes unchecked neo-liberal development. Significantly, these films went beyond revising rural imaginaries on-screen, to making a material impact on Jiufen and Fenyang by transforming them into landmarks of global film tourism. This work demonstrates how Hou and Jia responded to disorienting social changes not by resisting, but by tactically embracing the blurring of divides between the urban and rural, and local and global.

Male homosocial bonds and perceptions of human–robot relationships in an online sex doll forum

Debates about human–machine relationships have intensified following the launch of the world’s first commercially available sex robot ‘Harmony’, a hyperrealistic sex doll with AI-capabilities. With the likely consumer market for these devices among white, male, heterosexual sex-doll owners, their views about sex robot technology and the niche online communities in which they discuss their doll relationships have received little scholarly attention. Through a qualitative analysis of the discursive practices of male users of a major sex doll forum, this study found complex and dynamic homosocial relations characterized men’s online interactions. In their discussion of a sex robot future, men negotiate competing structures of masculinity and sexuality and create a safe, online space for others to express their sexual desires and preferences. Using the concept of the ‘seam’ or join, the results reveal the way male users of sex dolls position themselves subjectively and are positioned by technology and the increasingly porous interface between human and machine.