Updating the carbon footprint of the Galician fishing activity (NW Spain)

Recent life cycle assessment studies have revealed the relevance of cooling agent leakage when assessing the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated by fishing vessel operations. The goal of this communication is to update the carbon footprinting of the Galician fishing activity (NW Spain) by including the GHG emissions from cooling agent leakage. Results proved the relevant role played by refrigerants regarding their contribution to the carbon footprint of fishing activities. Thus, an overall increase of 13% was found when comparing the final global carbon footprint for the Galician fishing activity with previous calculations that did not include these emissions. Nevertheless, further efforts should be made in order to provide robust data in this respect.     

城市森林

重庆是中国最年轻的直辖市,城市规划建设大有可为,完全有条件建成一个大家公认的宜居城市,一个环境优美的城市,一个交通顺畅的城市,甚至变成一个森林城市。一个有希望、有活力的地方,要敢于设想和设计自己的美好未来。——薄熙来(重庆市长)     

A microfluidic approach for development of hybrid collagen-chitosan extracellular matrix-like membranes for on-chip cell cultures

To advance organ-on-a-chip development and other areas befitting from physiologically-relevant biomembranes,a microfluidic platform is presented for synthesis of biomembranes during gelation and investigation into their role as extracellular matrix supports.In this work,high-throughput studies of collagen,chitosan,and collagen-chitosan hybrid biomembranes were carried out to characterize and compare key properties as a function of the applied hydrodynamic conditions during gelation.Specifically,depending on the biopolymer material used,varying flow conditions during biomembrane gelation caused width,uniformity,and swelling ratio to be differently affected and controllable.Finally,cell viability studies of seeded fibroblasts were conducted,thus showing the potential for biological applications.     

全封闭式压缩机腔体声场的数值分析

全封闭式压缩机腔内强烈的声场反映了主要的壳体激发源以及因之产生的噪声辐射。吸气消音器的振动以及机体和电动机表面的辐射激发了这个声场。在对机体、电机表面、数值解法和与机壳的耦合等做不同几何简化的情况下,本文对腔内声场进行了数值分析。模拟结果得到了实验证实,具有良好的一致性。本模型适用于声能向机壳的传播以及向外部环境辐射时分析各参数的影响。     

Design and realization of transparent solar modules based on luminescent solar concentrators integrating nanostructured photonic crystals

Herein, we present a prototype of a photovoltaic module that combines a luminescent solar concentrator integrating one‐dimensional photonic crystals and in‐plane CuInGaSe₂ (CIGS) solar cells. Highly uniform and wide‐area nanostructured multilayers with photonic crystal properties were deposited by a cost‐efficient and scalable liquid processing amenable to large‐scale fabrication. Their role is to both maximize light absorption in the targeted spectral range, determined by the fluorophore employed, and minimize losses caused by emission at angles within the escape cone of the planar concentrator. From a structural perspective, the porous nature of the layers facilitates the integration with the thermoplastic polymers typically used to encapsulate and seal these modules. Judicious design of the module geometry, as well as of the optical properties of the dielectric mirrors employed, allows optimizing light guiding and hence photovoltaic performance while preserving a great deal of transparency. Optimized in‐plane designs like the one herein proposed are of relevance for building integrated photovoltaics, as ease of fabrication, long‐term stability and improved performance are simultaneously achieved. © 2015 The Authors. Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

A Context-Aware Interaction Model for the Analysis of Users’ QoE in Mobile Environments

This article describes a novel approach to model the quality of experience (QoE) of users in mobile environments. The context-aware and ratings interaction model (CARIM) addresses the open questions of how to quantify user experiences from the analysis of interaction in mobile scenarios, and how to compare different QoE records to each other. A set of parameters are used to dynamically describe the interaction between the user and the system, the context in which it is performed and the perceived quality of users. CARIM structures these parameters into a uniform representation, supporting the dynamic analysis of interaction to determine QoE of users and enabling the comparison between different interaction records. Its run-time nature allows applications to make context- and QoE-based decisions in real time to adapt themselves, and thus provide a better experience to users. As a result, CARIM provides unified criteria for the inference and analysis of QoE in mobile scenarios. Its design and implementation can be integrated (and easily extended if needed) into many different development environments. An experiment with real users comparing two different interaction designs and validating user behavior hypotheses proved the effectiveness of applying CARIM for the assessment of QoE in mobile applications.     

Vademecum‐based GFEM (V‐GFEM): optimal enrichment for transient problems

This paper proposes a generalized finite element method based on the use of parametric solutions as enrichment functions. These parametric solutions are precomputed off‐line and stored in memory in the form of a computational vademecum so that they can be used on‐line with negligible cost. This renders a more efficient computational method than traditional finite element methods at performing simulations of processes. One key issue of the proposed method is the efficient computation of the parametric enrichments. These are computed and efficiently stored in memory by employing proper generalized decompositions. Although the presented method can be broadly applied, it is particularly well suited in manufacturing processes involving localized physics that depend on many parameters, such as welding. After introducing the vademecum‐generalized finite element method formulation, we present some numerical examples related to the simulation of thermal models encountered in welding processes. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Method based on physical optics for the computation of the radar cross section including diffraction and double effects of metallic and absorbing bodies modeled with parametric surfaces

A method to compute the monostatic radar cross section (RCS) of complex bodies modeled by nonuniform rational B-spline (NURBS) surfaces is presented. The bodies can be covered by any kind of radar absorbing material (RAM) with electric and/or magnetic losses. Physical optics (PO) is used to obtain the scattered field of each surface. Fresnel coefficients are included in the stationary phase method (SPM) in order to take into account the effect of the RAM material. The contribution of diffraction by edges and double effects is also considered, improving the results of the PO approach. The diffraction is computed by the equivalent current method (ECM). A combination of geometrical optics (GO) with PO and ECM is used for the double reflection and double interaction between edges and surfaces respectively. Some simple cases are shown to validate the proposed method. The reliability of the method to analyzing the effect of covering a realistic target with RAM is also illustrated.