Construction sector views on low carbon building materials

As is the case in a number of countries, the UK construction industry faces the challenge of expanding production whilst making ambitious greenhouse gas emission reductions. Embodied carbon constitutes a growing proportion of whole-life carbon emissions and accounts for a significant share of total UK emissions. A key mitigation strategy is increasing the use of alternative materials with lower embodied carbon. The economic, technical, practical and cultural barriers to the uptake of these alternatives are explored through a survey of construction professionals and interviews with industry leaders. Perceptions of high cost, ineffective allocation of responsibility, industry culture, and the poor availability of product and building-level carbon data and benchmarks constitute significant barriers. Opportunities to overcome these barriers include earlier engagement of professionals along the supply chain, effective use of whole-life costing, and changes to contract and tender documents. A mounting business case exists for addressing embodied carbon, but has yet to be effectively disseminated. In the meantime, the moral convictions of individual clients and practitioners have driven early progress. However, this research underscores the need for new regulatory drivers to complement changing attitudes if embodied carbon is to be established as a mainstream construction industry concern.     

A CMOS Low-Noise Instrumentation Amplifier Using Chopper Modulation

This paper describes a low-power, low-noise chopper stabilized CMOS instrumentation amplifier for biomedical applications. Low thermal noise is achieved by employing MOSTs biased in the weak/moderate inversion region, whereas chopper stabilization is utilized to shift 1/f-noise out of the signal band hereby ensuring overall low noise performance. The resulting equivalent input referred noise is approximately 7 nV/ for a chopping frequency of 20 kHz. The amplifier operates from a modest supply voltage of 1.8 V, drawing 136 A of current thus consuming 245 W of power. The gain is 72.5 dB over a 4 kHz bandwidth. The inband PSRR is above 90 and the CMRR exceeds 105 dB.Jannik Hammel Nielsen was born in Nuuk, Greenland, in 1972. He received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering in 1999 and 2004 respectively, from the Technical University of Denmark. He is presently employed as a postdoctoral researcher at ØrstedDTU.His main research interests are in low-voltage, low-power analog systems, medical electronics and data converters.Erik Bruun received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering in 1974 and 1980, respectively, from the Technical University of Denmark. In 1980 he received the B.Com. degree from the Copenhagen Business School. In 2000 he also received the dr. techn. degree from the Technical University of Denmark.From January 1974 to September 1974 he was with Christian Rovsing A/S, working on the development of space electronics and test equipment for space electronics. From 1974 to 1980 he was with the Laboratory for Semiconductor Technology at the Technical University of Denmark, working in the fields of MNOS memory devices, I²L devices, bipolar analog circuits, and custom integrated circuits. From 1980 to 1984 he was with Christian Rovsing A/S. From 1984 to 1989 he was the managing director of Danmos Microsystems ApS. Since 1989 he has been a Professor of analog electronics at the Technical University of Denmark where he has served as head of the Sector of Information Technology, Electronics, and Mathematics from 1995 to 2001. Since 2001 he has been head of ØrstedDTU.His current research interests are in the areas of RF integrated circuit design and integrated circuits for mobile phones.     

An Implantable CMOS Amplifier for Nerve Signals

In this paper, a low noise high gain CMOS amplifier for minute nerve signals is presented. The amplifier is constructed in a fully differential topology to maximize noise rejection. By using a mixture of weak- and strong inversion transistors, optimal noise suppression in the amplifier is achieved. A continuous-time current-steering offset-compensation technique is utilized in order to minimize the noise contribution and to minimize dynamic impact on the amplifier input nodes. The method for signal recovery from noisy nerve signals is presented. A prototype amplifier is realized in a standard digital 0.5 m CMOS single poly, n-well process. The prototype amplifier features a gain of 80 dB over a 10 kHz bandwidth, a CMRR of more than 87 dB and a PSRR greater than 84 dB. The equivalent input referred noise in the bandwidth of interest is 4.8 nV/ . The amplifier power consumption is 275 W, drawn from a power supply; V _DD = –V _SS = 1.5 V.     

Digitale Zwillinge in der Bioprozesstechnik – Chancen und Möglichkeiten

The digitalization of processes is one of the currently dominating topics and missions in both industrial production and scientific research. In biotechnology, these efforts have enormous potential to optimize existing bioprocesses or to develop new bioprocesses for upcoming challenges. In this review, the state-of-art of digitalization in bioprocess engineering is considered, the terms digital twin and digital shadow are characterized, and an outlook on future Lab 4.0 concepts is given.