The electrochromic properties of sputtered nickel oxide films

Electrochromic nickel oxide films were prepared by reactive RF sputtering from a nickel target in an oxygen atmosphere. The films were deposited as a compact 40 nm layer of trivalent nickel oxide, Ni₂O₃. Reduction and oxidation of the films in 1 M KOH resulted in bleaching and coloration, respectively. Voltammetry indicated that the eventual electrochromic reaction involved the β-Ni(OH)₂/β-NiOOH couple. In situ visible spectra showed electrochromic modulation of the transmittance throughout the visible range with a peak change in transmittance of about 60% at a wavelength of 500 nm. In situ spectra in the near-infrared region indicated improved electrochromic switching in this region; the sputtered nickel oxide film exhibited about a 30% change in transmittance in comparison to less than 10% for a similar electroprecipitated nickel hydroxide film. The sputtered nickel oxide films exhibited durable electrochromic switching for over 2500 coloration/bleaching cycles, a significant improvement over the less than 500 switching cycles exhibited by electroprecipitated nickel hydroxide films.     

The design of Radiation Accident Registry

In order to provide effective monitoring and follow-up on the health effects of individuals accidentally exposed to ionising radiation, a Radiation Accident Registry (RAR) has been designed and constructed as an extension to the existing National Dose Registry (NDR). The RAR has basic functions of recording, monitoring and reporting. This type of registry is able to assist responders in preparing for and managing situations during radiological events and in providing effective follow-up on the long-term health effects of persons exposed to ionising radiation. It is especially important to register radiation-exposed people in vulnerable population groups, such as children and pregnant women, to ensure proper long-term health care and protection. Even though radiation accidents are rare, a registry prepared for such accidents could involve a large population and, in some cases, require lifetime monitoring for individuals. One of the most challenging tasks associated with RAR is the assessment of radiation dose resulting from accidents. In some cases, the assessment of radiation doses to individuals could be a process requiring the involvement of various methods. The development of fast and accurate dose assessment tools will remain a long-term challenge associated with the RAR. To meet this challenge, further research activities in radiation dosimetry for individual monitoring are needed.     

Cost effectiveness of nitrate leaching mitigation measures for grassland livestock systems at locations in England and Wales

As much as 60% of the nitrate in water in England is thought to derive from agriculture. Legislation aims to improve water quality by limiting nitrate concentration in surface and groundwaters to 50 mg l⁻¹. The UK Government responded to the requirements of the EC Nitrate Directive by delineating Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZs) to cover 55% of England in 2002 and increased it to 70% in 2009. In this study we assessed the cost-effectiveness of measures for implementation in livestock systems to mitigate nitrate leaching in the UK. These estimates were prepared for a range of hypothetical farms representative of typical dairy, beef and sheep farms at different locations in England and Wales and for a list of mitigation measures identified to reduce leaching. The NGAUGE and NFixCycle models were used to estimate leaching from these systems. The costs of implementation of the mitigation measures were also assessed in order to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of these measures. In general, the most effective measures to reduce leaching for all systems were the ones that involved a reduction in stocking rates and grazing time, followed by those involving improvements in fertiliser and crop management. Only in the case of the dairy system was effectiveness affected by location of the farm. The costs for implementation in the sheep system were relatively low compared with beef and dairy systems. Implementation of some of the measures with high cost-effectiveness would need to be incentivised financially or with legislation due to the high costs involved.     

地毯用的Tencel lyocell纤维

介绍了世界主要地毯市场的需求.分析了对现用地毯材料的处理中存在的问题.阐述了Tencel纤维独具的性能,以及利用Tencel纤维生产地毯的前景.     

美国硬木的等级

1 美国硬木资源概况 美国硬木产品已经在整个亚洲广泛使用多年,向东南亚地区出口硬木贸易额从2001年的7700万美元上升至2005年的1亿4000万美元,而在此期间,中国市场的需求从2.3亿美元上升到4.78亿美元.中国家具业年产值达到420亿美元,产品销往国际国内两个市场.     

解读RFID六大关键趋势

回首过去,我们发现在RFID的发展方面,2006年已经成为"一方面与另一方面"的一年.     

Using Virtual Pheromones and Cameras for Dispersing a Team of Multiple Miniature Robots

To safely and efficiently guide personnel of search and rescue operations in disaster areas, swift gathering of relevant information such as the locations of victims, must occur. Using the concept of ‘repellent virtual pheromones’ inspired by insect colony coordination behaviors, miniature robots can be quickly dispersed to survey a disaster site. Assisted by visual servoing, dispersion of the miniature robots can quickly cover an area. An external observer such as another robot or an overhead camera is brought into the control loop to provide each miniature robot estimations of the positions of all of the other near-by robots in the robotic team. These miniature robots can then move away from the other near-by robots on the team, resulting in the robot collective becoming swiftly distributed through the local area. The technique has been simulated with differing pheromone persistence levels and implemented using the miniature Scout robots, developed by the Center for Distributed Robotics at the University of Minnesota, which are well-suited to surveillance and reconnaissance missions.     

Simplified automatic fault detection in wind turbine induction generators

This paper presents a simplified automated fault detection scheme for wind turbine induction generators with rotor electrical asymmetries. Fault indicators developed in previous works have made use of the presence of significant spectral peaks in the upper sidebands of the supply frequency harmonics; however, the specific location of these peaks may shift depending on the wind turbine speed. As wind turbines tend to operate under variable speed conditions, it may be difficult to predict where these fault‐related peaks will occur. To accommodate for variable speeds and resulting shifting frequency peak locations, previous works have introduced methods to identify or track the relevant frequencies, which necessitates an additional set of processing algorithms to locate these fault‐related peaks prior to any fault analysis. In this work, a simplified method is proposed to instead bypass the issue of variable speed (and shifting frequency peaks) by introducing a set of bandpass filters that encompass the ranges in which the peaks are expected to occur. These filters are designed to capture the fault‐related spectral information to train a classifier for automatic fault detection, regardless of the specific location of the peaks. Initial experimental results show that this approach is robust against variable speeds and further shows good generalizability in being able to detect faults at speeds and conditions that were not presented during training. After training and tuning the proposed fault detection system, the system was tested on “unseen” data and yielded a high classification accuracy of 97.4%, demonstrating the efficacy of the proposed approach.