Innovation in construction: a sociology of technology approach

An alternative approach to understanding innovation is made using two intersecting ideas. The first is that successful innovation requires consideration of the social and organizational contexts in which it is located. The complex context of construction work is characterized by inter-organizational collaboration, a project-based approach and power distributed amongst collaborating organizations. The second is that innovations can be divided into two modes: 'bounded', where the implications of innovation are restricted within a single, coherent sphere of influence, and 'unbounded', where the effects of implementation spill over beyond this. Bounded innovations are adequately explained within the construction literature. However, less discussed are unbounded innovations, where many firms' collaboration is required for successful implementation, even though many innovations can be considered unbounded within construction's inter-organizational context. It is argued that unbounded innovations require an approach to understand and facilitate the interactions both within a range of actors and between the actors and technological artefacts. The insights from a sociology of technology approach can be applied to the multiplicity of negotiations and alignments that constitute the implementation of unbounded innovation. The utility of concepts from the sociology of technology, including 'system building' and 'heterogeneous engineering', is demonstrated by applying them to an empirical study of an unbounded innovation on a major construction project (the new terminal at Heathrow Airport, London, UK). This study suggests that 'system building' contains outcomes that are not only transformations of practices, processes and systems, but also the potential transformation of technologies themselves.     

Nanocrystalline TiO2 photosensitized with natural polymers with enhanced efficiency from 400 to 600 nm

TiO₂ sensitization for solar applications requires not only efficient but also stable and inexpensive sensitizers. Different condensed tannins extracted from bark wastes of tropical wood trees were studied as possible sensitizers of TiO₂. These natural polymers adhere strongly to the TiO₂ even from aqueous solutions. Absorption spectra are presented for 1 mM aqueous sensitizing solutions prepared with lyophilized condensed tannins which absorb light in the visible range. Spectral photocurrent measurements and I–V characterization show that no bias is required for electron injection to the TiO₂ from all studied condensed tannins. Incident photon to current efficiency (IPCE) analysis indicates that surface complexation originates absorption bands with different electron injection efficiencies. These play a dominant role in determining IPCE spectral shape. We propose that surface modification by the sensitizer changes the surface trap density, thereby decreasing recombination losses.     

单微乳液中制备Ag/TS-1及丙烯气相环氧化

采用N2H4还原含AgNO3的单微乳液制备了Ag／TS-1催化剂。TEM表征结果表明，Ag高度分散于TS-1之上。以H2、O2存在下的丙烯气相环氧化为探针反应，考察了Ag／TS-1的催化性能。结果表明，采用Ag／TS-1为催化剂，Ag的负载量为1％（质量分数，下同），823 K焙烧后，373 K下反应30 min时，丙烯转化率为1．69％，环氧丙烷（Propylene oxide，PO）选择性为93．2％。当Ag的负载量超过2％时，反应过程中生成大量的热，造成PO的选择性下降。采用Ag的负载量为8％的Ag／TS-1催化剂，消除热效应后，丙烯的转化率为2．46％．PO的选择性为79．2％。     

CO2 emissions in Greece for 1990–2002: A decomposition analysis and comparison of results using the Arithmetic Mean Divisia Index and Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index techniques

This paper deals with the decomposition analysis of energy-related CO₂ emissions in Greece from 1990 to 2002. The Arithmetic Mean Divisia Index (AMDI) and the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) techniques are applied and changes in CO₂ emissions are decomposed into four factors: income effect, energy intensity effect, fuel share effect and population effect. The period-wise and time series analyses show that the biggest contributor to the rise in CO₂ emissions in Greece is the income effect; on the contrary, the energy intensity effect is mainly responsible for the decrease in CO₂ emissions. A comparison of the results of the two techniques gave an insight in the intricacies of energy decomposition. Finally, conclusions and future areas of research are presented.     

Sintering studies of nano-crystalline zinc oxide

Sintering and grain growth of nano-crystalline undoped ZnO has been studied in detail over a wide range of temperature and holding time. Below 800 °C, sintering of over 70% theoretical density is not observed, irrespective of particle size. At 900 °C for 6 h, the nano-crystalline sample sinters to 99% of theoretical density whereas the density for as received sample is 93% of theoretical density. However, at 1300 °C or higher, the densification is found to be much faster and after a few hours becomes independent of holding time. Grain growth studies reveal a similar feature of attaining saturation over holding time. The average saturated grain size is found to be ∼1.5 and ∼2.2 μm at 800 and 900 °C, respectively, while at 1300 °C or higher, it is in between 12 and 13 μm.     

Low temperature synthesis of aluminium titanate by an aqueous sol-gel route

Formation of aluminium titanate (AT) has been achieved at low temperature through sol-gel process using boehmite and titanium hydroxide as precursors by controlling the particle size at nanoscale followed by in-situ peptisation. The formations of AT phase, particle size distributions, sintering and thermal expansion characteristics, and microstructural features have been reported. DTA and XRD analysis have been performed to confirm the formation of AT. A 94% relative density was obtained for aluminium titanate sintered at 1550 °C with controlled grain size in the range of 2-3 μm.     

宽带固定增益放大器THS4302特性及应用

THS4302是TI公司推出的新型固定增益放大器，具有2.4GHz的带宽和 5V／V的固定增益。其性能是现有同类产品的四倍，可为高速应用系统提供高速低噪声的模拟解决方案。文中介绍了THS4302的特点、工作原理及使用注意事项，并在此基础上给出了几种典型应用。     

A XRD study of Co/Au multilayers using a laboratory microdiffractometer

In this paper we show that by the analysis of 2D images collected with a laboratory X-ray microdiffractometer it is possible to non-destructively evaluate the structure, the microstructure, and the preferred orientation of films. In particular, the structural analysis of Co/Au multilayers on Si(1 0 0) deposited at different Ar pressures are reported and discussed.     

Similarity retrieval of iconic image database

The perception of spatial relationships among objects in a picture is one of the important selection criteria to discriminate and retrieve the images in an iconic image database system. The data structure called 2D string, proposed by Chang et al., is adopted to represent symbolic pictures. The 2D string preserves the objects' spatial knowledge embedded in images. Since spatial relationship is a fuzzy concept, the capability of similarity retrieval for the retrieval by subpicture is essential. In this paper, similarity measure based on 2D string longest common subsequence is defined. The algorithm for similarity retrieval is also proposed. Similarity retrieval provides the iconic image database with the distinguishing function different from a conventional database.