Academic literature on the topic 'Separated capacitor board'

It has been established that antioxidants in seminal plasma play an important role in protecting the spermatozoa against oxidative stress-induced damage. This study was conducted to measure the total antioxidant capacity (TAC) of boar seminal plasma. Fifty-four ejaculates were collected from 17 mature boars of proven fertility by the gloved-hand technique. Ejaculates were collected separately in different fractions (pre-sperm, sperm-rich, and post-sperm) according to their macroscopic (color) characteristics. After centrifugation (2400g for 3 min), the sperm pellet was discarded; the supernatant was recentrifuged and filtered through a 10-μm nylon mesh filter to remove debris or clumped spermatozoa. The seminal plasma was frozen at -20°C until further use. After thawing at room temperature, seminal plasma aliquots of 5 μL were immediately assessed for total antioxidant capacity. TAC was measured using the ABTS/H2O2/HRP decoloration method (Cano A et al. 2000 Redox Report 5, 365–370) which allows differentiation between hydrophilic and lipophilic antioxidant activity capacity. TAC units were expressed as micromolar (μM) Trolox equivalents. Data were analyzed using ANOVA. Only the hydrophilic activity was measurable, with the lipophilic activity being undetected. The overall TAC of seminal samples (mean ± SEM) was 1623.7 ± 56.28 μM, ranging from 674 to 2428 μM. Different TACs were observed among males (P < 0.05) and between ejaculates of the same male (P < 0.05). Ejaculate fraction had a significant effect (P < 0.001) on the TAC levels. The post-sperm fraction had a significantly lower TAC level (1104.09 ± 57.66 μM) than the pre-sperm and sperm-rich fractions (1611.95 ± 153.68 μM and 1356.136 ± 72.47 μM, respectively, P < 0.001). In conclusion, hydrophilic antioxidant activity represented the main contribution to the TAC in boar seminal plasma, showing differences among males, between ejaculates of the same male, and also between the different ejaculate fractions. This work was supported by CICYT (AGF98-0533; AGL01-0471) and INIA (RZ01-019).

The design of an analog frontend including a receiver amplifier (RX) and laser diode driver (LDD) for optical communication system is described. The RX consists of a transimpedance amplifier, a limiting amplifier, and an output buffer (BUF). An offset compensation and common-mode control circuit is designed using switched-capacitor technique to save chip area, provides continuous reduction of the offset in the RX. Active-peaking methods are used to enhance the bandwidth and gain. The very low gate-oxide breakdown voltage of transistors in deep sub-micron technologies is overcome in the LDD by implementing a topology which has the amplifier placed in a floating well. It comprises a level shifter, a pre-amplifier, and the driver stage. The single-chip frontend, fabricated in a 28 nm bulk-digital complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) process has a total active area of 0.003 mm2, is among the smallest optical frontends. Without the BUF, which consumes 8 mW from a separate supply, the RX power consumption is 21 mW, while the LDD consumes 32 mW. Small-signal gain and bandwidth are measured. A photo diode and laser diode are bonded to the chip on a test-printed circuit board. Electro-optical measurements show an error-free detection with a bit error rate of 10−12at 20 Gbit/s of the RX at and a 25 Gbit/s transmission of the LDD.

Current low temperature electronics (&lt;175°C) with logical functions (CPUs, MCUs) have exceptional levels of reliability in terms of packaging, stemming from decades of research. However, electronics that operate at higher temperatures (&gt;175°C) for prolonged periods of time require packaging technologies that have to tackle many new problems. At high temperatures traditionally used materials such as organic circuit boards, adhesives and standard solders degrade rapidly or undergo changes in structure and properties. An even more critical issue than high-temperature survivability is resistance to temperature cycling. Thermal mismatch between organic boards and semiconductor dies leads to high thermomechanical strains during swings from high to low temperature extremes, which can make an otherwise high temperature resistant assembly fail after a relatively low number of cycles. This work focuses on the packaging technologies for high temperature control modules, those with logical and signal conditioning applications. Although control modules share many similarities with power modules, they present their own unique design challenges, such as significantly higher complexity and a limitation of compatible materials. Here, recent research on substrates, die attach technologies and wirebond interconnects suited for high temperature ICs are presented along with packaging technologies for discrete components (capacitors and resistors) with the aim of identifying the current best solutions. Test vehicles for the various technologies were constructed and were subjected to high temperature storage at temperatures higher than 200°C. They were analysed in terms of degradation (i.e. loss in shear strength, pull strength, change in resistance, etc.). In parallel, a separate set of samples were subjected to temperature cycles from −20°C to 180°C and then analysed using the same tests as before for comparison. The combined data allow a recommendation to be made on how to assemble a viable control module such as one based on an SOI microcontroller designed at EPFL to operate at high temperatures.

The protection of a water resource’s ecological environment is one of the most important tasks in the watershed in China. The evaluation of water resources carrying capacity (WRCC) is the foundation for the suitability of territorial space development. It is necessary to further analyze the weaknesses of the coordinated development of various dimensions of WRCC and explore the basis of territorial space development and optimization. This paper considers Chinese unique policy tasks, namely, “three water management together”, the types of main function areas, “red lines” control, and national spatial suitability evaluation, to construct the evaluation index system of WRCC. Monomial evaluation, integrated evaluation, and coupling coordination analysis methods are used separately to evaluate the carrying index, comprehensive carrying index, and coupling coordination degree of WRCC in the Qingjiang River Basin. The results show that: (1) As far as monomial evaluation is concerned, water resource supplies are often overloaded on the overall economy, industrial, and agricultural development; (2) The comprehensive indices of WRCC of the counties in the southwest are obviously better than that of the counties in the northeast; (3) The degree of coupling coordination of WRCC in the Qingjiang River Basin is not high, and is essentially in the primary or barely coordinated level; (4) the short board of WRCC in the Qingjiang River Basin presents obvious spatial characteristics, which from west to east are water environment, water resources and water ecology lagging, respectively. This paper measures WRCC for industry, agriculture, life, and ecology, which is helpful in promoting the suitability evaluation of land space development. Meanwhile, the case study of the Qingjiang River Basin provides reference for other regions to implement the “double evaluation”.

The ability to sort and re-freeze frozen-thawed sperm would significantly increase the potential application of sperm sexing technology to species management. Frozen-thawed, sorted, re-frozen and then thawed ram sperm appear fully functional in vitro with blastocyst production greater than that for frozen-thawed, non-sorted sperm (Hollinshead FK et al. 2003 Theriogenology 59, 209 abst). The aim of this study was to evaluate the in vivo capacity of in vitro-produced embryos derived from frozen-thawed sperm after sorting and a second cryopreservation/thawing step. Frozen semen from 2 rams (n=3 ejaculates per ram) was used throughout. Post-thaw sperm treatments comprised (i) non-sorted (Control); (ii) sorted (Froz-Sort) and (iii) sorted, then re-frozen (Froz-Sort-Froz). X and Y sperm were separated using a high-speed sorter (SX MoFlo®, DakoCytomation, Fort Collins, CO, USA) after incubation with Hoechst 33342 and food dye to eliminate nonviable sperm. Reanalysis revealed high levels (mean±SEM) of purity for X- and Y-enriched samples for all treatments (89±1.2%). At Day 6 post-insemination, 2 embryos (blastocyst stage or greater) were transferred per recipient. Data were analyzed by chi-square and Fisher Exact Test. In vivo embryo survival was similar across sperm treatments (28/64, 43.8% overall) and 20 of 23 (87.0%) sexed lambs were of the predicted sex (Table 1). These results demonstrate high in vivo developmental capacity of in vitro-produced sexed embryos derived from frozen-thawed ram sperm after sorting and a second cryopreservation/thawing step, and increase the potential application of sperm sexing technology. Research support by XY, Inc., Australian Research Council and Zoological Parks Board of NSW. Table 1 In vivo survival of transferred in vitro produced embryos derived from frozen-thawed non-sorted (Control), frozen-thawed and sorted (Froz-Sort) and frozen-thawed, sorted, then frozen-thawed (Froz-Sort-Froz) ram sperm.

Introduction. A rockfill dam with a concrete screen is considered as an alternative to a traditional earth-faced rockfill dam in the process of designing a high-pressure Pskemsky hydraulic facility in Uzbekistan. A rockfill dam with a concrete screen has several strengths. However the geological structure of the dam site complexifies the application of a rockfill dam with a concrete screen, because dam boards have a deep layer of gritstone. There arose a need to study the stress-strain state of a 190 m dam in 2D and 3D settings. Materials and methods. The finite element method (FEM) and numerical modeling were employed to study the stress-strain state of the dam. The modulus of linear deformation of the rockfill top reaches 480 MPa, the one of the rockfill bottom — 240 MPa. The concrete deformation module was taken as equal to 29 and 12 hPa. The analysis took account of the isolation joint that separated the central part of the screen from its bank parts, while the contact surface of the screen and the dam body had a layer of friction-reduction emulsion. Results. The research performed by the co-authors enabled them not only to analyze the screen’s displacements and strains, but also to consider longitudinal forces and bending moments. Conclusions. A rockfill dam with a reinforced concrete screen has proven a reliable structure capable of accommodating static forces. However rock needs to be thoroughly compacted, and the water basin must be filled gradually. In this case, concrete compressive/tensile strength values will be sufficient in the 3D environment. The heterogeneity of the geological composition of the dam base cannot disintegrate the screen, because vertical joints compensate for the tensile stress arising inside.

Introduction: Heme, an iron-containing protoporphyrin, is an essential component of hemoglobin that binds oxygen for delivery to tissues. In sickle cell disease, intravascular hemolysis leads to the presence of cell-free hemoglobin and heme, which may contribute to oxidative damage and activation of inflammatory pathways. Hemoproteins such as haptoglobin and hemopexin provide pathways to remove hemoglobin and heme, respectively, from circulation. Due to its hydrophobic nature, heme also intercalates in cell membranes and binds to plasma components such as albumin and lipoproteins, though with varying affinity. Hemopexin has high affinity for heme and removes heme from other heme pools in blood to counter the highly toxic properties of heme unbound to hemoproteins. Due to chronic hemolysis, hemopexin is depleted in individuals with sickle cell disease. We hypothesize that the reduction in heme binding capacity leads to increased unbound heme in blood and contributes to the pathogenesis of sickle cell disease. To define the different heme binding pools in patients with sickle cell disease, we developed a method requiring small amounts of plasma which allows measurement of total and hemoprotein-unbound heme. With this method, we can quantify the binding capacity of plasma for heme and correlate that with measurement of heme scavenging proteins. Methods: Blood from healthy individuals and sickle cell patients was collected in EDTA as anticoagulant under IRB approval. Plasma was separated by centrifugation from whole blood, and either processed fresh or after freezing at -80°C. Plasma protein was precipitated with a 4-fold volume of acetone at neutral pH (NA) or acidic pH (AA). Under acidic condition, heme is released from all heme binding pools, including hemoglobin, and provides detection of the total heme present in plasma. Under neutral pH condition, only heme unbound to plasma proteins is extracted. Once extracted, samples were dried and resuspended in DMSO. Heme concentration was spectrophotometrically determined at 400nm using standard curves prepared from hemin added in AA or NA. To determine heme binding capacity, hemin was added to serial dilutions of plasma and extracted in NA and AA as above. The appearance of heme in NA relative to AA represents the point at which heme binding capacity of plasma was saturated. This was compared to measurement of hemopexin and haptoglobin using commercially available ELISA measurements. Hemopexin and albumin were added to samples to modulate heme binding capacity. Results: Heme concentration closely correlates with spectroscopic measurement of heme in DMSO confirming reliable quantification of total and unbound heme in acidic and neutral acetone extractions as low as 2.5µM. We next show that heme binding capacity can be determined. Heme added to plasma was effectively recovered in AA extracts and begins to appear in the NA extract when binding sites start to become saturated. We note that not all sites appear to be fully saturated before heme is detected in NA extract. Addition of hemopexin to plasma increased the binding capacity on an equimolar basis, indicating that hemopexin effectively binds heme present in plasma. In samples from patients with sickle cell disease, concentration of total and unbound heme varied widely, and did not necessarily correlate with degree of intravascular hemolysis, estimated based on the measurement of cell free hemoglobin. Both the capacity of plasma to bind heme and levels of hemopexin indicated that, in a number of patients, the amount of heme present was greater than the ability of hemopexin to bind cell free heme. Discussion: We present a novel method to quantitatively differentiate hemoprotein-bound and unbound heme in plasma, the latter of which is pathologically relevant in sickle cell disease. Our data show significant variation in the concentration of total and unbound heme in sickle cell patient samples, and that the binding capacity in sickle cell plasma only partially correlates to the degree of hemolysis measured based on cell free hemoglobin. Patients are currently enrolled in a clinical study to measure intra-patient differences in heme and heme-binding capacity during steady state and during acute sickle cell-related illness. Understanding the clinical implications of heme and heme scavengers may provide insights into diagnostic and therapeutic targets for patients with sickle cell disease. Disclosures Neumayr: Emmaus: Consultancy; Bayer: Consultancy; CTD Holdings: Consultancy; Pfizer: Consultancy; ApoPharma: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Micelle: Other: Site principal investigator; GBT: Other: Site principal investigator; PCORI: Other: site principal investigator; Novartis: Other: co-investigator; Bluebird Bio: Other: co-investigator; Sangamo Therapeutics: Other; Silarus: Other; Celgene: Other; La Jolla Pharmaceuticals: Other; Forma: Other; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Other; Seattle Children's Research: Other; Imara: Other; National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute: Other; Health Resources and Services Administration: Other. Vichinsky:Bluebird Bio: Consultancy, Research Funding; Pfizer: Consultancy, Research Funding; Agios Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy, Research Funding; GBT: Consultancy, Research Funding; Novartis: Consultancy, Research Funding. Kuypers:Forma Therapeutics, Inc.: Research Funding.

In this paper, a high-frequency AC-link DC–AC converter is presented with detailed analysis. This converter is used as an interface between a dc power source and a grid. The studied converter is a universal power converter which consists of two bridges separated by an AC-link; each bridge is connected to a source or it feeds a load. The link of this converter contains a parallel pair inductance-capacitor. The inductance is used to stock/supply energy and for the link capacitor, it allows to perform soft switching during turning on/turning off of the switches. The studied converter has considerable advantages compared to the other topologies. Its fundamental properties are, especially, the compactness, reliability and efficiency which it ensures. Also, it guarantees longer lifetime and the possibility to transfer power in the two power flow directions. In this talk, the principles of the ac-link inverter operation are clearly explained in this paper. Simulation results, under MATLAB/SIMULINK, are shown to validate the correct operation and the efficiency of the proposed converter topology. The control algorithm is, also, experimentally implemented using a dSPACE 1104 control board.

When George Orwell encountered ideas of a technological utopia sixty-five years ago, he acted the grumpy middle-aged man Reading recently a batch of rather shallowly optimistic “progressive” books, I was struck by the automatic way in which people go on repeating certain phrases which were fashionable before 1914. Two great favourites are “the abolition of distance” and “the disappearance of frontiers”. I do not know how often I have met with the statements that “the aeroplane and the radio have abolished distance” and “all parts of the world are now interdependent” (1944). It is worth revisiting the old boy’s grumpiness, because the rhetoric he so niftily skewers continues in our own time. Facebook features “Peace on Facebook” and even claims that it can “decrease world conflict” through inter-cultural communication. Twitter has announced itself as “a triumph of humanity” (“A Cyber-House” 61). Queue George. In between Orwell and latter-day hoody cybertarians, a whole host of excitable public intellectuals announced the impending end of materiality through emergent media forms. Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Daniel Bell, Ithiel de Sola Pool, George Gilder, Alvin Toffler—the list of 1960s futurists goes on and on. And this wasn’t just a matter of punditry: the OECD decreed the coming of the “information society” in 1975 and the European Union (EU) followed suit in 1979, while IBM merrily declared an “information age” in 1977. Bell theorized this technological utopia as post-ideological, because class would cease to matter (Mattelart). Polluting industries seemingly no longer represented the dynamic core of industrial capitalism; instead, market dynamism radiated from a networked, intellectual core of creative and informational activities. The new information and knowledge-based economies would rescue First World hegemony from an “insurgent world” that lurked within as well as beyond itself (Schiller). Orwell’s others and the Cold-War futurists propagated one of the most destructive myths shaping both public debate and scholarly studies of the media, culture, and communication. They convinced generations of analysts, activists, and arrivistes that the promises and problems of the media could be understood via metaphors of the environment, and that the media were weightless and virtual. The famous medium they wished us to see as the message —a substance as vital to our wellbeing as air, water, and soil—turned out to be no such thing. Today’s cybertarians inherit their anti-Marxist, anti-materialist positions, as a casual glance at any new media journal, culture-industry magazine, or bourgeois press outlet discloses. The media are undoubtedly important instruments of social cohesion and fragmentation, political power and dissent, democracy and demagoguery, and other fraught extensions of human consciousness. But talk of media systems as equivalent to physical ecosystems—fashionable among marketers and media scholars alike—is predicated on the notion that they are environmentally benign technologies. This has never been true, from the beginnings of print to today’s cloud-covered computing. Our new book Greening the Media focuses on the environmental impact of the media—the myriad ways that media technology consumes, despoils, and wastes natural resources. We introduce ideas, stories, and facts that have been marginal or absent from popular, academic, and professional histories of media technology. Throughout, ecological issues have been at the core of our work and we immodestly think the same should apply to media communications, and cultural studies more generally. We recognize that those fields have contributed valuable research and teaching that address environmental questions. For instance, there is an abundant literature on representations of the environment in cinema, how to communicate environmental messages successfully, and press coverage of climate change. That’s not enough. You may already know that media technologies contain toxic substances. You may have signed an on-line petition protesting the hazardous and oppressive conditions under which workers assemble cell phones and computers. But you may be startled, as we were, by the scale and pervasiveness of these environmental risks. They are present in and around every site where electronic and electric devices are manufactured, used, and thrown away, poisoning humans, animals, vegetation, soil, air and water. We are using the term “media” as a portmanteau word to cover a multitude of cultural and communications machines and processes—print, film, radio, television, information and communications technologies (ICT), and consumer electronics (CE). This is not only for analytical convenience, but because there is increasing overlap between the sectors. CE connect to ICT and vice versa; televisions resemble computers; books are read on telephones; newspapers are written through clouds; and so on. Cultural forms and gadgets that were once separate are now linked. The currently fashionable notion of convergence doesn’t quite capture the vastness of this integration, which includes any object with a circuit board, scores of accessories that plug into it, and a global nexus of labor and environmental inputs and effects that produce and flow from it. In 2007, a combination of ICT/CE and media production accounted for between 2 and 3 percent of all greenhouse gases emitted around the world (“Gartner Estimates,”; International Telecommunication Union; Malmodin et al.). Between twenty and fifty million tonnes of electronic waste (e-waste) are generated annually, much of it via discarded cell phones and computers, which affluent populations throw out regularly in order to buy replacements. (Presumably this fits the narcissism of small differences that distinguishes them from their own past.) E-waste is historically produced in the Global North—Australasia, Western Europe, Japan, and the US—and dumped in the Global South—Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, Southern and Southeast Asia, and China. It takes the form of a thousand different, often deadly, materials for each electrical and electronic gadget. This trend is changing as India and China generate their own media detritus (Robinson; Herat). Enclosed hard drives, backlit screens, cathode ray tubes, wiring, capacitors, and heavy metals pose few risks while these materials remain encased. But once discarded and dismantled, ICT/CE have the potential to expose workers and ecosystems to a morass of toxic components. Theoretically, “outmoded” parts could be reused or swapped for newer parts to refurbish devices. But items that are defined as waste undergo further destruction in order to collect remaining parts and valuable metals, such as gold, silver, copper, and rare-earth elements. This process causes serious health risks to bones, brains, stomachs, lungs, and other vital organs, in addition to birth defects and disrupted biological development in children. Medical catastrophes can result from lead, cadmium, mercury, other heavy metals, poisonous fumes emitted in search of precious metals, and such carcinogenic compounds as polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxin, polyvinyl chloride, and flame retardants (Maxwell and Miller 13). The United States’ Environmental Protection Agency estimates that by 2007 US residents owned approximately three billion electronic devices, with an annual turnover rate of 400 million units, and well over half such purchases made by women. Overall CE ownership varied with age—adults under 45 typically boasted four gadgets; those over 65 made do with one. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) says US$145 billion was expended in the sector in 2006 in the US alone, up 13% on the previous year. The CEA refers joyously to a “consumer love affair with technology continuing at a healthy clip.” In the midst of a recession, 2009 saw $165 billion in sales, and households owned between fifteen and twenty-four gadgets on average. By 2010, US$233 billion was spent on electronic products, three-quarters of the population owned a computer, nearly half of all US adults owned an MP3 player, and 85% had a cell phone. By all measures, the amount of ICT/CE on the planet is staggering. As investigative science journalist, Elizabeth Grossman put it: “no industry pushes products into the global market on the scale that high-tech electronics does” (Maxwell and Miller 2). In 2007, “of the 2.25 million tons of TVs, cell phones and computer products ready for end-of-life management, 18% (414,000 tons) was collected for recycling and 82% (1.84 million tons) was disposed of, primarily in landfill” (Environmental Protection Agency 1). Twenty million computers fell obsolete across the US in 1998, and the rate was 130,000 a day by 2005. It has been estimated that the five hundred million personal computers discarded in the US between 1997 and 2007 contained 6.32 billion pounds of plastics, 1.58 billion pounds of lead, three million pounds of cadmium, 1.9 million pounds of chromium, and 632000 pounds of mercury (Environmental Protection Agency; Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition 6). The European Union is expected to generate upwards of twelve million tons annually by 2020 (Commission of the European Communities 17). While refrigerators and dangerous refrigerants account for the bulk of EU e-waste, about 44% of the most toxic e-waste measured in 2005 came from medium-to-small ICT/CE: computer monitors, TVs, printers, ink cartridges, telecommunications equipment, toys, tools, and anything with a circuit board (Commission of the European Communities 31-34). Understanding the enormity of the environmental problems caused by making, using, and disposing of media technologies should arrest our enthusiasm for them. But intellectual correctives to the “love affair” with technology, or technophilia, have come and gone without establishing much of a foothold against the breathtaking flood of gadgets and the propaganda that proclaims their awe-inspiring capabilities.[i] There is a peculiar enchantment with the seeming magic of wireless communication, touch-screen phones and tablets, flat-screen high-definition televisions, 3-D IMAX cinema, mobile computing, and so on—a totemic, quasi-sacred power that the historian of technology David Nye has named the technological sublime (Nye Technological Sublime 297).[ii] We demonstrate in our book why there is no place for the technological sublime in projects to green the media. But first we should explain why such symbolic power does not accrue to more mundane technologies; after all, for the time-strapped cook, a pressure cooker does truly magical things. Three important qualities endow ICT/CE with unique symbolic potency—virtuality, volume, and novelty. The technological sublime of media technology is reinforced by the “virtual nature of much of the industry’s content,” which “tends to obscure their responsibility for a vast proliferation of hardware, all with high levels of built-in obsolescence and decreasing levels of efficiency” (Boyce and Lewis 5). Planned obsolescence entered the lexicon as a new “ethics” for electrical engineering in the 1920s and ’30s, when marketers, eager to “habituate people to buying new products,” called for designs to become quickly obsolete “in efficiency, economy, style, or taste” (Grossman 7-8).[iii] This defines the short lifespan deliberately constructed for computer systems (drives, interfaces, operating systems, batteries, etc.) by making tiny improvements incompatible with existing hardware (Science and Technology Council of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 33-50; Boyce and Lewis). With planned obsolescence leading to “dizzying new heights” of product replacement (Rogers 202), there is an overstated sense of the novelty and preeminence of “new” media—a “cult of the present” is particularly dazzled by the spread of electronic gadgets through globalization (Mattelart and Constantinou 22). References to the symbolic power of media technology can be found in hymnals across the internet and the halls of academe: technologies change us, the media will solve social problems or create new ones, ICTs transform work, monopoly ownership no longer matters, journalism is dead, social networking enables social revolution, and the media deliver a cleaner, post-industrial, capitalism. Here is a typical example from the twilight zone of the technological sublime (actually, the OECD): A major feature of the knowledge-based economy is the impact that ICTs have had on industrial structure, with a rapid growth of services and a relative decline of manufacturing. Services are typically less energy intensive and less polluting, so among those countries with a high and increasing share of services, we often see a declining energy intensity of production … with the emergence of the Knowledge Economy ending the old linear relationship between output and energy use (i.e. partially de-coupling growth and energy use) (Houghton 1) This statement mixes half-truths and nonsense. In reality, old-time, toxic manufacturing has moved to the Global South, where it is ascendant; pollution levels are rising worldwide; and energy consumption is accelerating in residential and institutional sectors, due almost entirely to ICT/CE usage, despite advances in energy conservation technology (a neat instance of the age-old Jevons Paradox). In our book we show how these are all outcomes of growth in ICT/CE, the foundation of the so-called knowledge-based economy. ICT/CE are misleadingly presented as having little or no material ecological impact. In the realm of everyday life, the sublime experience of electronic machinery conceals the physical work and material resources that go into them, while the technological sublime makes the idea that more-is-better palatable, axiomatic; even sexy. In this sense, the technological sublime relates to what Marx called “the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour” once they are in the hands of the consumer, who lusts after them as if they were “independent beings” (77). There is a direct but unseen relationship between technology’s symbolic power and the scale of its environmental impact, which the economist Juliet Schor refers to as a “materiality paradox” —the greater the frenzy to buy goods for their transcendent or nonmaterial cultural meaning, the greater the use of material resources (40-41). We wrote Greening the Media knowing that a study of the media’s effect on the environment must work especially hard to break the enchantment that inflames popular and elite passions for media technologies. We understand that the mere mention of the political-economic arrangements that make shiny gadgets possible, or the environmental consequences of their appearance and disappearance, is bad medicine. It’s an unwelcome buzz kill—not a cool way to converse about cool stuff. But we didn’t write the book expecting to win many allies among high-tech enthusiasts and ICT/CE industry leaders. We do not dispute the importance of information and communication media in our lives and modern social systems. We are media people by profession and personal choice, and deeply immersed in the study and use of emerging media technologies. But we think it’s time for a balanced assessment with less hype and more practical understanding of the relationship of media technologies to the biosphere they inhabit. Media consumers, designers, producers, activists, researchers, and policy makers must find new and effective ways to move ICT/CE production and consumption toward ecologically sound practices. In the course of this project, we found in casual conversation, lecture halls, classroom discussions, and correspondence, consistent and increasing concern with the environmental impact of media technology, especially the deleterious effects of e-waste toxins on workers, air, water, and soil. We have learned that the grip of the technological sublime is not ironclad. Its instability provides a point of departure for investigating and criticizing the relationship between the media and the environment. The media are, and have been for a long time, intimate environmental participants. Media technologies are yesterday’s, today’s, and tomorrow’s news, but rarely in the way they should be. The prevailing myth is that the printing press, telegraph, phonograph, photograph, cinema, telephone, wireless radio, television, and internet changed the world without changing the Earth. In reality, each technology has emerged by despoiling ecosystems and exposing workers to harmful environments, a truth obscured by symbolic power and the power of moguls to set the terms by which such technologies are designed and deployed. Those who benefit from ideas of growth, progress, and convergence, who profit from high-tech innovation, monopoly, and state collusion—the military-industrial-entertainment-academic complex and multinational commandants of labor—have for too long ripped off the Earth and workers. As the current celebration of media technology inevitably winds down, perhaps it will become easier to comprehend that digital wonders come at the expense of employees and ecosystems. This will return us to Max Weber’s insistence that we understand technology in a mundane way as a “mode of processing material goods” (27). Further to understanding that ordinariness, we can turn to the pioneering conversation analyst Harvey Sacks, who noted three decades ago “the failures of technocratic dreams [:] that if only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be transformed.” Such fantasies derived from the very banality of these introductions—that every time they took place, one more “technical apparatus” was simply “being made at home with the rest of our world’ (548). Media studies can join in this repetitive banality. Or it can withdraw the welcome mat for media technologies that despoil the Earth and wreck the lives of those who make them. In our view, it’s time to green the media by greening media studies. References “A Cyber-House Divided.” Economist 4 Sep. 2010: 61-62. “Gartner Estimates ICT Industry Accounts for 2 Percent of Global CO2 Emissions.” Gartner press release. 6 April 2007. ‹http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867›. Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia. Seattle: Basel Action Network, 25 Feb. 2002. Benjamin, Walter. “Central Park.” Trans. Lloyd Spencer with Mark Harrington. New German Critique 34 (1985): 32-58. Biagioli, Mario. “Postdisciplinary Liaisons: Science Studies and the Humanities.” Critical Inquiry 35.4 (2009): 816-33. Boyce, Tammy and Justin Lewis, eds. Climate Change and the Media. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. Commission of the European Communities. “Impact Assessment.” Commission Staff Working Paper accompanying the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) (recast). COM (2008) 810 Final. Brussels: Commission of the European Communities, 3 Dec. 2008. Environmental Protection Agency. Management of Electronic Waste in the United States. Washington, DC: EPA, 2007 Environmental Protection Agency. Statistics on the Management of Used and End-of-Life Electronics. Washington, DC: EPA, 2008 Grossman, Elizabeth. Tackling High-Tech Trash: The E-Waste Explosion & What We Can Do about It. New York: Demos, 2008. ‹http://www.demos.org/pubs/e-waste_FINAL.pdf› Herat, Sunil. “Review: Sustainable Management of Electronic Waste (e-Waste).” Clean 35.4 (2007): 305-10. Houghton, J. “ICT and the Environment in Developing Countries: Opportunities and Developments.” Paper prepared for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2009. International Telecommunication Union. ICTs for Environment: Guidelines for Developing Countries, with a Focus on Climate Change. Geneva: ICT Applications and Cybersecurity Division Policies and Strategies Department ITU Telecommunication Development Sector, 2008. Malmodin, Jens, Åsa Moberg, Dag Lundén, Göran Finnveden, and Nina Lövehagen. “Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Operational Electricity Use in the ICT and Entertainment & Media Sectors.” Journal of Industrial Ecology 14.5 (2010): 770-90. Marx, Karl. Capital: Vol. 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, 3rd ed. Trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, Ed. Frederick Engels. New York: International Publishers, 1987. Mattelart, Armand and Costas M. Constantinou. “Communications/Excommunications: An Interview with Armand Mattelart.” Trans. Amandine Bled, Jacques Guot, and Costas Constantinou. Review of International Studies 34.1 (2008): 21-42. Mattelart, Armand. “Cómo nació el mito de Internet.” Trans. Yanina Guthman. El mito internet. Ed. Victor Hugo de la Fuente. Santiago: Editorial aún creemos en los sueños, 2002. 25-32. Maxwell, Richard and Toby Miller. Greening the Media. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Nye, David E. American Technological Sublime. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994. Nye, David E. Technology Matters: Questions to Live With. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 2007. Orwell, George. “As I Please.” Tribune. 12 May 1944. Richtel, Matt. “Consumers Hold on to Products Longer.” New York Times: B1, 26 Feb. 2011. Robinson, Brett H. “E-Waste: An Assessment of Global Production and Environmental Impacts.” Science of the Total Environment 408.2 (2009): 183-91. Rogers, Heather. Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage. New York: New Press, 2005. Sacks, Harvey. Lectures on Conversation. Vols. I and II. Ed. Gail Jefferson. Malden: Blackwell, 1995. Schiller, Herbert I. Information and the Crisis Economy. Norwood: Ablex Publishing, 1984. Schor, Juliet B. Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth. New York: Penguin, 2010. Science and Technology Council of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Digital Dilemma: Strategic Issues in Archiving and Accessing Digital Motion Picture Materials. Los Angeles: Academy Imprints, 2007. Weber, Max. “Remarks on Technology and Culture.” Trans. Beatrix Zumsteg and Thomas M. Kemple. Ed. Thomas M. Kemple. Theory, Culture [i] The global recession that began in 2007 has been the main reason for some declines in Global North energy consumption, slower turnover in gadget upgrades, and longer periods of consumer maintenance of electronic goods (Richtel). [ii] The emergence of the technological sublime has been attributed to the Western triumphs in the post-Second World War period, when technological power supposedly supplanted the power of nature to inspire fear and astonishment (Nye Technology Matters 28). Historian Mario Biagioli explains how the sublime permeates everyday life through technoscience: "If around 1950 the popular imaginary placed science close to the military and away from the home, today’s technoscience frames our everyday life at all levels, down to our notion of the self" (818). [iii] This compulsory repetition is seemingly undertaken each time as a novelty, governed by what German cultural critic Walter Benjamin called, in his awkward but occasionally illuminating prose, "the ever-always-the-same" of "mass-production" cloaked in "a hitherto unheard-of significance" (48).

The goal of this Master thesis is to design a power convertor for BLDC motor 48V/2kW. Emphasis is placed on the small dimensions of the final printed circuit board. Therefore, power SMD transistors STL135N8F7AG are used in small packages PowerFlat 5x6. To reduce area of the PCB, electrolytic capacitors are mounted on a separate board, which is located above the main PCB. Small high-capacity 22F/100V ceramic capacitors are used in the DC-LINK as well. They are located as close as possible to the power SMD tranzistors. Control logic will be provided by microprocesor STM32G474RE. High resolution timer HRTIM1 is used. The first part of this thesis is devoted to the brief description of BLDC motor construction and driving. Next parts are focused on the design itself.

In the half century since paleontologists began finding putative microfossils in Precambrian sedimentary rocks, it has become apparent that not only is most of life’s history absent from the visible fossil record, but huge sectors of extant life remain to be discovered. Until the early 1980s, the only way to identify and study species of microbes—many if not most of which are morphologically indistinct from each other—was by growing them in the laboratory, isolating the separate colonies of organisms that developed as they reproduced, and then noting differences and similarities in what they consumed and produced. But the capacity to read the information in microbial genes that was developed in the 1980s and 1990s opened an entirely new world for study—much as the invention of the microscope had in the eighteenth century—and laid bare the unnerving fact that the vast majority of microbes on the planet had been boycotting the microbiologists’ carefully prepared cultures. Microbiologists had spent almost a century painstakingly cultivating, isolating, and classifying microorganisms, and yet they had failed to identify the most abundant microbes in natural waters, sediments, and soils. Indeed, it now appears that the hundreds of thousands of microbes named and maintained in the world’s bacteria zoos, or “culture collections,” invaluable as they are, comprise but a tiny and somewhat random sampling of the microbial world. These microbial cultures provide the only means by which biologists can directly manipulate and study the biochemistry and physiology of this huge sector of life in the laboratory—but they are distinguished more by their ability to prosper under laboratory conditions than by their importance in natural ecosystems. In the past few years, application of new techniques from molecular biology has resulted in the discovery of thousands of strange new types of microorganisms, and there is the implication of countless more: in the twenty-first century we find ourselves unexpectedly gathered at the threshold of a new world, looking not to Mars or Jupiter or to some distant galaxy, but gazing awestruck at the mud beneath our feet and the water in our seas.

Making sense of Brown v. Board of Education, decided the same year I was born, and understanding what it did and did not achieve have occupied me since I can remember. When the fiftieth anniversary of the ruling arrived, scholars and media pundits debated whether the case deserved its landmark status and whether it had delivered in any meaningful way on the promise of racial equality for African Americans—or if it instead was ineffectual or counterproductive. Those are important questions, and this book grapples with them. Yet largely missing from the public discussions was the enormous influence of Brown in schools beyond race. The Supreme Court’s embrace of the ideal of equal opportunity and its critique of the separate-but-equal approach to education transformed the treatment of immigrants, students learning English, girls, students with disabilities, and poor students in American schools; religion in schools; school choice; and social science evidence about schooling—and the story of these changes deserves telling. That is what this book aims to do, even as it tells of a mixed legacy of Brown in these other contexts while also tracing reverberations of Brown outside the United States. To tell these stories is to engage with public policy debates over separate versus mixed instruction in meeting the needs of varied kinds of students. Nested within larger disputes over the viability of the racial integration ideal, this effort also explores the emergence of Brown as a resource for enterprising and visionary reformers concerned with gender, disability, religion, and other topics. The legacies of Brown invite a look at the capacity of individuals to push and achieve change using law and social science; the histories are interconnected with social movements as well as unexpected consequences of resulting reforms. Chapter 1 offers an analysis of what this landmark U.S. Supreme Court case did and did not accomplish when it banned official racial segregation in public schools. I consider whether the lawyers’ goal ever was integration, defined to mean both the side-by-side instruction of students of different races and the creation of school communities with a sense of common purpose and membership bridging different identities, histories, and past opportunities.

Thermal design and packaging strategy of a prototype dual-loop vapor compression refrigeration cooling system, developed as a pilot model for thermal management of high performance CMOS based MCMs, is introduced in this paper. The cooling system was comprised of two separated refrigeration units providing low temperature cooling via a dual-path cooling module (evaporator) mounted on a CPU-MCM package. Cooling capacity for each refrigeration unit was controlled ranging from 250W to 2500W with a refrigerant evaporating temperature at −25 degree centigrade. The CPU-MCM mounted with the refrigeration cooling module was packaged on a system board assembly, together with other electronic devices. The assembly was accommodated into a dew-point control box where two dewpoint control units were operating in a redundancy to remove moisture and keep a dew temperature inside the box below −30 degree centigrade for completely preventing from condensation. Cooling redundancy was provided by both the refrigeration units and dual-path cooling module. The cooling module was redundant in that two sets of refrigerant passages were staggered within a thin copper plate, where each set was connected to a separated refrigeration unit. Apart from the robust system and steady operation, the configuration and operation mode also provided the cooling system a high power efficiency and much shortened starting time. Numerical simulations were also performed for investigating airflow and thermal characteristics, in a system board level inside the dew-point control box. Detailed predictions of airflow and temperature distributions were significantly helpful for improving and verifying practical system designs.

The main objective in optimizing train control is to eliminate the waist associated with classical design where train separation is determined through the use of “worst case” assumptions that are invariant to the system. In fact, the worst case approach has been in place since the beginning of train control systems. Worst case takes the most conservative approach to the determination of train stopping distance, which is the basis for design of virtually all train control. This leads to stopping distances that could be far more that actually required under the circumstances at the time the train is attempting to brake. Modern train control systems are designed to separate trains in order to provide safety of operation while increasing throughput. Calculations for the minimum distance that separates trains have traditionally been based on the sum of a series of worst case scenarios. The implication was that no train could ever exceed this distance in stopping. This distance is called Safe Braking Distance (SBD). SBD has always been calculated by static parameters that were assumed to be invariant. This is, however, not the case. Parameters such as adhesion, acceleration, weight, and reaction vary over time, location or velocity. Since the worst case is always used in the calculation, inefficiencies result in this methodology which causes degradation in capacity and throughput. This is also true when mixed traffic with different stopping characteristics are present at the same time. The classic theory in train control utilizes a SBD model to describe the characteristics of a stopping train. Since knowledge of these conditions is not known, poor conditions are assumed. A new concept in train control utilizes statistical analysis and estimation to provide knowledge of the conditions. Trains operating along the line utilize these techniques to understand inputs into their SBD calculation. This provides for a SBD calculation on board the train that is the shortest possible that maintains the required level of safety. The new SBD is a prime determinant in systems capacity. Therefore by optimizing SBD as describes, system capacity is also optimized. The system continuously adjusts to changing conditions.

Circulation control technology has proven itself useful in the area of short take-off and landing (STOL) fixed wing aircraft by decreasing landing and takeoff distances, increasing maneuverability and lift at lower speeds. The application of circulation control technology to vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) rotorcraft could also prove quite beneficial. Successful adaptation to helicopter rotor blades is currently believed to yield benefits such as increased lift, increased payload capacity, increased maneuverability, reduction in rotor diameter and a reduction in noise. Above all, the addition of circulation control to rotorcraft as controlled by an on-board computer could provide the helicopter with pitch control as well as compensate for asymmetrical lift profiles from forward flight without need for a swashplate. There are an infinite number of blowing slot configurations, each with separate benefits and drawbacks. This study has identified three specific types of these configurations. The high lift configuration would be beneficial in instances where such power is needed for crew and cargo, little stress reduction is offered over the base line configuration. The stress reduction configuration on the other hand, however, offers little extra lift but much in the way of increased rotor lifespan and shorter rotor length. Finally, the middle balanced configuration offers a middle ground between the two extremes. With this configuration, the helicopter benefits in all categories of lift, stress reduction and blade length reduction.

Created in 1978, the Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County (Authority) has developed an “award winning” solid waste management system that includes franchised solid waste collections and the following facilities to service the residents and businesses in Palm Beach County, Florida: • North County Resource Recovery Facility (NCRRF); • Residential and Commercial Recovered Materials Processing Facility; • Five Transfer Stations; • Class I Landfill; • Class III Landfill; • Biosolids Pelletization Facility; • Ferrous Processing Facility; • Woody Waste Recycling Facility; • Composting Facility; and • Household Hazardous Waste Facility. The Authority has proactively planned and implemented its current integrated solid waste management program to ensure disposal capacity through 2021. However, even in consideration of the current economic climate, the Authority anticipates continued population growth and associated new development patterns that will significantly increase demands on its solid waste system, requiring it to reevaluate and update its planning to accommodate future growth. The NCRRF, the Authority’s refuse derived fuel waste-to-energy facility, has performed very well since its start up in 1989 processing over 13 million tons of MSW, saving valuable landfill space and efficiently producing clean renewable energy. As the NCRRF has reached the end of its first 20 year operating term, it became necessary to complete a comprehensive refurbishment to ensure its continued reliable service for a second 20 year term and beyond providing for continued disposal capacity and energy production for the Authority’s customers. Separately, the Authority also recognized that the refurbishment alone will not provide any additional disposal capacity for the County. The County’s anticipated growth necessitated that the Authority evaluate several options for long-term processing and disposal capacity, resulting in a decision to expand its WTE capacity with a new mass burn facility, the first facility of its kind to be constructed in Florida in more than a decade, reaffirming its commitment to waste-to-energy. The planned 3,000 TPD expansion will provide a total disposal capacity of 5,000 TPD generating approximately 150MW of renewable energy. The decision to proceed with the expansion was approved by the Authority’s Board in October 2008. The Authority, with its Consulting Engineer, Malcolm Pirnie, Inc., has since made significant progress in the facility’s implementation including the completion of the preliminary design, submittal of environmental permit applications, ongoing procurement of a full service vendor, issuance of revenue bonds for project financing, and commencing extensive public outreach. This paper will focus on the development of the new mass burn facility and an update of the status of activities conducted to date including, permitting, financing, vendor procurement, design, and public outreach, as well as will highlight several innovative design, procurement, permitting, and financing features of this landmark project for the Authority, such as: • Utilization of SCR technology for control of NOx emission; • Incorporation of rainwater harvesting and water reuse; • Utilization of iterative procurement process designed to obtain vendor input in a competitive environment; and • Financing approach designed to preserve alternative minimum tax benefits.