In the emerging field of organic bioelectronics, conducting polymers and ion-selective membranes are combined to form resistors, diodes, transistors, and circuits that transport and process both electronic and ionic signals. Such bioelectronics concepts have been explored in delivery devices that translate electronic addressing signals into the transport and dispensing of small charged biomolecules at high specificity and spatiotemporal resolution. Manufacturing such "iontronic" devices generally involves classical thin film processing of polyelectrolyte layers and insulators followed by application of electrolytes. This approach makes miniaturization and integration difficult, simply because the ion selective polyelectrolytes swell after completing the manufacturing. To advance such bioelectronics/iontronics and to enable applications where relatively larger molecules can be delivered, it is important to develop a versatile material system in which the charge/size selectivity can be easily tailormade at the same time enabling easy manufacturing of complex and miniaturized structures. Here, we report a one-pot synthesis approach with minimal amount of organic solvent to achieve cationic hyperbranched polyglycerol films for iontronics applications. The hyperbranched structure allows for tunable pre multi-functionalization, which combines available unsaturated groups used in crosslinking along with ionic groups for electrolytic properties, to achieve a one-step process when applied in devices for monolithic membrane gel formation with selective electrophoretic transport of molecules.
Free space optics is an interesting alternative for telemetry with medical implants, due to the high data bandwidths available at optical frequencies. Especially implanted brain-computer interfaces gives rise to large data sets that needs to be transmitted transcutaneous. In this paper we show that it is possible to establish such a link at near-IR wavelengths using a modulated reflector in the implant, thus keeping the laser and the detector on the outside. In addition, we show that it will not only work on short, i.e. touch, distances but also at larger distances, in the range of a meter. We have used an electro absorption modulator to modulate the reflection of an external laser source back towards an external detector. The only part of this system that needs to be implanted is the modulator and drive electronics. The study has been done both by Monte-Carlo simulations of a multi-layer model of a rat skull, and with an experiment demonstrating the feasibility of the link when transmitted through biological tissue. The results show that it is possible to establish a transcutaneous link with an external laser source and light detector, and an internal modulated reflector.
Sweden has an ambitious plan to fully decarbonise district heating by 2030 and to contribute with negative emissions of greenhouse gases in 2050. The vagaries of the energy market associated with climate, political, and social changes entail cross-sectoral integration that can fulfill these national targets. Fifth-generation district heating and cooling (5GDHC) is a relatively new concept of district energy systems that features a simultaneous supply of heating and cooling using power-to-heat technologies. This paper presents best practices for developing 5GDHC systems in Sweden to reach a consensus view on these systems among all stakeholders. A mixed-method combining best practice and roadmapping workshops has been used to disseminate mixed knowledge and experience from middle agents representing industry professionals and practitioners. Four successful implementations of 5GDHC systems are demonstrated and the important learned lessons are shared. The best practices are outlined for system planning, system modeling and simulation, prevailing business models for energy communities, and system monitoring. A roadmap from the middle agents’ point of view is composed and can be utilised to establish industry standards and common regulatory frameworks. © 2023 The Author(s)
The degradation of three- and four-ring polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Kirk medium by Anthracophyllum discolor, a white-rot fungus isolated from the forest of southern Chile, was evaluated. In addition, the removal efficiency of three-, four- and five-ring PAHs in contaminated soil bioaugmented with A. discolor in the absence and presence of indigenous soil microorganisms was investigated. Production of lignin-degrading enzymes and PAH mineralization in the soil were also determined. A. discolor was able to degrade PAHs in Kirk medium with the highest removal occurring in a PAH mixture, suggesting synergistic effects between PAHs or possible cometabolism. A high removal capability for phenanthrene (62%), anthracene (73%), fluoranthene (54%), pyrene (60%) and benzo(a)pyrene (75%) was observed in autoclaved soil inoculated with A. discolor in the absence of indigenous microorganisms, associated with the production of manganese peroxidase (MnP). The metabolites found in the PAH degradation were anthraquinone, phthalic acid, 4-hydroxy-9-fluorenone, 9-fluorenone and 4,5-dihydropyrene. A. discolor was able to mineralize 9% of the phenanthrene. In non-autoclaved soil, the inoculation with A. discolor did not improve the removal efficiency of PAHs. Suitable conditions must be found to promote a successful fungal bioaugmentation in non-autoclaved soils. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.
Manganese peroxidase (MnP) produced by Anthracophyllum discolor, a Chilean white rot fungus, was immobilized on nanoclay obtained from volcanic soil and its ability to degrade polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) compared with the free enzyme was evaluated. At the same time, nanoclay characterization was performed.Nanoclay characterization by transmission electronic microscopy showed a particle average size smaller than 100nm. The isoelectric points (IEP) of nanoclay and MnP from A. discolor were 7.0 and 3.7, respectively, as determined by micro electrophoresis migration and preparative isoelectric focusing. Results indicated that 75% of the enzyme was immobilized on the nanoclay through physical adsorption. As compared to the free enzyme, immobilized MnP from A. discolor achieved an improved stability to temperature and pH. The activation energy (Ea) value for immobilized MnP (51.9kJmol -1) was higher than that of the free MnP (34.4kJmol -1).The immobilized enzyme was able to degrade pyrene (>86%), anthracene (>65%), alone or in mixture, and to a less extent fluoranthene (<15.2%) and phenanthrene (<8.6%). Compared to free MnP from A. discolor, the enzyme immobilized on nanoclay enhanced the enzymatic transformation of anthracene in soil.Overall results indicate that nanoclay, a carrier of natural origin, is a suitable support material for MnP immobilization. In addition, immobilized MnP shows an increased stability to high temperature, pH and time storage, as well as an enhanced PAHs degradation efficiency in soil. All these characteristics may suggest the possible use of nanoclay-immobilized MnP from A. discolor as a valuable option for in situ bioremediation purposes. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.
In this study, different growth conditions of Anthracophyllum discolor Sp4 including the effect of agitation, additions of lignocellulosic support, inducer and surfactant were evaluated on the MnP production in Kirk medium using a culture system made up of the tubes containing the glass bead. The highest MnP production (1,354 U/L on day 13) was obtained when the medium was supplemented with wheat grain and 0.25 mM MnSO 4 as inducer, under static conditions at 30°C. Two isoenzymes were purified (35 and 38 kDa respectively). MnP presented a maximal activity in the pH range between 4.5 and 5.5, a relatively high temperature tolerance (50°C) and a high catalytic activity for 2,6-dimethoxyphenol and hydrogen peroxide.
Dissolution of cellulose from various sources (microcrystalline cellulose and different dissolving grade pulp fibers) is investigated in solvent systems based on triethyl(n-octyl)ammonium chloride (N2228Cl). Clear cellulose solutions are obtained with N2228Cl in a variety of solvents, e.g., dimethyl sulfoxide, N,N-dimethylacetamide, and acetone. It is possible to prepare clear cellulose solutions from pulp fibers with concentrations up to 15 wt%. However, it is found that the cellulose is degraded, especially when neat (i.e., molten) N2228Cl is used as a solvent. The present work includes comprehensive rheological characterization of the cellulose solutions, both with shear and extensional rheology. In most cases, the viscosity values are low (complex viscosities below 100 Pa s for 5–10 wt% dissolved cellulose), and the solutions show more Newtonian than viscoelastic behavior.
The homogeneous acetylation of microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) by acetyl chloride and acetic anhydride in triethyl(n-octyl)ammonium chloride (N2228Cl)/molecular solvents (MSs) is investigated. The reaction with both acylating agents shows the expected increase of the degree of substitution (DS) on reaction temperature and time. Under comparable reaction conditions, however, DS is surprisingly little dependent on the MS employed, although the MSs differ in empirical polarity by 7 kcal molâ1 as calculated by use of solvatochromic probes. The empirical polarities of (MCC + N2228Cl + MS) differ only by 0.8 kcal molâ1. The formation a polar electrolyte sheath around cellulose chains presumably contributes to this âleveling-offâ of the dependence DS on the polarity of the parent MS employed. N2228Cl recovery and recycling is feasible. © 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
The reactivity ratios r1 (EO) and r2 (PO) for the copolymerization of ethylene oxide (EO) and propylene oxide (PO) have been determined. The reactions were carried out in dry dimethyl formamide at 90°C using the potassium salt of ethylene glycol as initiator. The polymer composition at different EO/PO ratios in the feed was determined by 1H-NMR. Using the Fineman-Ross method to calculate reactivity ratios from the values of polymer composition, rl- and r2-values of 1.8 and 0.3, respectively, were obtained.
Peer instruction is a method for activating students during lectures, which has gained a considerable amount of attention in higher education due to claims of dramatic improvement in learning gains. The purpose of this qualitative research study is to investigate what types of discussions engineering students engage in during a peer instruction session and what learning possibilities that are enabled by these different types of discussions. We observed twelve students during six separate and simulated peer instruction sessions and the students were interviewed individually after the sessions.Ananalysis of the data revealed that the students engaged in three qualitatively different types of discussions: affirmative discussions, motivating discussions, and argumentative discussions. We characterize these different types of discussions in terms of the number of alternative answers the students discuss, the extent to which they draw on prior knowledge and experiences, as well as the fundamental difference between an explanation and an argument. A good opportunity for learning is opened up when students are aspiring to find the truth, not simply being satisfied with what they believe to be true. We conclude that students do not always engage in discussions that support their learning in the best way, and we discuss implications for using peer instruction as a teaching method.
Background: Lignocellulosic substrates and pulping process streams are of increasing relevance to biorefineries for second generation biofuels and biochemical production. They are known to be rich in sugars and inhibitors such as phenolic compounds, organic acids and furaldehydes. Phenolic compounds are a group of aromatic compounds known to be inhibitory to fermentative organisms. It is known that inhibition of Sacchromyces cerevisiae varies among phenolic compounds and the yeast is capable of in situ catabolic conversion and metabolism of some phenolic compounds. In an approach to engineer a S. cerevisiae strain with higher tolerance to phenolic inhibitors, we selectively investigated the metabolic conversion and physiological effects of coniferyl aldehyde, ferulic acid, and p-coumaric acid in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Aerobic batch cultivations were separately performed with each of the three phenolic compounds. Conversion of each of the phenolic compounds was observed on time-based qualitative analysis of the culture broth to monitor various intermediate and final metabolites. Result: Coniferyl aldehyde was rapidly converted within the first 24 h, while ferulic acid and p-coumaric acid were more slowly converted over a period of 72 h. The conversion of the three phenolic compounds was observed to involved several transient intermediates that were concurrently formed and converted to other phenolic products. Although there were several conversion products formed from coniferyl aldehyde, ferulic acid and p-coumaric acid, the conversion products profile from the three compounds were similar. On the physiology of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the maximum specific growth rates of the yeast was not affected in the presence of coniferyl aldehyde or ferulic acid, but it was significantly reduced in the presence of p-coumaric acid. The biomass yields on glucose were reduced to 73 and 54 % of the control in the presence of coniferyl aldehyde and ferulic acid, respectively, biomass yield increased to 127 % of the control in the presence of p-coumaric acid. Coniferyl aldehyde, ferulic acid and p-coumaric acid and their conversion products were screened for inhibition, the conversion products were less inhibitory than coniferyl aldehyde, ferulic acid and p-coumaric acid, indicating that the conversion of the three compounds by Saccharomyces cerevisiae was also a detoxification process. Conclusion: We conclude that the conversion of coniferyl aldehyde, ferulic acid and p-coumaric acid into less inhibitory compounds is a form of stress response and a detoxification process. We hypothesize that all phenolic compounds are converted by Saccharomyces cerevisiae using the same metabolic process. We suggest that the enhancement of the ability of S. cerevisiae to convert toxic phenolic compounds into less inhibitory compounds is a potent route to developing a S. cerevisiae with superior tolerance to phenolic compounds.
IEEE konferens och IFIP 10:4 huvudkonferens, San Francisco
Building open-domain conversational systems (or chatbots) that produce convincing responses is a recognized challenge. Recent state-of-the-art (SoTA) transformer-based models for the generation of natural language dialogue have demonstrated impressive performance in simulating human-like, single-turn conversations in English.This work investigates, by an empirical study, the potential for transfer learning of such models to Swedish language. DialoGPT, an English language pre-trained model, is adapted by training on three different Swedish language conversational datasets obtained from publicly available sources: Reddit, Familjeliv and the GDC. Perplexity score (an automated intrinsic metric) and surveys by human evaluation were used to assess the performances of the fine-tuned models. We also compare the DialoGPT experiments with an attention-mechanism-based seq2seq baseline model, trained on the GDC dataset. The results indicate that the capacity for transfer learning can be exploited with considerable success. Human evaluators asked to score the simulated dialogues judged over 57% of the chatbot responses to be human-like for the model trained on the largest (Swedish) dataset. The work agrees with the hypothesis that deep monolingual models learn some abstractions which generalize across languages. We contribute the codes, datasets and model checkpoints and host the demos on the HuggingFace platform.
Conducting polyaniline (Pani) was prepared in the presence of methane sulfonic acid (MeSA) as dopant by chemical oxidative polymerization. The Pani–MeSA polymer was characterized by FT-IR, UV–vis, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and impedance spectroscopy. The polymer was dispersed in polyvinylacetate and coated on carbon steel samples by a dipping method. The electrochemical behavior and anticorrosion properties of the coating on carbon steel in 3% NaCl were investigated using open-circuit potential (OCP) versus time of exposure, and electrochemical techniques including electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), potentiodynamic polarization and cyclic voltammetry (CV). During initial exposure, the OCP dropped about 0.35 V and the interfacial resistance increased several times, indicating a certain reduction of the polymer and oxidation of the steel surface. Later the OCP shifted to the noble direction and remained at a stable value during the exposure up to 60 days. The EIS monitoring also revealed the initial change and later stabilization of the coating. The stable high OCP and low coating impedance suggest that the conducting polymer maintains its oxidative state and provides corrosion protection for carbon steel throughout the investigated period. The polarization curves and CV show that the conducting polymer coating induces a passive-like behavior and greatly reduces the corrosion of carbon steel.
Conducting polypyrrole electrodes were prepared by electrochemical polymerization of pyrrole on vacuum-metallized glass substrates. These electrodes were modified by doping with a range of metal halides as dopant ions having different electronegativity. Electrochemical reduction of nitrobenzene using these electrodes was studied by means of cyclic voltammetry technique in acetonitrile medium containing aqueous HClO4 (0.1M) as supporting electrolyte. It was found that the electronegativity of the dopant ion played a very important role in the electrocatalytic activity. Polypyrrole doped with nickel chloride gave the highest anodic current at the reduction potential of nitrobenzene. The results were explained on the basis of charge transfer efficiency at the electrode-electrolyte interface, which was associated with the acceptor state created by the dopant in the semi-conducting polymer.
Three-dimensional interactive audio has a variety ofpotential uses in human-machine interfaces. After lagging seriously behind the visual components, the importance of sound is now becoming increas-ingly accepted. This paper mainly discusses background and techniques to implement three-dimensional audio in computer interfaces. A case study of a system for three-dimensional audio, implemented by the author, is described in great detail. The audio system was moreover integrated with a virtual reality system and conclusions on user tests and use of the audio system is presented along with proposals for future work at the end of the paper. The thesis begins with a definition of three-dimensional audio and a survey on the human auditory system to give the reader the needed knowledge of what three-dimensional audio is and how human auditory perception works.
En jämförelse av slag- och klingaggregat vid maskinell röjning visar att klingaggregatet är säkrast mot olycksfall, vilket är speciellt viktigt om maskinell och motormanuell röjning sker samtidigt. Klingaggregatet har lika hög prestanda och ger ett godtagbart resultat ur ekologisk synpunkt.
Denna slutrapport utgör en sammanfattning och dokumentation av Projekt Förädling. Projektet har genomförts av ledningsgruppen för företagen AB CF Berg & Co samt OLAB Timber med stöd av Trätek. Resultatet av Projekt Förädling visar att de undersökta kunderna ställer definierade och preciserade kvalitetskrav både på produktens kärnegenskaper, men även på de lösningar och tjänster som är kopplade till produkten, affären och/eller leveransen. Det kan gälla gemensam produktutveckling eller andra lösningar som effektiviserar och utvecklar ett närmare samarbete mellan kund och leverantör.
Denna rapport beskriver ett delresultat från projektet "Samverkan och affärsutveckling i träkedjan" (SAIT). Rapporten redovisar genomförande och resultat från genomförd verksamhetsdefinition och -diagnos på ett sågverk och några av deras kunder och leverantörer i ett nätverk. Rapporten redovisar också hur denna typ av arbete kan användas som underlag vid verksamhetsutveckling samt hur resultatet kan användas för att spegla sågverkets situation i ett antal utvalda och väl kända teoribildningar (nätverk, imaginära organisationer, koordination, informationssystem, processer, planering och affärslogik). Syftet med denna spegling är att undersöka teoriernas tillämpbarhet i detta sammanhang samt att bättre förstå sågverkets position i nätverket samt dess pågående förändringsprocess. I rapporten diskuteras också den forskningsansats vi tillämpat, kunskaps- och förändringsbehov i studerad träkedja samt några områden för framtida forskning.
The mechanical reliability and aesthetic appearance of ceramic dental prostheses are strongly influenced by the presence of defects. When several processes are used during fabrication of ceramic dental prostheses, additional defects are unavoidably introduced in each process step; these are in addition to the ones that already exist in raw materials. To avoid the degeneration of material performance by the accumulated defect population, process optimization is needed to minimize the defects introduced. Standardized mechanical evaluations are usually performed on samples with carefully prepared surfaces in order to minimize the influence from the defects usually induced by fabrication processes. The results from such mechanical evaluation indicate the strength level that is achievable by the material with the given population of bulk defects. In order to avoid a reduction in the performance of the ceramic material by the additional defects normally induced by the fabrication process, it must be understood how these defects are introduced, and solutions must be found to reduce their size and frequency through modifications of the material and processes. The aim of this chapter is to elucidate the sources of defects that are common for ceramic dental prostheses and to determine how to minimize them.
A suspension of zirconia powder (TZ3YSE) with a solids loading of 50. vol% was prepared by ball milling. Binders were added and some of the suspension was diluted to 40, 30 and 20. vol% before freeze granulation was performed. A spray dried material (TZ3YSEB) was used as a reference. The pore size distribution of the different granules was evaluated and from the microstructure it was shown that inhomogeneities were present in both the freeze granulated as well as in the spray dried granules. In addition, the density, microstructure as well as the strength of sintered materials prepared from the granules were studied. The results showed that a high green density or sintered density was not sufficient in order to achieve a high strength material. It was further shown that the strength was significantly influenced by the granule density and not by the inhomogeneities found in the granules.
Through the confinement of gas in nanoporous materials, it is possible to significantly increase the path length for light–gas interaction. This enables the observation of much stronger absorption features for the confined gas molecules. In this work, we systematically characterized a variety of disordered strongly scattering ZrO2 and Al2O3 nanoporous ceramic materials to exploit the potential of gas in scattering media absorption spectroscopy. As a result, we identified a material with an unprecedented performance in terms of optical path length enhancement. In ZrO2 with thicknesses above 6 mm, the path enhancement exceeds 1000. The results obtained with near-infrared absorption spectroscopy on oxygen were validated by time-of-flight measurements at 700 nm, thus demonstrating their robustness. Finally, we report quantitative oxygen concentration measurement using nanoporous materials as miniaturized random-scattering multipass cell with an extremely simple and low-cost setup.