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Assessment of Thermally Enhanced Geo-Energy Piles and Walls
Get PDFGeo-energy piles and walls have long been recognized as a promising way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while providing renewable energy. However, enhancing the thermal performance of these structures has remained a signif-icant challenge. This thesis evaluated five different approaches to improving the thermal performance of geo-energy piles and walls, through a series of experiments using a fully instrumented testing rig. The first approach involved adding graphTHERM powder to concrete to double its thermal conductivity, boosting heat transfer efficiency by an impressive 50% to 66%. The second approach tested slag-based geopolymer concrete as a sustainable construc-tion material for geo-energy piles and walls, reducing CO2 emissions by 44.5% while improving thermal performance by 14% to 21%. The third approach in-volved testing thermally enhanced soils at the geo-energy structures/soil inter-face, resulting in an 81% improvement in heat transfer efficiency. The fourth approach utilized innovative phase change material (PCM) heat exchangers that increased heat transfer efficiency by 75% and 43% in heating and cooling operations, respectively. Finally, incorporated PCM-impregnated light weight aggregates at the interface of the structure soil, significantly increasing tem-perature difference and reducing thermal deformation of geo-energy struc-tures.Overall, these innovative approaches made a significant contribution to enhancing the thermal performance of geo-energy piles and walls. However, approaches four and five, which involve utilizing PCM heat exchangers and PCM-impregnated LWA's, respectively, showed extra benefits in dropping the thermal effect on soils and reducing the thermal damage on those structures. These techniques offer great promise for improving the thermal performance of geo-energy structures
Touching Base: Hungarian Intelligence and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in the 1960s
Get PDFYesThis article deals with a neglected dimension of Cold War history, namely the role of minor Communist secret services in subverting cultural relations with Britain. In particular, the article examines the efforts of Hungarian State Security to penetrate a university centre in London during the 1960s. Drawing on hitherto unexplored archival material, it documents the intensive attempts made to monitor or cultivate individuals at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies — notably the historian Dr László Péter — as part of a wide-ranging and ambitious intelligence offensive on the tenth anniversary of the 1956 Revolution. Paradoxically, this heightened espionage activity took place at a time of enhanced bilateral ties. The historical records analysed here provide new insight into the duplicity of Hungary’s foreign policy, and the hypocrisy of the post-revolutionary regime’s cultural ‘opening’ to the West, during a defining decade
Hands-On Minds: Fostering Conceptual Learning through Tangible Analogue Games in Higher Education
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Early diagnosis and personalised treatment focusing on synthetic data modelling: Novel visual learning approach in healthcare
No full textYesThe early diagnosis and personalised treatment of diseases are facilitated by machine learning. The quality of data has an impact on diagnosis because medical data are usually sparse, imbalanced, and contain irrelevant attributes, resulting in suboptimal diagnosis. To address the impacts of data challenges, improve resource allocation, and achieve better health outcomes, a novel visual learning approach is proposed. This study contributes to the visual learning approach by determining whether less or more synthetic data are required to improve the quality of a dataset, such as the number of observations and features, according to the intended personalised treatment and early diagnosis. In addition, numerous visualisation experiments are conducted, including using statistical characteristics, cumulative sums, histograms, correlation matrix, root mean square error, and principal component analysis in order to visualise both original and synthetic data to address the data challenges. Real medical datasets for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, cryotherapy and immunotherapy are selected as case studies. As a benchmark and point of classification comparison in terms of such as accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity, several models are implemented such as k-Nearest Neighbours and Random Forest. To simulate algorithm implementation and data, Generative Adversarial Network is used to create and manipulate synthetic data, whilst, Random Forest is implemented to classify the data. An amendable and adaptable system is constructed by combining Generative Adversarial Network and Random Forest models. The system model presents working steps, overview and flowchart. Experiments reveal that the majority of data-enhancement scenarios allow for the application of visual learning in the first stage of data analysis as a novel approach. To achieve meaningful adaptable synergy between appropriate quality data and optimal classification performance while maintaining statistical characteristics, visual learning provides researchers and practitioners with practical human-in-the-loop machine learning visualisation tools. Prior to implementing algorithms, the visual learning approach can be used to actualise early, and personalised diagnosis. For the immunotherapy data, the Random Forest performed best with precision, recall, f-measure, accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of 81%, 82%, 81%, 88%, 95%, and 60%, as opposed to 91%, 96%, 93%, 93%, 96%, and 73% for synthetic data, respectively. Future studies might examine the optimal strategies to balance the quantity and quality of medical data
A Focus on Data Challenges, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Experiments, Big Data, Visual Learning and Computational Health
No full textEarly diagnosis and personalised treatment are emerging in health, due to machine learning and deep learning playing a vital role in the treatment of cancer, infections and immunotherapies. However, immunotherapy faces obstacles as medical data are typically small, imbalanced and contain irrelevant features, resulting in suboptimal classification performance. Therefore, the following contributions are proposed, addressing the data challenges. A comprehensive immunotherapy literature review is presented to uncover gaps in published studies by exploring application domains, datasets, algorithms and software tools. Studies on imbalanced immunotherapy datasets are reproduced to identify gaps in applications. Novel personalised experiments are conducted based on converting original data to artificially big data, to consider the impact on classification evaluating simulations of observations and features, manual classification, visualisations and correlations. Random Forest and Generative Adversarial Network are mainly used for classification and synthetic data generation, respectively, because of their better performance. A visual learning approach is proposed considering data, algorithm and human levels to improve the quality of a dataset relative to the expected classification performance. Numerous experiments including statistical features,
cumulative sums, histograms, correlation matrix, mean squared error and principal component analysis are performed comparing visualisations of original and synthetic data. An adaptable synergy between data quality and classification performance is obtained while preserving statistical characteristics. For original and synthetic immunotherapy data, the Random Forest performs best with precision, recall, f-measure, accuracy, sensitivity and specificity
ACE2/ANG-(1-7)/Mas receptor axis activation prevents inflammation and improves cognitive functions in streptozotocin induced rat model of Alzheimer's disease-like phenotypes.
No full textNoActivation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS), by Angiotensin converting enzyme/Angiotensin II/Angiotensin receptor-1 (ACE/Ang II/AT1 R) axis elicits amyloid deposition and cognitive impairment. Furthermore, ACE2 induced release of Ang-(1-7) binds with the Mas receptor and autoinhibits ACE/Ang II/AT1 axis activation. Inhibition of ACE by perindopril has been reported to improve memory in preclinical settings. However, the functional significance and mechanism by which ACE2/Mas receptor regulate cognitive functions and amyloid pathology is not known. The present study is aimed to determine the role of ACE2/Ang-(1-7)/Mas receptor axis in STZ induced rat model of Alzheimer's disease (AD). We have used pharmacological, biochemical and behavioural approaches to identify the role of ACE2/Ang-(1-7)/Mas receptor axis activation on AD-like pathology in both in vitro and invivo models. STZ treatment enhances ROS formation, inflammation markers and NFκB/p65 levels which are associated with reduced ACE2/Mas receptor levels, acetylcholine activity and mitochondrial membrane potential in N2A cells. DIZE mediated ACE2/Ang-(1-7)/Mas receptor axis activation resulted in reduced ROS generation, astrogliosis, NFκB level and inflammatory molecules and improved mitochondrial functions along with Ca2+ influx in STZ treated N2A cells. Interestingly, DIZE induced activation of ACE2/Mas receptor significantly restored acetylcholine levels and reduced amyloid-beta and phospho-tau deposition in cortex and hippocampus that resulted in improved cognitive function in STZ induced rat model of AD-like phenotypes. Our data indicate that ACE2/Mas receptor activation is sufficient to prevented cognitive impairment and progression of amyloid pathology in STZ induced rat model of AD-like phenotypes. These findings suggest the potential role of ACE2/Ang-(1-7)/Mas axis in AD pathophysiology by regulating inflammation cognitive functions.Department of Biotechnology (DBT-BT/PR27480/MED/122/138/2018
Mechanical Properties and Durability of Sustainable UHPC Using Industrial Waste Residues and Sea/Manufactured Sand
No full textYesConsidering the continuous development of sustainable development, energy saving, and emission reduction concepts, it is very important to reduce concrete's cement content in order to improve its environmental impact. Using a reactive admixture to replace part of the cement in ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) can effectively improve the overall performance of the concrete and reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which is an important aspect of environmental protection. Here, industrial waste residue (fly ash and slag), sea sand (SS), and manufactured sand (MS) were used to produce UHPC under standard curing conditions to reduce the material cost and make it more environmentally friendly and sustainable. The effects of water-binder ratio, contents of cementitious materials, types of sands, and content of steel fibers on the mechanical performance of UHPC under standard curing were investigated experimentally. In addition, evaluations of the impermeability, chloride, and freeze-thaw resistance of various UHPCs produced were conducted by investigating the effects of various factors on the depth under hydraulic pressure and electric flux of UHPC, as well as the mass loss, relative dynamic modulus of elasticity, flexural strength, and compressive strength of UHPC specimens after freeze-thaw cycles. The obtained experimental results show that the SS-UHPC and MS-UHPC prepared by standard curing exhibit high strength, excellent impermeability, and chloride resistance. The frost-resistant grade of all groups of UHPCs prepared by standard curing was greater than F500 and had excellent freeze-thaw resistance, including those produced with local tap water or artificial seawater. The investigation presented in this paper could contribute to the production of new low-cost and environmentally friendly UHPCs and accelerate the application of UHPC in engineering structures
Experimental investigation into the effects of voids on the response of buried flexible pipes subjected to incrementally increasing cyclic loading
Get PDFYesIn this study, large-scale fully instrumented laboratory tests were conducted to investigate the behaviour of buried flexible high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipes, in sand beds with and without voids subjected to incrementally increasing cyclic loading. Voids with a predetermined size were created at one side of the springlines of the pipes, which were buried at variable depths, H, of 1.5, 2.0 and 2.5 times the diameter of the pipe, D. Results showed that increasing the pipe burial depth, H/D, contributed to decreasing the settlement of the footing, deformation of the pipe crown and invert, lateral displacement of the spring-line, and the stress and strain generated along the pipe crown and invert. Void presence led to a significant increase in the footing
settlement, which ranged from 3 % up to 18 %, according to H/D. Furthermore, void presence led to a sharp increase in the crown, invert, and spring-line settlements, which ranged from 34 % to 52 %, 10 %–12.5 %, and 13 %–38 %, respectively. Increasing pipe burial depth was found to be highly effective in protecting buried pipes,
minimising inevitable consequences of the presence of voids. However, this was combined with an increase in the pressure at the pipe spring-line that led to a positive horizontal support at the pipe’s spring-lines resulting in reducing pipe deformation
Overview of tailoring cementitious composites with various nanomaterials
No full textNoIncorporating nanomaterials brings great changes in tailoring the nano-/micro-/macroscale structures of bulk cement paste phase and interfacial transition zone in the cementitious composites through the nano-core effect, thus achieving stronger, more durable, and smart/multi-functional cementitious composites. Owing to the nano-modification of cement paste in combination with the supplement of nanoscale continuity for multiscale raw materials of cementitious composites, nanomaterials gradually show the potential to become the indispensable seventh component of cementitious composites besides cement, water, fine aggregates, coarse aggregates, chemical additives, and mineral additives. Therefore tailoring cementitious composites with nanomaterials provides a promising approach to develop the new generation of cementitious composites (e.g., ultra-high performance, smart/multi-functional, and resilient) and sustainable infrastructures. This chapter aims to provide a systematic overview of tailoring cementitious composites with various types of nanomaterials. It initially covers the principle of tailoring cementitious composites with nanomaterials and dispersion of nanomaterials in cementitious composites. It then presents the properties of cementitious composites with 0D, 1D, and 2D nanomaterials, namely, hydration, rheology, workability, durability, functional, and mechanical properties. It also highlights various applications of cementitious composites with nanomaterials, including structural health monitoring, traffic detection, and pollutant purification. This chapter concludes by presenting the future prospects of cementitious composites with nanomaterials
Bank Crisis Management and Resolution Legal Regimes In India And The European Union
No full textNoThe paper contains a critical review of the bank crisis management and resolution legal regimes in India and the European Union (EU). The purpose of the review is to use the EU framework as a case study to infer lessons that India could use as it moves to up date its own legal framework in this area. EU was selected because it adopted extensive reforms in its bank crisis management and resolution legal regimes following the global financial crisis (GFC) and the sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone during 2008-12. The two crises resulted insignificant bank failures in EU and caused massive public interventions and costly bank bailouts. The post-crisis EU framework aims to create a special resolution regime for banks in order to improve the process of managing bank failures, while ensuring the avoidance of publicly funded bank bailouts, especially for systemically important banks (SIBs). The EU framework also incorporates the proposals of international standards setters especially of Financial Stability Board (FSB) for the resolution of banks. The EU experience from the implementation of the reforms could be useful to India, which has recently embarked on efforts to update its own legal framework for bank resolution. India is moving in this direction at a slower pace than EU due to the fact that India did not suffer significant bank failures during the GFC. The paper reviews critically the Indian and EU approaches to bank resolution and makes recommendations for improving these frameworks