Direct measurement of electrocaloric effect in lead-free Ba(SnxTi1-x)O3 ceramics

In this study, we report on investigation of the electrocaloric (EC) effect in lead-free Ba(SnxTi1-x)O3 (BSnT) ceramics with compositions in the range of 0.08 ≤ x ≤ 0.15 by the direct measurement method using a differential scanning calorimeter. The maximum EC temperature change, ΔTEC-max = 0.63 K under an electric field of 2 kV/mm, was observed for the composition with x = 0.11 at ∼44 °C around the multiphase coexistence region. We observed that the EC effect also peaks at transitions between ferroelectric phases of different symmetries. Comparison with the results of indirect EC measurements from our previous work shows that the indirect approach provides reasonable estimations of the magnitude of the largest EC temperature changes and EC strength. However, it fails to describe correctly temperature dependences of the EC effect for the compositions showing relaxor-like behaviour (x = 0.14 and 0.15) because of their non-ergodic nature. Our study provides strong evidence supporting that looking for multiphase ferroelectric materials can be very useful to optimize EC performance

Gestural control of sonic swarms: Composing with grouped sound objects

This paper outlines an alternative controller designed to diffuse and manipulate a swarm of sounds in 3- dimensional space and discusses the compositional issues that emerge from its use. The system uses an algorithm from a nature-derived model describing the spatial behavior of a swarm. The movement of the swarm is mapped in the 3- dimensional space and a series of sound transformation functions for the sonic agents are implemented. The notion of causal relationships is explored regarding the spatial movement of the swarm and sound transformation of the agents by employing the physical controller as a performance, compositional and diffusion tool

Intermediately Executed Code is the Key to Find Refactorings that Improve Temporal Data Locality

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Data integration through service-based mediation for web-enabled information systems

The Web and its underlying platform technologies have often been used to integrate existing software and information systems. Traditional techniques for data representation and transformations between documents are not sufficient to support a flexible and maintainable data integration solution that meets the requirements of modern complex Web-enabled software and information systems. The difficulty arises from the high degree of complexity of data structures, for example in business and technology applications, and from the constant change of data and its representation. In the Web context, where the Web platform is used to integrate different organisations or software systems, additionally the problem of heterogeneity arises. We introduce a specific data integration solution for Web applications such as Web-enabled information systems. Our contribution is an integration technology framework for Web-enabled information systems comprising, firstly, a data integration technique based on the declarative specification of transformation rules and the construction of connectors that handle the integration and, secondly, a mediator architecture based on information services and the constructed connectors to handle the integration process

Digital Anthropology: Projects and Platforms

pdf of website textMark Turin has agreed with the copyright holder the right to host a copy of this piece (whether audio, text or video) on University of Cambridge archives and servers.Article published 28 November, 2011. The article reports presentations given at the American Anthropological Association meeting. The article includes a review of Dr Mark Turin's presentation, entitled: 'Multimedia Archives for Anthropology of the Himalayan Region'. URL accessed week of 07/12/2011: http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2011/11/28/digital-anthropology-projects-and-platforms

Using ATL to define advanced and flexible constraint model transformations

Transforming constraint models is an important task in re- cent constraint programming systems. User-understandable models are defined during the modeling phase but rewriting or tuning them is manda- tory to get solving-efficient models. We propose a new architecture al- lowing to define bridges between any (modeling or solver) languages and to implement model optimizations. This architecture follows a model- driven approach where the constraint modeling process is seen as a set of model transformations. Among others, an interesting feature is the def- inition of transformations as concept-oriented rules, i.e. based on types of model elements where the types are organized into a hierarchy called a metamodel