Enhancing the environmental sustainability of IT

Emerging technologies for learning report - Article exploring green I

Self-cleaning Properties of Thin Printed Layers of Titanium Dioxide

Tenké vrstvy oxidu titaničitého byly imobilizovány na sodnovápenatá skla a skelný uhlík použitím jak techniky materiálového tisku tak metodou chemického napařování. Pro přípravu titaničitých solů byly použity metody sol-gelu a nebo hydrotermální syntézy. Struktura připravených vrstev byla zkoumána rastrovací elektronovou mikroskopií a mikroskopií atomárních sil. Krystalická struktura připravených TiO2 byla analyzovány pomocí XRD metody. Fotoindukováná superhidrofility pripravených vzorků byla charakterizována měřením kontaktních úhlů. Fotokatalytická aktivity připravených vzorků byla testována na fotokatalytické oxidaci 2,6-dichlorindofenolu a kyseliny mravenčí. V případě sol-gel vrstev byl zkoumán vliv množství naneseného TiO2 a množství PEG, který byl do solu přidán jako praskliny potlačující činidlo. V případě hydrotermálních vrstev byl zkoumán vliv času a teploty syntézy a množství vrstev na výslednou účinnost vzorku. U chemicky napařených vzorků byl zjišťován vliv intenzity záření. Byla porovnána fotokatalitická aktivita vrstev připravených materiálovým tiskem a chemickým napařováním a byl vyhodnocen nejaktivnější vzorek.Titanium dioxide was immobilized on soda-lime glass substrates and glassy carbon substrates by two techniques: material printing and chemical vapour deposition. Two methods of sol preparation were used; sol-gel and hydrothermal synthesis. Morphology of all prepared titania layers were studied by scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy analysis. Crystallite phase of prepared TiO2 was determined using XRD analysis. Photoinduced superhydrophilicity was examined using the sessile drop method. Photocatalytic activity was investigated as a degradation rate of 2,6-dichloroindophenol or formic acid. We studied the influence of sol-loading and amount of PEG on final activity in case of sol-gel process. PEG was added as an anticracking agent. The influence of time and temperature of hydrothermal synthesis or amount of layers on final efficiency was examined for hydrothermally synthesized samples. The influence of different intensities of irradiation was investigated for the layers deposited by CVD process. The activity of titania thin films prepared by material printing and CVD process was compared and the best sample was evaluated.

The Economic Impacts of Government Financing of the 2010 FIFA World Cup

This paper presents estimates of the economic impacts of financing the hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup by the government of South Africa. Ex ante analysis using a fiscal social accounting matrix model indicates that hosting of the event impacts positively on gross domestic product and imports. The positive impact on imports will, inter alia, lead to deterioration in the current account deficit for a given amount of exports. Owners of capital benefit more than owners of labour as a result of 2010 FIFA World Cup expenditures by the government. Middle-income Black households are the largest winners, followed by high-income Whites. Asians experience the least gain. These outcomes are explained by the initial factor endowments and their sectoral allocation in the social accounting matrix. Government revenue goes up in response to the demand injection, and a large proportion of it accrues to central government and local government respectively.2010 FIFA World Cup, Economic Impact, SAM Modelling, Legacy, South Africa

What are the economic consequences of the migration and remittances for the Ukraine?

Background: Economic integration activities in modern globalized world increasingly involve international movements of labor. Inthe case of the Ukraine, the country is one of the top ten donors of the labor force, where both, temporary and permanent migrant workers account for about 10% of the Ukraine’s total population. Considering that remittances received in Ukraine from its migrants workers are estimated to be about 4% of the Gross Domestic Product, there are grounds to claim that high flow of labor and workers remittance flows have been influencing the country's economic development in resent years. Purpose: The purposeof this paper is to analyze the impact of migration and remittances, and examine their consequences on the Ukraine's economy. Practical Approach: Different forms of secondary empirical material of both qualitative and quantitative character have been used. Furthermore, to complement the analysis, a survey among Ukrainian migrants working in Portugal has been conducted. Results: Ithas been determined that labor migration and remittances haveadual effect on the Ukraine'seconomy.First, remittances do have a strong short -term boost to domestic demand that positively affected GDP growth in recent years. Second, however, is that large financial inflows do not contribute to the business sector but instead generate dependence on remittances as they are a source of a supplemental income for many thousands of Ukrainian households; moreover,strong migration trends do not seem to generate more opportunities for those remaining in the Ukraine.Contexto: As actividades de integração económica domundo globalizado moderno implicam cada vez mais deslocações internacionais de trabalhadores. No caso da Ucrânia, o país é um dos 10 maiores a enviarforça laboral para o exterior, onde tanto os trabalhadores emigrantes temporários, como os permanentes representam cerca de10% do total da população ucraniana. Tendo em consideração as remessas recebidas na Ucrânia, oriundas dos seus trabalhadores emigrantes e estimadasem cerca de 4% do Produto Interno Bruto, existe fundamento para preconizar que o elevado fluxo de trabalho e remessas de trabalhadores têm influenciado o desenvolvimento da economia do país nos últimos anos. Objectivo: O objetivodeste relatório é analisar o impacto da emigração e o das respetivas remessas e examinar as suas consequências na economia da Ucrânia. Metodologia: Foram utilizadas diferentes formas de materialempírico secundáriode características tanto quantitativas como qualitativas. Além disso, para complementar a análise, foi realizado um estudo entre emigrantes ucranianos a trabalhar actualmente em Portugal. Resultados: Determinou-se que a migração laboral e as remissas desencadeiamum efeito duplo na economia ucraniana. Numa primeira instância, as remissas potenciam fortemente o poder de compra doméstico a curto prazo, o que afectou positivamente o crescimento de PIB nos últimos anos. No entanto, numa segunda fase encontram -se os vastos fluxos financeiros internos que não contribuem para o sector de negócios, mas que, em vez disso , provocam dependências das remissas como uma fonte de rendimento suplementar para muitos milhares de lares ucranianos; mais ainda, as fortes tendências migratórias não parecem proporcionar mais oportunidades para os que permanecem na Ucrânia

Disseny i construcció d'una sonda atmosfèrica

The project consists of the construction of a functional meteorological probe, controlled by an Arduino microcontroller. This probe was design to measure pressure and temperature as functions of the altitude. This device is the first of its kind built at the EETAC, thus a considerable effort of requirement definition has been done. In the present report we describe how all the probesystems were designed, and all the necessary components as well as the reason why they were chosen are described. The resulting design is modular in order to facilitate future improvements/expansions.The steps necessary for the assembly of all the components in a common structure are detailed, as well as the choice of tools and materials. All the systems developed were tested simulating conditions similar to those expected in the real mission.Finally, after the construction and validation processes, all the materials and the tasks needed to launch the probe up to at an altitude of 35 km are detailed.The present report is intended to serve as a guide for futuresimilar projects in EETAC. The resulting device from this work is named FourCast after our surnames

Space station automation of common module power management and distribution

The purpose is to automate a breadboard level Power Management and Distribution (PMAD) system which possesses many functional characteristics of a specified Space Station power system. The automation system was built upon 20 kHz ac source with redundancy of the power buses. There are two power distribution control units which furnish power to six load centers which in turn enable load circuits based upon a system generated schedule. The progress in building this specified autonomous system is described. Automation of Space Station Module PMAD was accomplished by segmenting the complete task in the following four independent tasks: (1) develop a detailed approach for PMAD automation; (2) define the software and hardware elements of automation; (3) develop the automation system for the PMAD breadboard; and (4) select an appropriate host processing environment

Proxy-based Mobile Computing Infrastructure

In recent years, there has been a huge growth in mobile applications. More mobile users are able to access Internet services via their mobile devices e.g., smartphones ans tablets. Some of these applications are highly interactive and resource intensive. Mobile applications, with limited storage capacity, slow processors and limited battery life, could be connected to the remote servers in clouds for leveraging resources. For example, weather applications use a remote service that collects weather data and make this data available through a well-defined API. This represents a static partitioning of functionality between mobile devices and a remote server that is determined at run-time. Regardless of the network distance between the cloud infrastructure and the mobile device, the use of a remote service is well suited for mobile device applications with relatively little data to be transferred. However, long distances between a mobile device and remote services makes this approach unsuitable for applications that require larger amounts of data to be transferred and/or have a high level of interactiveness with the user. This includes mobile video communications (e.g., Skype, Face-Time, Google-Hangout), gaming applications that require sophisticated rendering and cloud media analysis that can be used to offer more personalized services. The latency incurred with this architecture makes it difficult to support real-time and interactive applications. A related problem is that the static partitioning strategy is not always suitable for all network conditions and inputs. For example, let us consider a speech recognition application. The performance depends on the size of the input and the type of connectivity to the backbone. Another challenge is that the communication medium between the mobile application and the remote service includes wireless links. Wireless links are more error prone and have less bandwidth than wired links. Often a mobile application may be disconnected. One approach to addressing these challenges is the use of a proxy. A proxy is computing power that is located at the network edge. This allows it to address problems with latency. It is possible for a proxy to have services that allow for offloading tasks from either the cloud or the mobile device and to deal with communication challenges between the mobile application and the mobile device. This work proposes a proxy-based system that acts as a middleware between the mobile application and the remote service. The proposed middleware consists of a set of proxies that provide services. The proposed middleware includes services for proxy discovery and selection, mechanisms for dealing with balancing loads on proxies and handoff. A prototype was developed to assess the effectiveness of the proposed proxy-based system

Performance Evaluation of a Resource Discovery Service

In a pervasive computing environment, the number and variety of resources (services, devices, and contextual information resources) make it necessary for applications to accurately discover the best ones quickly. Thus a resource-discovery service, which locates specific resources and establishes network connections as better resources become available, is necessary for those applications. The performance of the resource-discovery service is important when the applications are in a dynamic and mobile environment. In this thesis, however, we do not focus on the resource- discovery technology itself, but the evaluation of the scalability and mobility of the resource discovery module in Solar, a context fusion middleware. Solar has a naming service that provides resource discovery, since the resource names encode static and dynamic attributes. The results of our experiments show that Solar\u27s resource discovery performed generally well in a typical dynamic environment, although Solar can not be scaled as well as it should. And we identify the implementation issues related to that problem. We also discuss experience, insights, and lessons learned from our quantitative analysis of the experiment results

Cash flow or income? : the choice of base for company taxation

Considerable interest has been expressed in recent years by tax theorists as well as practitioners, for the taxation of companies based on their cash flow. Unlike the equity-income tax base, which requires the deductibility of economic depreciation and debt financing costs, the cash-flow base expenses capital at the point of purchase, eliminating the need for the subsequent costing of this capital. This paper raises some of the issues that would arise in trying to implement a company tax either in the form of an indexed equity-income or a cash-flow tax. Issues raised include: (i) administrative complexity; (ii) international tax coordination and competition; and (iii) transition problems. In a closed economy the cash-flow tax seems a simple, efficient form of company taxation, administratively straightforward and neutral with regard to investment decisions. The more complicated equity-income tax is harder to defend in a closed economy.Economic Theory&Research,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism

Managing IT Costs with ABC - An empirical study av Toyota Industries IT Supply Europe

The purpose of this essay is to apply Activity Based Costing on a Service and Support function in order to identify and allocate costs for providing support for IT deliverables