Fraser of cryptophthalmosis syndrome: A case report

Fraser or cryptophthalmos syndrome is a rare autosomal recessive disorder characterized by major features such as cryptophthalmos, syndactyly, and abnormal genitalia. Consanguinity is reported in 15-24.8% of the cases. The diagnosis of this syndrome can be made on clinical examination; therefore we present the clinical findings of a rare case of Fraser syndrome in a female infant

Developing a Circular Economy for the Data Centre Industry – how the CEDaCI project contributes to sustainable decision making

Data centres (DCs) house data processing and storage equipment. The data centre industry (DCI) is evolving rapidly, as society is becoming more dependent on digital technologies. Currently, there are 7.2 million DCs globally and provision is predicted to grow fivefold by 2030. The sector already utilises millions of tonnes of resources, including Critical Raw Materials, and the demand will only increase. DCI is based on a linear economy; recycling and materials reclamation infrastructure are also inadequate. At the end-of-life, many materials are either lost to landfill, incinerated, or unaccounted for. Furthermore, many virgin materials are located in geopolitically sensitive locations, which poses a threat to the supply chain that the sector relies on. The CEDaCI project aims to increase overall sectoral sustainability by addressing the various technical, cultural, and behavioural barriers across the DCI, such as fragmentation and sole focus on the energy efficiency. This paper describes the whole-systems approach and CEDaCI project outputs, including bespoke Eco-design guidelines, strategies, and digital tools to extend product life and recycling, and enable better decision-making to increase circularity in the DCI, prepare and support the implementation of the EU Circular Economy Action Plan and ensure a secure, sustainable resource supply chain

Design Thinking for Sustainability and the significance of Stakeholder Engagement in the development of the Circular Economy for the Data Centre Industry

The World Wide Web developed during the 1980s and was formally introduced in 1989; since then it has facilitated rapid communication between people and objects and revolutionised business models and services across all major sectors. Such is the popularity of the technology that 59% of the global population is now ‘connected’ (1). Digital communication is facilitated by human-centred technology (e.g. laptop and desktop computers and mobile phones) and data centres (DCs) which house digital data processing, networking and storage (ICT) equipment. The sector has already expanded rapidly to manage the increasing volume of data and it is predicted to grow 500% globally by 2030 (2). DC operation is energy intensive and the sector currently consumes 1% global electricity (3). It is also resource intensive and although the mass of materials utilised across the sector is unknown, it is estimated to be millions of tonnes. Sectoral focus has always been provision of 100% uninterrupted service and performance and although economic and environmental considerations have encouraged operational energy efficiency, the impact of design and manufacture have been largely overlooked and consequently, most DC equipment is designed for a linear economy. This is becoming an increasing problem because the first life of much DC equipment is only 1 to 5 years; to date circular practices such as refurbishment, reuse and recycling at end-of-life are limited by human and technical factors and consequently the sector contributes to the growing global electrical and electronic equipment waste stream. The CEDaCI project was initiated to kick-start a sectoral Circular Economy ahead of the predicted growth, in order to simultaneously increase resource efficiency and reclamation of Critical Raw Materials and reduce waste. The DC sector is comprised of highly specialised sub-sectors; however it is silo-based and knowledge exchange between sub-sectors is rare. Conversely, a Circular Economy is holistic by default and therefore expertise from all constituent sub-sectors is essential to enable development. In order to overcome these and other challenges the CEDaCI project employs design-based methodologies, namely the four-stage Double Diamond design process model (introduced by the Design Council in 2004) and Design Thinking (developed and popularised by IDEO from 2009). The importance of stakeholder engagement to the development of the Circular Economy as a whole cannot be under-estimated and the presentation shares examples of tools and practice from the CEDaCI project to illustrate the value of design-process-based strategies to support development of the CE in other sectors. 1. Simon Kemp, Hootesuite Digital 2020 Global Overview Report, 30 January 2020, https://wearesocial.com/digital-2020 https://wearesocial.com/blog/2020/01/digital-2020-3-8-billion-people-use-social-media 2. Infiniti Research Ltd., August 2015, High Power Consumption is Driving the Need for Greener Data Centres. Available http://www.technavio.com/blog/high-power-consumpton-is-driving-the-need-for-greener-data-centers. [14 August 2018] 3. Masanet, E., Shehabi, A., Lei, N., Smith, S., and Koomey, J., Recalibrating global data center energy-use estimates Science 28 Feb 2020: Vol. 367, Issue 6481, pp. 984-986 DOI: 10.1126/science.aba3758 4. Brown, T., Change by Design: How Design Thinking Creates New Alternatives for Business and Society (2009) Harper Collins, New York 5. Design Council, Double Diamond Design Methodology (2004) and Evolved Double Diamond Design Methodology (2019) https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/double-diamond-universally-accepted-depiction-design-process https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/what-framework-innovation-design-councils-evolved-double-diamon

A circular economy for the data centre industry : using design methods to address the challenge of whole system sustainability in a unique industrial sector

The data centre industry (DCI) has grown from zero in the 1980s, to enabling 60% of the global population to be connected in 2021 via 7.2 million data centres. The DCI is based on a linear economy and there is an urgent need to transform to a Circular Economy to establish a secure supply chain and ensure an economically stable and uninterrupted service, which is particularly difficult in an industry that is comprised of ten insular subsectors. This paper describes the CEDaCI project which was established to address the challenge in this unique sector; this ground-breaking project employs a whole systems approach, Design Thinking and the Double Diamond methods, which rely on people/stakeholder engagement throughout. The paper reviews and assesses the impact of these methods and project to date, using quantitative and qualitative research, via an online sectoral survey and interviews with nine data centre and IT industry experts. The results show that the project is creating positive impact and initiating change across the sector and that the innovative output (designs, business models, and a digital tool) will ensure that sectoral transformation continues; the project methods and structure will also serve as an exemplar for other sectors

High Throughput Ion-Implantation for Silicon Solar Cells

AbstractIon implantation is a technique that has been demonstrated to improve solar cell efficiency and eliminate process steps in standard and advanced cell designs. Intevac has developed a high productivity, continuous flux ion implantation tool for solar cells. We demonstrate improved n-type emitters over POCl3 diffused emitters, and selective patterning capabilities. Additionally, it is shown that non-mass analyzed implantation provides similar performance as mass-analyzed implantation, yet at a much lower capital cost

Immittance Matching for Multi-dimensional Open-system Photonic Crystals

An electromagnetic (EM) Bloch wave propagating in a photonic crystal (PC) is characterized by the immittance (impedance and admittance) of the wave. The immittance is used to investigate transmission and reflection at a surface or an interface of the PC. In particular, the general properties of immittance are useful for clarifying the wave propagation characteristics. We give a general proof that the immittance of EM Bloch waves on a plane in infinite one- and two-dimensional (2D) PCs is real when the plane is a reflection plane of the PC and the Bloch wavevector is perpendicular to the plane. We also show that the pure-real feature of immittance on a reflection plane for an infinite three-dimensional PC is good approximation based on the numerical calculations. The analytical proof indicates that the method used for immittance matching is extremely simplified since only the real part of the immittance function is needed for analysis without numerical verification. As an application of the proof, we describe a method based on immittance matching for qualitatively evaluating the reflection at the surface of a semi-infinite 2D PC, at the interface between a semi-infinite slab waveguide (WG) and a semi-infinite 2D PC line-defect WG, and at the interface between a semi-infinite channel WG and a semi-infinite 2D PC slab line-defect WG.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Secondary grating formation by readout at Bragg-null incidence

We show that when a dynamic hologram is read out by illumination at the Bragg nulls of a previously recorded grating the diffracted beam inside the medium can result in the recording of two secondary gratings that alter the final selectivity curve. This is confirmed experimentally. This effect can cause cross talk in hologram multiplexing that is stronger than interpage cross talk when a small number of holograms with high diffraction efficiencies are multiplexed. (C) 1999 Optical Society of America. OCIS codes: 090.0090, 210.2860, 090.2910