Aerogel-enhanced blankets: state-of-the-art, market readiness, and future challenges

Aerogel-enhanced products are often indicated as promising materials for increasing the thermal resistance of the building envelope. In particular, aerogel-enhanced blankets have already showed their effectiveness in several retrofitting projects. This paper aims to review the current state of the art regarding aerogel-enhanced blankets. In these materials, a fiber matrix bonds together the aerogel structure, compensating the low mechanical properties of the aerogels without reducing their exceptionally low thermal conductivity. This paper describes current aerogel-enhanced blankets existing worldwide and produced by different companies. Then, a new aerogel-enhanced blanket developed by the authors is presented. Thermal characterization tests confirm the superior performance of aerogel-enhanced blankets, which show a thermal conductivity as low as 0.013 W/(mK). Finally, future research challenges for aerogel-enhanced blankets are presented

Sustained meaning activation for polysemous but not homonymous words: Evidence from EEG

Theoretical linguistic accounts of lexical ambiguity distinguish between homonymy, where words that share a lexical form have unrelated meanings, and polysemy, where the meanings are related. The present study explored the psychological reality of this theoretical assumption by asking whether there is evidence that homonyms and polysemes are represented and processed differently in the brain. We investigated the time-course of meaning activation of different types of ambiguous words using EEG. Homonyms and polysemes were each further subdivided into two: unbalanced homonyms (e.g., ". coach") and balanced homonyms (e.g., ". match"); metaphorical polysemes (e.g., ". mouth") and metonymic polysemes (e.g., ". rabbit"). These four types of ambiguous words were presented as primes in a visual single-word priming delayed lexical decision task employing a long ISI (750. ms). Targets were related to one of the meanings of the primes, or were unrelated. ERPs formed relative to the target onset indicated that the theoretical distinction between homonymy and polysemy was reflected in the N400 brain response. For targets following homonymous primes (both unbalanced and balanced), no effects survived at this long ISI indicating that both meanings of the prime had already decayed. On the other hand, for polysemous primes (both metaphorical and metonymic), activation was observed for both dominant and subordinate senses. The observed processing differences between homonymy and polysemy provide evidence in support of differential neuro-cognitive representations for the two types of ambiguity. We argue that the polysemous senses act collaboratively to strengthen the representation, facilitating maintenance, while the competitive nature of homonymous meanings leads to decay

ChatGPT and its Impact on Libraries

Artificial Intelligence and its impact on education has been a prevalent topic, especially these last six months with the release of ChatGPT. Most of the conversation regarding ChatGPT has revolved around how it affects teaching and learning, but libraries are often left out of the conversation. This panel-workshop combination will explain what ChatGPT is and help us to know the correct terminology to use when discussing artificial intelligence and machine learning. We will also discuss how ChatGPT is affecting libraries and the work that we do on campus. If you have not gotten a chance to use ChatGPT yet, this is a great opportunity to do so, as we will workshop using ChatGPT and analyze its responses. After dabbling with ChatGPT, we will discuss how we, as librarians, can respond to this new technology. Artificial intelligence is only going to become more ubiquitous and it is our responsibility to understand it and have a plan for how to handle it in our work