Who pollutes in Scotland? A prelude to an analysis of sustainability policies in a devolved context

The notion of sustainable development has begun to figure prominently in the regional, as well as the national, policy concerns of many industrialized countries. Indicators have typically been used to monitor changes in economic, environmental and social variables to show whether economic development is on a sustainable path. This paper focuses on pollution in Scotland and analyses the sustainability policies in a devolved political context

Experimental and numerical study of local mean age of air

This paper presents the results from the experimental and numerical study of a room with mixing ventilation, focused on the local mean age of air (LMA). The measurements were performed using the tracer gas concentration decay method. The numerical predictions were obtained from the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) module of the latest version of the ESP-r software

“Can’t Put my Finger on It”: A Research Report on the Non-Existence and Meaninglessness of Sin

This paper presents findings from an exploratory study of sin. Based on nine in-depth interviews with self-identified religious people, we demonstrate that respondents define sin as (1) nonconformity, (2) relative to other social realities, and (3) taught by moral authorities. In so doing, respondents’ definitions reveal that sin, despite its use to justify all types of social policies, is a social construction that has no established concrete meaning in daily life. In conclusion, we argue that social scientists would benefit greatly from systematic analyses of the meaning (lessness) and significance of sin in people’s lives as well as within existing social scientific literature, and propose avenues for research concerning this term

Electrochemical evaluation and phase-related impedance studies on silicon–few layer graphene (FLG) composite electrode systems

Silicon-Few Layer Graphene (Si-FLG) composite electrodes are investigated using a scalable electrode manufacturing method. A comprehensive study on the electrochemical performance and the impedance response is measured using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The study demonstrates that the incorporation of few-layer graphene (FLG) results in significant improvement in terms of cyclability, electrode resistance and diffusion properties. Additionally, the diffusion impedance responses that occur during the phase changes in silicon is elucidated through Staircase Potentio Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (SPEIS): a more comprehensive and straightforward approach than previous state-of-charge based diffusion studies

Creation and evaluation of full-text literature-derived, feature-weighted disease models of genetically determined developmental disorders

There are >2500 different genetically determined developmental disorders (DD), which, as a group, show very high levels of both locus and allelic heterogeneity. This has led to the wide-spread use of evidence-based filtering of genome-wide sequence data as a diagnostic tool in DD. Determining whether the association of a filtered variant at a specific locus is a plausible explanation of the phenotype in the proband is crucial and commonly requires extensive manual literature review by both clinical scientists and clinicians. Access to a database of weighted clinical features extracted from rigorously curated literature would increase the efficiency of this process and facilitate the development of robust phenotypic similarity metrics. However, given the large and rapidly increasing volume of published information, conventional biocuration approaches are becoming impractical. Here, we present a scalable, automated method for the extraction of categorical phenotypic descriptors from the full-text literature. Papers identified through literature review were downloaded and parsed using the Cadmus custom retrieval package. Human Phenotype Ontology terms were extracted using MetaMap, with 76–84% precision and 65–73% recall. Mean terms per paper increased from 9 in title + abstract, to 68 using full text. We demonstrate that these literature-derived disease models plausibly reflect true disease expressivity more accurately than widely used manually curated models, through comparison with prospectively gathered data from the Deciphering Developmental Disorders study. The area under the curve for receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves increased by 5–10% through the use of literature-derived models. This work shows that scalable automated literature curation increases performance and adds weight to the need for this strategy to be integrated into informatic variant analysis pipelines. Database URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/database/baac03

Trends in New South Wales infant hospital admission rates in the first year of life: population-based study

Objective: To examine the trends in hospital admissions in the first year of life and identify whether changes in maternal and infant risk factors explain any changes Design: Population-based study using de-identified linked health data. Participants: All 788,798 liveborn infants delivered in New South Wales from 2001 to 2009 with a linked birth and hospital record. Main outcome measures: The number of infants readmitted to hospital at least once, up to one year of age, per 100 livebirths each year; changes in maternal and infant risk factors were assessed using logistic regression. Results: The number of infants admitted to hospital up to age one decreased 10.5%, from 18.4 per 100 births in 2001 to 16.5 in 2009. Fifty five per cent of this decrease could be explained by changes in factors that are associated with likelihood of hospitalisation; length of stay during the birth admission, maternal age and maternal smoking. The rate of admissions for jaundice and feeding difficulties increased significantly over the study period, while admissions for infections decreased. Conclusions: There has been a decrease in the rate of infants admitted to hospital in the first year of life, which can be partly explained by increasing maternal age, decreasing maternal smoking and a shift to shorter length of hospital stay at birth. Improved maternal and neonatal care in hospital and increased postnatal support at home may have contributed to reduced risk of readmission. The introduction of government policies may explain the rest of the decrease

A comparison of lithium-ion cell performance across three different cell formats

To investigate the influence of cell formats during a cell development programme, lithium-ion cells have been prepared in three different formats. Coin cells, single layer pouch cells, and stacked pouch cells gave a range of scales of almost three orders of magnitude. The cells used the same electrode coatings, electrolyte and separator. The performance of the different formats was compared in long term cycling tests and in measurements of resistance and discharge capacities at different rates. Some test results were common to all three formats. However, the stacked pouch cells had higher discharge capacities at higher rates. During cycling tests, there were indications of differences in the predominant degradation mechanism between the stacked cells and the other two cell formats. The stacked cells showed faster resistance increases, whereas the coin cells showed faster capacity loss. The difference in degradation mechanism can be linked to the different thermal and mechanical environments in the three cell formats. The correlation in the electrochemical performance between coin cells, single layer pouch cells, and stacked pouch cells shows that developments within a single cell format are likely to lead to improvements across all cell formats

Experimental data of cathodes manufactured in a convective dryer at the pilot-plant scale, and charge and discharge capacities of half-coin lithium-ion cells.

Megtec Systems pilot-plant scale continuous convective coater. The data was generated as part of an experimental design involving the following coating-drying process variables and ranges: comma bar gap, 80-140 µm; web speed, 0.5-1.5 m/min; coating ratio, 110-150%; drying temperature, 85-110 °C and drying air speed, 5-15 m/s. The manufacturing data include pre-calendered coating thickness, mass loading dry and wet, pre-calendered porosity, spatial autocorrelation and join counting (SAJC) -score for carbon and for fluorine, cell thickness, coating weight and porosity of 15 different electrode coatings and 45 half-coin cells. The electrochemical data was obtained at 25 °C in a Maccor 4000 series battery cycler and consists of charge and discharge capacities at C/20, C/5, C/2, 1C, 2C, 5C and 10C C-rates. Discharge gravimetric and volumetric capacities, rate performance (at 5C:0.2C) and first cycle loss data is also reported. Details of the experimental design and a comprehensive analysis of the data can be found in the co-submitted manuscript (Román-Ramírez et al., 2021). Additional collected data not used in Román-Ramírez et al. (2021) is reported in the present manuscript and include visual observations of coating defects, rheological properties of the electrode slurries (solid content, viscosity, coating shear rate and viscosity at coating shear rate), room temperature and room humidity during the coatings and first cycle loss of the coin cells. Raw and analyzed data is made available. The reported data can be used to extend the analysis reported in Román-Ramírez et al. (2021), and for the comparison of relevant data obtained at different manufacturing scales. [Abstract copyright: © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc.

Understanding the effect of coating-drying operating variables on electrode physical and electrochemical properties of lithium-ion batteries

The effect of coating and drying process variables (comma bar gap, web speed, coating ratio, drying temperature and drying air speed) on NMC622 cathode physical properties (thickness, mass loading and porosity) and electrochemical properties (gravimetric capacity, volumetric capacity and rate performance) is studied by a design of experiments approach. Electrochemical performance is assessed on half coin cells at C-rates from C/20 up to 10C. The statistical analysis of the data reveals that the cathode physical properties are mainly affected by comma bar gap and coating ratio. The electrochemical properties also show high correlations between comma bar gap and coating ratio for some C-rates. As a second evaluation, the relationship between the cathode half-cell physical characteristics with the electrochemical performance is studied through multiple linear regression analysis. A correlation mainly between coating weight and the electrochemical properties is found. Empirical linear models representing the relationship between the output and input variables are provided, showing correlation coefficients ( ) as high as 0.99