Renewable, ethical? Assessing the energy justice potential of renewable electricity

Energy justice is increasingly being used as a framework to conceptualize the impacts of energy decision making in more holistic ways and to consider the social implications in terms of existing ethical values. Similarly, renewable energy technologies are increasingly being promoted for their environmental and social benefits. However, little work has been done to systematically examine the extent to which, in what ways and in what contexts, renewable energy technologies can contribute to achieving energy justice. This paper assesses the potential of renewable electricity technologies to address energy justice in various global contexts via a systematic review of existing studies analyzed in terms of the principles and dimensions of energy justice. Based on publications including peer reviewed academic literature, books, and in some cases reports by government or international organizations, we assess renewable electricity technologies in both grid integrated and off-grid use contexts. We conduct our investigation through the rubric of the affirmative and prohibitive principles of energy justice and in terms of its temporal, geographic, socio-political, economic, and technological dimensions. Renewable electricity technology development has and continue to have different impacts in different social contexts, and by considering the different impacts explicitly across global contexts, including differences between rural and urban contexts, this paper contributes to identifying and understanding how, in what ways, and in what particular conditions and circumstances renewable electricity technologies may correspond with or work to promote energy justice

Low channel count montages using sensor tying for VEP-based BCI

Contains fulltext : 209831.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Objective: Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are slowly making their appearance on the consumer market, accompanied by a higher popularity among the general public. This new group of users requires easy-to-use headsets with robustness to non-precise placement. In this paper, an optimized fixed montage EEG headset for VEP BCIs is proposed. Approach: The proposed layout covers only the most relevant area with large sensors to account for slight misplacement. To obtain large sensors, without having them physically available, we tie multiple sensors together and simulate the effect by averaging the signal of multiple sensors. Main results: In simulations based on recorded 256-channel EEG data, it is shown that a circular center-surround configuration with sensor tying, leading to only 8 channels covering a large part of the occipital lobe, can provide high performance and good robustness to misplacement. Automatically optimized layouts were unable to achieve better performance, demonstrating the utility of this manual design. Finally, the performance and benefits of sensor tying in the manual design are then validated in a physical experiment. Significance: The resulting proposed layout fulfills most requirements of an easy to use consumer EEG headset.13 p

Sensor tying, optimal montages for VEP-based BCI

Item does not contain fulltextAs Brain computer interfaces (BCI's) attract more attention in the customer market, the need for easy-to-use headsets increases. In this paper we propose an optimized fixed montage EEG headset for VEP BCIs based on covering the most relevant areas on the skull with simulated large sensors. To obtain large sensors, we propose to tie (that is short-circuit) multiple sensors and we simulate the tying by averaging the signals. We show that a circular center-surround configuration with proper sensor tying can provide high performance and good robustness to misplacement of the headset while the number of required channels can be as few as eight. We also provide an alternative cheap design requiring only two channels, which can still achieve acceptable average performance.8th Graz Brain Computer Interface Conference 2019, (Graz, Austria, 16. bis 20. September 2019

Sensor tying, optimal montages for VEP-based BCI

As Brain computer interfaces (BCI's) attract more attention in the customer market, the need for easy-to-use headsets increases. In this paper we propose an optimized fixed montage EEG headset for VEP BCIs based on covering the most relevant areas on the skull with simulated large sensors. To obtain large sensors, we propose to tie (that is short-circuit) multiple sensors and we simulate the tying by averaging the signals. We show that a circular center-surround configuration with proper sensor tying can provide high performance and good robustness to misplacement of the headset while the number of required channels can be as few as eight. We also provide an alternative cheap design requiring only two channels, which can still achieve acceptable average performance

A visual brain-computer interface as communication aid for patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Objective: Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) spellers that make use of code-modulated Visual Evoked Potentials (cVEP) may provide a fast and more accurate alternative to existing visual BCI spellers for patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). However, so far the cVEP speller has only been tested on healthy participants. Methods: We assess the brain responses, BCI performance and user experience of the cVEP speller in 20 healthy participants and 10 ALS patients. All participants performed a cued and free spelling task, and a free selection of Yes/No answers. Results: 27 out of 30 participants could perform the cued spelling task with an average accuracy of 79% for ALS patients, 88% for healthy older participants and 94% for healthy young participants. All 30 participants could answer Yes/No questions freely, with an average accuracy of around 90%. Conclusions: With ALS patients typing on average 10 characters per minute, the cVEP speller presented in this paper outperforms other visual BCI spellers. Significance These results support a general usability of cVEP signals for ALS patients, which may extend far beyond the tested speller to control e.g. an alarm, automatic door, or TV within a smart home