A vision of and for love: Towards a Christian post-postmodern worldview

The theme of this article has to do with the identification of distinctive features that need emphasis in a biblical worldview attuned to the postmodern world of the 21st century. The first of these features is the embrace of difference as non-oppositional, as challenge to meet, rather than a threat to resist. The second is that with a postmodern understanding of the existence of limited rational knowledge (Reason and Science) and of the crucial role of faith, worldviews need to be seen, not in the first place as conceptual systems, but as faith-oriented, sensory expectancy filters, operating implicitly and largely beneath our conscious awareness. The third is the recognition that responsibility-to the other rather than freedom-from the other needs to be emphasised. Such responsibility involves recognising that voluntary suffering-with the other is crucial to a post-postmodern biblical worldview. Indeed, the final feature proposes that such a worldview needs to be rooted and grounded as a vision of and for Love. As God is Compassionate Love, and as God is with us (Emmanuel), so we, image-bearers of God, are to embody love and resist evil, living out our confession that we live by Grace and not by Blind Chance

Polydimethylsiloxane as an elastic material applied in a capacitive accelerometer

Polydimethylsiloxane is a silicone rubber. It has a unique flexibility, resulting in one of the lowest glass-transition temperatures of any polymer. Furthermore, it shows a low elasticity change versus temperature, a high thermal stability, chemical inertness, dielectric stability, shear stability and high compressibility. Because of its high flexibility and the very low drift of its properties with time and temperature, polydimethylsiloxane could be well suited for mechanical sensors, such as accelerometers. A novel capacitive accelerometer with polydimethylsiloxane layers as springs has been realized. The obtained measurement results are promising and show a good correspondence with the theoretical values

On the design of a triaxial accelerometer

Up to now, mainly uniaxial accelerometers are described in most publications concerning this subject. However, triaxial accelerometers are needed in the biomedical field. Commercially available triaxial accelerometers consisting of three orthogonally positioned uniaxial devices do not meet all specifications of the biomedical application. Therefore, a new highly symmetrical inherently triaxial accelerometer is being developed, the advantages of which are higher sensitivity and reduction of off-axis sensitivity

Trajectory Deflection of Spinning Magnetic Microparticles, the Magnus Effect at the Microscale

The deflection due to the Magnus force of magnetic particles with a diameter of 80 micrometer dropping through fluids and rotating in a magnetic field was measured. With Reynolds number for this experiment around 1, we found trajectory deflections of the order of 1 degree, in agreement within measurement error with theory. This method holds promise for the sorting and analysis of the distribution in magnetic moment and particle diameter of suspensions of microparticles, such as applied in catalysis, or objects loaded with magnetic particles.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures. Appendix with 6 figure

Selective low concentration ammonia sensing in a microfluidic lab-on-a-chip

In the medical community, there is a considerable interest in a diagnostic breath analyzer for ammonia that is selectively enough to measure in exhaled air and small enough for the small volumes available in such an application. An indirect measurement system for low gaseous ammonia concentrations has been miniaturized and integrated on a chip in order to reach this goal. The detection limit of the system was calculated to be 1.1 parts per billion (ppb). The response time was determined to be 1.6 min with a gas How of 50 ml/min. The required gas volume for one measurement is therefore sufficiently small, although sampling assistance is required for breath analysis. The selectivity of the system is sufficient to measure ammonia concentrations in the low-ppb range. The system is even sufficiently selective to be used in environments that contain elevated carbon dioxide levels, like exhaled air. The lower ammonia concentration expected in diagnostic breath analysis applications, 50 ppb, was demonstrated to be detectable

Organic layers on silicon result in a unique hybrid fet

A Field-Effect Transistor (FET) is presented that combines the conventional lay-out of the silicon substrate (channel and source and drain connections) with a Si-C linked organic gate insulator contacted via an organic, conducting polymer. It is shown that this hybrid device combines the excellent electrical behavior of the silicon substrate and the ease of use and good properties of organic insulators and contacting materials.\ud Keywords: organic monolayer, FET, conducting polyme

Theory, technology and assembly of a highly symmetrical capacitive triaxial accelerometer

A highly symmetrical cubic easy-to-assemble capacitive triaxial accelerometer for biomedical applications has been designed, realized and tested. The outer dimensions of the sensor are 5×5×5 mm 3 and the device is mounted on a standard IC package. New aspects of the sensor are an easy assembly procedure, the use of the polymers polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as spring material between the capacitor plates and the mass and polyimide (PI) as flexible interconnection layer between the capacitor plates, and the highly symmetrical cubic structure. The mathematical model, technology and assembly procedure of the sensor are described. The measurement results show a good linearity in the output voltage for accelerations up to at least 5 g and a bandwidth of DC >50 Hz. In the x-axis the sensitivity was found to be 175 mV/g which is in good correspondence with the theory. The sensitivity can be increased when the PDMS layer is patterned, which was shown in previous versions of the highly symmetrical triaxial acceleromete

Polydimethylsiloxane, a photocurable rubberelastic polymer used as spring material in micromechanical sensors

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is a commercially available physically and chemically stable photocurable silicone rubber which has a unique flexibility (G≈250 kPa) at room temperature. Further properties of PDMS are a low elasticity change versus temperature (1.1 kPa/°C), no elasticity change versus frequency and a high compressibility. PDMS is an interesting polymer to be used as spring material in micromechanical sensors such as accelerometers. The spring constant of the PDMS structures was theoretically calculated and measurements were done on accelerometers with PDMS springs to validate the theory. The measured and calculated spring constants showed a good correspondence, so the measurement results showed that the PDMS structures can successfully be used as mechanical springs

Extensive Modeling of a Coaxial Stub Resonator for Online Fingerprinting of Fluids

A straightforward method of extensive modeling of a lossy stub resonator system for online fingerprinting of fluids is presented in this paper. The proposed model solves the telegrapher's equations including the skin effect and dielectric losses and describes the amplitude versus frequency response of lossy coaxial stub resonators with a fluid under investigation as dielectric. The adequacy of the method is demonstrated by comparing simulations with experimentally obtained data. Even though we applied the model to a coaxial stub resonator for the online fingerprinting of fluids (e.g., for water quality monitoring), the potential applicability of the method reaches further. Indeed, the method introduced here may be useful for different types of sensors based on lossy transmission line theor