Optimal learning spaces: design implications for primary schools

Review guide of the design evidence for primary school

Tissue-specific silencing of homoeologs in natural populations of the recent allopolyploid Tragopogon mirus

The definitive version is available at www3.interscience.wiley.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03205.

Clever classrooms : Summary report of the HEAD project

Based on the results of the HEAD Project (Holistic Evidence and Design), funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, clear evidence has been found that well-designed primary schools boost children’s academic performance in reading, writing and maths. Differences in the physical characteristics of classrooms explain 16% of the variation in learning progress over a year for the 3766 pupils included in the study. Or to make this more tangible, it is estimated that the impact of moving an ‘average’ child from the least effective to the most effective space would be around 1.3 sub-levels, a big impact when pupils typically make 2 sub-levels progress a year. This report summarises and illustrates the design and practice implications for architects and designers

Pressurized Calcium Looping in the Presence of Steam in a Spout-Fluidized-Bed Reactor with DFT Analysis

Calcium looping is a high-temperature solid-looping process for CO2 capture, exploiting cyclical carbonation of CaO. Previous work investigating the effects of steam on the carbonation reaction has produced conflicting results, with the majority of work conducted using thermogravimetric analyzers (TGA). Here, pressurized carbonation kinetics in the presence of steam in a 3 kWe pressurized spout-fluidized bed reactor, gives a rigorous insight into the effects of steam. Pseudo-intrinsic kinetics were determined using an effectiveness factor model along with activation energies and kinetic expressions. The mechanism in which steam promotes CO2 adsorption on the surface of CaO was investigated using density functional theory (DFT). The molecular-scale changes on the CaO surface owing to the presence of steam compared to the base case of CO2 adsorption on a ‘clean’ (without steam) surface were simulated with the Cambridge Serial Total Energy Package (CASTEP) software. The results suggest that steam promotes CO2 adsorption via the formation of surface OH groups on the CaO surface

A survey on touch dynamics authentication in mobile devices

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. There have been research activities in the area of keystroke dynamics biometrics on physical keyboards (desktop computers or conventional mobile phones) undertaken in the past three decades. However, in terms of touch dynamics biometrics on virtual keyboards (modern touchscreen mobile devices), there has been little published work. Particularly, there is a lack of an extensive survey and evaluation of the methodologies adopted in the area. Owing to the widespread use of touchscreen mobile devices, it is necessary for us to examine the techniques and their effectiveness in the domain of touch dynamics biometrics. The aim of this paper is to provide some insights and comparative analysis of the current state of the art in the topic area, including data acquisition protocols, feature data representations, decision making techniques, as well as experimental settings and evaluations. With such a survey, we can gain a better understanding of the current state of the art, thus identifying challenging issues and knowledge gaps for further research

Spouted Bed Reactor for kinetic Measurements of Reduction of Fe2O3 in a CO2/CO Atmosphere Part I - Atmospheric Pressure Measurements and Equipment Commissioning

A high pressure and high temperature spouted bed reactor, operating in fluidisation mode, has been designed and validated at low pressure for the study of gas-solid reaction kinetics. Measurements suggested the bed exhibited a fast rate of gas interchange between the bubble and particulate phases. Pressurised injection of the particles to the bottom of the bed allowed the introduction of solid reactants in a simple and controlled manner. The suitability of the reactor for the purpose of kinetic studies was demonstrated by investigation of the intrinsic kinetics of the initial stage of the reduction of Fe2O3 with CO over multiple cycles for chemical looping. Changes of pore structure over the initial cycles were found to affect the observed kinetics of the reduction. The initial intrinsic rate constant of the reduction reaction (ki) was measured by using a kinetic model which incorporated an effectiveness factor. The uncertainty arising from the measurement of particle porosity in the model was compensated for by the tortuosity factor. The average activation energy obtained for cycles three to five was 61 ± 8 kJ/mol, which is comparable with previous studies using both fluidised beds and thermogravimetry

Microwave assisted heterogeneous catalysis: effects of varying oxygen concentrations on the oxidative coupling of methane

The oxidative coupling of methane was investigated over alumina supported La2O3/CeO2 catalysts under microwave dielectric heating conditions at different oxygen concentrations. It was observed that, at a given temperature using microwave heating, selectivities for both ethane and ethylene were notably higher when oxygen was absent than that in oxygen/methane mixtures. The differences were attributed to the localised heating of microwave radiation resulting in temperature inhomogeneity in the catalyst bed. A simplified model was used to estimate the temperature inhomogeneity; the temperature at the centre of the catalyst bed was 85 °C greater than that at the periphery when the catalyst was heated by microwaves in a gas mixture with an oxygen concentration of 12.5% (v/v), and the temperature difference was estimated to be 168 °C in the absence of oxygen

Secretin facilitates GABA transmission in the cerebellum

Secretin was the first hormone discovered in human history, and yet, its function as a neuropeptide has been overlooked in the past. The recent discovery of the potential use of secretin in treating autistic patients, together with the conflicting reports on its effectiveness, urges an in-depth investigation of this issue. We show here that in the rat cerebellar cortex, mRNAs encoding secretin are localized in the Purkinje cells, whereas those of its receptor are found in both Purkinje cells and GABAergic interneurons. Immunoreactivity for secretin is localized in the soma and dendrites of Purkinje cells. In addition, secretin facilitates evoked, spontaneous, and miniature IPSCs recorded from Purkinje cells. We propose that secretin is released from the somatodendritic region of Purkinje cells and serves as a retrograde messenger modulating GABAergic afferent activity.published_or_final_versio

Strengthen user authentication on mobile devices by using user’s touch dynamics pattern

Mobile devices, particularly the touch screen mobile devices, are increasingly used to store and access private and sensitive data or services, and this has led to an increased demand for more secure and usable security services, one of which is user authentication. Currently, mobile device authentication services mainly use a knowledge-based method, e.g. a PIN-based authentication method, and, in some cases, a fingerprint-based authentication method is also supported. The knowledge-based method is vulnerable to impersonation attacks, while the fingerprint-based method can be unreliable sometimes. To overcome these limitations and to make the authentication service more secure and reliable for touch screen mobile device users, we have investigated the use of touch dynamics biometrics as a mobile device authentication solution by designing, implementing and evaluating a touch dynamics authentication method. This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of this method, the acquisition of raw touch dynamics data, the use of the raw data to obtain touch dynamics features, and the training of the features to build an authentication model for user identity verification. The evaluation results show that by integrating the touch dynamics authentication method into the PIN-based authentication method, the protection levels against impersonation attacks is greatly enhanced. For example, if a PIN is compromised, the success rate of an impersonation attempt is drastically reduced from 100% (if only a 4-digit PIN is used) to 9.9% (if both the PIN and the touch dynamics are used). © 2019, The Author(s)