An innovation integrated approach to testing motorcycle drive chain lubricants

An innovative integrated approach to the testing and comparison of motorcycle drive chain lubricants is presented. This is a novel way of testing the lubrication by using loaded operating chains and sprockets. A test rig has been designed to operate chains and sprockets in a clean environment and allow direct comparison between different lubricants. The advantage of this method over previous techniques is that it allows the differentiation of lubricants in a more controlled operating environment and evaluates the overall lubricant performance as opposed to individual properties. The lubricants tested were a wax spray, PTFE spray and drip fed light oil. The test rig allowed measurement of the power saved by the lubricant in running the chains and sprockets. Chain length and component masses were also taken before and after running the chains and sprockets under load on the test rig. The results clearly show that any lubricant is preferable to none. The drip fed oil provided the greatest power saving and wear protection between the chain rollers and pins and the spray lubricants provided the highest level of protection between rollers and sprocket

Influence of gasoline engine lubricant on tribological performance, fuel economy and emissions

The requirement for increased performance, improved fuel economy and reduced emissions is constantly sustaining the demand for research into combustion, fuels and lubricants. Due to the nature of the operation of an engine and the current market climate the lubricant not only has to respond to these requirements, but also to changes in engine design, fuelling methods and fuel types, increased power densities and developments in emissions formation and after-treatment. This paper will describe advances made at the authors’ institution to elucidate the influence of gasoline engine lubricant on tribological performance, fuel economy and emissions, giving examples of work undertaken and then look to future possible lubricant demands

Emerging paradigms in the reuse of domestic wastewater

Water is a key yet limited resource in Australia. With the threat of water shortages in Western Australia becoming increasingly important, there is a great need to develop strategies to sustainably manage this resource. Conventional methods of addressing water shortages include the development of new supplies and use of expensive engineering processes. Alternative sustainable options are available from a demand side, including implementing water saving technologies and wastewater management. The approach to water supply and disposal in developed nations is generally governed by a centralised strategy. This process often results in water being used at an unsustainable rate and disposed of in a wasteful manner. Traditional disposal methods combine all domestic wastewater for treatment and disposal. This is often an expensive undertaking, not only financially but also in terms of energy consumption and environmental impacts. The act of disposing of treated wastewaters to the environment prevents the reuse of the constituents of wastewater. The reuse of domestic wastewater provides an opportunity to aid water conservation. Reuse of both “blackwater” (toilet wastewater) and “greywater” (wastewater from laundry, bath/shower and kitchen) has successfully been implemented in Australia and become accepted methods of water and nutrient reuse. In the last decade, another option to recycle wastewater has become popular in Europe. This is the separation and reuse of urine. Benefits obtained from these processes include water conservation and nutrient recycling, but also reduced energy consumption and protection of effluent receiving waters. Domestic greywater has great potential for reuse in Western Australia. Regulations have recently been relaxed to enable greywater to be reused, after on-site treatment, on domestic gardens. Greywater is the largest in-house wastewater stream, therefore large volumes are available for garden irrigation. The demonstrated success of domestic greywater reuse provides the impetus to promote and implement other forms of domestic wastewater reuse. Similar to greywater reuse, the reuse of blackwater has been successfully demonstrated in Australia, most commonly on a medium-large scale (e.g. community level), but also at the individual domestic scale. Domestic blackwater reuse only awaits approval from the regulatory authorities to make it possible. Although urine constitutes only 1% of the total domestic wastewater stream it contributes up to 80% of Nitrogen and 60% of Phosphorus found in the stream. Separating the urine either at the toilet, or immediately after flushing, enables the urine to be reused via agricultural or horticultural irrigation. Due to the high concentrations of nutrients, urine can be an effective plant fertiliser, approximately equal to that of a chemical fertiliser. The challenge is to integrate these technologies and practices to provide a method of total domestic wastewater management and reuse. In order to implement domestic wastewater reuse the State Government and the Regulating Authorities must shift from focussing on conventional water conservation measures to examining the emerging paradigms

Gender in Television Advertising: A Thematic Analysis

The purpose of this study was to examine the various images of females compared to males in advertising shown during weekdays and weekends from 12:00-2:00p.m. Roles, settings, products endorsed and primary narrator were categories used to analyze and code the advertisements. Data collected were taken from three different networks - ABC, NBC and CBS. A total of twelve hours of programming was studied from the weekend advertisements, as well as twelve hours from weekday advertisements. There were 281 commercials that were not repeated during both advertising segments which were used for this research. The results suggested that males were portrayed more often in high-ranking, executive positions as well as physical labor positions. Women were portrayed more often than men in the home, cleaning and cooking; however, the parental role was shared equally during weekend advertising. Males also were shown taking part in the parental role during weekday advertising, although not as much as women. Men were the primary narrators during weekend advertising, while men and women equally narrated commercials during the weekday television advertising. Liberal Feminism Theory was the basis for this study, which claims thatwomen are traditionally devalued compared to men. This study suggested that when comparing weekday to weekend daytime advertising, liberal feminism theory was partially supported. Because stereotyping has been a significant part of television advertising, it was important to examine the images men and women are watching during the weekday as well as the weekend

A framework for evaluating flood risk governance

Calls to strengthen flood risk governance are echoed across Europe amidst a growing consensus that floods will increase in the future. Accompanying the pursuit of societal resilience, other normative agendas relating legitimacy (e.g. accountability and public participation), and resource efficiency, have become attached to discussions concerning flood risk governance. Whilst these represent goals against which ‘success’ is socially and politically judged, lacking from the literature is a coherent framework to operationalise these concepts and evaluate the degree to which these are achieved. Drawing from cross-disciplinary and cross-country research conducted within the EU project STAR-FLOOD, this paper presents a framework for evaluating the extent to which flood risk governance arrangements support societal resilience, and demonstrate efficiency and legitimacy. Through empirical research in England, this paper critically reflects on the value of this approach in terms of identifying entry points to strengthen governance in the pursuit of these goals

Integrated Serologic Surveillance of Population Immunity and Disease Transmission.

Antibodies are unique among biomarkers in their ability to identify persons with protective immunity to vaccine-preventable diseases and to measure past exposure to diverse pathogens. Most infectious disease surveillance maintains a single-disease focus, but broader testing of existing serologic surveys with multiplex antibody assays would create new opportunities for integrated surveillance. In this perspective, we highlight multiple areas for potential synergy where integrated surveillance could add more value to public health efforts than the current trend of independent disease monitoring through vertical programs. We describe innovations in laboratory and data science that should accelerate integration and identify remaining challenges with respect to specimen collection, testing, and analysis. Throughout, we illustrate how information generated through integrated surveillance platforms can create new opportunities to more quickly and precisely identify global health program gaps that range from undervaccination to emerging pathogens to multilayered health disparities that span diverse communicable diseases

The undebated issue of justice: silent discourses in Dutch flood risk management

Flood risk for all types of flooding is projected to increase based on climate change projections and increases in damage potential. These challenges are likely to aggravate issues of justice in flood risk management (henceforth FRM). Based on a discursive-institutionalist perspective, this paper explores justice in Dutch FRM: how do institutions allocate the responsibilities and costs for FRM for different types of flooding? What are the underlying conceptions of justice? What are the future challenges with regard to climate change? The research revealed that a dichotomy is visible in the Dutch approach to FRM: despite an abundance of rules, regulations and resources spent, flood risk or its management, are only marginally discussed in terms of justice. Despite that the current institutional arrangement has material outcomes that treat particular groups of citizens differently, depending on the type of flooding they are prone to, area they live in (unembanked/embanked) or category of user (e.g. household, industry, farmer). The paper argues that the debate on justice will (re)emerge, since the differences in distributional outcomes are likely to become increasingly uneven as a result of increasing flood risk. The Netherlands should be prepared for this debate by generating the relevant facts and figures. An inclusive debate on the distribution of burdens of FRM could contribute to more effective and legitimate FRM

Bridging the legitimacy gap—translating theory into practical signposts for legitimate flood risk governance

Legitimacy is widely regarded as a founding principle of ‘good’ and effective governance, yet despite intense academic debate and policy discourse, the concept remains conceptually confusing and poorly articulated in practice. To bridge this gap, this research performed an interpretive thematic analysis of academic scholarship across public administration, public policy, law, political science and geography. Three core themes were identified in relation to representative deliberation, procedural and distributive equity and justice, and socio-political acceptability, with numerous sub-themes therein. In an attempt to clarify conceptual confusion, this paper grounds these theoretical debates in the context of flood risk governance where numerous legitimacy dilemmas exist. A number of questions are presented as conceptual ‘sign posts’ to encourage reflexive governance in the future. Thus, more broadly, we assert the importance of bringing legitimacy to the forefront of contemporary flood risk governance discourse and practice, moving beyond the realm of academic reflection

Towards Large-scale Inconsistency Measurement

We investigate the problem of inconsistency measurement on large knowledge bases by considering stream-based inconsistency measurement, i.e., we investigate inconsistency measures that cannot consider a knowledge base as a whole but process it within a stream. For that, we present, first, a novel inconsistency measure that is apt to be applied to the streaming case and, second, stream-based approximations for the new and some existing inconsistency measures. We conduct an extensive empirical analysis on the behavior of these inconsistency measures on large knowledge bases, in terms of runtime, accuracy, and scalability. We conclude that for two of these measures, the approximation of the new inconsistency measure and an approximation of the contension inconsistency measure, large-scale inconsistency measurement is feasible.Comment: International Workshop on Reactive Concepts in Knowledge Representation (ReactKnow 2014), co-located with the 21st European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2014). Proceedings of the International Workshop on Reactive Concepts in Knowledge Representation (ReactKnow 2014), pages 63-70, technical report, ISSN 1430-3701, Leipzig University, 2014. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-15056