Ten Ways to Fool the Masses When Presenting Battery Research

As scientists within the field of battery research we may often find it quite difficult to match and trust the promises given in press releases and high-profile papers. Even though there are real breakthroughs, where the results indeed are as impressive as they are marketed to be, we may as often find the reporting of "revolutionary" results to omit critical aspects of the methods and materials used. The absolute majority of researchers do not actively pursue to present their science in any untrue fashion, but poor (ethical) judgement could affect anyone working long hours in a gloomy lab at dusk and at the same time feel being pressed for publications and citations. Here, we outline ten ways to make your results appear more attractive and ground-breaking than they actually are, especially to laypeople that might not appreciate the full range of difficulties associated with battery research. Consider it a light-hearted entry with respect to scientific quality in methodology and dissemination, that might assist you in looking for nebulous reporting practices in your own and your peers\u27 work, but please do not consider it a guide, but a humorous contrast to the real publishing guidelines recently launche

The fungal peptide toxin Candidalysin activates the NLRP3 inflammasome and causes cytolysis in mononuclear phagocytes

Clearance of invading microbes requires phagocytes of the innate immune system. However, successful pathogens have evolved sophisticated strategies to evade immune killing. The opportunistic human fungal pathogen Candida albicans is efficiently phagocytosed by macrophages, but causes inflammasome activation, host cytolysis, and escapes after hypha formation. Previous studies suggest that macrophage lysis by C. albicans results from early inflammasome-dependent cell death (pyroptosis), late damage due to glucose depletion and membrane piercing by growing hyphae. Here we show that Candidalysin, a cytolytic peptide toxin encoded by the hypha-associated gene ECE1, is both a central trigger for NLRP3 inflammasome-dependent caspase-1 activation via potassium efflux and a key driver of inflammasome-independent cytolysis of macrophages and dendritic cells upon infection with C. albicans. This suggests that Candidalysin-induced cell damage is a third mechanism of C. albicans-mediated mononuclear phagocyte cell death in addition to damage caused by pyroptosis and the growth of glucose-consuming hyphae

Design of an alarm system for the hearing impaired

Life for a hearing-impaired person can be difficult in many ways. Having a hearing lossinvolves an increased risk of loneliness and exhaustion symptoms due to bad hearing. Not being able to hear everything, while talking with colleagues and eventually missing the punch line of a joke can lead to the feeling of social exclusion and not fitting in.The only thing that helps to restore the hearing of a hearing impaired is through hearing aids. But in many cases, even hearing aids do not help to cope with everyday life and in most cases, additional aids are needed. But does today's market for hearing aids solve the problems and needs of the user? How will a product work and look like to improve the life of a hearing-impaired?This project was about understanding how the hearing disorder affects daily life andidentifying the problems and needs of a hearing-impaired person.The project is based on a general design process and includes background studies on hearing impairment, questionnaire studies, interviews with the hearing impaired, market research, creative methods and analyses, and evaluation methods of ideas and concepts.The goal was to create a product that improves the everyday life of a hearing-impaired person.

Utveckling av gränssnitt för ett kalkyl- och beredningssystem

This document presents the work of a candidate thesis in Industrial Design with focus of product development, that was made in spring 2016 by Kasper Westman at Lulea university of technology. The aim of the project was to develop an interface concept for a new calculation and processing system that will be used at SSC, Skellefteå Snickericentral. The project has treated four stages: preliminary investigation, idea generation, concept development and detail design. The document reports in detail the methods and relevant theories of the substance used in each stage of reasoning and description of the choices that was made.The project began with an investigation in which interviews and observations was made of the current system at SSC. From the results of the investigation, several different suggestions were sketched out and evaluated. The sketches have been presented to employees of SSC who contributed opinions. Based on this, four different concepts have been developed, now with the help of the computer program Axure. The new concepts were evaluated together with the employees of SSC and a final result was made. The final result is images that show how the interface will look like with the motivation and description of how the interface is meant to be used.This document is written in Swedish.Validerat; 20160629 (global_studentproject_submitter

Design of an alarm system for the hearing impaired

Life for a hearing-impaired person can be difficult in many ways. Having a hearing lossinvolves an increased risk of loneliness and exhaustion symptoms due to bad hearing. Not being able to hear everything, while talking with colleagues and eventually missing the punch line of a joke can lead to the feeling of social exclusion and not fitting in.The only thing that helps to restore the hearing of a hearing impaired is through hearing aids. But in many cases, even hearing aids do not help to cope with everyday life and in most cases, additional aids are needed. But does today's market for hearing aids solve the problems and needs of the user? How will a product work and look like to improve the life of a hearing-impaired?This project was about understanding how the hearing disorder affects daily life andidentifying the problems and needs of a hearing-impaired person.The project is based on a general design process and includes background studies on hearing impairment, questionnaire studies, interviews with the hearing impaired, market research, creative methods and analyses, and evaluation methods of ideas and concepts.The goal was to create a product that improves the everyday life of a hearing-impaired person.

Introducing a pulse response based rotor position estimator for DTC IPMSM drives

Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are currently being considered for large-scale energy storage. Optimization of SIB electrolytes is, however, still largely lacking. Here we exhaustively evaluate NaPF6 in diglyme as an electrolyte of choice, via both physicochemical properties and extensive electrochemical tests including half as well as full cells. Fundamentally, the ionic conductivity is found to be quite comparable to carbonate based electrolytes and to obey the fractional Walden rule with viscosity. We find Na metal to work well as a reference electrode and the electrochemical stability, evaluated potentiostatically for various electrodes and corroborated by DFT calculations, to be satisfactory in the entire voltage range 0-4.4 V. Galvanostatic cycling at C/10 of half and full cells using Na3V2(PO4)(3) (NVP) or Na3V2(PO4)(2)F-3 (NVPF) as cathodes and hard carbon (HC) as anodes indicates rapid capacity fading in cells with HC anodes, possibly originating in a lack of a stable SEI or by trapping of sodium. Aiming to understand this capacity fade further, we conducted a GC/MS analysis to determine electrolyte reduction products and to propose reduction pathways, concluding that oligomer and/or alkoxide formation is possible. Overall, the promising results should warrant further investigations of diglyme based electrolytes for modern SIB development, albeit avoiding HC anodes