407 research outputs found
Investigation and Characterization of Conductive DEAP Polymer Materials with Nickel Nanocomposites
Dielectric ElectroActive Polymers, or DEAPs, are devices with coupled electrical and mechanical responses that resemble stretchable parallel plate capacitors, that can act as actuators, sensors, or electrical generators. Currently, the electrode layers on the top and bottom are generally conductive carbon grease, which is dirty and also causes curing issues for certain polymers. This thesis explores several polymers and conductive fillers to identify a conductive nanocomposite material, to replace the grease electrode with a solid material and eliminate issues associated with grease electrodes. It then characterizes the mechanical and electric properties and how they change during cyclic loading, while augmenting an equibiaxial tensile testing machine and advancing the knowledge of equibiaxial characterization.
The most promising polymer/filler combination was found to be EcoFlex30, a platinum cure silicone rubber, containing seven volume percent of nickel nanostrands and three volume percent of 0.1 mm length nickel-coated carbon fiber. Using two conductive fillers of different sizes resulted in much higher conductivity than a single filler alone, and an enormous piezoresistive effect. This material gave weak conductivity at no load, increasing several orders of magnitude as strained and well surpassing the benchmark of 1.2 S/m set by conductive carbon grease. Elastomer materials were found to have conductivities as high as 275 S/m under peak strain, and changing the nickel-coated carbon fiber length allowed for strains over 120%. Equibiaxial stress-strain curves were also analyzed for energy lost through hysteresis, in order to compare to published results for DEAPs used as Dielectric Energy Generators. Results and recommendations are presented for using and further improving the materials for applications of DEAPs used as energy harvesters and capacitive sensors, using the material alone as a piezoresistive sensor, and improving the equibiaxial characterization process
The place of music in the religious training of young people
Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit
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An information system for the planning and control of a food service operation.
Business AdministrationDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.
Reliability of the Dynamic Gait Index in Vestibular Disorders
The purpose of this study was to examine the inter-rater and intra-rater reliability of the Dynamic Gait Index (DGI) when used with patients with vestibular disorders. Subjects included 30 patients aged 27-88 years, with vestibular disorders, who were referred for vestibular rehabilitation. Subjects\u27 performance on the DGI was concurrently rated by two physical therapists experienced in vestibular rehabilitation to determine inter-rater reliability. To determine intra-rater reliability each subject repeated the DGI one-hour later. Percent agreement and kappa statistics were calculated for individual DGI items. Kappa statistics for individual items were averaged to yield a composite kappa score of the DGI. Total DGI scores were evaluated for inter-rater and intra-rater reliability using Spearman rank order correlation coefficient. Inter-rater reliability of individual DGI items varied from poor to excellent based on kappa values. Composite kappa values demonstrated good overall inter-rater reliability of total DGI scores. Spearman Rho demonstrated excellent correlation between total DGI scores of both raters. Intra-rater reliability of individual items varied from fair to excellent based on kappa values. Composite kappa values demonstrated good overall intra-rater reliability of DGI. Fair but significant correlation was demonstrated between total DGI scores using Spearman Rho. It was concluded that the Dynamic Gait Index demonstrated only fair inter- and intra-rater reliability when used with subjects with vestibular disorders
Exploring the Digital Humanities at AUC #DHAUC
The digital brings different playgrounds and new kinds of interaction, and we must incessantly ask questions of it, disturbing the edge upon which we find ourselves so precariously perched. And what the digital asks of us is that every assumption we have be turned on its head
Transcribing Medieval Manuscripts for Machine Learning
In the early twentieth century, many scholars focused on the preparation of
editions and translations of texts previously available only to the few
specialists able to read archaic hands and privileged enough to travel to work
in person with them in manuscript. Valuable scholarship in its own right, the
preparation of these editions and translations for particular texts deemed
important enough to justify the effort and time, laid the foundation for
generations of scholarship in medieval studies. On the other hand, for many
materials in historical archival collections, including already digitised
collections, medievalists have only had the time to create partial
transcriptions, if any at all. Access to textual material from the medieval
period has increased greatly in recent years with digitisation, and we are able
to imagine many new research projects in decades to come. What challenges do
new frontiers of automation in the archives raise with respect to medieval
studies and in particular to the ways we transcribe? In this article, we argue
that if medievalists hope to pursue the kinds of analysis that goes on in
advanced computational research, we will need new kinds of transcriptions,
intentionally theorized not only for human reading, but also for machine
processing. We already have mature methods for remediating generations of
editions of medieval works such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR), but we
can ask ourselves if these are the kinds of text we want to use for future
computational analysis. We suggest instead that one way forward is by going
back to the scriptorium
Locating Medieval French, or Why We Collect and Visualize the Geographic Information of Texts
This article focuses on geographic information contained in the body of medieval French texts composed over the period of the eleventh to the fifteenth century. By “geographic information” we mean textual references made to different kinds of place names at different scales within sustained prose or poetic narrative—landmarks, settlements, regions, and countries—real and imaginary. Collecting such geographic information across a large corpus of texts and analyzing it with the digital methods that have become available to scholars in recent years allow us to create new contexts in which we can reexamine a variety of questions in literary history
Digital Spatial Practices and Linguistic Landscaping in Beirut
This article describes research done on language and script variation in the linguistic landscape (LL) of Beirut, Lebanon. It discusses how the cityscape itself became an archive for researchers and how digital humanities’ (DH) methods were used to capture and analyze patterns in written language found in public space. It also discusses the DH project, Linguistic Landscapes of Beirut (LLB) at the heart of this research and the benefits and challenges of its two core methods: mobile data collection for documentation of linguistic diversity and geospatial visualization. The article argues that knowledge production in non-Western locations such as Beirut is both impacted and enriched by the complex political and social environment. This research, carried out with under-resourced infrastructures and at the frontiers of DH practice in the Arab world, blended theory, practice and pedagogy, ultimately illustrates that context profoundly changes computational research.Cet article décrit des recherches effectuées sur la variation de la langue et de l’écriture dans le paysage linguistique (LL) de Beyrouth, au Liban. Il explique la façon dont le paysage urbain lui-même est devenu une archive pour les chercheurs et celle dont les méthodes des humanités numériques (DH) ont été utilisées pour capturer et analyser les modèles du langage écrit dans l’espace public. Il aborde également le projet DH, Paysages linguistiques de Beyrouth (LLB) au cœur de cette recherche et les avantages et les défis de ses deux méthodes principales : la collecte mobile de données pour la documentation de la diversité linguistique et la visualisation géospatiale. L’article soutient que la production de connaissances dans des endroits non occidentaux comme Beyrouth est à la fois influencée et enrichie par un environnement politique et social complexe. Cette recherche, menée avec des infrastructures sous-financées et aux frontières des pratiques des humanités numériques dans le monde arabe, mêlant théorie, pratique et pédagogie, illustre finalement que le contexte change profondément la recherche informatisée
Spatial Humanities: An Agenda for Pre-Modern Research
This article provides some basic context for digital mapping in the humanities and proposes some paths forward for researchers to experiment with digital tools. Visualizing map information today has been significantly democratized, with a variety of simple entry points available for professional and public researchers. The article discusses some of the challenges in getting and organizing pre-modern humanities spatial data and propose a list of practical suggestions for beginners. Whereas other humanists interested in mapping may find this article useful, the article is written with the pre-modern humanities researcher in mind
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