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

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

Digital Humanities in their Contemporary Arabic Context: Current State and Future Perspectives for Local Knowledge Production

This paper was accepted for the proceedings of the 3er Encuentro de Humanistas Digitales, but for reasons unknown, it never appeared.Este artículo tiene como objetivo ofrecer un estado de la cuestión sobre la emergencia de las Humanidades Digitales en el contexto árabe. Aunque se considera el rol de las instituciones extranjeras, que iniciaron o participaron en investigaciones sobre cultura árabe, se pone el acento en el desarrollo de proyectos de Humanidades Digitales como un componente de la sociedad de la información y la producción de conocimiento desde coordenadas locales. Además, se pretende reflexionar sobre la historia de computación en el contexto árabe y, en particular, sobre su encuentro con las Humanidades, y analizar los términos árabes que han emergido recientemente con la finalidad de caracterizar las Humanidades Digitales en tanto que actividad académica. Por último, ejemplifica la creación de textos, la producción de conocimiento, los datos abiertos y las Humanidades Públicas con una serie de proyectos e iniciativas árabes de limitada difusión