Digital Materiality of the Internet-of-Things

date-added: 2015-01-19 04:14:58 +0000 date-modified: 2015-04-01 06:51:10 +0000date-added: 2015-01-19 04:14:58 +0000 date-modified: 2015-04-01 06:51:10 +0000This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, CreativeWorks London Hub, grant AH/J005142/1, and the European Regional Development Fund, London Creative and Digital Fusion

Biology of Applied Digital Ecosystems

A primary motivation for our research in Digital Ecosystems is the desire to exploit the self-organising properties of biological ecosystems. Ecosystems are thought to be robust, scalable architectures that can automatically solve complex, dynamic problems. However, the biological processes that contribute to these properties have not been made explicit in Digital Ecosystems research. Here, we discuss how biological properties contribute to the self-organising features of biological ecosystems, including population dynamics, evolution, a complex dynamic environment, and spatial distributions for generating local interactions. The potential for exploiting these properties in artificial systems is then considered. We suggest that several key features of biological ecosystems have not been fully explored in existing digital ecosystems, and discuss how mimicking these features may assist in developing robust, scalable self-organising architectures. An example architecture, the Digital Ecosystem, is considered in detail. The Digital Ecosystem is then measured experimentally through simulations, with measures originating from theoretical ecology, to confirm its likeness to a biological ecosystem. Including the responsiveness to requests for applications from the user base, as a measure of the 'ecological succession' (development).Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure, conferenc

Eysenbach, Tuische and Diepgen’s evaluation of web searching for identifying unpublished studies for systematic reviews: an innovative study which is still relevant today.

PublishedArticleRevie

Erratum to: Web searching for systematic reviews: a case study of reporting standards in the UK Health Technology Assessment programme.

See http://hdl.handle.net/10871/17330 for the original article

Bridging formalisation and expert judgement in searches for studies for systematic reviews

Systematic reviews aim to use pre-specified and explicitly described methods. This entails an element of formalisation in which methods are described according to a fixed structure. However, qualitative studies show that too much emphasis on formalisation can obscure how expert judgement is required even after clearly defined methods are established. Thus, there is a gap between how systematic review methods are formalised in guidance and reported in systematic reviews, and how they are carried out in practice using undisclosed expert judgement. The aim of this thesis is to describe and bridge the gap between formalisation and expert judgement with respect to searching for studies for systematic reviews, with a particular focus on forward citation searching and web searching. Forward citation searching and web searching are useful search methods to consider due to observed variability in both if and how they are used in systematic reviews, in contrast to searches of bibliographic databases which are routine in almost all systematic reviews. To this end, the thesis seeks to fulfil three objectives: first, to formalise the conduct and reporting of forward citation searching and web searching in systematic reviews; secondly, to describe and evaluate the conduct and reporting of forward citation searching and web searching in systematic reviews; thirdly, to explore the role of expert judgement when using forward citation searching and web searching. Both aggregative and configurative review types are considered throughout. The findings show that formalised approaches to searching are apparent in guidance to different degrees. However, systematic reviews do not always reflect formalised guidance. Qualitative investigation describes hitherto hidden practical knowledge which underpins searching decisions. The thesis draws these findings together and proposes that guidance on searching for studies should be framed in terms of the practical understanding which informs how searching is undertaken rather than limited to describing recommended processes

Influence of anneal atmosphere on ZnO-nanorod photoluminescent and morphological properties with self-powered photodetector performance

OA Monitor ExerciseEPSR

The LiAl/FeS2 battery power source for the future

Advanced high power density rechargeable batteries are currently under development. These batteries have the potential of greatly increasing the power and energy densities available for space applications. Depending on whether the system is optimized for high power or high energy, values up to 150 Wh/kg and 2100 W/kg (including hardware) are projected. This is due to the fact that the system uses a high conductivity molten salt electrolyte. The electrolyte also serves as a separator layer with unlimited freeze thaw capabilities. Life of 1000 cycles and ten calendar years is projected. The electrochemistry consists of a lithium aluminum alloy negative electrode, iron disulfide positive electrode, and magnesium oxide powder immobilized molten salt electrolyte. Processed powders are cold compacted into circular discs which are assembled into bipolar cell hardware with peripheral ceramic salts. The culmination of the work will be a high energy battery of 40 kWh and a high power battery of 28 kWh

Lubrication at physiological pressures by polyzwitterionic brushes

The very low sliding friction at natural synovial joints, which have friction coefficients of mu < 0.002 at pressures up to 5 megapascals or more, has to date not been attained in any human-made joints or between model surfaces in aqueous environments. We found that surfaces in water bearing polyzwitterionic brushes that were polymerized directly from the surface can have m values as low as 0.0004 at pressures as high as 7.5 megapascals. This extreme lubrication is attributed primarily to the strong hydration of the phosphorylcholine-like monomers that make up the robustly attached brushes, and may have relevance to a wide range of human-made aqueous lubrication situations

Acoustic Enhancement of Polymer/ZnO Nanorod Photovoltaic Device Performance

Leverhulme Trust and EPSRC. Grant Numbers: EP/J500021/1, EP/G037515/1