Electrolytic rectifiers

TypescriptM.A. University of Missouri 1912More than a half-century ago, Wheatstone, in experimenting with the electro-chemical behavior of certain elements, laid the foundation for the modern chemical rectifier. In the year 1855, he found that aluminum as anode in certain electrolytes, offered great resistance to the passage of the electric current, while as kathode, offered very little. This experiment was repeated two years later by Buff. He thought he observed that when the aluminum was used as the anode, that a dark skin formed upon its surface. This was verified by Beetz in 1877. Talt, in 1869, observed a high counter E.M.F. Overbeck and Streintz considering the film as a non-conductor, separating two conductors, the electrolyte and plates, saw in the arrangement a typical condenser. This application was studied and developed until within the last few years, but has not yet been brought to the point of utility

PARADOXES, CONFLICTS AND TENSIONS IN ESTABLISHING MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT FUNCTION

Managing master data as an organization-wide function enforces changes in responsibilities and established ways of working. These changes cause tensions in the organization and can result in conflicts. Understanding these tensions and mechanisms helps the organization to manage the change more effectively. The tensions and conflicts are studied through the theory of paradox. The object of this paper is to identify paradoxes in a Master Data Management (MDM) development process and the factors that contribute to the emergence of these conflicts. Altogether thirteen MDM specific paradoxes were identified and factors leading to them were presented. Paradoxes were grouped into categories that represent the organization’s core activities to understand how tensions are embedded within the organization, and how they are experienced. Five paradoxes were observed more closely to illustrate the circumstances they appear. Working through the tensions also sheds light on the question of how these paradoxes should be managed. This example illustrates how problems emerge as dilemmas and evolve into paradoxes

Data governance: Organizing data for trustworthy Artificial Intelligence

The rise of Big, Open and Linked Data (BOLD) enables Big Data Algorithmic Systems (BDAS) which are often based on machine learning, neural networks and other forms of Artificial Intelligence (AI). As such systems are increasingly requested to make decisions that are consequential to individuals, communities and society at large, their failures cannot be tolerated, and they are subject to stringent regulatory and ethical requirements. However, they all rely on data which is not only big, open and linked but varied, dynamic and streamed at high speeds in real-time. Managing such data is challenging. To overcome such challenges and utilize opportunities for BDAS, organizations are increasingly developing advanced data governance capabilities. This paper reviews challenges and approaches to data governance for such systems, and proposes a framework for data governance for trustworthy BDAS. The framework promotes the stewardship of data, processes and algorithms, the controlled opening of data and algorithms to enable external scrutiny, trusted information sharing within and between organizations, risk-based governance, system-level controls, and data control through shared ownership and self-sovereign identities. The framework is based on 13 design principles and is proposed incrementally, for a single organization and multiple networked organizations.NORTE-01-0145- FEDER-000037

A and B site doping of a phonon-glass perovskite oxide thermoelectric

By tuning the A site cation size it is possible to control the degree of octahedral distortion and ultimately structural symmetry in the new perovskite solid solution La0.5Na0.5−xKxTiO3, affording a rhombohedral-to-cubic transition as x increases above 0.4. The La3+ and K+ cations are distributed randomly across the A site leading to significant phonon disorder in cubic La0.5K0.5TiO3 (Pm[3 with combining macron]m) which produces a phonon-glass with a thermal conductivity of 2.37(12) W m−1 K−1 at 300 K; a reduction of 75% when compared with isostructural SrTiO3. This simple cation substitution of Sr2+ for La3+ and K+ maintains the flexible structural chemistry of the perovskite structure and two mechanisms of doping for the introduction of electronic charge carriers are explored; A site doping in La1−yKyTiO3 or B site doping in La0.5K0.5Ti1−zNbzO3. The phonon-glass thermal conductivity of La0.5K0.5TiO3 is retained upon doping through both of these mechanisms highlighting how the usually strongly coupled thermal and electronic transport can be minimised by mass disorder in perovskites. Precise control over octahedral distortion in A site doped La1−yKyTiO3, which has rhombohedral (R[3 with combining macron]c) symmetry affords lower band dispersions and increased carrier effective masses over those achieved in B site doped La0.5K0.5Ti1−zNbzO3 which maintains the cubic (Pm[3 with combining macron]m) symmetry of the undoped La0.5K0.5TiO3 parent. The higher Seebeck coefficients of A site doped La1−yKyTiO3 yield larger power factors and lead to increased thermoelectric figures of merit and improved conversion efficiencies compared with the mechanism for B site doping

Pacific Northwest GridWise™ Testbed Demonstration Projects; Part II. Grid Friendly™ Appliance Project

Fifty residential electric water heaters and 150 new residential clothes dryers were modified to respond to signals received from underfrequency, load-shedding appliance controllers. Each controller monitored the power-grid voltage signal and requested that electrical load be shed by its appliance whenever electric power-grid frequency fell below 59.95 Hz. The controllers and their appliances were installed and monitored for more than a year at residential sites at three locations in Washington and Oregon. The controllers and their appliances responded reliably to each shallow underfrequency event—an average of one event per day—and shed their loads for the durations of these events. Appliance owners reported that the appliance responses were unnoticed and caused little or no inconvenience for the homes’ occupants

A possible role for river restoration enhancing biodiversity through interaction with wildfire

BackgroundHistorically, wildfire regimes produced important landscape-scale disturbances in many regions globally. The “pyrodiversity begets biodiversity” hypothesis suggests that wildfires that generate temporally and spatially heterogeneous mosaics of wildfire severity and post-burn recovery enhance biodiversity at landscape scales. However, river management has often led to channel incision that disconnects rivers from their floodplains, desiccating floodplain habitats and depleting groundwater. In conjunction with predicted increases in frequency, intensity and extent of wildfires under climate change, this increases the likelihood of deep, uniform burns that reduce biodiversity.Predicted synergy of river restoration and biodiversity increaseRecent focus on floodplain re-wetting and restoration of successional floodplain habitat mosaics, developed for river management and flood prevention, could reduce wildfire intensity in restored floodplains and make the burns less uniform, increasing climate-change resilience; an important synergy. According to theory, this would also enhance biodiversity. However, this possibility is yet to be tested empirically. We suggest potential research avenues.Illustration and future directionsWe illustrate the interaction between wildfire and river restoration using a restoration project in Oregon, USA. A project to reconnect the South Fork McKenzie River and its floodplain suffered a major burn (“Holiday Farm” wildfire, 2020), offering a rare opportunity to study the interaction between this type of river restoration and wildfire; specifically, the predicted increases in pyrodiversity and biodiversity. Given the importance of river and wetland ecosystems for biodiversity globally, a research priority should be to increase our understanding of potential mechanisms for a “triple win” of flood reduction, wildfire alleviation and biodiversity promotion

Legal linked data ecosystems and the rule of law

This chapter introduces the notions of meta-rule of law and socio-legal ecosystems to both foster and regulate linked democracy. It explores the way of stimulating innovative regulations and building a regulatory quadrant for the rule of law. The chapter summarises briefly (i) the notions of responsive, better and smart regulation; (ii) requirements for legal interchange languages (legal interoperability); (iii) and cognitive ecology approaches. It shows how the protections of the substantive rule of law can be embedded into the semantic languages of the web of data and reflects on the conditions that make possible their enactment and implementation as a socio-legal ecosystem. The chapter suggests in the end a reusable multi-levelled meta-model and four notions of legal validity: positive, composite, formal, and ecological

God and Politics: A Spiritual State of the Union

Recent years have witnessed a dangerous resurfacing of racial tension, religious intolerance, and political divisiveness in American life. Outbursts of venomous anger, often expressed in the name of God, have produced an ugly new standard in public discourse. At the same time, Americans, often inspired by their faith in God, have seen through racial, religious, and national fault lines and have responded courageously and contributed generously to others in the wake of disasters at home and abroad. In this presentation, Rabbi Sharon Brous will reflect on how different views of God serve to foster different types of public discourse, action, and culture. Rabbi Sharon Brous is the founding rabbi of IKAR, a Jewish spiritual community in Los Angeles whose mission is to promote the integration of soulful prayer, serious learning, and social justice. A graduate of Columbia University with a B.A. in history and an M.A. in human rights and conflict resolution, she was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, where she received several awards in Talmud and homiletics. She has been named to The Jewish Daily Forward\u27s list of the 50 most influential American Jews and to Newsweek\u27s list of America\u27s leading rabbis. Rabbi Brous is a frequent contributor to The Washington Post\u27s On Faith and she has been a guest on Krista Tippet\u27s National Public Radio program Speaking of Faith. She serves on the board of Rabbis for Human Rights, on the rabbinic advisory board of American Jewish World Service, on the regional council of Progressive Jewish Alliance, and as a member of the Task Force to Advance Multireligious Collaboration on Global Poverty

Asset Management DataInfrastructures

Many organizations tasked with managing public utility infrastructure routinely collect and store large volumes of data for decision making purposes in their management and maintenance processes. This data is collected, stored and analyzed within asset management data infrastructures, however, traditional data management methods are becoming increasingly inadequate. More and more, data is being provided by new sources that can communicate over the internet, collectively known as the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT may benefit the management of public utility infrastructures by providing enough quality data to generate trusted information required to make the right decisions at the right time, helping asset management organizations improve their decision-making capability. The extensible asset management data infrastructure model presented in this dissertation aims at improving our understanding of asset management through IoT. Using a Duality of Technology lens, this research takes the view that IoT is continually being socially and physically constructed, and discriminates between human activity that affects IoT, and human activity that is affected by IoT. Explorative case studies in the asset management domain are used as the main research method. Taking the view that asset management data infrastructures are complex adaptive systems ensures that the resulting model is capable of dealing with the evolution of asset management data infrastructures in the face of new technologies and new requirements. The usability of the model is tested by means of test case studies. The tests indicate that the model can be used to improve our understanding of asset management through IoT and to provide actionable insights for the achievement of expected benefits and mitigation of risks of asset management through IoT.Information and Communication Technolog