Ottawa, ON -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/16/2020 -- The Shroud of Turin is a length of linen cloth bearing the negative image of a crucified man on it. Many believe that this cloth is Christ's burial shroud consequently, attracting much research from both historians and scientists. As a result, it has become one of the most studied relics in all of history. To date, the specific time in history when the Shroud was used is still a contentious issue as various research groups have placed it in different time periods. For instance, one study radiocarbon dated the Shroud to have originated between 1260-1390, while a more recent study using more advanced techniques dated the shroud to between 200 BC and 372AD – the time of Jesus Christ. Even though there are valid statistical questions about the radiocarbon dating results, the very large discrepancy between the medieval radiocarbon dates and the first century appears very likely to be due to some other cause than contamination hence calling for further studies.

Indeed, the fact that recent studies have placed the Shroud in Christ's time is vital. In as much as this is important, certainty of the same would highly be welcome. In a recent publication featured in Advances in Engineering and selected as a key scientific article, Professor Thomas McAvoy from the Institute for Systems Research at University of Maryland carefully analyzed recently published UV photographs of the Shroud. He specifically focused on analyzing 22 of the UV photos that Miller took in 1978. This exciting work is currently published in the research journal, Applied Optics.

In brief, Professor Thomas McAvoy discussed the non-uniform illumination problem with the photos and proposed a a method to overcome it. Next, he analyzed the first 16 UV photos, and he subjected the photos to preliminary treatment where they were resized, the center of illumination located and one outlier image detected. Overall, he cast the UV photos into the CIE L * a * b color space to get pixel intensity.

The author reported that the Shroud exhibited very unique UV fluorescence intensity properties, where it fluoresced more on its right side than its left side. In addition, where comparisons could be made, the Shroud was seen to fluoresce more on its dorsal side than its frontal side, and fluorescence was stronger near the center of the image on the Shroud than near the head or feet. Moreover, fluorescence was stronger near the center of the image on the Shroud than near the image of the head or feet. The center of the image on the Shroud also fluoresced more than the sides of the Shroud near it.

In summary, the study by Professor Thomas McAvoy carefully re-examined recently published UV images of the Shroud of Turin and presented a unique approach to overcome the uneven illumination problem with the images. Generally, it was shown that the Shroud of Turin exhibited very unique UV fluorescence properties. Following such realization, the author posed a very important question, 'What could account for the unique UV fluorescence intensity properties of the Shroud?' that ought to be addressed. In a statement to Advances in Engineering, Professor Thomas McAvoy further highlighted that the best approach to follow up on his study would be to carry out additional in-depth research so as to determine what produced these unique properties. A follow up paper on the effect of neutron radiation on the UV fluorescence properties of linen was submitted by Professor McAvoy in February, 2020 to Applied Optics.

This story has been featured at Advances in Engineering: https://advanceseng.com/analysis-uv-photographs-shroud-turin/

About Advances in Engineering
Advances in Engineering is the leading source of trustworthy and timely engineering research news. It continues to feature the very best in research paper across the sciences, with articles that consistently rank among the most cited in the world. Advances in Engineering select research papers that are most influential in their scientific fields or across fields and that will significantly advance scientific understanding. Selected papers tend to present novel and broadly important data, or concepts.

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Ottawa, ON -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/02/2020 -- Technically, wind energy is a form of solar energy. Consequently, it is renewable and can be used to generate electricity; this knowledge has been exploited greatly, particularly in the past decade where many wind farms have been installed in different regions worldwide. Wind farms are comprised of numerous large wind turbines that rotate, and the generated motion is transferred to a generator that in turn converts the kinetic energy to electric energy. So far, the process seems flawless; unfortunately, reports from residents of areas surrounding the wind farm have raised complaints regarding noise pollution generated by the turbines. More specifically, the motion of the large blades and mechanical parts of the turbines generate noise that has been reported to cause annoyance, sleep disturbance and consequently adverse health effects. Therefore, to ensure that residents living near wind farms are not subjected to excessive noise-related disturbance, it is important to identify potentially disturbing wind farm noise components. Moreover, suitable methods for quantifying these components are required. Acceptable threshold levels also need to be defined to determine the prevalence of potential noise disturbance.

Literature has it that the presence of amplitude modulation in wind farm noise is the result of annoyance. Presently, an extensive review of existing methods for AM detection and quantification can be found in various studies. Of particular interest is the IOA 'reference method' that incorporates various concepts, can be automated thus allowing analysis over long time periods, and is robust to background noise contamination, thus reducing the instances of false positives.

Overall, it is important to determine how often amplitude modulation is present at residential locations near a wind farm. In this view, Australian researchers from the Flinders University: Dr. Kristy Hansen, Phuc Nguyen, Dr. Branko Zajamsek, Prof. Peter Catcheside, in collaboration with Prof. Colin Hansen at The University of Adelaide studied the prevalence and characteristics of wind farm AM of a certain windfarm in Australia. Their goal was to determine how often AM occurred at various distances from the wind farm and to assess the suitability of the IOA 'reference method' for detecting low-frequency amplitude modulation of a tone that is generated by wind turbines. Their research work is currently published in Journal of Sound and Vibration and featured in Advances in Engineering as a key scientific article.

Their approach involved outdoor measurements for a total of 64 days at 9 different residences located between 1 and 9 km from the nearest wind turbine of a South Australian wind farm, which at the time of measurements was made up of 37 operational turbines, each with a rated power of 3 MW. The motivation for their analysis was to investigate the prevalence of a low-frequency 'thumping' or 'rumbling' noise that had been mentioned in complaints from residents.

The authors reported that an audible indoor low-frequency tone was amplitude modulated at the blade-pass frequency for 20% of the time up to a distance of 2.4 km. In addition, they found that the audible amplitude modulation occurred for a similar percentage of time between wind farm percentage power capacities of 40 and 85%, indicating that it was important that the AM analysis should not restricted to high power output conditions only.

In summary, the study investigated the prevalence and characteristics of wind farm amplitude modulation at 9 different residences located near a South Australian wind farm. Their work showed that, despite the number of amplitude modulation events being recorded to reduce with distance, audible indoor amplitude modulation still occurred for 16% of the time at a distance of 3.5 km. At night-time, audible amplitude modulation occurred indoors at residences located as far as 3.5 km from the wind farm for up to 22% of the time. In a statement to Advances in Engineering, Dr. Kristy Hansen pointed out that the adopted approach was successful, although more research was needed to quantify the annoyance and sleep disturbance potential of the recorded type of tonal amplitude modulation.

This story has been featured at Advances in Engineering:

https://advanceseng.com/audible-thumping-from-wind-farms-can-travel-up-to-3-5-km/

About Advances in Engineering
Advances in Engineering is the leading source of trustworthy and timely engineering research news. It continues to feature the very best in research paper across the sciences, with articles that consistently rank among the most cited in the world. Advances in Engineering select research papers that are most influential in their scientific fields or across fields and that will significantly advance scientific understanding. Selected papers tend to present novel and broadly important data, or concepts.

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Ottawa, ON -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/02/2020 -- Fossil fuels continue to account for eighty-five per cent of the world's energy consumption. The need for renewable energy resources is unequivocal. As a result, we have recently witnessed an increase in renewable energy penetration, amounting to 27% of global electricity generation in 2019. However, the ability of the existing electric grid to support renewable energy penetration is limited as the infrastructure was designed to support unidirectional power-flows emanating from a few generating sources to a large number of consumers. Consequently, power-flows from distributed renewable energy sources pose grid stability challenges. In addition, growing concerns regarding efficiency, reliability, and security necessitate the transformation of the present grid into a "smart grid".

The smart grid paradigm is envisioned to integrate several forward-looking technologies while maintaining full backward compatibility with the existing grid without compromising stability. Information from various sensors are integrated via communication networks to enable intelligent real-time power-flow decisions. Several studies reported in the scientific literature have examined smart grid decision problems, especially in the context of microgrids and nanogrids. However, most of these works either do not account for important nonlinearities and/or do not accommodate uncertainties in supply and demand.

To this end, a joint effort by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU SV) and Cisco Systems Inc. investigated the design of optimal energy management policies in the presence of supply and demand uncertainties. The research conducted by Dr. Chaitanya Poolla under the guidance of Dr. Abraham K. Ishihara from CMU SV and Dr. Rodolfo Milito from Cisco Systems Inc. resulted in a weather forecast-integrated Markov Decision Process-based (MDP) framework for near-optimal policy design in the presence of uncertainties. Their work is published in the scientific journal, Applied Energy.

To address the energy management problem, a modeling framework consisting of battery dynamics, a stochastic demand model, a stochastic solar generation model, and an electricity pricing scheme was considered. Within this framework, the researchers proposed MDP-based near-optimal policies and contrasted their performance to that of rule-based policies. Based on simulations in residential and commercial environments, the authors found the MDP approach significantly reduced operating costs in comparison to the heuristic alternatives.

This work has been identified by the Advances in Engineering selection committee as a key scientific article and a significant contribution to research excellence in the field of energy. In a statement to Advances in Engineering, Dr. Chaitanya Poolla highlighted that the proposed framework facilities the design and evaluation of energy management policies with configurable demand-supply-storage parameters in the presence of weather-induced uncertainties.

This story has been featured at Advances in Engineering:

https://advanceseng.com/optimal-energy-management-amid-uncertain-supply-demand/

About Advances in Engineering
Advances in Engineering is the leading source of trustworthy and timely engineering research news. It continues to feature the very best in research paper across the sciences, with articles that consistently rank among the most cited in the world. Advances in Engineering select research papers that are most influential in their fields or across fields and that will significantly advance scientific understanding. Selected papers tend to present novel and broadly important data, or concepts.

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Ottawa, ON -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/02/2020 -- The core goals of strategic environmental policies are to significantly reduce the use of fossil fuels and the emission of greenhouse gases through development of renewable energy technologies. The agricultural sector, for example, is among the fields that have witnessed tremendous growth of innovative technologies for the recovery of valuable resources such as energy, metals, and nutrients from bio-wastes and wastewaters. Unfortunately, several minerals and natural resources have been observed to deteriorate at an alarming rate. This calls for an urgent resolution to avoid future food unrest and distribution interruptions considering the critical role played by the macronutrients and micronutrients in ensuring socio-economic stability.

Previously, the research teams of Prof. Vaneeckhaute (Canada) and Prof. Meers (Belgium) have identified anaerobic digestion as a promising technology for the conversion of biodegradable wastes into biogas and nutrient-rich digestate. The digestates can often not be directly utilized for agricultural purposes due to the existing stringent regulations. As such, the valuable nutrients must be extracted from the digestates. However, most of the present studies have focused on the recovery of macronutrients from the digestate with limited focus on the fate of micronutrients and heavy metals. This requires an understanding of the digestate treatment process and its influence on the micronutrient and heavy metal contents at the various processing phases.

In a recent publication featured in Advances in Engineering and selected as a key scientific article, Laval University scientists in Quebec, Canada: Professor Celine Vaneeckhaute and Olivier Darveau together with Professor Erik Meers from Ghent University in Belgium evaluated the feasibility of a new vibrating membrane filtration technology in the recovery of valuable micronutrients and heavy metals from the liquid fraction of digestates, all while reducing the macronutrient concentrations to dischargeable water. Their work is currently published in the journal, Separation and Purification Technology.

The two-step vibrating membrane filtration system was operated with a reversed osmosis membrane and was followed by a lagoon. First, the system was applied for digestate processing at a full-scale biogas plant treating animal manure, energy maize, and residues from the food industry through anaerobic co-digestion. Next, a physicochemical characterization of the process streams and mass balance analyses for macronutrients, micronutrients and heavy metals throughout the treatment process were performed. Finally, the authors investigated the possibility of recycling the resulting macro- and micronutrient concentrates as substitutes for synthetic fertilizers taking into consideration their potential pollution with heavy metals.

Dischargeable water was produced in agreement with the regional (Flemish) regulatory standards using the vibrating membrane filtration system followed by a lagoon. The lagoon supplemented the performance of the vibrating membrane filtration system by allowing for further biological and natural purification. The concentrates produced by the first vibrating membrane filtration step exhibited great potential for reuse as inorganic fertilizers in place of synthetic fertilizers because they were typically rich in nitrogen and potassium nutrients, along with micronutrients such as Cu and Zn. Moreover, none of the regulatory standards for heavy metal concentrations in soil enhancers were exceeded according to the Flemish regulation. On the other hand, the concentrates produced by the second vibrating membrane filtration step showed little potential for reuse as fertilizers due to poor macronutrient contents.

Micronutrients provide additional value to the potential fertilizer products since they play a crucial role in various metabolic activities and their absence may lead to retarded plant growth and low soil quality. Synthetic fertilizers are often poor in micronutrients as opposed to the recovered nutrient products in this study. It was worth noting that a huge portion of the micronutrient and heavy metals end up in the solid fraction of digestate due to solid-liquid separation. Dr. Celine Vaneeckhaute, corresponding author in a statement to Advances in Engineering, mentioned that their further research will target the recovery of heavy metals from solid fractions of digestate, along with field experiments to confirm the micronutrient value of recovered fertilizer products.

This story has been featured at Advances in Engineering:

https://advanceseng.com/recovery-micronutrients-heavy-metals-digestate/

About Advances in Engineering
Advances in Engineering is the leading source of trustworthy and timely engineering research news. It continues to feature the very best in research paper across the sciences, with articles that consistently rank among the most cited in the world. Advances in Engineering select research papers that are most influential in their fields or across fields and that will significantly advance scientific understanding. Selected papers tend to present novel and broadly important data, or concepts.

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Ottawa, ON -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/19/2020 -- A plethora of literature exist that offer plausible information regarding the exceptional performance of sensors based on carbon nanotubes (CNT) transistors, with promises of transformative impact. Indeed, CNT-based biosensors have received immense attention over the decades, following which numerous demonstrations of sensors that make use of nanotubes as the semiconducting channel in a carbon nanotube field-effect transistor (CNTFET) have been exhibited.

Regardless of such strong research activity, fundamental understanding of how CNTFETs respond when operated under bias stress conditions relevant to many sensor applications is still missing. In fact, little has been done to explore bias stress for CNTFETs with channels of one or a few parallel CNTs, with existing reports primarily focusing on gate bias stress, rather than the combination of gate and drain bias stress that is required for most device applications. This lack of information regarding the effects of bias stress on CNTFETs over long time scales is an obstacle to the field.

In a recent publication featured in Advances in Engineering and selected as a key scientific article, Duke University researchers: Steven Noyce (PhD candidate), James Doherty (PhD Student), Dr. Zhihui Cheng, and Prof. Aaron Franklin in collaboration with Dr. Hui Han and Dr. Shane Bowen at Illumina, Inc. developed a measurement platform that allowed for robust, long-term testing of numerous CNTFETs concurrently in a fully automated manner. In addition, they also established bias ranges under which CNT transistors could operate continuously for months or more without degradation. Their work is currently published in the research journal, Nano Letters.

In brief, the team employed a custom characterization system from which they were able to determine the impacts of defect formation and charge traps on the stability of CNT-based sensors under extended bias. In addition to breakdown (which is well-known), they identified three additional operational modes: full stability, slow decay, and fast decay. These four distinct operational modes were based on applied drain-source bias, wherein devices held at sufficiently low voltage exhibited stability for months of continuous operation. Moreover, they established that as the applied bias increased beyond the full stability range, the CNTs experienced irreversible slow and then fast decay until eventually breaking down.

The researchers also identified a current drift behavior that reduced dynamic range of a CNT-based sensor by over four orders of magnitude but could be avoidable with appropriate sensing modalities. Hence, the importance of operating voltages and related device configuration is high for properly functioning CNTFETs being applied to sensing applications. The structure used for the study was chosen to be similar to a majority of previously studied CNT-based sensors so that the results achieved could have close applicability to the field as a whole.

"Carbon nanotube-based sensors have been studied for decades, but mostly with a focus on unique ways to integrate or apply them for a given application," said Prof. Franklin whose lab led the research to Advances in Engineering. "This study digs deeper into the operation of the nanotubes themselves when they are held under prolonged electrical stress, which is often required for sensing applications. Our findings show great promise for using the nanotubes, but with certain constraints that must be factored in when determining how to bias them in a sensor."

In summary, an electrical characterization platform that allows for the long-term interrogation of CNTFETs under various bias conditions was developed. Ultimately, the results presented describe what behaviors are to be expected when CNTs are stressed by continuous and variable biases over long periods of time and demark conditions under which the CNTs are electrically stable, providing valuable insight for the further advancement of the thousands of diverse CNTFET-based sensors that have been proposed. Further, the electrical characterization platform developed in the work is more broadly applicable to other nanoelectronic devices that require long-term study under various bias conditions.

This story has been featured at Advances in Engineering: https://advanceseng.com/are-carbon-nanotubes-stable-enough-for-use-in-sensors/

About Advances in Engineering
Advances in Engineering is the leading source of trustworthy and timely engineering research news. It continues to feature the very best in research paper across the sciences, with articles that consistently rank among the most cited in the world. Advances in Engineering select research papers that are most influential in their fields or across fields and that will significantly advance scientific understanding. Selected papers tend to present novel and broadly important data, or concepts.

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