Improving thermal conductivity of cotton fabrics using composite coatings containing graphene, multiwall carbon nanotube or boron nitride fine particles

Graphene, multi-wall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) and fine boron nitride (BN) particles were separately applied with a resin onto a cotton fabric, and the effect of the thin composite coatings on the thermal conductive property, air permeability, wettability and color appearance of the cotton fabric was examined. The existence of the fillers within the coating layer increased the thermal conductivity of the coated cotton fabric. At the same coating content, the increase in fabric thermal conductivity was in the order of graphene > BN > MWCNT, ranging from 132 % to 842 % (based on pure cotton fabric). The coating led to 73 %, 69 % and 64 % reduction in air permeability when it respectively contained 50.0 wt% graphene, BN and MWCNTs. The graphene and MWCNT treated fabrics had a black appearance, but the coating had almost no influence on the fabric hydrophilicity. The BN coating made cotton fabric surface hydrophobic, with little change in fabric color.

Fine-scale foraging habitat and behavioural responses of pygmy blue whales

This study characterised, for the first time, periodically abundant and variable pygmy blue whale prey across the southern Australian shelf. Prey was closely tied to weather and ocean features. Foraging habitat and whale interactions described here will aid rapid assessments of profitable whale areas and forecasting effects of ongoing habitat change.

Improved contact load-bearing capacity of ultra-fine grained titanium : Multilayering and grading

The contact load-bearing response and surface damage resistance of multilayered hierarchical structured (MHSed) titanium were determined and compared to monolithic nanostructured titanium. The MHS structure was formed by combining cryorolling with a subsequent Surface Mechanical Attrition Treatment (SMAT) producing a surface structure consisted of an outer amorphous layer containing nanocrystals, an inner nanostructured layer and finally an ultra-fine grained core. The combination of a hard outer layer, a gradual transition layer and a compliant core results in reduced indentation depth, but a deeper and more diffuse sub-surface plastic deformation zone, compared to the monolithic nanostructured Ti. The redistribution of surface loading between the successive layers in the MHS Ti resulted in the suppression of cracking, whereas the monolithic nanograined (NG) Ti exhibited sub-surface cracks at the boundary of the plastic strain field. Finite element models with discrete layers and mechanically graded layersrepresenting the MHS system confirmed the absence of cracking and revealed a 38% decrease in shear stress in the sub-surface plastic strain field, compared to the monolithic NG Ti. Further, the mechanical gradation achieves a more gradual stress distribution which mitigates the interface failure and increases the interfacial toughness, thus providing strong resistance to loading damage. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

Recycled glass as a partial replacement for fine aggregate in structural concrete -effects on compressive strength

Waste management is becoming a major issue for communities worldwide. Glass, being nonbiodegradable, is not suitable for addition to landfill, and as such recycling opportunities need to be investigated. Due to the high material consumption of the construction industry, the utilisation of waste glass as a partial replacement for fine aggregate in structural concrete is particularly attractive. This project aimed to determine the level of glass replacement resulting in optimal compressive strength. Three concrete samples were tested at 7 and 28 days, for glass replacement proportions of 15, 20, 25, 30 and 40%. Compressive strength was found to increase up to a level of 30%, at which point the strength developed was 9% and 6% higher than the control after 7 and 28 days respectively. This demonstrates that concrete containing up to 30% fine glass aggregate exhibits higher compressive strength development than traditional concrete.

Effect of heat treatment on diffusion, internal friction, microstructure and mechanical properties of ultra-fine-grained nickel severely deformed by equal-channel angular pressing

Severe plastic deformation via equal-channel angular pressing was shown to induce characteristic ultra-fast diffusion paths in Ni (Divinski et al., 2011). The effect of heat treatment on these paths, which were found to be represented by deformation-modified general high-angle grain boundaries (GBs), is investigated by accurate radiotracer self-diffusion measurements applying the 63Ni isotope. Redistribution of free volume and segregation of residual impurities caused by the heat treatment triggers relaxation of the diffusion paths. A correlation between the GB diffusion kinetics, internal friction, microstructure evolution and microhardness changes is established and analyzed in detail. A phenomenological model of diffusion enhancement in deformation-modified GBs is proposed.

Weather fine light distant

A photograph that is part of a series building upon 'Fly Rhythm' 2013, this work and the other's in the exhibition are referenced in two double blind refereed, peer reviewed articles for 'Brolga' and 'Journal of somatic dance' due for publication in 2016. The series has also been referenced in the conference 'Photography in the 21st Century' at Central Saint Martins, London UK 2015 organised by 'The Philsophy of Photography' Journal, Intellect publishers UK; and 'MEMORY ^ SENTIMENT ^ BODY ^ SPACE ^ OBJECT ' Coventry University symposium 2015

Combined use of GPS and accelerometry reveals fine scale three-dimensional foraging behaviour in the short-tailed shearwater

Determining the foraging behaviour of free-ranging marine animals is fundamental for assessing their habitat use and how they may respond to changes in the environment. However, despite recent advances in bio-logging technology, collecting information on both at-sea movement patterns and activity budgets still remains difficult in small pelagic seabird species due to the constraints of instrument size. The short-tailed shearwater, the most abundant seabird species in Australia (ca 23 million individuals), is a highly pelagic procellariiform. Despite its ecological importance to the region, almost nothing is known about its at-sea behaviour, in particular, its foraging activity. Using a combination of GPS and tri-axial accelerometer data-loggers, the fine scale three-dimensional foraging behaviour of 10 breeding individuals from two colonies was investigated. Five at-sea behaviours were identified: (1) resting on water, (2) flapping flight, (3) gliding flight, (4) foraging (i.e., surface foraging and diving events), and (5) taking-off. There were substantial intra- and inter- individual variations in activity patterns, with individuals spending on average 45.8% (range: 17.1-70.0%) of time at sea resting on water and 18.2% (range: 2.3-49.6%) foraging. Individuals made 76.4 ± 65.3 dives (range: 8-237) per foraging trip (mean duration 9.0 ± 1.9 s), with dives also recorded during night-time. With the continued miniaturisation of recording devices, the use of combined data-loggers could provide us with further insights into the foraging behaviour of small procellariiforms, helping to better understand interactions with their prey.

Modelling human preferences for ranking and collaborative filtering: a probabilistic ordered partition approach

Learning preference models from human generated data is an important task in modern information processing systems. Its popular setting consists of simple input ratings, assigned with numerical values to indicate their relevancy with respect to a specific query. Since ratings are often specified within a small range, several objects may have the same ratings, thus creating ties among objects for a given query. Dealing with this phenomena presents a general problem of modelling preferences in the presence of ties and being query-specific. To this end, we present in this paper a novel approach by constructing probabilistic models directly on the collection of objects exploiting the combinatorial structure induced by the ties among them. The proposed probabilistic setting allows exploration of a super-exponential combinatorial state-space with unknown numbers of partitions and unknown order among them. Learning and inference in such a large state-space are challenging, and yet we present in this paper efficient algorithms to perform these tasks. Our approach exploits discrete choice theory, imposing generative process such that the finite set of objects is partitioned into subsets in a stagewise procedure, and thus reducing the state-space at each stage significantly. Efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms are then presented for the proposed models. We demonstrate that the model can potentially be trained in a large-scale setting of hundreds of thousands objects using an ordinary computer. In fact, in some special cases with appropriate model specification, our models can be learned in linear time. We evaluate the models on two application areas: (i) document ranking with the data from the Yahoo! challenge and (ii) collaborative filtering with movie data. We demonstrate that the models are competitive against state-of-the-arts.

Fine-scale patterns of genetic variation in a widespread clonal seagrass species

Seagrasses are ecosystem engineers that offer important habitat for a large number of species and provide a range of ecosystem services. Many seagrass ecosystems are dominated by a single species, with research showing that genotypic diversity at fine spatial scales plays an important role in maintaining a range of ecosystem functions. However, for most seagrass species, information on fine-scale patterns of genetic variation in natural populations is lacking. In this study, we use a hierarchical sampling design to determine the levels of genetic and genotypic diversity at different spatial scales (centimeters, meters, kilometers) in the Australian seagrass Zostera muelleri. Our analysis shows that at fine spatial scales (<1 m), levels of genotypic diversity are relatively low (R(Plots) = 0.37 ± 0.06 SE), although there is some intermingling of genotypes. At the site (10’s m) and meadow location (km) scale, we found higher levels of genotypic diversity (R(sites) = 0.79 ± 0.04 SE; R(Locations) = 0.78 ± 0.04 SE). We found some sharing of genotypes between sites within meadows, but no sharing of genotypes between meadow locations. We also detected a high level of genetic structuring between meadow locations (FST = 0.278). Taken together, our results indicate that both sexual and asexual reproductions are important in maintaining meadows of Z. muelleri. The dominant mechanism of asexual reproduction appears to occur via localized rhizome extension, although the sharing of a limited number of genotypes over the scale of 10’s of meters could also result from the localized dispersal and recruitment of fragments. The large number of unique genotypes at the meadow scale indicates that sexual reproduction is important in maintaining these populations, while the high level of genetic structuring suggests little gene flow and connectivity between our study sites. These results imply that recovery from disturbances will occur through both sexual and asexual regeneration, but the limited connectivity at the landscape scale implies that recovery at meadow-scale losses is likely to be limited.