Direct spun aligned carbon nanotube web-reinforced proton exchange membranes for fuel cells

A new method combining electrospinning of SPEEK and direct spinning of CNT forests has been used to prepare sulfonated poly(ether ether ketone) (SPEEK)/directly spinnable carbon nanotube (dsCNT) composite proton exchange membranes. The SPEEK/dsCNT membrane is more robust than SPEEK alone, and in a fuel cell significantly outperforms both SPEEK and the commercial Nafion 212 membranes.

Epistemic Modality in Linguistic and Literature Essays in English : A comparative corpus-based study of modal verbs in student claims

This study is a corpus-based comparison between student essays written in the subject areas of English linguistics and literature at undergraduate level. They are 200 Bachelor degree theses submitted at a variety of university departments (such as English, Language and Literature, Humanities, Social and Intercultural Studies) in Sweden. The comparison concerns frequencies of core modal verbs and how often they occur together with the I, we and it subject pronouns and in the structures this/the [essay, study, project, thesis] when students attempt to communicate their personal claims. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the essays show few similarities in the ways that core modal verbs appear in both disciplines. The results indicate mainly distinct differences, especially in relation to clusters and variation of performative verbs. Specific patterns in the ways that students use core modal verbs as hedges have also been identified.

Appréhension du corpus eurorégional, expression privilégiée d'une création territoriale

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Variación del índice de niebla usando un corpus obtenido a partir de los libros digitalizados por google

En lingüística, principalmente en el idioma inglés, se usa el Índice de Niebla de Gunning para determinar la legibilidad de un texto. El índice estima los años de educación formal necesarios para comprenderel texto en una primera lectura. Un Índice de 11 años apunta a una persona con el colegio finalizado, (Gunning, 1973). Analizamos en esta investigación la variación del Índice al cambiar la forma de obtener uno de los parámetros. En la fórmula original se consideran “palabras complejas” las que tienen tres o más sílabas. En su lugar utilizamos “palabras desconocidas” que son aquellas cuyo uso es poco familiar, según un corpus construido durante la investigación, partiendo de millones de libros digitalizados por Google y la Universidad de Harvard. Aunque la variación de los resultados dependerá del valor asignado para determinarsi una palabra es desconocida la investigación es pionera en el uso de un corpus para calcular el Índice de Niebla.

Biomimetic Scaffold with Aligned Microporosity Designed for Dentin Regeneration

Tooth loss is a common result of a variety of oral diseases due to physiological causes, trauma, genetic disorders, and aging and can lead to physical and mental suffering that markedly lowers the individual’s quality of life. Tooth is a complex organ that is composed of mineralized tissues and soft connective tissues. Dentin is the most voluminous tissue of the tooth and its formation (dentinogenesis) is a highly regulated process displaying several similarities with osteogenesis. In this study, gelatin, thermally denatured collagen, was used as a promising low-cost material to develop scaffolds for hard tissue engineering. We synthetized dentin-like scaffolds using gelatin biomineralized with magnesium-doped hydroxyapatite and blended it with alginate. With a controlled freeze-drying process and alginate cross-linking, it is possible to obtain scaffolds with microscopic aligned channels suitable for tissue engineering. 3D cell culture with mesenchymal stem cells showed the promising properties of the new scaffolds for tooth regeneration. In detail, the chemical–physical features of the scaffolds, mimicking those of natural tissue, facilitate the cell adhesion, and the porosity is suitable for long-term cell colonization and fine cell–material interactions.

Navigating a corpus of journal papers using Handles

For some years now the Internet and World Wide Web communities have envisaged moving to a next generation of Web technologies by promoting a globally unique, and persistent, identifier for identifying and locating many forms of published objects . These identifiers are called Universal Resource Names (URNs) and they hold out the prospect of being able to refer to an object by what it is (signified by its URN), rather than by where it is (the current URL technology). One early implementation of URN ideas is the Unicode-based Handle technology, developed at CNRI in Reston Virginia. The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a specific URN naming convention proposed just over 5 years ago and is now administered by the International DOI organisation, founded by a consortium of publishers and based in Washington DC. The DOI is being promoted for managing electronic content and for intellectual rights management of it, either using the published work itself, or, increasingly via metadata descriptors for the work in question. This paper describes the use of the CNRI handle parser to navigate a corpus of papers for the Electronic Publishing journal. These papers are in PDF format and based on our server in Nottingham. For each paper in the corpus a metadata descriptor is prepared for every citation appearing in the References section. The important factor is that the underlying handle is resolved locally in the first instance. In some cases (e.g. cross-citations within the corpus itself and links to known resources elsewhere) the handle can be handed over to CNRI for further resolution. This work shows the encouraging prospect of being able to use persistent URNs not only for intellectual property negotiations but also for search and discovery. In the test domain of this experiment every single resource, referred to within a given paper, can be resolved, at least to the level of metadata about the referred object. If the Web were to become more fully URN aware then a vast directed graph of linked resources could be accessed, via persistent names. Moreover, if these names delivered embedded metadata when resolved, the way would be open for a new generation of vastly more accurate and intelligent Web search engines.

The standardisation of Scottish Gaelic orthography 1750-2007: a corpus approach

This thesis investigates the standardisation of Modern Scottish Gaelic orthography from the mid-eighteenth century to the twenty-first. It presents the results of the first corpus-based analysis of Modern Scottish Gaelic orthographic development combined with an analytic approach that places orthographic choices in their sociolinguistic context. The theoretical framework behind the analysis centres on discussion of how the language ideologies of the phonographic ideal, historicism, autonomy, vernacularism and the ideology of the standard itself have shaped orthographic conventions and debates. It argues that current spelling norms reflect an orthography that is the result of compromise, historical factors and pragmatic function. The research uses a digital corpus to examine how three particular features have been used over time: the dialect variation between <eu> and <ia>; variation in s + stop consonant clusters (sd/st, sg/sc, sb/sp); and the use of the grave and acute accents. Evidence is drawn from the Corpas na Gàidhlig electronic corpus created at the University of Glasgow: the sub-corpus used in this study includes 117 published texts representing a period of over 250 years from 1750 to 2007, and a total size of over four and a quarter million words. The results confirm a key period of reform between 1750 and the early nineteenth century, and thereafter a settled norm being established in the early nineteenth century. Since then, some variation has been acceptable although changes and reform of some features have centred on increasing uniformity and regularisation.

Linguística de Corpus no Ensino das Línguas

Este artigo constitui uma reflexão sobre as vantagens da utilização de corpora no processo de ensino/aprendizagem das línguas. O trabalho com corpora na sala de aula acarreta uma aproximação entre as práticas de investigação e as práticas de ensino-aprendizagem. O aluno adquire o papel de um investigador que pretende obter respostas a partir dos dados disponíveis no corpus. Deste modo, o aluno descobre a língua por meio das suas próprias observações, transformando-se em agente do seu processo de aprendizagem. Equacionada sob um certo ponto de vista de configuração tradicionalista, a utilização da informática na análise lexical afigura-se improfícua, no entanto, muitos estudiosos das Humanidades em geral, para além de revelarem a salutar consciência da indispensável adesão das Humanidades à informática, como forma de garantir a vitalidade das Humanidades, no que respeita à análise estatístico-lexical, preconizam que a utilização do computador constitui uma mais-valia. Ao longo deste artigo, procuraremos refletir sobre as seguintes questões: Quais são os benefícios das abordagens lexicais inspiradas na exploração de corpora ou em conceitos da Linguística de Corpus? Qual é o papel da informática na análise lexical? Que novas potencialidades apresentam as concordâncias na sala de aula?

Lingüística de corpus y análisis cuantitativo en la gramática (histórica) del español: el caso de las oraciones completivas de sustantivo

El uso de (grandes) corpus textuales como base empírica para el análisis de fenómenos gramaticales ocupa un lugar central dentro de la lingüística contemporánea. La gramática histórica del español no es ninguna excepción, y desde principios del presente milenio los historiadores de la lengua disponen de dos grandes corpus diacrónicos ampliamente usados en el mundo entero, como son el CORDE de la Real Academia Española y el Corpus del español de Mark Davies (2002-). Al lado de los grandes corpus muestras de textos de menor extensión, pero con características relevantes para la investigación en cuestión, también se utilizan como base de análisis empíricos.

Low‑cost origami fabrication of 3D self‑aligned hybrid microfluidic structures

[EN] 3D microfluidic device fabrication methods are normally quite expensive and tedious. In this paper, we present an easy and cheap alternative wherein thin cyclic olefin polymer (COP) sheets and pressure sensitive adhesive(PSA) were used to fabricate hybrid 3D microfluidic structures, by the Origami technique, which enables the fabrication of microfluidic devices without the need of any alignment tool. The COP and PSA layers were both cut simultaneously using a portable, low-cost plotter allowing for rapid prototyping of a large variety of designs in a single production step. The devices were then manually assembled using the Origami technique by simply combining COP and PSA layers and mild pressure. This fast fabrication method was applied, as proof of concept, to the generation of a micromixer with a 3D-stepped serpentine design made of ten layers in less than 8 min. Moreover, the micromixer was characterized as a function of its pressure failure, achieving pressures of up to 1000 mbar. This fabrication method is readily accessible across a large range of potential end users, such as educational agencies (schools,universities), low-income/developing world research and industry or any laboratory without access to clean room facilities, enabling the fabrication of robust, reproducible microfluidic devices.