Rxn Rover: Automation of Chemical Reactions with User-Friendly, Modular Software

The automation of chemical reactions in research and development can be an enabling technology to reduce cost and waste generation in light of technology transformation towards renewable feedstocks and energy...

Medical Industry Trends That Promote the Use of Optical Medicine Fiber

Optics has, since ancient times, being used as aid for the exam human patients and in some therapeutic treatments. Many of the optic medical instruments in use today were developed in the nineteenth century and, with the advent of optical fibers and laser light sources in the mid twentieth century, a new generation of medical devices, instruments, and techniques have been developed that have helped modernize medicine and perform task unimaginable only a few decades ago. This chapter illustrates through several optical instrument and application examples the uses, benefits, and future prospects that optics brings as an enabling technology to the medicine and the overall healthcare industry.

Social Protection and Gender Inequality in Using Enabling Technology: An Analysis with the Framework of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This article explores the relationship between social protection and gender gaps in using enabling technology with the perspective of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as both are SDG Indicators. A cross-country comparative examination of 38 countries shows that gender disparity in mobile phone ownership is significantly and negatively correlated with the overall mobile phone owning rate and the proportion of females owning a mobile phone in a country. The coverage of social insurance programmes in a country has very weak and negative association with gender disparity in mobile phone ownership, and the correlation is statistically insignificant. The cross-country variations in mobile phone ownership are significant if gender is not considered. The results suggest that the social protection systems in these countries may not be gender-sensitive enough. A number of practical implications are provided based on the empirical evidence, and improvements in future studies are also suggested since this article is an initial output of a series of follow-up research in the author’s plan.

Power Electronic Converters for Microgrids

Power electronic converters are indispensable building blocks of microgrids. They are the enabling technology for many applications of microgrids, e.g., renewable energy integration, transportation electrification, energy storage, and power supplies for computing. In this chapter, the requirements, functions, and operation of power electronic converters are introduced. Then, different topologies of the converters used in microgrids are discussed, including DC/DC converters, single-phase DC/AC converters, three-phase three-wire, and four-wire DC/AC converters. The remaining parts of this chapter focus on how to optimally design and control these converters with the emerging wide-bandgap semiconductors. Correlated tradeoffs of converter efficiency, power density, and cost are analyzed using Artificial Neural Networks to find the optimal design of the converters.

Research on RFID Anticollision Algorithms in Industrial Internet of Things

As a perception enabling technology of the Internet of Things, RFID can quickly identify target objects. The tag-to-tag collision problem seriously affects the identification performance of the RFID system, which causes the reader to be unable to accurately identify any tag within the specific time. The mainstream anticollision algorithms are limited by the performance bottleneck under the standard framework. In this paper, we analyze the features and merits of three kinds of algorithms in detail and propose a new algorithm architecture for RFID anticollision. Through the extensive experimental results comparison, we prove that the new architecture is effective to improve the performance of DFSA algorithms. Finally, we summarize the future research trends in the RFID anticollision algorithms.

ENABLING TECHNOLOGY AND THE NAVAL ARCHITECT 1860-2010

Enabling technology permits the naval architect to do more with fewer resources, increasing output, decreasing cost and improving productivity, with the resulting benefits being widely distributed in a worldwide economy. For example a bulk carrier’s energy consumption per ton-mile today is less than 3% of what it was a century and half ago – due to more efficient machinery, larger hulls with lower resistance per ton and improved propulsive efficiency, yet with higher speed and shorter port times.