Anatoxin-a (ANTX) is a neurotoxin produced by several freshwater cyanobacteria and has been implicated in the death of livestock and domestic animals from consumption of tainted surface waters. ANTX is unstable under normal conditions and is somewhat problematic to extract and study. Accelerated solvent extraction (ASE) combined with liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC/MS) was used to develop an efficient extraction and analytical method for both ANTX and the more commonly encountered hepatotoxic microcystins produced by cyanobacteria. The effects of nitrogen supply on the cellular production and release of ANTX was investigated in Aphanizomenon issatschenkoi (Ussaczew) Proschkina-Lavrenko (Nostocales). In contrast to the predictions of the carbonnutrient balance hypothesis, the maximum production was observed under moderate N stress. In addition, steady state fugacity-based models were employed to investigate ANTX’s distribution and fate in freshwater ecosytems. ANTX was not found to be very persistent in aquatic ecosystems and did not appear to bioaccumulate in fish, at least not from the dissolved phase.

This project aimed to address the lack of research into the mechanical properties and degradation mechanisms for historical tapestries at the fabric level and understand how effective conservation support strategies can be in the preservation of these artifacts. The research incorporated a large range of techniques from diverse disciplines including weaving, ageing, computer modeling, biochemistry and conservation science. The successful manufacture and ageing of relevant samples provided an excellent opportunity to include testing of historical samples for comparison. Tensile testing of all samples provided a valuable insight into the characteristics of degraded historical samples compared to artificially aged samples. Although individual ageing processes – including UV ageing, Relative Humidity (RH) – thermal cycling and mechanical strain ageing produced a reduction in strength, the historical samples showed a far greater loss of strength due to the combination of all types of ageing in addition to handling and pollution damage. A proteomic analysis of the wool fibres resulted in a greater understanding of the degradative “dark” wool ageing process which suggests that wool yellowing and tendering can be produced not just through photo-chemical reaction. Additionally, the chemical analysis laid an important foundation for future research into linking chemical mechanisms of damage with mechanical loss of strength. Analysis using electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy (EPR) provided an insight into the free radical chemistry of a range of wool/wool samples. It was observed that the light aged samples produced thiyl radicals whereas thioperoxy radicals were seen in the heat-humidity aged samples. This implies separate chemical reactions occur to produce degradation in the different ageing regimes. EPR analysis of some historical samples produced a carbon-based radical peak linked to a soot calibration signal. Further research on historical samples found phenolic radicals, possibly linked to the complex dye chemistry. Further research needs to be undertaken to fully clarify these findings. A world-wide questionnaire to textile conservators has provided a useful resource in terms of a survey of methods and materials used across the world – including technical data as well as more “ethical” motivations for conservation. The results of this survey were used along with the physical data collated in the mechanical testing as information inputted into a finite element model (FEA) to undertake the digital modeling of a tapestry hanging under its own weight. Although more research is needed to fully develop this model, a preliminary investigation has been established which can be used in future research as a tool for textile conservators across the world.

Glass fiber core Vacuum Insulation Panels (VIPs) have thermal performance per unit thickness of about 5-10 times higher than the traditionally used building insulation materials such as mineral wool, XPS, EPS, foam, etc. This advantage of VIP has made it very attractive new option for innovative building designs. Especially in Canada, where some of the areas have long and very cold winters. Confidence in the service life of a building material is necessary before putting a product to market. Extensive research has been conducted on the product development, quality improvement, and field application of VIPs around the world. However, there is lack of consistent and simple prediction method for the long-term thermal performance of VIPs. This paper discussed the process and performance of a field project using glass fiber VIPs to retrofit a commercial building in Yukon, Canada. The thermal performance of the VIPs used in this project was continuously monitored and critically analyzed since the start in 2011. The results have shown satisfactory thermal performance of VIPs for the past 8 years. The findings were also used to validate glass fiber core VIP accelerated aging tests conducted by the National Research Council Canada (Ottawa), and the aging rate of VIPs in a cold and dry climate was determined. The second part of this study investigated the monitored performance results from two sets of simplified accelerated laboratory aging tests, the results were analyzed with the aim to separate the impact of air diffusion from water vapour on the long-term thermal performance of glass fiber VIPs. In addition, this study also investigated the potential application of VIPs in balcony constructions to reduce heat transfer through thermal bridges. Computer modeling exercises, using a benchmarked (EN ISO 10211) three-dimensional transient and steady-state heat transfer simulation tool HEAT3, were carried out on the most optimal (thermal performance) balcony assemblies of wood framed buildings using VIP as insulation. This niche application of VIPs can significantly increase the energy efficiency of building envelopes/skins in extreme climates of Canada and elsewhere in the world. / Graduate / 2021-11-06

abstract: The popularity of solar photovoltaic (PV) energy is growing across the globe with more than 500 GW installed in 2018 with a capacity of 640 GW in 2019. Improved PV module reliability minimizes the levelized cost of energy. Studying and accelerating encapsulant browning and solder bond degradation—two of the most commonly observed degradation modes in the field—in a lab requires replicating the stress conditions that induce the same field degradation modes in a controlled accelerated environment to reduce testing time. Accelerated testing is vital in learning about the reliability of solar PV modules. The unique streamlined approach taken saves time and resources with a statistically significant number of samples being tested in one chamber under multiple experimental stress conditions that closely mirror field conditions that induce encapsulant browning and solder bond degradation. With short circuit current (Isc) and series resistance (Rs) degradation data sets at multiple temperatures, the activation energies (Ea) for encapsulant browning and solder bond degradation was calculated. Regular degradation was replaced by the wear-out stages of encapsulant browning and solder bond degradation by subjecting two types of field-aged modules to further accelerated testing. For browning, the Ea calculated through the Arrhenius model was 0.37 ± 0.17 eV and 0.71 ± 0.07 eV. For solder bond degradation, the Arrhenius model was used to calculate an Ea of 0.12 ± 0.05 eV for solder with 2wt% Ag and 0.35 ± 0.04 eV for Sn60Pb40 solder. To study the effect of types of encapsulant, backsheet, and solder on encapsulant browning and solder bond degradation, 9-cut-cell samples maximizing available data points while minimizing resources underwent accelerated tests described for modules. A ring-like browning feature was observed in samples with UV pass EVA above and UV cut EVA below the cells. The backsheet permeability influences the extent of oxygen photo-bleaching. In samples with solder bond degradation, increased bright spots and cell darkening resulted in increased Rs. Combining image processing with fluorescence imaging and electroluminescence imaging would yield great insight into the two degradation modes. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Systems Engineering 2020

abstract: The primary goal of this thesis is to evaluate the influence of ethyl vinyl acetate (EVA) and polyolefin elastomer (POE) encapsulant types on the glass-glass (GG) photovoltaic (PV) module reliability. The influence of these two encapsulant types on the reliability of GG modules was compared with baseline glass-polymer backsheet (GB) modules for a benchmarking purpose. Three sets of modules, with four modules in each set, were constructed with two substrates types i.e. glass-glass (GG) and glass- polymer backsheet (GB); and 2 encapsulants types i.e. ethyl vinyl acetate (EVA) and polyolefin elastomer (POE). Each module set was subjected to the following accelerated tests as specified in the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standard and Qualification Plus protocol of NREL: Ultraviolet (UV) 250 kWh/m2; Thermal Cycling (TC) 200 cycles; Damp Heat (DH) 1250 hours. To identify the failure modes and reliability issues of the stressed modules, several module-level non-destructive characterizations were carried out and they include colorimetry, UV-Vis-NIR spectral reflectance, ultraviolet fluorescence (UVF) imaging, electroluminescence (EL) imaging, and infrared (IR) imaging. The above-mentioned characterizations were performed on the front side of the modules both before the stress tests (i.e. pre-stress) and after the stress tests (i.e. post-stress). The UV-250 extended stress results indicated slight changes in the reflectance on the non-cell area of EVA modules probably due to minor adhesion loss at the cell and module edges. From the DH-1250 extended stress tests, significant changes, in both encapsulant types modules, were observed in reflectance and UVF images indicating early stages of delamination. In the case of the TC-200 stress test, practically no changes were observed in all sets of modules. From the above short-term stress tests, it appears although not conclusive at this stage of the analysis, delamination seems to be the only failure mode that could possibly be affecting the module performance, as observed from UV and DH extended stress tests. All these stress tests need to be continued to identify the wear-out failure modes and their impacts on the performance parameters of PV modules. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Mechanical Engineering 2020

Electromagnetic (EM) imaging schemes are inherently non-linear and ill-posed. Albeit there exist remedies to these fundamental problems, more efficient solutions are still being sought. To this end, in this thesis, the non-linearity is tackled in- corporating a multitude of techniques (ranging from Born approximation (linear), inexact Newton (linearized) to complete nonlinear iterative Landweber schemes) that can account for weak to strong scattering problems. The ill-posedness of the EM inverse scattering problem is circumvented by formulating the above methods into a minimization problem with a sparsity constraint. More specifically, four novel in- verse scattering schemes are formulated and implemented. (i) A greedy algorithm is used together with a simple artificial neural network (ANN) for efficient and accu- rate EM imaging of weak scatterers. The ANN is used to predict the sparsity level of the investigation domain which is then used as the L0 - constraint parameter for the greedy algorithm. (ii) An inexact Newton scheme that enforces the sparsity con- straint on the derivative of the unknown material properties (not necessarily sparse) is proposed. The inverse scattering problem is formulated as a nonlinear function of the derivative of the material properties. This approach results in significant spar- sification where any sparsity regularization method could be efficiently applied. (iii) A sparsity regularized nonlinear contrast source (CS) framework is developed to di- rectly solve the nonlinear minimization problem using Landweber iterations where the convergence is accelerated using a self-adaptive projected accelerated steepest descent algorithm. (iv) A 2.5D finite difference frequency domain (FDFD) based in- verse scattering scheme is developed for imaging scatterers embedded in lossy and inhomogeneous media. The FDFD based inversion algorithm does not require the Green’s function of the background medium and appears a promising technique for biomedical and subsurface imaging with a reasonable computational time. Numerical experiments, which are carried out using synthetically generated mea- surements, show that the images recovered by these sparsity-regularized methods are sharper and more accurate than those produced by existing methods. The methods developed in this work have potential application areas ranging from oil/gas reservoir engineering to biological imaging where sparse domains naturally exist.

This diploma thesis investigates the accelerated sedimentation of the magnetorheological fuids (MRFs) using centrifuge. Experiments are carried out at room temperature as well as at higher temperatures (40°C, 60°C and 80°C). The development of the new improved measuring device for the sedimentation evaulation is described. Magnetic components of the device were designed using FEM analysis. Newly designed device is verified. To accomplish the experiments at the high temperatures the new heated chamber for experimental centrifuge is designed and constructed. In the next part of the work full experiment of the accelerated sedimentation is performed. At final the empirical model of the sedimetation velocity for various accelerations and temperatures is synthesized.

This paper describes implementation of the whole cryptographic protocol TLS including control logic and used cryptographic systems. The goal is to implement an application in the FPGA technology, so it could be used in hardware accelerated network card. The reason for this is new supported higher transmission speeds that Ethernet is able to operate on, and the absence of implementation of this protocol on FPGA. In the first half of this paper is described theory of cryptography followed by description of TLS protocol, its development, structure and operating workflow. The second half describes the implementation on the chosen technology that is also described here. It is used already existing solutions of given cryptographic systems for the implementation, or at least their parts that are modified if needed for TLS. It was implemented just several parts of whole protocol, such are RSA, Diffie-Hellman, SHA and part of AES. Based on these implementations and continuing studying in this matter it was made conclusion, that FPGA technology is inappropriate for implementation of TLS protocol and its control logic. Recommendation was also made to use FPGA only for making calculations of given cryptographic systems that are controlled by control logic from software implemented on standard processors.

In this diploma thesis the current methods of color fastness evaluation of color digital prints were solved. The theoretical part provides basic information needed to understand the experiment. Samples of inkjet prints were subjected to accelerated and long-term lightfastness test. The long-term test took place in the spaces of the Faculty of Chemistry, Brno University of Technology, which fulfilled the condition of direct light in a closed room. For one year, samples were exposed and their reflection spectra were measured at monthly intervals. An accelerated lightfastness test was performed in a solar chamber with a xenon lamp. Only some samples were selected for this test because of the small space in the chambre and thw failure of the instrument. At regular intervals were measured again their reflection spectra from which the colorimetric values were calculated. After completion of the testing, the rate parameter was determined from the dependence of the loss of the normalized gamut volume on different doses of irradiation. In the case of long-term testing, it was based on data from the Hydrometeorological Institute, which gave values of direct outdoor solar radiation. In the accelerated test, the irradiation dose of the sample up to 800 nm was determined. Finally, the lightfastness of each sample was examined and compared with each other and the relevance of the accelerated test was assessed.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(工学) / 甲第22847号 / 工博第4787号 / 新制||工||1749(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院工学研究科高分子化学専攻 / (主査)教授 山子 茂, 教授 田中 一生, 教授 辻井 敬亘 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering) / Kyoto University / DGAM