Refine
Year of publication
- 2010 (343) (remove)
Institute
- Fachbereich Medizintechnik und Technomathematik (73)
- Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften (41)
- IfB - Institut für Bioengineering (40)
- Fachbereich Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik (36)
- Fachbereich Chemie und Biotechnologie (35)
- Fachbereich Energietechnik (35)
- Fachbereich Maschinenbau und Mechatronik (31)
- Fachbereich Bauingenieurwesen (24)
- Fachbereich Luft- und Raumfahrttechnik (24)
- INB - Institut für Nano- und Biotechnologien (23)
Language
- English (187)
- German (153)
- Italian (2)
- Multiple languages (1)
Document Type
- Article (141)
- Conference Proceeding (100)
- Book (38)
- Part of a Book (23)
- Conference: Meeting Abstract (19)
- Patent (7)
- Report (5)
- Doctoral Thesis (2)
- Other (2)
- Part of a Periodical (2)
Keywords
- Aachen / Fachhochschule Aachen (3)
- Aachen University of Applied Sciences (3)
- FH Aachen (2)
- Geschichte (2)
- avalanche (2)
- humans (2)
- Adsorbentien (1)
- Cardiovascular MRI (1)
- Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (1)
- Commercial Vehicle (1)
The cost of solar tower power plants is dominated by the heliostat field making up roughly 50% of investment costs. Classical heliostat design is dominated by mirrors brought into position by steel structures and drives that guarantee high accuracies under wind loads and thermal stress situations. A large fraction of costs is caused by the stiffness requirements of the steel structure, typically resulting in ~ 20 kg/m² steel per mirror area. The typical cost figure of heliostats (figure mentioned by Solucar at Solar Paces Conference, Seville, 2006) is currently in the area of 150 €/m² caused by the increasing price of the necessary raw materials. An interesting option to reduce costs lies in a heliostat design where all moving parts are protected from wind loads. In this way, drives and mechanical layout may be kept less robust, thereby reducing material input and costs. In order to keep the heliostat at an appropriate size, small mirrors (around 10x10 cm²) have to be used, which are placed in a box with a transparent cover. Innovative drive systems are developed in order to obtain a cost-effective design. A 0,5x0,5 m² demonstration unit will be constructed. Tests of the unit are carried out with a high-precision artificial sun unit that imitates the sun’s path with an accuracy of less than 0.5 mrad and creates a beam of parallel light with a divergence of less than 4 mrad.
During the development process of a complex technical product, one widely used and important technique is accelerated testing where the applied stress on a component is chosen to exceed the reference stress, i.e. the stress encountered in field operation, in order to reduce the time to failure. For that, the reference stress has to be known. Since a complex technical product may fail regarding numerous failure modes, stress in general is highly dimensional rather than scalar. In addition, customers use their products individually, i.e. field operation should be described by a distribution rather than by one scalar stress value. In this paper, a way to span the customer usage space is shown. It allows the identification of worst case reference stress profiles in significantly reduced dimensions with minimal loss of information. The application example shows that even for a complex product like a combustion engine, stress information can be compressed significantly. With low measurement effort it turned out that only three reference stress cycles were sufficient to cover a broad range of customer stress variety.
Background: One of the most prominent neurobiological models of alexithymia assumes an altered function of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) as the crucial neural correlate of alexithymia. So far functional imaging studies have yielded inconclusive results. Therefore, we tested this hypothesis in healthy alexithymics and nonalexithymics in an event-related fMRI study.
Methods: Thirty high- and 30 low-alexithymic right-handed male subjects (selected by the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale, TAS-20) were investigated with event-related fMRI using a picture viewing paradigm. The stimuli consisted of happy, fearful and neutral facial expressions (Ekman-Friesen) as well as positive, negative and neutral pictures from the International Affective Picture System.
Results: Contrasting the high-alexithymic with the low-alexithymic group we observed increased activation of the supragenual ACC for different emotional valences as well as for different emotional stimuli. Moreover, there was a positive correlation of the ACC with the individual TAS-20 scores but no correlations with the individual Beck Depression Inventory scores. Additionally, there was no difference in activity of the amygdala.
Conclusions: We demonstrated that the supragenual ACC is constantly activated more strongly in alexithymic subjects and that this activation is related to the symptoms of alexithymia and not to associated symptoms such as depression. Therefore, our findings support the hypothesis of an altered function of the ACC in alexithymia.
Differential modulation of valence and arousal in high-alexithymic and low-alexithymic individuals
(2010)
High-alexithymic individuals are characterized by an impaired ability to identify and communicate emotions whereas low-alexithymic individuals have a wide-ranging ability to deal with emotions. This study examined the hypothesis that valence and arousal modifications of emotional stimuli differentially modulate cortical regions in high-alexithymic and low-alexithymic individuals. To this end, 28 high-alexithymic and 25 low-alexithymic individuals were investigated with event-related fMRI using visual emotional stimuli. We found differential neural activations in the dorsal anterior cingulate, the insula and the amygdala. We suggest that these differences may account for the impaired ability of high-alexithymic individuals to appropriately handle emotional stimuli.
Following the success of PET/CT during the last decade and the recent increasing proliferation of SPECT/CT, another hybrid imaging instrument has been gaining more and more interest: MR-PET. First combined, simultaneous PET and MR studies carried out in small animals demonstrated the feasibility of the new approach. Concurrently, some prototypes of an MR-PET scanner for simultaneous human brain studies have been built, their performance is being tested and preliminary applications have already been shown. Through this pioneering work, it has become clear that advances in the detector design are necessary for further optimization.
Recently, the different issues related to the present state and future prospects of MR-PET were presented and discussed during an international 2-day workshop at the Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, held after, and in conjunction with, the 2008 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference in Dresden, Germany on October 27–28, 2008. The topics ranged from small animal MR-PET imaging to human MR-BrainPET imaging, new detector developments, challenges/opportunities for ultra-high field MR-PET imaging and considerations of possible future research and clinical applications. This report presents a critical summary of the contributions made to the workshop.
Normative Regulations
(2010)
Unter Energieeffizienz wird verstanden, dass ein definiertes Ziel mit möglichst wenig Energie erreicht wird. Im Beitrag wird zunächst eine Formel zur Berechnung der Gesamtenergieeffizienz eines Gebäudes angegeben. Darauf aufbauend wird ein 3-Säulen-Modell zur Energieeinsparung vorgeschlagen. Es beinhaltet vereinfachte Verfahren zur Berechnung der Betriebseigenschaften von Heizanlagen, raumlufttechnischen Anlagen und Kühl- und Kaltwasseranlagen. Am Beispiel einer RLT-Anlage wird die Vorgehensweise der Bewertung näher erläutert. Zusammenfassend wird festgestellt, dass das vereinfachte Verfahren eine schnelle und sichere energetische Bewertung der genannten Anlagen erlaubt,, zu Präsenzwissen führt, die Haupteinflussgrößen aufzeigt und eine Anlagenbewertung ohne Gebäudebewertung gewährleistet. Das vereinfachte Verfahren wird im Frühjahr 2011 verfügbar sein. Es soll Bestandteil der DIN V 18599 werden, und die EnEV 2012 soll darauf Bezug nehmen.
A novel scheme for precise diagnostics and effective stabilization of currents in a fuel cell stack
(2010)
A novel scheme for detecting inhomogeneous internal currents in a fuel cell stack is presented. In this paper the scheme is investigated for the case that the flow field plates consist of graphite. Then plates of high conductivity, e.g. aluminium between the flow field plates together with small slits in these plates have three effects: (a) Whenever a local inhomogeneity of the electric current occurs at a particular cell in the stack, this will induce a surface current close to that cell perpendicular to the averaged current. This current can be detected. (b) The plates of high conductivity completely prevent the inhomogeneities from spreading to neighbouring cells. (c) Even at the particular cell the inhomogeneity is suppressed as far as possible. Thus this scheme leads to much better diagnostic possibilities and at the same time reduces electric instabilities to an extent, where they probably become harmless. This scheme will first be explained for a simple model to clarify the idea. However, very precise three dimensional computations using realistic parameters are presented, corroborating the results of the simple model.
A novel tomographic scheme for analysing the state of any single membrane electrode assembly (MEA) in a stack is suggested. Plates of very high conductivity placed between every fuel cell and slitted in an appropriate manner cause surface currents at well-defined locations of the stack. We show that knowing these surface currents, information about anomalies of the currents in a MEA can be obtained using the methods of tomography. The results are mathematically not unique. However, when assuming plausible defect structures, one can exclude improbable deficiencies by applying a special form of simulated annealing. We present numerical calculations of typical examples demonstrating that the essential defects of the MEA in any single cell of the stack can be detected and their extent can be determined.
Durch rapide gesellschaftliche Veränderungen und neue Anforderungen auf dem Arbeitsmarkt gewinnt die akademische berufliche Weiterbildung zunehmend an Bedeutung. Die Nachfrage nach entsprechenden Angeboten ist sowohl seitens der Unternehmen als auch der Arbeitnehmer/-innen hoch. Die Hochschulen sind aufgefordert, darauf zu reagieren und Wege für lebenslanges Lernen aufzuzeigen, indem sie außerhalb der Hochschule erworbene Kenntnisse auf Hochschulabschlüsse anerkennen und Möglichkeiten schaffen, diese Kenntnisse mit dem Ziel weiterzuentwickeln, einen akademischen Abschluss zu erreichen. Dieser Beitrag stellt einen Studiengang vor, der es Berufstätigen ermöglicht, durch die Anrechnung beruflich erworbener Kompetenzen bis zu 50 Prozent der zu erbringenden Studienleistung abzugelten.