- Date:
- 2005-2009
- Theme:
- Microfluidics and Lab-on-a-chip
- Funding:
- Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia, University of Putra Malaysia (UPM) and Royal Academy of Engineering
A novel separation device uses dielectrophoresis to achieve 100% non-contact separation of a mixture of particles. The method is continuous and flow through, involves no fouling and ensuring longevity of operation. It is sensitive to medium conductivity, applied frequency and voltage. This project will present a characterisation of a microfluidic device using an incorporating angled microelectrode arrays for the continuous dielectrophoretic separation of particles. The characterisation is essential to get specific indication for each particle type deflects, behaves and hence separated at the end of the arrays. A new optimised device design consists of sequential interdigitated electrode arrays with angle of 60 degree is introduced. This device uses negative dielectrophoresis to achieve gradual deflection through the sequential influence of the electrodes in the array. A microfluidic channel is made using two layers of dry film resist SY320 with its thickness reduces to approximately 30õm height, which then could increase the dielectrophoretic force. The data is examined by measuring deflection of particle from the side wall against frequency at different voltage applied. When a mixture of particles of 2õm and 1õm are in the channel, they can then physically be separated along the arrays achieving 100% spatial separation at the outlet of the channel simply by means of a channel junction with as low as operating voltage of 10V. The project will discuss results obtained and the optimisation of separation that is achievable by choice of frequency and voltage.
Primary investigators
- namy05r
- Nicolas Green
Associated research group
- Nano Research Group
- Date:
- 2006-2009
- Themes:
- Nanophotonics and Biomimetics, Biomimetics
- Funding:
- Department
Over 500 million years of evolution have created highly optimised optical solutions for the survival of the species. By definition the optical devices created are fabricated in organic materials, so further optimisation is possible by utilising materials that cannot be incorporated by living systems. Our research searches the living world for innovative optical designs and then analyses Nature's solution to a particular optical problem. Nature's solution is then modelled and improved by a combination of incorporating advanced materials and evolutionary algorithms (which take Nature's current day solution further into the future). As an example of the practical application of this research, a study of the structural colour produced by the Morpho Rhetenor butterfly wing led to the creation of a new type of photonic crystal structure for which a Patent has been granted.
Primary investigator
- Professor Greg Parker
Secondary investigator
- Michael Pollard
Associated research groups
- Nano Research Group
- Southampton Nanofabrication Centre
- Date:
- 2009-2009
- Theme:
- Interaction with Knowledge and semantics
- Funding:
- JISC
The Innovation Base is a structured place to share models of higher education. They can be any type of model including use cases, scenarios, models of processes and information models; and they can be in any format including images of drawings, text descriptions and formal models created in a language such as BPMN, UML or Archimate.
The aims of the Innovation Base (IB) are to:
- Act as a structured central location for the deposit of models of higher education.
- Support sharing of models in order to reduce duplication of effort and help the community to identify common processes that may justify shared services or common action.
- Help project teams and programmes to share the outputs of projects in ways in which people can make better user of them.
What makes the Innovation Base different from previous attempts to produce models is it's agnosticism as to the method or approach that was used to create the knowledge that it holds. For example the IB can take knowledge that has been generated from role analysis using the Higher Education Role Analysis (HERA) method, information on enterprise architectures created using The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) method or developments using agile development methods.
It is specifically designed to enable users to add information that they have, in the form in which they have it. This might be a sketch of a business process through to a full enterprise architecture model in a formal notation.
The IB offers depositors some support for the modelling that they are undertaking by offering guidance for producing modelling constructs such as the development of business process models, information models, use cases and scenarios.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigator
Partner
- University of Manchester
Associated research group
- Learning Societies Lab
- Date:
- 2008-2009
- Themes:
- Technology Enhanced Learning, Assessment
- Funding:
- JISC
The MathAssess project aims to build on the significant investment JISC has made in QTI as an open standard in the e-assessment arena and supported the development of open source tool kits such as ASDEL, AQURATE and Minibix . By enhancing these toolkits and integrating with Maxima, a computer algebra system, MathAssess will shown how the specific needs of mathematics can be catered for using open content interoperability standards and open source software.
MathAssess acknowledged long-established user needs in mathematics e-assessment ââ¬â diagnostic, formative and summative ââ¬â providing for the delivery of truly randomised questions and tests, with hints, solutions and feedback being available to students at all appropriate stages. The project will bring together the mathematics communityââ¬â¢s decades of experience creating and using on-line resources with a commitment to open standards with the aim of overcoming long-standing problems with lock-in and obsolescence.
Primary investigators
Associated research groups
- Learning Societies Lab
- Electronic and Software Systems
- Date:
- 2008-2012
- Themes:
- Algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks, Decentralised Information Systems, Agent Based Computing, Intelligent Systems and Machine Learning, Decentralised Architectures
We are entering a new age in the evolution of computer systems, in which pervasive computing technologies seamlessly interact with human users [Satyanarayanan, 2001;Weiser, 1991]. These technologies serve people in their everyday lives at home and work by functioning invisibly in the background. They free them from tedious routine tasks and create a smart environment around them [Cook and Das, 2004]. In the influential article ââ¬ÅThe Computer for the 21st Centuryââ¬?, Mark Weiser described smart environments as a ââ¬Åphysical world that is richly and invisibly interwoven with sensors, actuators, displays, and computational elements, embedded seamlessly in the everyday objects of our lives, and connected through a continuous networkââ¬? [Weiser, 1991]. For example, this would be an intelligent building, or a smart traffic control system. Now, since such smart environments need information about their surroundings, they rely first and foremost on sensory data from the real world. More accurately, this data is provided by wireless sensor networks, which are responsible for sensing as well as for information collecting [Lewis, 2004]. Thus, improving the efficiency of these tasks in the networks of wireless sensors is of necessity. Given this, we will focus on efficient long-term (e.g. lifetime-long) information collection of these networks, using learning-theory to tackle this challenge.
Primary investigators
- Long Tran-Thanh
- Nick Jennings
- acr
Associated research group
- Agents, Interaction and Complexity
- Date:
- 2009-2009
- Themes:
- Technology Enhanced Learning, Interaction with Knowledge and semantics
- Funding:
- JISC
The JISC Funded Faroes Project has been working to reinvent Teaching and Learning Repositories learning from the best practices of Web 2.0. They have successfully deployed an innovative repository called The Language Box that acts as a community repository for Language teachers. The Faroes team has discovered that more sophisticated profile pages give users a home within the repository, act as a focus for their work, and help them feel more ownership of the work that they deposit. This increases the visibility of the repository and encourages more deposits.
The allAboutMePrints project will build on the work of Faroes to make Sophisticated Profile pages available to any repository based on the EPrints Project. The project will:
- Add Live Data features to the existing Faroes profile system ââ¬â including download statistics and news about commentary and ratings
- Develop a MePrints Profile Plugin that can be redeployed to other EPrints installations, whether they are teaching or research repositories
- Develop a MePrints Profile Widget that users can include on their personal web spaces, and which will bring in information about their EPrints deposits allAboutMePrints will work alongside existing extensions such as IRStats and SNEEP, and its functionality will degrade gracefully if these are not present when it is deployed.
The Live Data features and widgets will be developed in collaboration with the existing Language Box community, and will be of deployed to the Language Box as well as being made available for installation in repositories in other institutions.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
- hcd
- Les Carr
Associated research group
- Learning Societies Lab
- Date:
- 2009-2011
- Themes:
- Technology Enhanced Learning, Interaction with Knowledge and semantics
- Funding:
- JISC
The OneShare project will build on the existing EdShare Southampton and Language Box repositories in order to create a Deposit Once methodology, where students and practitioners can use a Virtual Learning Environment, Community or Institutional Repository as part of single system, knowing that a deposit made in to any one of those systems will be propagated to the others.
To achieve this three challenges need to be overcome:
- Community Attitudes to copyright and ownership need to be understood and supported in order to build practitioner confidence and encourage a change of culture towards open content.
- Institutional Policy needs to be developed in order to support practitioners in sharing their materials, and to incorporate repository use into institutional practices.
- Technology Integration needs to be enabled between Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), Institutional and Community Repositories, so that users depositing resources in any one of these systems will be able to see them through the others.
The OneShare project will tackle these three challenges, using the Language Box and EdShare Southampton as exemplars to develop guidance materials, EPrints software extensions, and a deposit once architecture that can be repurposed at other institutions. Our objective is for the Deposit Once methodology to help teaching and learning repositories gain greater acceptance with users and institutions across the UK, supporting efforts to allow teachers and lecturers to share their materials, and create a public library of open content.
Primary investigators
- hcd
- David Millard
Secondary investigators
- Les Carr
- saw
Partners
- The Centre for Language, Linguistics and Area Studies, Southampton
- University of Portsmouth
Associated research group
- Learning Societies Lab
- Funding:
- Microsoft Research
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
- cjl07r
- gj07r
Associated research groups
- Agents, Interaction and Complexity
- Science and Engineering of Natural Systems Group
- Date:
- 2005-2007
- Theme:
- Digital Libraries
- Funding:
- JISC
Investigated long-term preservation for institutional repositories (IRs), by identifying preservation services in conjunction with specialists, such as national libraries and archives, and building support for services into popular repository software, in this case EPrints. The project moved towards a powerful and flexible framework based on granular Web services and providers. An exemplar service produced by the project was PRONOM-ROAR, which allies a digital file format identification service, PRONOM from the National Archives, with a Web registry of repositories (ROAR).
This project was superseded by the Preserv2 project.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
- sh94r
- jmnh
- tdb2
- dt2
Partners
- The British Library
- The National Archives
- University of Oxford
Associated research group
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Date:
- 2009-2010
- Theme:
- Digital Libraries
- Funding:
- JISC
A JISC project to enable a diverse range of digital content presented by institutional repositories - research papers, science data, arts, teaching materials and theses - to be managed effectively today, tomorrow and beyond.
The project will build on the work begun in the Preserv and Preserv2 projects.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
- sh94r
- dt2
- hcd
- dm2
Partners
- School of Chemistry, University of Southampton
- University of the Arts London
- University of Northampton
Associated research groups
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Learning Societies Lab