Affordable Technology Research Articles

Study of the high-energy alpha particles influence on the styrene accumulation kinetics and functional groups during the synthesis of proton-exchange membranes based on PVDF.

The study investigates the effect of alpha irradiation on the graft copolymerization of styrene with polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF). Using methods of radiation-chemical modification, a proton exchange membrane (PEM) with a uniform distribution of functional sulfate groups throughout the entire volume was developed. Grafting of styrene was carried out at different temperatures and solution concentrations. Functional sulfo-groups were added to the graft polymer by sulfonation, with the addition of solvents. The degree of grafting (DG), water absorption (W) and exchange capacity (IEC) correlate well with the absorbed dose and alpha particle fluence. Research into this method will allow us to develop an affordable industrial technology for widespread implementation.

Distributed bricolage – The affordances of digital technologies towards a collaborative entrepreneurial agency response to COVID-19

This study explores the human and social dynamics of entrepreneurship in the context of disruptive crises, specifically COVID-19. It reveals how digital technologies enable a form of collaborative agency, which we term distributed bricolage, characterized by the emergent, voluntary collaboration of heterogeneous actors across global networks. These actors, motivated by a shared goal to address urgent needs, engage in designing, hacking, and producing necessary items through agile and responsive collective structures. Analysing the initiatives of six diverse and impactful groups, our research highlights the transition from individual to collective entrepreneurial agency, underscoring the ability of distributed networks to self-organize and implement innovative solutions with available resources. We contribute to the entrepreneurship literature by delving into the ‘make do’ attitude across initiatives, shifting the spotlight from individual agency to a network of distributed actors, who are capable of self-organizing and operating effectively. This study extends the bricolage concept by showcasing the networked, socialized nature of entrepreneurial action, moving beyond the traditional focus on individual agency to a more inclusive understanding of distributed and collaborative efforts afforded by digital technologies.

Mimicry of European Football Commentary: Arap Uria’s Comic Lip-Sync Impressions in Kenyan Social Media

ABSTRACT The popularity of football in Africa is evident in the widespread viewership of televised top world league matches across the continent. Entertaining as they are to African fans, the broadcast images raise significant questions regarding the political implications of sports television as a medium for conveying cultural content. The matches are often played in far-off places and feature hardly any African commentators. New media technologies present African users with a host of technological affordances that enable them to challenge the hierarchical logic of industrial media production and the restricted communicative space of sports television. Comedy is a common form of political engagement with televised football images. This article analyses lip-sync impressions by a Kenyan comedian, Arap Uria, who records short parody videos that comment on iconic moments in football matches and posts them on social media platforms. Reading the audiovisual texts as politically motivated comic performances, this article argues that Uria’s lip-sync commentaries are a significant part of the contemporary sports television consumption culture in Kenya. The article discusses the place of the football commentator as a cultural mediator as well as how lip-sync performances can generate protest through artistic truth, remixing and parody.

Techlienation and Decolonizing Reparations in African Intra-diasporic Contexts

ABSTRACT This study conceptualizes techlienation from the historical standpoint of imperialism, which has created a legacy of sociocultural entanglements within asymmetrical relationships in Africa. It argues that the vestiges of imperialism are perpetuated through certain technological affordances that require new approaches to the interpretation of alienation within emergent African intra-diasporic contexts. It therefore explores the theorization on alienation from the Hegelian normative/ontological perspective that holistically interrogates man’s objectification outside of the Absolute Spirit; and the Marxian descriptive historical cum socioeconomic contextualization of the politics of separating man from the products of his labour. The study also establishes the theoretical underpinnings of alienation in Africa within anti-imperial discourses, especially following its application to the experiences of slavery and colonialism in the quest for decolonisation. It subsequently contends that the forces of neo-imperialism have appropriated digital tools, especially those of new information and communication technologies, to transform the operational dynamics of digital labor in reinforcing cultural imperialism while creating African intra-diasporic contexts. The study concludes that the reparations debate should incorporate the reality of digitally afforded cultural estrangement through the quest for digital justice, as it relates to content creation and dissemination, while postulating the need for Afrocentric retooling and remodeling of today’s digital culture.

Thiol-functionalized cellulose for mercury polluted water remediation: Synthesis and study of the adsorption properties

Mercury pollution poses a global health threat due to its high toxicity, especially in seafood where it accumulates through various pathways. Developing effective and affordable technologies for mercury removal from water is crucial. Adsorption stands out as a promising method, but creating low-cost materials with high selectivity and capacity for mercury adsorption is challenging.Here we show a sustainable method to synthesize low-cost sulfhydrylated cellulose with ethylene sulfide functionalities bonded glucose units. Thiol-functionalized cellulose exhibits exceptional adsorption capacity (1325 mg g−1) and selectivity for Hg(II) over other heavy metals (Co, Cu, Zn, Pb) and common cations (Ca++, Mg++) found in natural waters. It performs efficiently across a wide pH range and different aqueous matrices, including wastewater, and can be regenerated and reused multiple times without significant loss of performance. This approach offers a promising solution for addressing mercury contamination in water sources.

Natural Light Harvesting Materials: A Study on Optoelectronic Properties of Potential Natural Dyes

Natural dyes are being highlighted by research and industry trends; the majority of plant species offer abundant sources of colouring compounds. They can be harvested using affordable technology and used in cutting-edge applications. Hence, an examination of the optoelectronic characteristics of Carissa caranda fruit dye has been looked into in this paper. Anthocyanins present in Carissa caranda were extracted by solvent extraction of the fruits with ethanol and methanol solvents, maintaining pH at 7 under room temperature. UV-visible spectroscopy analyzed the dye extracts, and the optoelectronic properties such as optical energy band gap, extinction coefficient, and refractive index, are studied. UV-Vis investigations revealed large absorption peaks in the visible area and obvious band gaps. Carissa caranda natural dye had the lowest direct bandgap of 2.98eV and an indirect bandgap of 1.93eV for ethanolic extraction. It was found that the optical absorption in the dyes obeyed both direct and indirect transitions between the molecular energy levels. FTIR spectroscopy has been used to confirm the composition of the natural dyes. The findings here may be particularly significant for organic electronics applications, including O-LEDs and sensors.

Exploring the technological affordances of SimpleMind in supported academic writing: A mind-mapping software analysis

This research investigates EFL undergraduate students’ utilization of cross-platform mind-mapping software and the factors shaping their choice of devices and timing when employing SimpleMind to enhance their academic writing skills. Grounded in Mayer’s (2019) cognitive science principles of learning, this study posits that offering EFL learners dual channels for processing information, encompassing both visual and verbal modalities, enhances information retention and reduces cognitive load. SimpleMind, a digital graphic software, has the potential to support learners in this dual coding process of information, provided it is used thoughtfully. Through the framework of the affordance-actualization theory, this research advocates for empowering language learners to proactively discover and leverage SimpleMind’s affordances to craft a customized strategy aligned with their specific academic writing learning environment. This paper presents preliminary findings from a larger study involving 71 Japanese first-year students. They explored SimpleMind’s features to cater to their individualized academic writing learning preferences.

Building Sustainable Social Housing System: A Singapore Case from New Institutionalism Economics Approach

Policymakers worldwide currently face challenges in planning, regulating, and managing the housing market. One of the primary solutions is the provision of affordable social housing fostering economic development, culture integration, technology empowerment, and social stability. Singapore is recognized as a successful model of well-balanced centralized legislation and market-augmented governance. However, current studies have mainly focused on urban planning and real estate finance fields. A holistic approach should be conducted to understand the effectiveness of the whole framework and policy conduit including affordability, inclusiveness, and connectivity. This study emphasizes the importance of the Housing and Development Board (HDB) governance and analyzes what policies make social housing schemes robust and sustainable by combining the Singapore case with the New Institutionalism Economics (NIE) approach. HDB decreases transaction costs by centralized planning and establishes a transparent system to increase housing affordability and ownership. Inclusiveness is achieved by inter-departmental joint force so that social capital can be maximized for diverse community cohesion. Socio-technical change and institutional evolution have mutual effects on each other for efficiency and connectivity. Digital innovations make sustainable communities and smart cities. As a result, this study proposes a practical framework for learning from Singapore's implications for national governance, institutional development, and policy formulation that holds universal reference value.

‘It’s One Rule for Them and One for Us’: Occupational Classification, Gender and Worktime Domestic Labour

In this article, we focus on gender and class to investigate worktime domestic labour. Methodologically, we extend a novel, comparative critical realist method in which occupation-based and gendered positions in productive and reproductive labour are foregrounded. By building theoretical connections between labour process conditions and collective rule-following practices, we illustrate how inequalities are inscribed organisationally. Our analysis provides a more critical contextualisation of technological affordances to develop the literature on how technology is implicated in the reproduction of social inequality. Moreover, our analysis identifies multi-level causal processes, which combine to explain the presence and actualisation of worktime domestic labour or its absence, which is due, principally, to fear of sanction. For realist researchers interested in diversity-based challenges, absences are important because they can point towards specific discriminatory mechanisms. Our investigation thus revealed a surprising level of class-related in-work inequality within the gendered dynamics of domestic work.

The supporting role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine/Deep Learning in monitoring the marine environment: a bibliometric analysis

The widespread interest towards a sustainable and effective monitoring of the environment is increasingly demanding the development of modern and more affordable technologies to support or even replace the traditional time-consuming, high-cost sampling surveys at a multi-scale level. Researchers are highly benefitting from the recent enormous progresses achieved in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) field, with Machine/Deep Learning (ML/DL) applications increasing at sight. This gives a remarkable contribution to the environmental monitoring at sea, further allowing to develop efficient, smart and low-cost solutions to support the wide variety of tasks dealing with this objective. This study explores the global scientific literature on AI and ML/DL applications for the environmental monitoring over the last years. The VOSviewer software has been used to create maps based on the bibliographic network data: this allowed to display the relationships among scientific journals, researchers, and countries and to analyze the co-occurrence of different terms connected to the research. The resulting bibliometric analysis aims at verifying the major research interests and at providing the community with interesting findings and new perspectives on this very important topic, highlighting the great potential and flexibility of these methodologies and the excellent achievements they obtained in the last years.

Ambient identity construction via massive anonymous danmu comments

This article contributes to the scholarship on digital identity work by examining the linguistic mechanisms of ambient identity construction in fully anonymous online environments. It investigates how video viewers construct textual personae by leaving massive anonymous comments in danmu, a viewing-and-commenting system that synchronously posts comments onto a video screen as it plays. Drawing on the sociological concept of homophily and the linguistics-informed Appraisal framework, this study systematically tracks the patterns in the attitudinal orientations among massive anonymous comments left over a high-profile Chinese video featuring a teacher's home visit. The article argues that the technological affordances of danmu lead to the inherent collectiveness of anonymous digital identity construction. It reports two attitudinal meaning-making mechanisms through which massive anonymous comments converge into a homogeneous mass and describes the viewers' collective ambient identities revealed in their comments. This project brings clarity to the dynamics of ambient digital identity construction by deploying computational tools to linguistic analysis and has practical implications for marketing research, social media monitoring, and community building.

A Comparative Study on the Removal of Fluorides from Groundwater: Strategies and Technologies

This study conducts a comprehensive comparative analysis of various strategies and technologies employed for the removal of fluorides from groundwater, addressing the increasing concern over elevated fluoride levels in water sources. High fluoride concentrations pose significant health risks, including dental and skeletal fluorosis, necessitating effective and sustainable removal methods. The research evaluates the efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and environmental impact of different fluoride removal techniques, providing valuable insights for water treatment practitioners, policymakers, and communities grappling with fluoride-contaminated groundwater. The study begins by outlining the prevalence of fluoride contamination in groundwater and the associated health risks, establishing the critical need for reliable removal methods. Subsequently, a review of existing literature presents an overview of conventional and emerging technologies utilized for fluoride removal. Conventional methods such as coagulation, precipitation, and adsorption are examined, considering their efficiency, operational ease, and cost implications. The study then delves into advanced technologies like membrane processes, ion exchange, and electrochemical methods, assessing their applicability and effectiveness in diverse groundwater contexts. Environmental sustainability is a key focus throughout the analysis, with a critical examination of the by-products and waste generated by each removal method. The ecological footprint, including energy consumption and material usage, is considered to provide a holistic understanding of the environmental impact associated with fluoride removal technologies. Furthermore, the economic feasibility of each method is evaluated, considering capital and operational costs. Comparative cost analyses offer insights into the affordability and scalability of different removal technologies, aiding decision-makers in selecting suitable methods based on financial constraints. The study concludes with a synthesized overview of the comparative analysis, emphasizing the strengths and limitations of each fluoride removal method. In summary, this comparative study contributes to the broader understanding of fluoride removal technologies, facilitating informed decision-making in addressing groundwater contamination. The findings are anticipated to inform researchers, water treatment professionals, and policymakers, guiding the selection of appropriate and context-specific fluoride removal methods to ensure safe and potable groundwater sources

Silver nanoparticles modified titanium carbide MXene composite for RSM-CCD optimised chloride removal from water

Unsafe levels of chloride in drinking water can make it unpalatable, susceptible to infrastructure corrosion and prone to heavy metals mobility. Conventional chloride mitigation strategies are subjected to inefficient performance and costly operation, necessitating innovations for more sustainable, affordable, and scalable technologies. In this study, silver nanoparticles-modified Ti3C2 MXene nanocomposite (AgMX) is synthesised via dry impregnation method for effective removal of chloride ion from water. The composite physicochemical properties were thoroughly characterised using various analytical techniques, including TEM, SEM, XRD, EDS, BET, zeta potential and pHpzc analysis. The experimental testing was optimised using CCD-RSM method in terms of adsorbent dosage (0.2–2 g/L), reaction time (1–17 min), and chloride concentration (10–90 mg/L). Under optimal conditions (adsorbent:1.55 g/L, time: 12.19 min, & concentration: 52.17 mg/L), a promising chloride removal of 91.8 % was achieved. Langmuir model showed the best fit to adsorption isotherm (R2: 0.9852) comparing to Freundlich and Dubinin-Kaganer-Radushkevich (DKR) isotherms, while pseudo-second-order kinetic model offered the closest data to the experimental results (R2: 9893) compared to the pseudo-first-order, Elovich and Intraparticle diffusion models R2: 0.2335,0.1212 and 0.2050, respectively. The composite reusability and regeneration potential after four repeated cycles were found practically efficient as ≥ 68 % and ≥ 84 %, respectively. The outcomes of this study can demonstrate the efficiency of the formulated composite as a promising material for the sustainable treatment of chloride-contaminated water.

Design and Optimization of Plasmonic Nanoparticles-Enhanced Perovskite Solar Cells Using the FDTD Method.

This study explores how plasmonic nanoparticles affect absorption, transmission, and reflection—three important performance metrics in organic-inorganic halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Through an investigation of different types of nanoparticles and their concentration in the composite layer, the study provides important information for improving PSC design in order to increase overall efficiency. The results highlight the importance of the type and volume fraction of nanoparticles in the composite layer, which influence the spectral characteristics of the solar cell, such as absorption, reflection, and transmission. These findings could encourage PSCs to be widely used as a practical and affordable renewable energy source, which would advance the development of affordable and efficient solar energy technologies.

Technology affordances and social withdrawal: The rise of hikikomori

AbstractThe prevalence of social withdrawal behaviors has been a growing concern in recent years. The concept of hikikomori, a severe social withdrawal condition, has gained increasing attention in high‐income societies and developed economies. The term applies to both the condition and the person experiencing it. Technology has been blamed for exacerbating the isolation of hikikomoris. Paradoxically, anecdotal evidence suggests that technology can help mitigate their social withdrawal. Drawing on affordance theory, this study explores the potential of technology as an intermediate intervention to help hikikomoris reintegrate into society by addressing the research question—“How are the affordances of technology leveraged to contribute to the gradual reintegration of hikikomoris into society?” This netnographic study is based on over 2‐year naturalistic observations of the Hikikomori Escape online community. Our findings identified seven types of affordances that facilitate Hikikomoris' social reintegration journey: anonymous storytelling, meta connectivity, information access for skill growth, peer networking and community building, online coaching, virtual‐to‐real connectivity, and tech‐enabled skill development. We discuss how three levels of technology affordances shape hihikomoris' self‐motivation to connect socially at the individual and community levels, facilitating their gradual reintegration into society. This research contributes by developing an empirically grounded framework of how technology can contribute to addressing social withdrawal among hikikomoris. Such knowledge is crucial for scholars, policymakers, and health professionals seeking to tackle this pressing societal challenge.

Humanising Peer Review with Artificial Intelligence: Paradox or Panacea?

The emergence of artificial intelligence in the higher education publishing context has led to scholars seeking opportunities to leverage the new technological affordances offered by the tool. Yet, there have been questions emerging about the extent to which artificial intelligence should prompt scholars towards certain outcomes. In this commentary, we examine the need for human flourishing to sit at the forefront of decisions around academic publishing alongside the pursuit of fair and innovative knowledge creation and dissemination. We advocate an evidence-based position against artificial intelligence as a peer reviewer, recognising that parroting knowledge is insufficient to be critical and comprehensive in the review process. There are significant limitations to the current artificial intelligence tools from bias to current corpus limitations that restrict its usefulness as a gatekeeper of knowledge, a key role a reviewer takes on board. We offer suggestions for places where artificial intelligence tools may be quite useful and offer some future directions for artificial intelligence in publishing processes.

Us, Them, Right, Wrong: How TikTok's Green Screen, Duet, and Stitch help shape political discourse

As TikTok exploded in popularity following the initial lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, use from individual users skyrocketed. During this time, political content became largely ubiquitous across the app. Politics play out daily on TikTok, as individuals craft messages within the technological affordances and sociocultural dynamics of the app. This study expands on research regarding civic engagement in digital public spheres by examining and describing how TikTok shapes political expression and discourse through three technological affordances on the app: the Green Screen, the Stitch, and the Duet. While these affordances are often hailed as features that bolster user creativity through increased possible interactions, our analysis found these increased possible interactions to be highly specific, and also limited in conjunction with politics. On political TikTok, these affordances function more as political commentary than conversation, lending to an overall volatile environment.

The role of attention in immersion: The two–competitor model

Currently, we face an exponentially increasing interest in immersion, especially sensory–driven immersion, mainly due to the rapid development of ideas and business models centered around a digital virtual universe as well as the increasing availability of affordable immersive technologies for education, communication, and entertainment. However, a clear definition of ‘immersion’, in terms of established neurocognitive concepts and measurable properties, remains elusive, slowing research on the human side of immersive interfaces.To address this problem, we propose a conceptual, taxonomic model of attention in immersion. We argue (a) modeling immersion theoretically as well as studying immersion experimentally requires a detailed characterization of the role of attention in immersion, even though (b) attention, while necessary, cannot be a sufficient condition for defining immersion. Our broader goal is to characterize immersion in terms that will be compatible with established psychophysiolgical measures that could then in principle be used for the assessment and eventually the optimization of an immersive experience. We start from the perspective that immersion requires the projection of attention to an induced reality, and build on accepted taxonomies of different modes of attention for the development of our two–competitor model. The two–competitor model allows for a quantitative implementation and has an easy graphical interpretation. It helps to highlight the important link between different modes of attention and affect in studying immersion.

Tensile nanostructured hierarchically porous non-precious transition metal-based electrocatalyst for durable anion exchange membrane-based water electrolysis

Electrochemical water electrolysis is a promising method for sustainable hydrogen production while transiting towards hydrogen economy. Among many, the Anion Exchange Membrane (AEM) based water electrolyzer is an emerging yet potentially affordable technology on maturity for producing large-scale hydrogen accommodating the usage of Non-Platinum Group Metal (non-PGM) based inexpensive electrocatalysts. Herein, we demonstrate the excellent performance of a bifunctional Nickel Copper Phosphide-Nickel sulphide (NCP-NS) electrocatalyst with a unique tensile nanostructure obtained via a facile, controlled ambient galvanic displacement route. An AEM electrolyzer with a larger active area of 10 cm2 stacked with the symmetric NCP-NS electrodes and a membrane demonstrates scalability with a requirement of a mere 1.66 V to reach a current density of 10 mA cm−2. The nickel-copper phosphide boosts the kinetics of charge transfer between the electrode and electrolyte interface, while a unique combination of a few nickel sulphide phases present in the catalyst provides sufficiently appropriate active sites for the overall water electrolysis. For the first time, we report a room temperature performance of ∼ 230 mA cm−2 at 2 V for a non-PGM-based bifunctional electrocatalyst with exceptional durability for over 300 h of operation in an AEM water electrolyser with a retention rate of 95 %-97 % at a current density range of 80–800 mA cm−2.

Exploring the mechanism of digital technology affordance on manufacturing enterprises’ digital competitive advantage

PurposeDigital technology is crucial to improving a firm’s core competitiveness. However, the existing research on the relationship therein shows heterogeneity. Using digital technology can enhance competitive advantage, which is crucial for enterprises and scholars. Thus, based on the digital technology affordance theory, this study explores the relationship between digital technology affordance and digital competitive advantage.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data were collected from 509 large and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in China, and multiple regression and structural equation modelling were used to test the hypotheses. Specifically, we discuss the mediating role of digital business capability and the moderating role of organisational legitimacy.FindingsEditability, association and visibility positively affect digital competitive advantage, and their coordination is strong. Further, they can help enterprises gain a competitive advantage through the mediating role of digital business capability (digital strategy, digital integration and regulation). However, the influence effect and action path differ per in different dimensions. Organisational legitimacy positively moderates the mediating effect of digital integration and regulation, and there is a moderated mediating effect. However, the moderating effect on the mediating effect of digital strategy is not significant.Originality/valueExisting studies neglect the relationship between the coordination of digital technology functions and digital competitive advantage. This study provides a new theoretical explanation for an in-depth understanding of these issues. These findings promote the development of innovation theory and provide valuable insights for guiding the application of digital technology in enterprises.