The Importance of Understanding and Utilizing Fair Use in Educational Contexts: A Study on Media Literacy and Copyright Confusion
This brief paper discusses the recent study conducted by Hobbs, Jaszi, & Aufderheide (Oct. 2007), The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy, and its implications for educators and particularly writing teachers. This paper is also available along with other Top Intellectual Property Developments of 2007, hosted on the website of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).
Copyrights and conversations: Intellectual property in the classroom
Abstract Traditionally, academic uses of portions of the work of others have fallen under the protection of the doctrine of fair use. However, as we move courses online, many standards we relied on in the classroom have suddenly become litigious. How we approach teaching students conventions of citation and fair use, therefore, must change. By approaching conventions of citation and prohibitions against plagiarism in the classroom from the perspective of copyright issues, students can come to have a greater understanding of the nature of scholarship. In this article, therefore, I make some recommendations for teaching students about the issues involved, and I suggest ways that we, as authors, teachers, and researchers, may want to think about intellectual property in the digital age.
Hydrogen-rich gas production from biomass air and oxygen/steam gasification in a downdraft gasifier
Biomass gasification is an important method to obtain renewable hydrogen. However, this technology still stagnates in a laboratory scale because of its high-energy consumption. In order to get maximum hydrogen yield and decrease energy consumption, this study applies a self-heated downdraft gasifier as the reactor and uses char as the catalyst to study the characteristics of hydrogen production from biomass gasification. Air and oxygen/steam are utilized as the gasifying agents. The experimental results indicate that compared to biomass air gasification, biomass oxygen/steam gasification improves hydrogen yield depending on the volume of downdraft gasifier, and also nearly doubles the heating value of fuel gas. The maximum lower heating value of fuel gas reaches 11.11MJ/Nm3 for biomass oxygen/steam gasification. Over the ranges of operating conditions examined, the maximum hydrogen yield reaches 45.16gH2/kg biomass. For biomass oxygen/steam gasification, the content of H2 and CO reaches 63.27–72.56%, while the content of H2 and CO gets to 52.19–63.31% for biomass air gasification. The ratio of H2/CO for biomass oxygen/steam gasification reaches 0.70–0.90, which is lower than that of biomass air gasification, 1.06–1.27. The experimental and comparison results prove that biomass oxygen/steam gasification in a downdraft gasifier is an effective, relatively low energy consumption technology for hydrogen-rich gas production.