Kim Toft Hansen

Screen printed PZT/PZT thick film bimorph MEMS cantilever device for vibration energy harvesting

We present a MEMS-based PZT/PZT thick film bimorph vibration energy harvester with an integrated silicon proof mass. The most common piezoelectric energy harvesting devices utilize a cantilever beam of a non piezoelectric material as support beneath or in-between the piezoelectric material. It provides mechanical support but it also reduces the power output. Our device replaces the support with another layer of the piezoelectric material, and with the absence of an inactive mechanical support all of the stresses induced by the vibrations will be harvested by the active piezoelectric elements.

Fabrication and characterization of MEMS-based PZT/PZT bimorph thick film vibration energy harvesters

We describe the fabrication and characterization of a significantly improved version of a microelectromechanical system-based PZT/PZT thick film bimorph vibration energy harvester with an integrated silicon proof mass; the harvester is fabricated in a fully monolithic process. The main advantage of bimorph vibration energy harvesters is that strain energy is not lost in mechanical support materials since only Pb(ZrxTi1-x)O3 (PZT) is strained; as a result, the effective system coupling coefficient is increased, and thus a potential for significantly higher output power is released. In addition, when the two layers are connected in series, the output voltage is increased, and as a result the relative power loss in the necessary rectifying circuit is reduced. We describe an improved process scheme for the energy harvester, which resulted in a robust fabrication process with a record high fabrication yield of 98%. The robust fabrication process allowed a high pressure treatment of the screen printed PZT thick films prior to sintering. The high pressure treatment improved the PZT thick film performance and increased the harvester power output to 37.1 ?W at 1 g root mean square acceleration. We also characterize the harvester performance when only one of the PZT layers is used while the other is left open or short circuit.

Norskov and Danish Commercial Public Service Drama

The authors take a closer look at the effect of Danish commercial public service drama on a national and international level and when competing with a large national public service player. Firstly, they introduce the complex broadcasting institution TV 2, the spatial history of their drama production and the embedded attention towards regionalism and often provinciality. Secondly, they address the close connection between a very local crime serial production, Norskov (2015–) and local, national and international industrial and cultural policies, as well as contemporary negotiations of a regional place, location and geographic peripherality. The authors show how, since the 1990s, television in the Danish regions in particular has become a vernacular opportunity for a broadcaster with an ambition to reflect provincialism and promote regional awareness.

The Team, Danish Transnationalism and the Local Colour of Europe

The authors outline the influence of the British reception of Nordic Noir as a basis supporting the increased transnational production model of Danish crime dramas. Besides the important German influence on the international distribution of especially The Killing, the BBC played a decisive role in broadcasting this and other subtitled series. The culmination of the transnationalisation of Danish drama production appears with the pan-European series The Team, illustrating how knowhow, creative personnel and expertise from the Danish television drama industry contributed to the production, and furthermore how the ‘local colour of Europe’ constituted the spatial concept of the series. The increased commodification of locations in screen productions is closely linked to transnational conditions in the funding of drama and in reaching international markets and audiences.

Location Studies: A Topography of Nordic Noir

The authors introduce the new method for media analysis, which they call location studies. This method is particularly interested in how locations are found and in which ways they are related to the spatial understanding of television drama. They present the method as an outcome of the spatial turn in media studies and also as a specific subdivision and combination of television production studies and textual readings of television drama. On this basis, the authors propose a model and a method for describing the negotiated, mediated interpretation of a specific place and location as these are represented on screen and influenced by off-screen factors of place, production, policy and destination.

Funding Models and Increasing Transnationalism

The authors give an outline of how local, national, regional and transnational cooperation has been an increasing Nordic tendency since the 1990s, but also how the traces of such local/global processes in television studies have deeper roots in visions of television as a private, glocal medium. They outline specific, different tendencies across the Nordic region and view the theoretical and historical backgrounds of places and locations in television drama from the perspective of glocalisation. The authors give an account of the funding models applying to television drama production cultures in the Nordic region. Finally, they give examples of how methods of collaboration, co-funding and co-production in Nordic Noir productions across the Nordic region in particular show clear signs of the increasing transnationalisation of television drama.

Four Perspectives on the Nordic Region

The authors expand their methodical approach to locations in Nordic Noir by way of a succinct overview of four important cultural preconditions for the understanding of Nordic Noir as a cultural phenomenon: (a) the recent Nordic wave in food, design and fashion as a market condition, (b) the history of Nordic melancholy in arts and philosophy, (c) the Nordic landscapes as commodities, and (d) the Nordic media welfare system and the public service basis for drama series. Summing up, the authors give a brief introduction to Nordic television production in general. The display of such local colour of the Nordic region and the relationship between the television crime series and the region are important as expositions of regional culture, topography, history and society.

Stieg Larsson and Scandinavian Crime Literature as a Stepping Stone

The authors analyse the literary roots of Nordic Noir’s spatial logic and link this to the notions of a neo-romantic tendency in local crime fiction and norientalism as a concept. The global reach and bestselling speed of Mai Sjowall/Per Wahloo, Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson, respectively, are singled out as specific indications of a changed literary market. In this process, especially the Swedish literary market appears to be influential on the world scene of Nordic crime fiction. The authors sum op the development from literature to screened crime fiction based on two different production models: the Beck model and the Danish model, and shed light on the blurred media boundaries in Sweden and the focus on televised crime fiction in Denmark.

Beck and Character Adaptations

The authors analyse the development of Nordic crime dramas in the 1990s and its reliance on the significant role of various Beck productions, the shift towards an increased market-oriented production model and the slow move away from cinema orientation towards VHS/DVD wholesale. The authors introduce character adaptations as a concept that shows the importance of series based on characters from crime literature, but as for the cases of Beck, Wallander, The Fjallbacka Murders and Dicte, most of these series use the literature as inspiration for characters rather than storyline. In the chapter, the authors reveal the slow change of film and television drama, primarily by way of character adaptations, from mostly adaptations for film and television to original television productions.

The Killing and DR’s Danish Model

The authors analyse locations in The Killing and show how these demonstrate the DR way of producing public service high quality crime drama, sometimes referred to as the Danish model. They focus on how locations are used to create particular dramaturgic concepts and structures, and, furthermore, how the sites of production, the different DR production dogmas and the public service drama mandate influence the way in which locations and places are negotiated and reflected in the productions. The authors develop the concept of Nordic Noir further and reflect its different stylistic, emotional, cultural, historical, geographical and political aspects. Finally, they elaborate the melancholic mood in The Killing and the role of music in this regard.