P2_2 Playing at a stadium one mile above sea level

This paper focuses on the decrease in the performance of professional athletes at high altitude; the central interest is the proportional drop in performance to partial pressure of oxygen in the atmosphere. Too little data has been scientifically recorded to make any accurate functional predictions as to the detriment in performance with altitude, while inductive interpretation of the available data would lead to the prediction that there is an effect no quantifiable predictions to advantage of having a home stadium at high altitude is possibl

P2_13 Dominoes and Self-Organised Criticality

This article presents a very simple model of self-organised criticality using a 1 dimensional system of dominoes. It is found that when the likelihood of a domino falling is small, a power law exists between number of dominoes which fall in each event, and the frequency with which it occurs. This is determined to be of the form y=x-1.88

P2_10 Shotgun!

This paper looks at the stopping power of shotguns as a function of distance from the target and number of shot in the shell.  This relationship is determined, and it is found that the stopping power falls off quickly for larger numbers of pellets. Avenues for a more thorough investigation are also suggested

P2_14 Shotgun patterns

This article provides a model of particle collisions for producing shot patterns from shotgun ammunition of a constant mass, for different numbers of pellets. The scatter pattern is found to be Gaussian, and the mean deviation for pellets from the centre increases linearly with range. Interestingly, this deviation is slightly greater for fewer large pellets, than the same mass of smaller pellets

P2_7 Power Curves and Gear Ratios in Bicycles

This article investigates how the power exerted by a cyclist varies with cyclist speed, and gear ratio. From Hill’s relation, both relations are determined and plotted. Suggestions are made on how these results might be useful to recreational and competitive cyclists

P2_3 A Tapered Tower

This paper evaluates the possibility of building a space elevator from a mechanical standpoint; calculating the yield stress and required density of a homogeneous material that such a structure would ideally need. It is concluded that a tapered tower made from carbon nanotubes may potentially be feasible

Effect of the surface morphology of TiO2 nanotubes on photocatalytic efficacy using electron-transfer-based assays and antimicrobial tests

The application of titanium oxide nanotubes for the removal of contaminants from freshwater is a rapidly growing scientific interest, especially when it comes to water conservation strategies. In this study we employed four different titanium oxide nanotube surfaces, prepared by a two-electrode anodic oxidation. Two of the surfaces were synthesised in aqueous media, while the other two surfaces were synthesised in ethylene glycol. One of the arrays synthesised in the organic medium was impregnated with silver nanoparticles, while the remaining surfaces were not. The chemical reactivity of the various surfaces was assessed using 2,2-Diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and 2,20 -azino-bis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS) as free electron sensitive probe molecules, in parallel with tannic acid degradation and copper ion reducing capacity. The potential antimicrobial activity of the surfaces was assessed against a panel of microorganisms composed of yeast, fungi, Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Field emission scanning electron microscopy revealed that surfaces produced in the aqueous medium had a smaller tube length and a smaller tube diameter. It was noted that one of the materials using sodium sulfate as the supporting electrolyte had the most irregular nanostructure morphology with tubes growing to the side rather than vertically. The structural variation of the surfaces directly reflected both the chemical and biological activity, with the nanotubes formed in ethylene glycol showing the fastest rates in the stabilization of DPPH and ABTS radicals, the fastest tannic acid decomposition under various pH conditions and the fastest metal reducing activity. Furthermore, the surface containing silver and its bare counterpart showed the most effectivepeer-reviewe

Extracting the unresolved pulsar contribution to the gamma-ray background

We present a statistical framework which can be used to determine the contribution of an unresolved population of pulsars to the gamma-ray background. This formalism is based on the joint analysis of photon time series over extended regions of the sky. We demonstrate the robustness of this technique in controlled simulations of pulsar populations, and show that the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope can be used to detect a pulsar contribution as small as 0.1% of the gamma-ray background. This technique is sensitive to pulsar populations with photon fluxes greater than ~1E-10 cm^-2 s^-1. The framework is extensible to arbitrarily complex searches for periodicity and can therefore be tailored to specific applications such as all-sky surveys and studies of the Galactic center and globular clusters.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures. Minor formatting correction