Monitoring the Thermal Power of Nuclear Reactors with a Prototype Cubic Meter Antineutrino Detector

In this paper, we estimate how quickly and how precisely a reactor's operational status and thermal power can be monitored over hour to month time scales, using the antineutrino rate as measured by a cubic meter scale detector. Our results are obtained from a detector we have deployed and operated at 25 meter standoff from a reactor core. This prototype can detect a prompt reactor shutdown within five hours, and monitor relative thermal power to three percent within seven days. Monitoring of short-term power changes in this way may be useful in the context of International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) Reactor Safeguards Regime, or other cooperative monitoring regimes.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

Helter skelter, topsy-turvy and ‘loonycolour’: carnivalesque realism in 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning'

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning has been reductively sidelined as “working class realism” where that term implies a mere reportage of grim reality. Such a view ignores the joyously subversive spirit alive in the novel. This essay argues that the “glorious loonycolour” of Arthur Seaton’s internal world has a transformative effect on external reality. Through Arthur’s consciousness, the pubs and fairgrounds of 1950s working class culture become a transgressive, carnivalesque site of inversion, an energetic, death-defying topsy-turveydom. Sillitoe, then, does violence to realism and allows us, if only temporarily, to see reality in a different, and radically optimistic, way. At the same time, his version of the carnivalesque is less romanticised than Mikhail Bakhtin’s, since he is alive to the dangers of containment which lurk at its heart. This awareness climaxes in Arthur’s move towards matrimony, an institution which may contain his vitality or provide a new outlet

Confronting the abject: women and dead babies in modern English fiction

Jean Rhys and Aldous Huxley were groundbreaking in that they represented the experience of illegal abortion openly with no apparent disapprobation, drawing it to the attention of a significant readership. Their representations – bodily, but grim – resonate with Bakhtin’s argument that modernity can sustain only a denigrated version of the grotesque, a faint echo of the carnivalesque humour of Rabelais, where laughter is superseded by fear (in Kristeva’s term, the abject). Twenty-five years later, Alan Sillitoe and Nell Dunn pushed the limits further, placing abortion at the centre of their novels, forcing the reader to engage with the woman’s experience, while working within a realist tradition that did not spare harsh details. Within this tradition they are nonetheless sometimes playful, even comic, in their language and modes of representation, carrying readers far beyond the stark specifics of realism and outside the reductive restrictions of the polarized abortion debate

The effect of viewing time, time to encounter, and practice on perception of aircraft separation on a cockpit display of traffic information

The concept of a cockpit display of traffic information (CDTI) includes the integration of air traffic, navigation, and other pertinent information in a single electronic display in the cockpit. Two studies were conducted to develop a clear and concise display format for use in later full-mission simulator evaluations of the CDTI concept. Subjects were required to monitor a CDTI for specified periods of time and to make perceptual judgments concerning the future position of a single intruder aircraft in relationship to their own aircraft. Experimental variables included: type of predictor information displayed on the two aircraft symbols; time to encounter point; length of time subjects viewed the display; amount of practice; and type of encounter (straight or turning). Results show that length of viewing time had little or no effect on performance; time to encounter influenced performance with the straight predictor but did not with the curved predictor; and that learning occurred under all conditions

Effect of field of view and monocular viewing on angular size judgements in an outdoor scene

Observers typically overestimate the angular size of distant objects. Significantly, overestimations are greater in outdoor settings than in aircraft visual-scene simulators. The effect of field of view and monocular and binocular viewing conditions on angular size estimation in an outdoor field was examined. Subjects adjusted the size of a variable triangle to match the angular size of a standard triangle set at three greater distances. Goggles were used to vary the field of view from 11.5 deg to 90 deg for both monocular and binocular viewing. In addition, an unrestricted monocular and binocular viewing condition was used. It is concluded that neither restricted fields of view similar to those present in visual simulators nor the restriction of monocular viewing causes a significant loss in depth perception in outdoor settings. Thus, neither factor should significantly affect the depth realism of visual simulators

A Pulsed Synchrotron for Muon Acceleration at a Neutrino Factory

A 4600 Hz pulsed synchrotron is considered as a means of accelerating cool muons with superconducting RF cavities from 4 to 20 GeV/c for a neutrino factory. Eddy current losses are held to less than a megawatt by the low machine duty cycle plus 100 micron thick grain oriented silicon steel laminations and 250 micron diameter copper wires. Combined function magnets with 20 T/m gradients alternating within single magnets form the lattice. Muon survival is 83%.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figures, LaTeX, 5th International Workshop on Neutrino Factories and Superbeams (NuFact 03), 5-11 Jun 2003, New Yor

The limitations of speech control: perceptions of provision of speech-driven environmental controls

This study set out to collect data from assistive technology professionals about their provision of speech-driven environmental control systems. This study is part of a larger study looking at developing a new speech-driven environmental control system

Enabling local rapid change solutions to the Climate Emergency

Three quarters of UK Local Authorities (LAs) have declared Climate Emergencies. Most include an ambition for carbon neutrality by 2030. Yet a lack of clarity on a national policy framework through to 2030 means that LAs now face the challenge of creating an enabling environment to respond to urgent Climate Emergency targets. This paper reviews the implications of the LA Climate Emergency Declarations for local policy making in respect of low carbon retrofit. It will focus on evidence from a council whose dedicated project team is creating and implementing 2030 Climate response strategies, as well as built environment practitioners who have expertise to deliver retrofit services. Using documentary evidence and expert testimony, this paper will explore the gaps in creating an enabling environment/policy roadmap to 2030, the role might local government play in delivering large scale domestic retrofit, and how to align the various stakeholder groups. The paper finds that despite the simplistic term ‘retrofit’, the domestic retrofit landscape is far from simple. It is not a homogenous entity, rather a complex, multi-layered and segmented eco-system. We propose reviewing this segmentation through the lens of ‘first-mover’ which would help clarify where efforts should be focused, and which measures could be taken to accelerate consumer engagement. The authors discover there is potential for Local Authorities to develop novel approaches to retrofit processes, by taking the role of ‘middle actor’, reshaping the customer journey and engaging a range of stakeholders to stimulate local economies and deliver on social and environmental goals. Open collaboration with third sector organisations can provide access to research, resources, and networks to help deploy rapid change solutions

FEP covers for silicon solar cells

Feasibility of fluorinated ethylene propylene as replacement for conventional silicon solar cell cover