CDIO Open day learning activity to inspire the next generation of engineering applicants

Abstract The new engineering provision at Canterbury Christ Church University has adopted the Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate (CDIO) pedagogy approach. In particular the MEng, BEng and BEng with Foundation Year are grounded in the fundamentals of Physics and Engineering Science. To inspire the potential students on the open day we have developed taster sessions to develop their understanding of the important factors in these subjects. The taster sessions comprise a selection of activities in the form of practical sessions related to Engineering Programmes at Canterbury Christ Church University. The activities offer potential applicants a flavour of learning activities and aim to achieve the following learning outcomes: • Working in small groups students: o Complete a preliminary engineering design exercise o Communicate their ideas. o Demonstrate an understanding of the project This practice paper reviews this approach to engineering recruitment practice

Covert Communication over Classical-Quantum Channels

The square root law (SRL) is the fundamental limit of covert communication over classical memoryless channels (with a classical adversary) and quantum lossy-noisy bosonic channels (with a quantum-powerful adversary). The SRL states that $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{n})$ covert bits, but no more, can be reliably transmitted in $n$ channel uses with $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{n})$ bits of secret pre-shared between the communicating parties. Here we investigate covert communication over general memoryless classical-quantum (cq) channels with fixed finite-size input alphabets, and show that the SRL governs covert communications in typical scenarios. %This demonstrates that the SRL is achievable over any quantum communications channel using a product-state transmission strategy, where the transmitted symbols in every channel use are drawn from a fixed finite-size alphabet. We characterize the optimal constants in front of $\sqrt{n}$ for the reliably communicated covert bits, as well as for the number of the pre-shared secret bits consumed. We assume a quantum-powerful adversary that can perform an arbitrary joint (entangling) measurement on all $n$ channel uses. However, we analyze the legitimate receiver that is able to employ a joint measurement as well as one that is restricted to performing a sequence of measurements on each of $n$ channel uses (product measurement). We also evaluate the scenarios where covert communication is not governed by the SRL

Fouling Characteristics of a Light Australian Crude Oil

Australian crude oils, which generally contain little asphaltenes, nevertheless give rise to fouling in refinery pre-heat trains. In this research, fouling of a series of such crude oils and their blends is being assessed. The present work focuses on thermal fouling resulting from heating Gippsland crude oil at moderate temperatures. The oil is maintained under nitrogen at a pressure of 379 kPa, and re-circulated at bulk temperatures of 80-120°C through an electrically heated annular probe at velocities in the range 0.25 to 0.65 m/s with surface temperatures from 180-260°C. Experiments are run for periods up to 90 hours at constant heat flux. Fouling is detected by the increase of wall temperature of the probe. The oil is characterized by its filterable solids content, density and viscosity both before and after the fouling run. The trends in fouling rates are compared to predictions of the threshold-fouling model proposed by Ebert and Panchal (1995). Data on deposit composition are presented, and the fouling mechanism discussed

The effects of addition of omega-3, 6, 9 fatty acids on the quality of bovine chilled and frozen-thawed sperm

This study was aimed to investigate the effects of omega-3, 6, 9 fatty acids on the characteristics of bovine chilled and frozen-thawed semen. For this purpose, oil containing different levels of omega-3, 6, 9 fatty acids were added to semen extender. To emulsify the oil in semen extender, polyethylene glycol (PEG) was added as a suitable solvent and the solution was finally sonicated. Five proven Holstein bulls were randomly selected and their ejaculates were collected using an artificial vagina. Groups were designed as control, treatments 1, 2, 3 and 4. The control group contained only the basic extender (Tris-citrate buffer, egg yolk and glycerol) without any additives. In treatment 1, only 5% PEG was added to the diluent; while in treatments 2, 3 and 4 different concentrations of omega-3, 6, 9 fatty acids (1.0, 2.5 and 5.0%) in combination with PEG were added to the basic extender. After dilution, the semen samples were packaged into 0.5 ml straws, a process that was followed by cooling the semen straws. Motility, viability and morphology of semen samples were evaluated after 24 and 48 h of storage in refrigerator (5 ˚C) or after one month of storage in the liquid nitrogen. Immotility was increased and all the other parameters including motility, viability and morphology were significantly decreased in all the groups compared with fresh samples during cold storage and freezing-thawing. Our results demonstrated the following: 1) PEG has significant detrimental effects, especially on the sperm motility; 2) addition of omega-3, 6, 9 fatty acids could not improve the sperm motility in chilled storage condition and after freezing-thawing; and 3) omega-3, 6, 9 fatty acidscould not also attenuate the other deleterious effects of PEG. In conclusion, our findings reveal that addition of these fatty acids to the semen extender does not enhance the resistance of the bovine sperm membrane to cooling and freezing-thawing and that further studies are required to find suitable candidate compounds that can boost the quality of semen that is chilled and freeze-thawed

Quenching Effects in the Hadron Spectrum

Lattice QCD has generated a wealth of data in hadronic physics over the last two decades. Until relatively recently, most of this information has been within the "quenched approximation" where virtual quark--anti-quark pairs are neglected. This review presents a descriptive discussion of the effects of removing this approximation in the calculation of hadronic masses.Comment: To appear in "Lattice Hadron Physics", ed. A.C. Kalloniatis, D.B. Leinweber and A.G. William

Perturbative Renormalization of Improved Lattice Operators

We derive bases of improved operators for all bilinear quark currents up to spin two (including the operators measuring the first moment of DIS Structure Functions), and compute their one-loop renormalization constants for arbitrary coefficients of the improvement terms. We have thus control over O(a) corrections, and for a suitable choice of improvement coefficients we are only left with errors of O(a^2).Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX + 1 eps file + epscrc2.sty (included). Talk given to the Lattice 97 International Symposium, 22-26 July 1997, Edinburgh, UK. Minor changes in notatio