Integrated digital avionics to improve aircraft environmental control systems

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/77327/1/AIAA-46929-196.pd

A case for increased private sector involvement in Ireland's national animal health services

Non-regulatory animal health issues, such as Johne's disease, infectious bovine rhinotracheitis (IBR) and mastitis will become increasing important, with ongoing globalisation of markets in animals and animal products. In response, Ireland may need to broaden the scope of its national animal health services. However, there have been concerns about the respective roles and responsibilities (both financial and otherwise) of government and industry in any such moves. This paper argues the case for increased private sector involvement in Ireland's national animal health services, based both on theoretical considerations and country case studies (the Netherlands and Australia). The Dutch and Australian case studies present examples of successful partnerships between government and industry, including systems and processes to address non-regulatory animal health issues. In each case, the roles and responsibilities of government are clear, as are the principles underpinning government involvement. Furthermore, the roles and responsibilities (financial and otherwise) of the Dutch and Australian industry are determined through enabling legislation, providing both legitimacy and accountability. There are constraints on the use of EU and national government funds to support non-regulatory animal health services in EU member states (such as Ireland and the Netherlands)

The challenges facing public libraries in the Big Society: The role of volunteers, and the issues that surround their use in England

The use of volunteers in English public libraries is nothing new, however their use is becoming ever greater and one may argue that we are increasingly seeing a mixed economy of public library provision, in the wider arena of the Big Society. This paper presents the findings of a Delphi Study of 15 library managers undertaken as part of a Professional Doctorate exploring the challenges facing public libraries in England today, particularly focusing on volunteer use. An overview of relevant supporting literature is provided to help contextualize the research, particularly focusing on concepts such as the political background surrounding policy development, community engagement, the Big Society, and volunteering. Explanation of how the Delphi Study was conducted is given, together with a discussion of the key findings. Results show that opinions of library managers cover a broad spectrum. Although volunteer use is generally viewed by the respondents as a good thing, with potential to further enhance a service and aid community engagement, there are also a number of concerns. These concerns particularly relate to the idea of the volunteer as a replacement to paid staff rather than an enhancement to the service. Other key concerns relate to the quality of service provision, the rationale behind volunteer use, and the capacity of communities to deliver. Volunteer use in public libraries on this scale is a new phenomenon, and the longevity of such a development is largely unknown. This raises the question as to whether this is simply a large scale ideological experiment, or a move to even greater community engagement

Call Me Caitlyn: Making and making over the 'authentic' transgender body in Anglo-American popular culture

A conception of transgender identity as an ‘authentic’ gendered core ‘trapped’ within a mismatched corporeality, and made tangible through corporeal transformations, has attained unprecedented legibility in contemporary Anglo-American media. Whilst pop-cultural articulations of this discourse have received some scholarly attention, the question of why this 'wrong body' paradigm has solidified as the normative explanation for gender transition within the popular media remains underexplored. This paper argues that this discourse has attained cultural pre-eminence through its convergence with a broader media and commercial zeitgeist, in which corporeal alteration and maintenance are perceived as means of accessing one’s ‘authentic’ self. I analyse the media representations of two transgender celebrities: Caitlyn Jenner and Nadia Almada, alongside the reality TV show TRANSform Me, exploring how these women’s gender transitions have been discursively aligned with a cultural imperative for all women, cisgender or trans, to display their authentic femininity through bodily work. This demonstrates how established tropes of authenticity-via-bodily transformation, have enabled transgender to become culturally legible through the wrong body trope. Problematically, I argue, this process has worked to demarcate ideals of ‘acceptable’ transgender subjectivity: self-sufficient, normatively feminine, and eager to embrace the possibilities for happiness and social integration provided by the commercial domain

Satellite Telemetry and Long-Range Bat Movements

Background: Understanding the long-distance movement of bats has direct relevance to studies of population dynamics, ecology, disease emergence, and conservation. Methodology/Principal Findings: We developed and trialed several collar and platform terminal transmitter (PTT) combinations on both free-living and captive fruit bats (Family Pteropodidae: Genus Pteropus). We examined transmitter weight, size, profile and comfort as key determinants of maximized transmitter activity. We then tested the importance of bat-related variables (species size/weight, roosting habitat and behavior) and environmental variables (day-length, rainfall pattern) in determining optimal collar/PTT configuration. We compared battery- and solar-powered PTT performance in various field situations, and found the latter more successful in maintaining voltage on species that roosted higher in the tree canopy, and at lower density, than those that roost more densely and lower in trees. Finally, we trialed transmitter accuracy, and found that actual distance errors and Argos location class error estimates were in broad agreement. Conclusions/Significance: We conclude that no single collar or transmitter design is optimal for all bat species, and that species size/weight, species ecology and study objectives are key design considerations. Our study provides a strategy for collar and platform choice that will be applicable to a larger number of bat species as transmitter size and weight continue to decrease in the future

UK Large-scale Wind Power Programme from 1970 to 1990: the Carmarthen Bay experiments and the Musgrove Vertical-Axis Turbines

This article describes the development of the Musgrove Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) concept, the UK ‘Carmarthen Bay’ wind turbine test programme, and UK government’s wind power programme to 1990. One of the most significant developments in the story of British wind power occurred during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, with the development of the Musgrove vertical axis wind turbine and its inclusion within the UK Government’s wind turbine test programme. Evolving from a supervisor’s idea for an undergraduate project at Reading University, the Musgrove VAWT was once seen as an able competitor to the horizontal axis wind systems that were also being encouraged at the time by both the UK government and the Central Electricity Generating Board, the then nationalised electricity utility for England and Wales. During the 1980s and 1990s the most developed Musgrove VAWT system, along with three other commercial turbine designs was tested at Carmarthen Bay, South Wales as part of a national wind power test programme. From these developmental tests, operational data was collected and lessons learnt, which were incorporated into subsequent wind power operations.http://dx.doi.org/10.1260/03095240677860621

The Devil's altar? : crime and the early modern public house

Was the early modern public house really such a dangerous place, as Puritan preachers (and many historians) suggested? This article discusses offences by publicans and patrons. It argues that the evidence for crime needs to be carefully contextualised and that taverns could stabilise as well as threaten the social order

Provinciality and the Art World: The Midland Group 1961- 1977

This paper takes as its focus the Midland Group Gallery in order to first, make a case for the consideration of the geographies of art galleries. Second, highlight the importance of galleries in the context of cultural geographies of the sixties. Third, discuss the role of provinciality in the operation of art worlds. In so doing it explicates one set of geographies surrounding the gallery – those of the local, regional and international networks that connected to produce art works and art space. It reveals how the interactions between places and practices outside of metropolitan and regional hierarchies provides a more nuanced insight into how art worlds operated during the sixties, a period of growing internationalism of art, and how contested definitions of the provincial played an integral role in this. The paper charts the operations of the Midland Group Gallery and the spaces that it occupied to demonstrate how it was representative of a post-war discourse of provincialism and a corresponding re-evaluation of regional cultural activity

Dallas Bower: a producer for television's early years, 1936-39

Having worked in the film industry as a sound technician and then director, Dallas Bower (1907-99) was appointed in 1936 as one of two senior producers at the start of the BBC Television service. Over the next three years Bower produced as well as directed many ground-breaking live programmes, including the opening-day broadcast on 2 November 1936; the BBC Television Demonstration Film (1937, his only surviving pre-war production); a modern-dress Julius Caesar (1938), in uniforms suggestive of a Fascist disctatorship; Act II of Tristan and Isolde (1938); Patrick Hamilton’s play Rope (1939), utilising extended single camera-shots camera-shots; numerous ballets, among them Checkmate (1938); and ambitious outside broadcasts from the film studios at Denham and Pinewood. Developing the working practices of producing for the theatre, film industry and radio, Bower was a key figure in defining the role of the creative television producer at the start of the medium. Among his innovations, according to his unpublished autobiographical fragment ‘Playback’ (written 1995), was the introduction of a drawn studio plan for the four cameras employed in all live broadcasts from Alexandra Palace. Using Bower’s writings (among them his 1936 book Plan for Cinema), his BECTU History Project interview, the BBC Written Archives and contemporary industry coverage, this article reconstructs the early development of the role of staff television producer in order to consider the questions of autonomy, agency and institutional constraints at the BBC in the pre-war years