Development of a lightweight nickel electrode

Nickel electrodes made using lightweight plastic plaque are about half the weight of electrodes made from state of the art sintered nickel plaque. This weight reduction would result in a significant improvement in the energy density of batteries using nickel electrodes (nickel hydrogen, nickel cadmium and nickel zinc). These lightweight electrodes are suitably conductive and yield comparable capacities (as high as 0.25 AH/gm (0.048 AH/sq cm)) after formation. These lightweight electrodes also show excellent discharge performance at high rates

Recent advances in Ni-H2 technology at NASA Lewis Research Center

The NASA Lewis Research Center has concentrated its efforts on advancing the Ni-H2 system technology for low Earth orbit applications. Component technology as well as the design principles were studied in an effort to understand the system behavior and failure mechanisms in order to increase performance and extend cycle life. The design principles were previously addressed. The component development is discussed, in particular the separator and nickel electrode and how these efforts will advance the Ni-H2 system technology

High-velocity feature of the class I methanol maser in G309.38-0.13

The Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) has been used to map class I methanol masers at 36 and 44 GHz in G309.38-0.13. Maser spots are found at nine locations in an area of 50''x30'', with both transitions reliably detected at only two locations. The brightest spot is associated with shocked gas traced by 4.5 micron emission. The data allowed us to make a serendipitous discovery of a high-velocity 36-GHz spectral feature, which is blue-shifted by about 30 km/s from the peak velocity at this frequency, but spatially located close to (within a few arcseconds of) the brightest maser spot. We interpret this as indicating an outflow parallel to the line of sight. Such a high velocity spread of maser features, which has not been previously reported in the class I methanol masers associated with a single molecular cloud, suggests that the outflow most likely interacts with a moving parcel of gas.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, accepted by MNRAS Letter

Study of a Large NaI(Tl) Crystal

Using a narrow band positron beam, the response of a large high-resolution NaI(Tl) crystal to an incident positron beam was measured. It was found that nuclear interactions cause the appearance of additional peaks in the low energy tail of the deposited energy spectrum

Intensity enhancement of O VI ultraviolet emission lines in solar spectra due to opacity

Opacity is a property of many plasmas, and it is normally expected that if an emission line in a plasma becomes optically thick, its intensity ratio to that of another transition that remains optically thin should decrease. However, radiative transfer calculations undertaken both by ourselves and others predict that under certain conditions the intensity ratio of an optically thick to thin line can show an increase over the optically thin value, indicating an enhancement in the former. These conditions include the geometry of the emitting plasma and its orientation to the observer. A similar effect can take place between lines of differing optical depth. Previous observational studies have focused on stellar point sources, and here we investigate the spatially-resolved solar atmosphere using measurements of the I(1032 A)/I(1038 A) intensity ratio of O VI in several regions obtained with the Solar Ultraviolet Measurements of Emitted Radiation (SUMER) instrument on board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SoHO) satellite. We find several I(1032 A)/I(1038 A) ratios observed on the disk to be significantly larger than the optically thin value of 2.0, providing the first detection (to our knowledge) of intensity enhancement in the ratio arising from opacity effects in the solar atmosphere. Agreement between observation and theory is excellent, and confirms that the O VI emission originates from a slab-like geometry in the solar atmosphere, rather than from cylindrical structures.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, ApJ Letters, in pres

Rapid protein immobilization for thin film continuous flow biocatalysis

Open Access Article. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.A versatile enzyme immobilization strategy for thin film continuous flow processing is reported. Here, non-covalent and glutaraldehyde bioconjugation are used to immobilize enzymes on the surfaces of borosilicate reactors. This approach requires only ng of protein per reactor tube, with the stock protein solution readily recycled to sequentially coat >10 reactors. Confining reagents to thin films during immobilization reduced the amount of protein, piranha-cleaning solution, and other reagents by ∼96%. Through this technique, there was no loss of catalytic activity over 10 h processing. The results reported here combines the benefits of thin film flow processing with the mild conditions of biocatalysis

United Kingdom: Citizenship education in the United Kingdom: comparing England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales

Purpose: In this country case study the authors undertake a comparative analysis of citizenship education across the four nations of the UK. The curriculum and contexts in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are first described. Then the article considers how each national example engages with fundamental expectations of citizenship education, specifically in relation to questions of citizenship status and the relationship between citizens and the state; political identity; and active citizenship processes. Approach: Drawing on the authors’ collective experience and insights into policy and practice in each nation, we started with a ‘generative conversation’ to identify key issues for inclusion in this case study. Findings: The article unearths a variety of constraints and problems, and situates these in a broader policyscape in which policy accretion and policy approximation generate a permissive culture, which has undermined the promise of citizenship education as an entitlement for all young people

Is Improving Access to University Enough? Socio-Economic Gaps in the Earnings of English Graduates

Much research and policy attention has been on socio-economic gaps in participation at university, but less attention has been paid to socio-economic gaps in graduates' earnings. This paper addresses this shortfall using tax and student loan administrative data to investigate the variation in earnings of English graduates by socio-economic background. We fi nd that graduates from higher income families (with median income of around $77,000) have average earnings which are 20$26,000). Once we condition on institution and subject choices, this premium roughly halves, to around 10%. The premium grows with age and is larger for men, in particular for men at the most selective universities. We estimate the extent to which different institutions and subjects appear to deliver good earnings for relatively less well off students, highlighting the good performance of medicine, economics, law, business, engineering, technology and computer science, as well as the prominent London-based universities.Nuffield Foundation British Academ

High Purity Pion Beam at TRIUMF

An extension of the TRIUMF M13 low-energy pion channel designed to suppress positrons based on an energy-loss technique is described. A source of beam channel momentum calibration from the decay pi+ --> e+ nu is also described.Comment: 5 page