24,654 research outputs found
A study of the usefulness of Skylab EREP data for earth resources studies in Australia
The author has identified the following significant results. Preliminary results show that the high resolution imagery has, potentially, an operational role in geological surveying and the design of major engineering works, and is much more promising in this regard than the low resolution Skylab and ERTS-1 imagery
Structures in granitic bathyliths and associated foldbelts in relation to mineral resources
There are no author-identified significant results in this report
New class of thermosetting plastics has improved strength, thermal and chemical stability
New class of thermosetting plastics has high hydrocarbon content, high stiffness, thermal stability, humidity resistance, and workability in the precured state. It is designated cyclized polydiene urethane, and is applicable as matrices to prepare chemically stable ablative materials for rocket nose cones of nozzles
The disappearing women: North West ICT project final report
Project Context
The Disappearing Women: Northwest ICT project was embarked upon to further understand why more women leave the sector than are being recruited, 36% of new ICT recruits in the UK (in the first quarter of 2002) were women, yet in the same period, women accounted for 46% of all leavers or ādisappearingā women (The DTI Women in IT Champions report 2003, Grey and Healy 2004). This continuing trend shows a decline from 27% of women making up the ICT workforce in 1997 with a drop to 21% in 2004 (The DTI Women in IT Industry report 2005b). The number of women in the ICT sector remains disappointingly small considering that women make up around 50% of the total UK workforce and significantly this figure has gradually continued to fall despite numerous initiatives to attract more women into the sector (see Griffiths and Moore 2006 for a list of high profile āwomen in ICTā initiatives).
The research teamās first gender research project - Women in IT (WINIT) - ran for two years from January 2004 until March 2006 at the Information Systems Institute at The University of Salford and dealt solely with women who worked in the ICT sector in England. The WINIT Project via an online questionnaire and in-depth interviews gathered the stories and experiences of up to 500 participants and 19 interviewees respectively. The project enabled these womenās voices to be heard but the research team were constantly aware that a certain part of the female ICT workforce - the ādisappearingā women who had left ICT vowing never to return - had been overlooked and effectively silenced. It was these women who once found, may be able to facilitate a more in-depth understanding of why women were leaving the ICT sector. Having amassed skills and expertise, qualifications in ICT and crossed ICT recruitment barriers (DTI 2005a) the ādisappearingā women for whatever reasons decided to change their career trajectories and leave the sector. What āchillyā (Falkner 2004) workplaces, disinterested organisational cultures and indifferent working conditions had these women encountered that became determining factors in leaving the ICT sector? There has been little (if any) research conducted involving this specific cohort of women and The Disappearing Women: North West ICT (DW: NW ICT) project seeks to make a research contribution to what is a continuing statistical and symbolic under-representation of women in the ICT labour market.
The DW: NW ICT project was partly funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) from April 2006 until December 2006 under ESF Objective 3, Policy Field 5.1: Improving the Participation of Women. The DW: NW ICT project contributes research to priority 5 and its strategic objective to reduce the level of disadvantage faced by women in the labour market. The project was run in the Information Systems Group, Salford Business School of The University of Salford, Greater Manchester, UK.
The report is structured as follows. The first section presents the backdrop for the research, looking in general at women in the ICT labour market in England and then women leaving the ICT sector focussing on the North West of England and more explicitly women leaving ICT employment in the North West of England. The research aims of the project form the following section; they have been loosely classified in to two groupings, the push and pull factors that are contributing to the high attrition rate of women leaving ICT. The methodology follows with the route taken in how this āhard to reachā target sample were finally located, once contacted the life history interview process and procedures adopted is explained in full. The vignettes of the ādisappearingā women are included to allow the reader an opportunity to āget to knowā these women a little more closely. Key themes that have naturally emerged throughout the interview data analysis process are presented, including hostilities in the ICT workplace, significant events and the process of leaving ICT workplaces and finally stories of the āappearingā women and their current situations are heard. A discussion regarding the findings of the DW: NW ICT project concludes this report
Polyimide polymers provide improved ablative materials
Principle heat absorption of silica-reinforced plastic ablative materials occurs from the in-depth reaction of silica with carbon to form silicon monoxide and carbon monoxide. The higher the degree of completion of this reaction, the higher the capacity of the ablative material to absorb heat
Polyimide polymers provide higher char yield for graphitic structures
Technique for manufacture of graphite composites uses high-char-forming processable polyimide resin systems to produce the graphitic matrix. Only three cyclic steps are required to yield a 99.7 percent graphite product
Ablative resin Patent
Ablative resins used for retarding regression in ablative materia
Absence of synaptic regulation by phosducin in retinal slices.
Phosducin is an abundant photoreceptor protein that binds G-protein Ī²Ī³ subunits and plays a role in modulating synaptic transmission at photoreceptor synapses under both dark-adapted and light-adapted conditions in vivo. To examine the role of phosducin at the rod-to-rod bipolar cell (RBC) synapse, we used whole-cell voltage clamp recordings to measure the light-evoked currents from both wild-type (WT) and phosducin knockout (Pd(-/-)) RBCs, in dark- and light-adapted retinal slices. Pd(-/-) RBCs showed smaller dim flash responses and steeper intensity-response relationships than WT RBCs, consistent with the smaller rod responses being selectively filtered out by the non-linear threshold at the rod-to-rod bipolar synapse. In addition, Pd(-/-) RBCs showed a marked delay in the onset of the light-evoked currents, similar to that of a WT response to an effectively dimmer flash. Comparison of the changes in flash sensitivity in the presence of steady adapting light revealed that Pd(-/-) RBCs desensitized less than WT RBCs to the same intensity. These results are quantitatively consistent with the smaller single photon responses of Pd(-/-) rods, owing to the known reduction in rod G-protein expression levels in this line. The absence of an additional synaptic phenotype in these experiments suggests that the function of phosducin at the photoreceptor synapse is abolished by the conditions of retinal slice recordings
Probing The Wavelength-dependent Excited-state Dynamics Of A Photochromic Molecular Switch Using Resonance Raman Spectroscopy
Diarylethene (DAE) derivatives are an important class of photochromic molecular switches that undergo ring-opening and ring-closing reactions following excitation with visible or UV light, respectively. Here, we use resonance Raman spectroscopy to examine the wavelength-dependence of the cycloreversion (ring-opening) reaction following excitation into the two lowest electronic absorption bands of a common DAE derivative. Resonance Raman spectroscopy reveals the initial dynamics on the excited-state potential energy surface based on mode-specific enhancements of the vibrational spectrum that depend on the electronic resonance condition. Although the vibrational frequencies report on the ground-state structure of the molecule, the relative intensities of the Raman transitions reflect the initial motion immediately following excitation to the upper electronic state. Specifically, we report stimulated resonance Raman spectra and Raman gain profiles for excitation into two separate absorption bands centered near 560 nm and 370 nm. Although excitation into either band results in the cycloreversion reaction with similar quantum yield, the resonance Raman spectra indicate that the initial dynamics are different for the two excited states. Excitation into the lower energy absorption band reveals resonance enhancement of a 986 cm mode that corresponds to a ring breathing mode of the central cyclohexadiene ring, and likely represents motion directly along the ring-opening reaction coordinate. In contrast, excitation into the higher energy absorption band results in resonance enhancement for 1400 cmand 1600 cm modes that represent ethylenic stretching along the conjugated backbone of the molecule and of the peripheral phenyl rings, respectively, and probably do not map directly onto the reaction coordinate. These observations provide key information for understanding the reactivity of DAE derivatives following excitation in the visible and near-UV
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