Enabling sustainable user interaction with domestic heating controls

Copyright @ 2011 University of BathThe way we live greatly effects the carbon emissions of our homes; heating accounts for nearly 60% of domestic energy consumption in the UK. This consumption is directly influenced by occupants through the use of their control systems. Using realworld data from buildings and observational data from users this research proposes guidelines for the design of more inclusive domestic heating controls. Two usercentred studies have been completed to date; one using controls under lab conditions and the other in a low-carbon housing development. In both studies controls were found to exclude users due to the cognitive demands placed on them, therefore creating an unnecessary barrier to reducing heat energy consumption in the home. The design principles proposed aim to help designers consider user needs when designing the interfaces of heating controls and energy management systems. By designing more inclusive and usable controls considerable energy savings could be made in the domestic context.This work is funded by the EPSRC and Buro Happold

Who is failing abused and neglected children?

This is a response to an article by Nigel Speight and Jane Wynne, ‘Is the Children Act failing severely abused and neglected children?’, published in this journal in March 2000.1 Overall, we consider the article to be polemical and inadequately argued. Many of the points made are unsubstantiated and there are errors of fact. Where does evidence based practice go if senior practitioners prefer anecdotes and personal belief to research findings? Restrictions on space preclude an exhaustive reply to all the points Speight and Wynne raise, so we have confined ourselves to addressing those considered most significant

Growth of Epitaxial Oxide Thin Films on Graphene

The transfer process of graphene onto the surface of oxide substrates is well known. However, for many devices, we require high quality oxide thin films on the surface of graphene. This step is not understood. It is not clear why the oxide should adopt the epitaxy of the underlying oxide layer when it is deposited on graphene where there is no lattice match. To date there has been no explanation or suggestion of mechanisms which clarify this step. Here we show a mechanism, supported by first principles simulation and structural characterisation results, for the growth of oxide thin films on graphene. We describe the growth of epitaxial SrTiO3 (STO) thin films on a graphene and show that local defects in the graphene layer (e.g. grain boundaries) act as bridgepillar spots that enable the epitaxial growth of STO thin films on the surface of the graphene layer. This study, and in particular the suggestion of a mechanism for epitaxial growth of oxides on graphene, offers new directions to exploit the development of oxide/graphene multilayer structures and devices

3d Modularity

We find and propose an explanation for a large variety of modularity-related symmetries in problems of 3-manifold topology and physics of 3d $\mathcal{N}=2$ theories where such structures a priori are not manifest. These modular structures include: mock modular forms, $SL(2,\mathbb{Z})$ Weil representations, quantum modular forms, non-semisimple modular tensor categories, and chiral algebras of logarithmic CFTs.Comment: 119 pages, 10 figures and 20 table

A NuSTAR observation of disk reflection from close to the neutron star in 4U 1608-52

Studying the reflection of X-rays off the inner edge of the accretion disk in a neutron star low-mass X-ray binary, allows us to investigate the accretion geometry and to constrain the radius of the neutron star. We report on a NuSTAR observation of 4U 1608-52 obtained during a faint outburst in 2014 when the neutron star, which has a known spin frequency of 620 Hz, was accreting at ~1-2% of the Eddington limit. The 3-79 keV continuum emission was dominated by a Gamma~2 power law, with a ~1-2% contribution from a kTbb~0.3-0.6 keV black body component. The high-quality NuSTAR spectrum reveals the hallmarks of disk reflection; a broad iron line peaking near 7~keV and a Compton back-scattering hump around ~20-30 keV. Modeling the disk reflection spectrum points to a binary inclination of i~30-40 degrees and a small `coronal' height of h<8.5 GM/c2. Furthermore, our spectral analysis suggests that the inner disk radius extended to Rin~7-10 GM/c2, close to the innermost stable circular obit. This constrains the neutron star radius to R<21 km and the redshift from the stellar surface to z>0.12, for a mass of M=1.5 Msun and a spin parameter of a=0.29.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, MNRAS Letters in pres