3d single-ion magnets

One of the determining factors in whether single-molecule magnets (SMMs) may be used as the smallest component of data storage, is the size of the barrier to reversal of the magnetisation, Ueff. This physical quantity depends on the magnitude of the magnetic anisotropy of a complex and the size of its spin ground state. In recent years, there has been a growing focus on maximising the anisotropy generated for a single 3d transition metal (TM) ion, by an appropriate ligand field, as a means of achieving higher barriers. Because the magnetic properties of these compounds arise from a single ion in a ligand field, they are often referred to as single-ion magnets (SIMs). Here, the synthetic chemist has a significant role to play, both in the design of ligands to enforce propitious splitting of the 3d orbitals and in the judicious choice of TM ion. Since the publication of the first 3d-based SIM, which was based on Fe(II), many other contributions have been made to this field, using different first row TM ions, and exploring varied coordination environments for the paramagnetic ions

Multidisciplinary Engineering Systems 2nd and 3rd Year College-Wide Courses

Undergraduate engineering education today is ineffective in preparing students for multidisciplinary system integration and optimization - exactly what is needed by companies to become innovative and gain a competitive advantage in this global economy. While there is some movement in engineering education to change that, this change is not easy, as it involves a cultural change from the silo approach to a holistic approach. The ABET-required senior capstone multidisciplinary design course too often becomes a design-build-test exercise with the emphasis on just getting something done. Students rarely break out of their disciplinary comfort zone and thus fail to experience true multidisciplinary system design. What is needed are multidisciplinary systems courses, with a balance between theory and practice, between academic rigor and the best practices of industry, presented in an integrated way in the 2nd and 3rd years that prepares students for true multidisciplinary systems engineering at the senior level and beyond. The two courses presented here represent a significant curriculum improvement in response to this urgent need

Disturbance Attenuation in a Magnetic Levitation System with Acceleration Feedback

The objective of this work is to demonstrate the use of acceleration feedback to improve the performance of a maglev system, especially in disturbance attenuation. In the single degree-of-freedom (DOF) system studied here, acceleration feedback has the effect of virtually increasing inertia, damping and stiffness. It is shown that it can be used to increase disturbance rejection without sacrificing tracking performance. Both analytical and experimental results demonstrate that disturbance rejection can be improved with acceleration feedback

A case study in online formal/informal learning: was it collaborative or cooperative learning?

Developing skills in communication and collaboration is essential in modern design education, in order to prepare students for the realities of design practice, where projects involve multidisciplinary teams, often working remotely. This paper presents a learning activity that focusses on developing communication and collaboration skills of undergraduate design students working remotely and vocational learners based in a community makerspace. Participants were drawn from these formal and informal educational settings and engaged in a design-make project framed in the context of distributed manufacturing. They were given designer or maker roles and worked at distance from each other, communicating using asynchronous online tools. Analysis of the collected data has identified a diversity of working practice across the participants, and highlighted the difficulties that result from getting students to work collaboratively, when not collocated. This paper presents and analysis of participants’ communications, with a view to identify whether they were learning collaboratively, or cooperatively. It was found that engaging participants in joint problem solving is not enough to facilitate collaboration. Instead effective collaboration depends on symmetry within the roles of participants and willingness to share expertise through dialogue. Designing learning activities to overcome the challenges that these factors raise is a difficult task, and the research reported here provides some valuable insight

RE:FORM - Reimagining Education for the Future Of Redistributed Manufacturing

Manufacturing supply chains are being reshaped and redistributed by the Internet. Designers in Delhi are working with makers in Manchester, transporting bits over networks rather than boxes by container ship. We are moving to a world where software files rather than physical products are posted, with makers local to consumers fabricating products designed and developed globally. How do we educate future makers and designers for this new industrial reality of networked prototyping and manufacturing? The Open University (OU) and MAKLab have been exploring this challenge as part of the Royal College of Art’s Future Makespaces in Redistributed Manufacturing project. The OU is a distance learning institution. Providing hands-on making experience for our design students is difficult as we cannot assume our students have access to any equipment or materials, yet we recognise the importance of materiality in a design education: not just understanding the theories, but also how materials and tools perform. MAKLab specialise in providing individualised training pathways in design and digital fabrication, but are interested in exploring how to scale up that individualised educational model in partnership with educational institutions. Partnering allowed us to explore what benefits learners might gain from being involved in an online collaborative design and making process, from sketches to software models through to full scale prototypes: not only learning technical expertise but also the soft skills of negotiation, collaboration, and project management. As educators we were interested to find out how universities and makerspaces might work together to set learners a challenge that more closely resembled what they might experience in their professional lives. To address these questions, our project was underpinned by a number of research workshops and interviews to establish the context and potential challenges to be addressed, but we were agreed that our project wouldn’t stop at the theoretical stage. We would test our ideas by running a live study with participants, aiming at real measurable outcomes