Storage battery comprising negative plates of a wedge shaped configuration

An improved silver-zinc battery particularly suited for use in an environment where battery operation is subjected to multiple charge/discharge cycling over extended periods is described. The battery seperator system, containing a highly absorbent material continguous with the surfaces of the plates and multiple semi-permeable membranes interposed between the plates, is also characterized

Low-skill no more! essential workers, social reproduction and the legitimacy-crisis of the division of labour

Workers in the realm of social reproduction – e.g. nurses, carers, cleaners, food preparation workers etc. – are considered low-skill and are poorly remunerated. During the Covid-19 crisis they have been recast as ‘essential’, leading to unprecedented praise and attention in public discourse. Nonetheless, public praise for these ‘essential’ workers so far has not translated into a commitment for higher wages and improved working conditions. In this article, we argue that skills hierarchies continue to determine labour market outcomes and social inequalities. We pinpoint that these are embedded into the logic of capitalist social relations, rather than being an expression of the features of jobs themselves. We also show how some socially reproductive sectors resist the tendency to automation precisely because of the prevalence therein of a workforce which is portrayed as un-skilled. By focussing on low-skilled workers’ engagement in various forms of labour unrest and their demands for long overdue recognition and wage rises. the article puts into question the inherited skills-lexicon according to which low-wage jobs are unproductive and lacking in skills and competence. The authors conclude that these workers’ fights for the recognition of the dignity and importance of their jobs and professions can facilitate a rethinking of the division of labour in our societies

Weber: Religion, Nation and Empire

Colonialism figures in the work of Max Weber in multiple forms. While in his professorial address he supported internal colonialism as the antidote against the threat represented by the immigration of foreigners, in the writings on world religions colonialism appears as displacement, amnesia and Freudian slip. Colonial subjects in particular are portrayed as personalities unable to develop the mentality that would help them to free themselves from what Weber regarded as the chains of a communitarian, gregarious and subaltern life. In the end, I argue that Weber’s work contributed, albeit contradictorily and not always explicitly, to spread an idea of colonial violence as a force of progress and a racist idea of colonial others as backward

Optimization of the Velocity Azimuth Display (VAD) Algorithm\u27s Adaptable Parameters in the WSR-88D System

Meteorologists have encountered problems with the Velocity Azimuth Display (VAD) algorithm in the Weather Surveillance Radar - 1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) System. Under certain meteorological conditions, forecasters have observed differences between the radar\u27s wind profiles and wind profiles from rawinsonde upper-air soundings, or wind profilers. One of the main causes of this problem is inversions in the atmosphere which cause the radar beam to subrefract or superefract, causing the VAD winds to be inaccurately reported at a particular height. This thesis used the WSR-88D Algorithm Testing and Display System (WATADS) to compare VAD winds from recorded Level 2 NEXRAD data at Vandenberg AFB, CA, with rawinsonde wind data and wind profiler data also recorded from Vandenberg. Approximately two weeks of data from each season in which low-level inversions in the atmosphere were present were used in this research. The adaptable parameters of the VAD algorithm were modified to determine if the VAD winds reported by the WSR-88D could be improved. This research discovered that only modifying the VAD range adaptable parameter resulted in any significant improvement in the VAD winds. However, no single range value could be determined to work the best in all cases. The degree to which the range value optimizes the VAD winds is seasonally dependent Overall, changing the VAD range value during low-level inversions might improve the VAD winds at one height, but will probably cause the VAD winds at another height to be unreliable