The Ups and Downs of Zero G

A team of physicists from the Unversity of Leicester undertook some experiments in zero gravity. But not all went according to plan, as Dave Gray explains

Visualising the University Degree Journey

<p>In UK Higher Education, examiners are placed in a privileged position, able to apply adjustments to grades and confer awards in line with institutional regulations. Most frequently, examiners utilise dense tabulations of marks that blend into one another.</p> <p>This paper proposes an objective visual approach and prototype system, which can be used to chart students’ journeys through their programme and visually reason about their performance. We also present the evaluation, made during a trial within the School of Computer Science at Bangor University. The results of the evaluation are favourable.</p

Prospectus, November 30, 1976

TWAIN\u27S AMERICAN HUMOR\u27 COMES TO PC SATURDAY; Musical comedy: Apple Tree tryouts scheduled; Choir, Madrigals sing Sunday; PC flu shots set for Mon.; Paxton concert Dec. 12; PC news in brief: Spring Schedule changed, Sing to me!!!, Art exhibit Dec. 4, 5, Jeremiah Johnson , Illinois Wesleyan first home foe; Star Trek lives: Roddenberry gets a call from Klingon League; Finals start December 16; Four-week Advent season has three-fold purpose; Lockers must be renewed; \u27I found it\u27: Crusade reaches for everyone; Survey shows: Young people\u27s concerns changing; A man and his music: There\u27s plenty of Ellingtonia, but there\u27s never enough; Skylines: New energy technology exists; Covenant Players: Emphasis is upon play\u27s message; PC Communications Div. offers recital on Saturday; Christmas time is kids time in Champaign; What\u27s up, Doc?: Can Bugs Bunny replace Elvis?; American Heritage Dancers perform at ISU this week; Mediaseen: FCC will provide $ help for hearings; Classifieds; Sgt. Creekmur says: National Guard \u27perfect part-time job\u27; Faculty bowlers bunched up - \u27anything can happen\u27; Indoor track team needs recruits - \u27room for all\u27; Defeated by DuPage: Cobras open at home tonight against Ill. Wesleyan; Sports editorial: Firing of Blackman \u27tremendous setback\u27 for UI football; Women cagers get ready; K-Action wins ithttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_1976/1001/thumbnail.jp

Struggling with the Praxis of Social Accounting: Stakeholders, Accountability, Audits and Procedures

Addresses three related, though not entirely congruent, aims. Seeks, first, to initiate moves towards a "normative theory" - a conceptual framework - for the developing of social accounting by organizations. Second, aims inductively to draw out best practice from a range of social accounting experiments, illustrated, in particular, by reference to two short cases from Traidcraft plc and Traidcraft Exchange. Third, draws from the conclusions reached in the exploration of the first two aims and attempts to identify any clear "social accounting standards" or "generally acceptable social accounting principles" which can be used to guide the new and emerging social accounting practice. Presents a number of subtexts which attempt to link back to the accounting literature's more trenchant critiques of social accounting; to address the tension between academic theorizing and engaging with practice; to synthesize different approaches to social accounting practice; and to respond to the urgency that the recent upsurge in interest in social accounting places on the newly formed Institute of Social and Ethical Accountability. An ambitious paper which means that coverage of issues must be thinner than might typically be expected - exploratory, rather than providing answer, offers a collective view from experience and encourage engagement with the rapidly evolving social accounting agenda

Evidence of Strong-Coupled Superconductivity in CaC6 from Tunneling Spectroscopy

Point-contact tunneling on CaC$_6$ crystals reproducibly reveals superconducting gaps, $\Delta$, of 2.3$\pm$0.2 meV which are $\sim$~40% larger than earlier reports. That puts CaC$_6$ into the class of very strong-coupled superconductors since 2$\Delta$/kT$_c\sim$~4.6. Thus soft Ca phonons will be primarily involved in the superconductivity, a conclusion that explains the large Ca isotope effect found recently for CaC$_6$. Consistency among superconductor-insulator-normal metal (SIN), SIS and Andreev reflection (SN) junctions reinforces the intrinsic nature of this result.Comment: 2nd version, 4 pages, 4 figures, re-submitted to Physical Review Letter

Parallel-Processing CMOS Circuitry for M-QAM and 8PSK TCM

There has been some additional development of parts reported in "Multi-Modulator for Bandwidth-Efficient Communication" (NPO-40807), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 32, No. 6 (June 2009), page 34. The focus was on 1) The generation of M-order quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM) and octonary-phase-shift-keying, trellis-coded modulation (8PSK TCM), 2) The use of square-root raised-cosine pulse-shaping filters, 3) A parallel-processing architecture that enables low-speed [complementary metal oxide/semiconductor (CMOS)] circuitry to perform the coding, modulation, and pulse-shaping computations at a high rate; and 4) Implementation of the architecture in a CMOS field-programmable gate array