Design and fabrication of noncondensing radiator for environmental evaluation of space power mercury Rankine system

Conceptual and mechanical design analyses, and fabrication of noncondensing radiator for environmental testing of space power mercury Rankine syste

The Picatinny Technology Transfer Innovation Center: A business incubator concept adapted to federal laboratory technology transfer

In recent years, the US defense industrial base spawned the aerospace industry, among other successes, and served as the nation`s technology seed bed. However, as the defense industrial base shrinks and public and private resources become scarcer, the merging of the commercial and defense communities becomes necessary to maintain national technological competencies. Cooperative efforts such as technology transfer provide an attractive, cost-effective, well-leveraged alternative to independently funded research and development (R and D). The sharing of knowledge, resources, and innovation among defense contractors and other public sector firms, academia, and other organizations has become exceedingly attractive. Recent legislation involving technology transfer provides for the sharing of federal laboratory resources with the private sector. The Army Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC), Picatinny Arsenal, NJ, a designer of weapons systems, is one of the nation`s major laboratories with this requirement. To achieve its important technology transfer mission, ARDEC reviewed its capabilities, resources, intellectual property, and products with commercial potential. The purpose of the review was to develop a viable plan for effecting a technology transfer cultural change within the ARDEC, Picatinny Arsenal and with the private sector. This report highlights the issues identified, discussed, and resolved prior to the transformation of a temporarily vacant federal building on the Picatinny installation into a business incubator. ARDEC`s discussions and rationale for the decisions and actions that led to the implementation of the Picatinny Technology Transfer Innovation Center are discussed

Diversity, Dilemmas and Transformation in Post-Compulsory Education: an Introduction to the Special Issue on Work Based Research

As governments recognize the central place of post-compulsory education in regenerating and modernizing the economic and social fabric of society (BIS 2008), it is appropriate for us as educational researchers to question whether this recognition beckons a different role for research in post-compulsory education. Much of this research is work based, using a broad interpretation of this term, and the majority of articles received by this journal (though the proportion published is a lower one) reflect this balance. Work based research in education poses particular challenges for the researcher and the practitioner, whether the focus is practitioner research, in which case the dilemmas can centre on potential role conflict between practitioner and researcher roles, or whether the work based research is observational – analyzing others’ professional practice, in which case the dilemmas can centre on power relations between researcher and researched, the politics of research, and ethical questions around care for participants and the degree of their involvement or non-involvement in the total research enterprise. This article reviews the prospects for work based research in post-compulsory education and introduces the articles in this special issue

Sex-specific but not sexually explicit: pupillary responses to dressed and naked adults

Dilation of the pupils is an indicator of an observer's sexual interest in other people, but it remains unresolved whether this response is strengthened or diminished by sexually explicit material. To address this question, this study compared pupillary responses of heterosexual men and women to naked and dressed portraits of male and female adult film actors. Pupillary responses corresponded with observers' self-reported sexual orientation, such that dilation occurred during the viewing of opposite-sex people, but were comparable for naked and dressed targets. These findings indicate that pupillary responses provide a sex-specific measure, but are not sensitive to sexually explicit content

Melt movement through the Icelandic crust

We use both seismology and geobarometry to investigate the movement of melt through the volcanic crust of Iceland. We have captured melt in the act of moving within or through a series of sills ranging from the upper mantle to the shallow crust by the clusters of small earthquakes it produces as it forces it way upward. The melt is injected not just beneath the central volcanoes, but also at discrete locations along the rift zones and above the centre of the underlying mantle plume. We suggest that the high strain rates required to produce seismicity at depths of 10 − 25 km in a normally ductile part of the Icelandic crust are linked to the exsolution of carbon dioxide from the basaltic melts. The seismicity and geobarometry provide complementary information on the way that the melt moves through the crust, stalling and fractionating, and often freezing in one or more melt lenses on its way upwards: the seismicity shows what is happening instantaneously today, while the geobarometry gives constraints averaged over longer timescales on the depths of residence in the crust of melts prior to their eruption

Factors associated with self-care activities among adults in the United Kingdom: a systematic review

Background: The Government has promoted self-care. Our aim was to review evidence about who uses self-tests and other self-care activities (over-the-counter medicine, private sector,complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), home blood pressure monitors). Methods: During April 2007, relevant bibliographic databases (Medline, Embase, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts, PsycINFO,British Nursing Index, Allied and Complementary Medicine Database, Sociological Abstracts, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, Arthritis and Complementary Medicine Database, Complementary and Alternative Medicine and Pain Database) were searched, and potentially relevant studies were reviewed against eligibility criteria. Studies were included if they were published during the last 15 years and identified factors, reasons or characteristics associated with a relevant activity among UK adults. Two independent reviewers used proformas to assess the quality of eligible studies. Results: 206 potentially relevant papers were identified, 157 were excluded, and 49 papers related to 46 studies were included: 37 studies were, or used data from questionnaire surveys, 36 had quality scores of five or more out of 10, and 27 were about CAM. Available evidence suggests that users of CAM and over-the-counter medicine are female, middle-aged, affluent and/or educated with some measure of poor health, and that people who use the private sector are affluent and/or educated. Conclusion: People who engage in these activities are likely to be affluent. Targeted promotion may, therefore, be needed to ensure that use is equitable. People who use some activities also appear to have poorer measures of health than non-users or people attending conventional services. It is, therefore, also important to ensure that self-care is not used as a second choice for people who have not had their needs met by conventional service

Multi-layer scintillation detector for the MOON double beta decay experiment: Scintillation photon responses studied by a prototype detector MOON-1

An ensemble of multi-layer scintillators is discussed as an option of the high-sensitivity detector Mo Observatory Of Neutrinos (MOON) for spectroscopic measurements of neutrino-less double beta decays. A prototype detector MOON-1, which consists of 6 layer plastic-scintillator plates, was built to study the sensitivity of the MOON-type detector. The scintillation photon collection and the energy resolution, which are key elements for the high-sensitivity experiments, are found to be 1835+/-30 photo-electrons for 976 keV electrons and sigma = 2.9+/-0.1% (dE/E = 6.8+/-0.3 % in FWHM) at the Qbb ~ 3 MeV region, respectively. The multi-layer plastic-scintillator structure with good energy resolution as well as good background suppression of beta-gamma rays is crucial for the MOON-type detector to achieve the inverted hierarchy neutrino mass sensitivity.Comment: 8 pages, 16 figures, submitted to Nucl.Instrum.Met

Smart Cities: Towards a New Citizenship Regime? A Discourse Analysis of the British Smart City Standard

Growing practice interest in smart cities has led to calls for a less technology-oriented and more citizen-centric approach. In response, this articles investigates the citizenship mode promulgated by the smart city standard of the British Standards Institution. The analysis uses the concept of citizenship regime and a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods to discern key discursive frames defining the smart city and the particular citizenship dimensions brought into play. The results confirm an explicit citizenship rationale guiding the smart city (standard), although this displays some substantive shortcomings and contradictions. The article concludes with recommendations for both further theory and practice development

Determination of the Gamow-Teller Quenching Factor from Charge Exchange Reactions on 90Zr

Double differential cross sections between 0-12 degrees were measured for the 90Zr(n,p) reaction at 293 MeV over a wide excitation energy range of 0-70 MeV. A multipole decomposition technique was applied to the present data as well as the previously obtained 90Zr(p,n) data to extract the Gamow-Teller (GT) component from the continuum. The GT quenching factor Q was derived by using the obtained total GT strengths. The result is Q=0.88+/-0.06 not including an overall normalization uncertainty in the GT unit cross section of 16%.Comment: 11 papes, 4 figures, submitted to Physics Letters B (accepted), gzipped tar file, changed content