Assessing Aquatic Insect Flight Behavior with Sticky Traps

A suspended sticky trap was designed to analyze flight behavior of aquatic insects, including both direction and vertical distribution of flight. Specifications of trap construction are detailed. Possible applications were explored and preliminary results from the study of a small Indiana stream demonstrated primary upstream migration of females, and indicated vertical partitioning of flight activity at the species level

Female career progression in retailing

Abstract: Purpose – The aim of this paper is to highlight the factors that limit and support female career progression in the retail industry. Design/methodology/approach – The research used a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. Data were collected from employees and managers working in 31 stores belonging to national stores operating in the East Midlands as well as ten SME independent retailers based in the region. Findings – The women in this study can be categorised into those women who are not interested in pursuing a career in retail, those that seek promotion but have difficulties balancing the demands of their work and domestic circumstances and those who have actively pursued a career in the industry. Despite these categorisations, the study suggests that the career progression of all female staff is helped and hindered by a number of interrelating factors, such as whether they have a role model, are loyal to the store they work in or have children. Practical implications – It is proposed that career initiatives in retailing need to be more adaptable so that they take account of the different development needs of these three types of women. Originality/value – This is a large-scale study that uses a mixed method approach and considers the opinions of store staff working in a range of roles

Maximising women's potential in the UK's retail sector

Purpose – A defining characteristic of the UK retail sector is the high number of women it employs but there remains an enduring under-representation of women in its management positions. The majority of women in the industry work part-time and this paper explores the factors that impact upon the career progression. Approach – One thousand questionnaires were completed by store staff in three leading retailers supported by interviews with store staff and SME retailers in the UK’s East Midlands region. Findings – The study revealed continuing barriers to career progression for women working part-time in retailing. Despite family friendly employment policies becoming an increasingly important feature of modern work organisations, career progression was informed by a traditional concept of a career based on full-time working. Research Limitations - the study was limited to one sector, there is a need for further studies into women’s career progression in other sectors reliant on female employment. Practical implications - the findings have implications for promotion policies, training and development provision and line management practices if retailers are to maximise the potential of the women they employ. Originality/Value – The findings, based on both quantitative and qualitative data, suggest that retailing is an industry where a significant number of women are working below their potential despite organisational policies supportive of diversity and equality of opportunity

Design and development of a self-healing fuse

Mercury-filled self-healing fuses for protecting solid state circuits from faults - design and developmen

Studies in a Random Noise Model of Decoherence

We study the effects of noise and decoherence for a double-potential well system, suitable for the fabrication of qubits and quantum logic elements. A random noise term is added to the hamiltonian, the resulting wavefunction found numerically and the density matrix obtained by averaging over noise signals. Analytic solutions using the two-state model are obtained and found to be generally in agreement. In particular, a simple formula for the decoherence rate in terms of the noise parameters in the two-state model is reviewed and verified for the full simulation with the multi-level system. The formalism is extended to describe multiple sources of noise or different "dephasing" axes at the same time. Furthermore, the old formula for the "Turing-Watched Pot" effect is generalized to the case where the environmental interactions do not conserve the "quality" in question. Various forms for the noise signal are investigated. An interesting result is the importance of the noise power at low frequency. If it vanishes there is, in leading order, no decoherence. This is verified in a numerical simulation where two apparently similar noise signals, but differing in the power at zero frequency, give strikingly different decoherence effects. A short discussion of situations dominated by low frequency noise is given.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figures. New section added on Very Low Frequency Noise, with two additional figures. Conclusions, Abstract modified accordingly. Various other small editorial changes and clarification

A summary of the ECAS MHD power plant results

The performance and the cost of electricity (COE) for MHD systems utilizing coal or coal derived fuels are summarized along with a conceptual open cycle MHD plant design. The results show that open cycle coal fired recuperatively preheated MHD systems have potentially one of the highest coal-pile-to-bus bar efficiencies (48.3%) and also one of the lowest COE of the systems studied. Closed cycle, inert gas systems do not appear to have the potential of exceeding the efficiency of or competing with the COE of advanced steam plants

Self-healing fuse

Fast-acting current limiting device provides current overload protection for vulnerable circuit elements and then re-establishes conduction path within milliseconds. Fuse can also perform as fast-acting switch to clear transient circuit overloads. Fuse takes advantage of large increase in electrical resistivity that occurs when liquid metal vaporizes

Intelligent redundant actuation system requirements and preliminary system design

Several redundant actuation system configurations were designed and demonstrated to satisfy the stringent operational requirements of advanced flight control systems. However, this has been accomplished largely through brute force hardware redundancy, resulting in significantly increased computational requirements on the flight control computers which perform the failure analysis and reconfiguration management. Modern technology now provides powerful, low-cost microprocessors which are effective in performing failure isolation and configuration management at the local actuator level. One such concept, called an Intelligent Redundant Actuation System (IRAS), significantly reduces the flight control computer requirements and performs the local tasks more comprehensively than previously feasible. The requirements and preliminary design of an experimental laboratory system capable of demonstrating the concept and sufficiently flexible to explore a variety of configurations are discussed

High-temperature, high-pressure optical cell

The invention is an optical cell for containment of chemicals under conditions of high temperature and high pressure. The cell is formed of a vitreous silica tube, two optical windows comprising a vitreous silica rod inserted into the ends of a tube, and fused into position in the tube ends. Windows are spaced apart to form a cavity enclosed by the tube and the windows. A hole is drilled radially through the tube and into the cavity. Another vitreous silica tube is fused to the silica tube around the hole to form the stem, which is perpendicular to the long axis of the tube. The open end of the stem is used to load chemicals into the cavity. Then the stem may be sealed, and if desired, it may be shortened in order to reduce the volume of the cavity, which extends into the stem

Structural parameters for globular clusters in M31 and generalizations for the fundamental plane

The structures of globular clusters (GCs) reflect their dynamical states and past histories. High-resolution imaging allows the exploration of morphologies of clusters in other galaxies. Surface brightness profiles from new Hubble Space Telescope observations of 34 globular clusters in M31 are presented, together with fits of several different structural models to each cluster. M31 clusters appear to be adequately fit by standard King models, and do not obviously require alternate descriptions with relatively stronger halos, such as are needed to fit many GCs in other nearby galaxies. The derived structural parameters are combined with corrected versions of those measured in an earlier survey to construct a comprehensive catalog of structural and dynamical parameters for M31 GCs with a sample size similar to that for the Milky Way. Clusters in M31, the Milky Way, Magellanic Clouds, Fornax dwarf spheroidal and NGC 5128 define a very tight fundamental plane with identical slopes. The combined evidence for these widely different galaxies strongly reinforces the view that old globular clusters have near-universal structural properties regardless of host environment.Comment: AJ in press; 59 pages including 16 figure