Graduating product designers and their attitudes to design responsibility: A survey

The notion of responsibility in designing is one that is becoming increasingly important, underlying significant areas of design activity. The research reported in this paper presents the results of a questionnaire study of 50 graduating product designers from 11 UK Universities. We find that students are focussed on environmental issues, have a very clear idea about where their responsibilities end for the products they design, but who display significant differences between the ideas about responsibility they espouse and their practice

Detecting Mass Protest through Social Media

Building on the existing understanding of the dynamics of mass protest, this paper argues that social media data can be used to detect the occurrence of such protests. It outlines a theoretical framework arguing that during times of mass mobilization, network central actors will geographically converge upon city centers, and that the relative magnitudes of social media activity in the center and periphery of the state can be used to detect the occurrence of protests. This article presents a new dataset of 2.2 million geocoded Ukrainian tweets, which are used to empirically test the theory against the observed 2014 Euromaidan protests in Ukraine. By relying completely on count and network data rather than keywords, hashtags, or other contextual clues from the content, this technique is portable across language barriers and national borders

Astrometric Discovery of GJ 802b: In the Brown Dwarf Oasis?

The Stellar Planet Survey is an ongoing astrometric search for giant planets and brown dwarfs around a sample of about 30 M-dwarfs. We have discovered several low-mass companions by measuring the motion of our target stars relative to their reference frames. The lowest mass discovery thus far is GJ 802b, a companion to the M5-dwarf GJ 802A. The orbital period is 3.14 +/- 0.03 y, the system mass is 0.214 +/- 0.045 Msolar, and the semi-major axis is 1.28 +/- 0.10 AU or 81 +/- 6 mas. Imaging observations indicate that GJ 802b is likely to be a brown dwarf with the astrometrically determined mass 0.058 +/- 0.021 Msolar (one sigma limits). The remaining uncertainty in the orbit is the eccentricity that is now loosely constrained. We discuss how the system age limits the mass and the prospects to further narrow the mass range when e is more precisely determined.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ on May 9, 200

The Science of Justice, Race, Arrests, and Police Use of Force

The current report examines racial disparities in use of force across 12 law enforcement departments from geographically and demographically diverse locations and reveals that racial disparities in police use of force persist even when controlling for racial distribution of local arrest rates. Additionally, multiple participating departments still demonstrated racial disparities when force incidents were benchmarked exclusively against Part I violent arrests, such that Black residents were still more likely than Whites to be targeted for force

Quantum gate for Q switching in monolithic photonic bandgap cavities containing two-level atoms

Photonic bandgap cavities are prime solid-state systems to investigate light-matter interactions in the strong coupling regime. However, as the cavity is defined by the geometry of the periodic dielectric pattern, cavity control in a monolithic structure can be problematic. Thus, either the state coherence is limited by the read-out channel, or in a high Q cavity, it is nearly decoupled from the external world, making measurement of the state extremely challenging. We present here a method for ameliorating these difficulties by using a coupled cavity arrangement, where one cavity acts as a switch for the other cavity, tuned by control of the atomic transition.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl

PRICES AND PRICING POLICIES FOR SMALL ANIMAL AND EQUINE VETERINARY SERVICES: A STUDY OF TEACHING HOSPITALS AND MICHIGAN PRIVATE PRACTICES DURING 2000

Prices are a key determinant of financial performance for virtually any business in either the public or private sector, and the Veterinary Teaching Hospital at Michigan State University (MSU-VTH) offers no exception. To achieve consistent success, it is critical that a business understands the prevailing conditions in the marketplace when setting prices for its goods and services. Important issues to address include: 1. What are the prices of similar goods and services produced by other firms? 2. How important is price as a choice factor when customers select a source of these goods and services? 3. How do staff members view prices at the point-of-sale? 4. How are prices determined? These questions are especially crucial in small businesses such as those typical of the veterinary profession, where the decision-makers tend to be technical experts rather than trained business managers. Without this information, these decision-makers often have very little basis on which to develop a pricing policy.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Data Visualization and Analysis for Climate Studies using NASA Giovanni Online System

With many global earth observation systems and missions focused on climate systems and the associated large volumes of observational data available for exploring and explaining how climate is changing and why, there is an urgent need for climate services. Giovanni, the NASA GES DISC Interactive Online Visualization ANd ANalysis Infrastructure, is a simple to use yet powerful tool for analysing these data for research on global warming and climate change, as well as for applications to weather. air quality, agriculture, and water resources

Cryogenic Hydrogen Oxygen Propulsion System for Planetary Science Missions

A Cryogenic Hydrogen Oxygen Propulsion System (CHOPS) that uses liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LO2) propellants can dramatically enhance NASA's ability to explore the solar system due to their superior specific impulse (Isp) capability. Although these cryogenic propellants can be challenging to manage and store, they allow significant mass advantages over traditional hypergolic propulsion systems and are therefore enabling for many planetary science missions. New cryogenic storage techniques such as subcooling, advanced insulation, low thermal conductivity structures allow for the long term storage and use of cryogenic propellants for solar system exploration and hence allow NASA to deliver more payloads to targets of interest, launch on smaller and less expensive launch vehicles, or both

The relationship between superoxide generation, cytochrome b and oxygen in activated neutrophils

AbstractThe O2 affinity for O.2 — generation (i.e. O2 tension at which 50% of the O2-saturated activity was observed) by rat neutrophils activated by the chemotactic peptide (N-formyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine) plus cytochalasin B was measured as 5.4 μM (± 1.4, n = 5). Similarly, the O2 tension at which cytochrome b was oxidized to 50% of its aerobic steady-state level in activated cells was 4.7 μM (± 1.0, n = 3): in non-activated cells the corresponding value for cytochrome b oxidation was 11.4 μM (± 2.8, n = 3). It is proposed that O2 depletion at inflammatory sites may limit oxidant generation by activated neutrophils and thus reduce oxidant damage to surrounding tissues