Facilitating a ‘non-judgmental’ skills-based co-design environment

This paper reflects on a pilot study for the design of a series of e-textiles workshops developed for the Nottinghamshire Mind Network community of mental health and wellbeing service users, managers and volunteers. The final workshops will form part of ‘An Internet of Soft Things’ (IoSofT) project, which seeks to develop a Person-Centred Approach (PCA) to design. The workshops should be experienced by participants as a non-judgemental environment, as one of the conditions of the Person-Centred Approach – unconditional positive regard (UPR) (Rogers, 1957). While the research team agree in theory that participants should feel safe and supported, putting non-judgement into practice in a multi - disciplinary environment, in which skills form the basis of workshop activity, has proved to be challenging. The paper introduces the key criteria of the PCA in psychotherapy, and describes the particular challenges that being non-judgemental presented to the textile designers and therapeutic practitioners who designed and facilitated the workshops. It presents an analysis of the design artefacts produced in the course of six workshop sessions (such as the ‘group agreement’), and participant feedback, and discusses the resulting framework that will be applied in the next iteration of workshops to enable participants’ comfort, creativity and autonomy

Limits on chemical complexity in diffuse clouds: search for CH3OH and HC5N absorption

Context: An unexpectedly complex polyatomic chemistry exists in diffuse clouds, allowing detection of species such as C2H, C3H2, H2CO and NH3 which have relative abundances that are strikingly similar to those inferred toward the dark cloud TMC-1 Aims: We probe the limits of complexity of diffuse cloud polyatomic chemistry. Methods: We used the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer to search for galactic absorption from low-lying J=2-1 rotational transitions of A- and E-CH3OH near 96.740 GHz and used the VLA to search for the J=8-7 transition of HC5N at 21.3 GHz. Results: Neither CH3OH nor HC5N were detected at column densities well below those of all polyatomics known in diffuse clouds and somewhat below the levels expected from comparison with TMC-1. The HCN/HC5N ratio is at least 3-10 times higher in diffuse gas than toward TMC-1. Conclusions: It is possible to go to the well once (or more) too ofte

Conceptual design of the 6 MW Mod-5A wind turbine generator

The General Electric Company, Advanced Energy Programs Department, is designing under DOE/NASA sponsorship the MOD-5A wind turbine system which must generate electricity for 3.75 cent/KWH (1980) or less. During the Conceptual Design Phase, completed in March, 1981, the MOD-5A WTG system size and features were established as a result of tradeoff and optimization studies driven by minimizing the system cost of energy (COE). This led to a 400' rotor diameter size. The MOD-5A system which resulted is defined in this paper along with the operational and environmental factors that drive various portions of the design. Development of weight and cost estimating relationships (WCER's) and their use in optimizing the MOD-5A are discussed. The results of major tradeoff studies are also presented. Subsystem COE contributions for the 100th unit are shown along with the method of computation. Detailed descriptions of the major subsystems are given, in order that the results of the various trade and optimization studies can be more readily visualized

User's manual for MacPASCO

A user's manual is presented for MacPASCO, which is an interactive, graphic, preprocessor for panel design. MacPASCO creates input for PASCO, an existing computer code for structural analysis and sizing of longitudinally stiffened composite panels. MacPASCO provides a graphical user interface which simplifies the specification of panel geometry and reduces user input errors. The user draws the initial structural geometry and reduces user input errors. The user draws the initial structural geometry on the computer screen, then uses a combination of graphic and text inputs to: refine the structural geometry; specify information required for analysis such as panel load and boundary conditions; and define design variables and constraints for minimum mass optimization. Only the use of MacPASCO is described, since the use of PASCO has been documented elsewhere

Study of thermal insulation for airborne liquid hydrogen fuel tanks

A concept for a fail-safe thermal protection system was developed. From screening tests, approximately 30 foams, adhesives, and reinforcing fibers using 0.3-meter square liquid nitrogen cold plate, CPR 452 and Stafoam AA1602, both reinforced with 10 percent by weight of 1/16 inch milled OCF Style 701 Fiberglas, were selected for further tests. Cyclic tests with these materials in 2-inch thicknesses bonded on a 0.6-meter square cold plate with Crest 7410 adhesive systems, were successful. Zero permeability gas barriers were identified and found to be compatible with the insulating concept

Observations of rotationally resolved C3 in translucent sight lines

The rotationally resolved spectrum of the A ^1Pi_u <- X ^1Sigma^+_g 000-000 transition of C3, centered at 4051.6A, has been observed along 10 translucent lines of sight. To interpret these spectra, a new method for the determination of column densities and analysis of excitation profiles involving the simulation and fitting of observed spectra has been developed. The populations of lower rotational levels (J<14) in C3 are best fit by thermal distributions that are consistent with the kinetic temperatures determined from the excitation profile of C2. Just as in the case of C2, higher rotational levels (J>14) of C3 show increased nonthermal population distributions in clouds which have been determined to have total gas densities below ~500 cm-3.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa

Consistent Gravitationally-Coupled Spin-2 Field Theory

Inspired by the translational gauge structure of teleparallel gravity, the theory for a fundamental massless spin-2 field is constructed. Accordingly, instead of being represented by a symmetric second-rank tensor, the fundamental spin-2 field is assumed to be represented by a spacetime (world) vector field assuming values in the Lie algebra of the translation group. The flat-space theory naturally emerges in the Fierz formalism and is found to be equivalent to the usual metric-based theory. However, the gravitationally coupled theory, with gravitation itself described by teleparallel gravity, is shown not to present the consistency problems of the spin-2 theory constructed on the basis of general relativity.Comment: 16 pages, no figures. V2: Presentation changes, including addition of a new sub-section, aiming at clarifying the text; version accepted for publication in Class. Quantum Grav