Mental health and emotional well-being of students in further education - a scoping study

This study aimed to explore how FE colleges in England are engaging with and addressing the mental health needs of their young students (aged 16-19), both in terms of promoting positive mental health and emotional well-being and in responding to identified mental health problems

Floppy modes and non-affine deformations in random fiber networks

We study the elasticity of random fiber networks. Starting from a microscopic picture of the non-affine deformation fields we calculate the macroscopic elastic moduli both in a scaling theory and a self-consistent effective medium theory. By relating non-affinity to the low-energy excitations of the network (``floppy-modes'') we achieve a detailed characterization of the non-affine deformations present in fibrous networks.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, new figure

Information erasure without an energy cost

Landauer argued that the process of erasing the information stored in a memory device incurs an energy cost in the form of a minimum amount of mechanical work. We find, however, that this energy cost can be reduced to zero by paying a cost in angular momentum or any other conserved quantity. Erasing the memory of Maxwell's demon in this way implies that work can be extracted from a single thermal reservoir at a cost of angular momentum and an increase in total entropy. The implications of this for the second law of thermodynamics are assessed.Comment: 8 pages with 1 figure. Final published versio

Singular electrostatic energy of nanoparticle clusters

The binding of clusters of metal nanoparticles is partly electrostatic. We address difficulties in calculating the electrostatic energy when high charging energies limit the total charge to a single quantum, entailing unequal potentials on the particles. We show that the energy at small separation $h$ has a strong logarithmic dependence on $h$. We give a general law for the strength of this logarithmic correction in terms of a) the energy at contact ignoring the charge quantization effects and b) an adjacency matrix specifying which spheres of the cluster are in contact and which is charged. We verify the theory by comparing the predicted energies for a tetrahedral cluster with an explicit numerical calculation.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to Phys Rev

Different Scenarios for Critical Glassy Dynamics

We study the role of different terms in the $N$-body potential of glass forming systems on the critical dynamics near the glass transition. Using a simplified spin model with quenched disorder, where the different terms of the real $N$-body potential are mapped into multi-spin interactions, we identified three possible scenarios. For each scenario we introduce a ``minimal'' model representative of the critical glassy dynamics near, both above and below, the critical transition lin e. For each ``minimal'' model we discuss the low temperature equilibrium dynamics.Comment: Completely revised version, 8 pages, 5 figures, typeset using EURO-LaTeX, Europhysics Letters (in press

Tunneling mechanism of light transmission through metallic films

A mechanism of light transmission through metallic films is proposed, assisted by tunnelling between resonating buried dielectric inclusions. This is illustrated by arrays of Si spheres embedded in Ag. Strong transmission peaks are observed near the Mie resonances of the spheres. The interaction among various planes of spheres and interference effects between these resonances and the surface plasmons of Ag lead to mixing and splitting of the resonances. Transmission is proved to be limited only by absorption. For small spheres, the effective dielectric constant can be tuned to values close to unity and a method is proposed to turn the resulting materials invisible.Comment: 4 papges, 5 figure

FSA field test report, 1980 - 1982

Photovoltaic modules made of new and developing materials were tested in a continuing study of weatherability, compatibility, and corrosion protection. Over a two-year period, 365 two-cell submodules have been exposed for various intervals at three outdoor sites in Southern California or subjected to laboratory acceptance tests. Results to date show little loss of maximum power output, except in two types of modules. In the first of these, failure is due to cell fracture from the stresses that arise as water is regained from the surrounding air by a hardboard substrate, which shrank as it dried during its encapsulation in plastic film at 150 C in vacuo. In the second, the glass superstrate is sensitive to cracking, which also damages the cells electrostatically bonded to it; inadequate bonding of interconnects to the cells is also a problem in these modules. In a third type of module, a polyurethane pottant has begun to yellow, though as yet without significant effect on maximum power output

The exposure history of the Apollo 16 site: An assessment based on methane and hydrolysable carbon

Nineteen soils from eight stations at the Apollo 16 landing site have been analyzed for methane and hydrolysable carbon. These results, in conjunction with published data from photogeology, bulk chemistry, rare gases, primordial and cosmogenic radionuclides, and agglutinate abundances have been interpreted in terms of differing contributions from three components-North and South Ray Crater ejecta and Cayley Plains material