Bucking the trend: part-time Master’s students at the University of Northampton

Nick Petford, Vice Chancellor of the University of Northampton, and Nick Allen, Executive Officer at the University of Northampton, explain how their institution has bucked the decline in part-time study for postgraduates and push the benefits of working with local industry partners on bespoke programmes

A highly scalable Met Office NERC Cloud model

Large Eddy Simulation is a critical modelling tool for scien- tists investigating atmospheric flows, turbulence and cloud microphysics. Within the UK, the principal LES model used by the atmospheric research community is the Met Office Large Eddy Model (LEM). The LEM was originally devel- oped in the late 1980s using computational techniques and assumptions of the time, which means that the it does not scale beyond 512 cores. In this paper we present the Met Office NERC Cloud model, MONC, which is a re-write of the existing LEM. We discuss the software engineering and architectural decisions made in order to develop a flexible, extensible model which the community can easily customise for their own needs. The scalability of MONC is evaluated, along with numerous additional customisations made to fur- ther improve performance at large core counts. The result of this work is a model which delivers to the community signifi- cant new scientific modelling capability that takes advantage of the current and future generation HPC machine

Development of a method for measuring quasi-static stiffness of snowboard wrist protectors

In snowboarding, the wrist is the most common injury site, as snowboarders often put their arms out to cushion a fall. This can result in a compressive load through the carpals coupled with wrist hyperextension, leading to sprains or fractures. Wrist protectors are worn by snowboarders in an effort to reduce injury risk, by decreasing impact forces and limiting wrist hyperextension during falls. However, there is no international standard or universally-accepted performance specification that these products should conform to, resulting in an inability to judge which design elements offer the most protection. EN 14120:2003 prescribes requirements that roller sports wrist protectors should meet, and has been identified as a starting point for developing a snowboarding-specific standard. This paper critiques the EN 14120:2003 test protocol and goes on to present a mechanical test for assessing the ability of snowboard wrist protectors to resist extension of the hand under an applied load. A bespoke rig incorporating the hand/arm surrogate from EN 14120:2003 was mounted to a uniaxial test machine, and wrist protectors were strapped to the surrogate at a set tightness (tight, moderate, loose). Linear displacement of the uniaxial test machine was transferred to angular displacement of the hand via a galvanised steel cable passing through a low friction pulley. Linear displacement was set to 200 mm/min and force was measured at the load cell until 80 N was reached. The test, presented here, found that the ability of the protectors to limit hand extension was dependent on how tightly they were fitted to the surrogate; therefore, strap tightness must be accounted for during further wrist protector safety assessments. This test provides a repeatable way to characterise the ability of snowboarding wrist protectors to limit wrist extension

Not Alone: Tracing the Origins of Very Low Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs Through Multiplicity Studies

The properties of multiple stellar systems have long provided important empirical constraints for star formation theories, enabling (along with several other lines of evidence) a concrete, qualitative picture of the birth and early evolution of normal stars. At very low masses (VLM; M <~ 0.1 M_sun), down to and below the hydrogen burning minimum mass, our understanding of formation processes is not as clear, with several competing theories now under consideration. One means of testing these theories is through the empirical characterization of VLM multiple systems. Here, we review the results of various VLM multiplicity studies to date. These systems can be generally characterized as closely separated (93% have projected separations Delta < 20 AU) and near equal-mass (77% have M_2/M_1 >= 0.8) occurring infrequently (perhaps 10-30%). Both the frequency and maximum separation of stellar and brown dwarf binaries steadily decrease for lower system masses, suggesting that VLM binary formation and/or evolution may be a mass-dependent process. There is evidence for a fairly rapid decline in the number of loosely-bound systems below ~0.3 M_sun, corresponding to a factor of 10-20 increase in the minimum binding energy of VLM binaries as compared to more massive stellar binaries. This wide-separation ``desert'' is present among both field (~1-5 Gyr) and older (> 100 Myr) cluster systems, while the youngest (<~10 Myr) VLM binaries, particularly those in nearby, low-density star forming regions, appear to have somewhat different systemic properties. We compare these empirical trends to predictions laid out by current formation theories, and outline future observational studies needed to probe the full parameter space of the lowest mass multiple systems.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, contributed chapter for Planets and Protostars V meeting (October 2005); full table of VLM binaries can be obtained at http://paperclip.as.arizona.edu/~nsiegler/VLM_binarie

Effect of surrogate design on the measured stiffness of snowboarding wrist protectors

In snowboarding, the wrist is the most common injury site, as snowboarders often put their arms out to cushion a fall. This can result in a compressive load through the carpals coupled with wrist hyperextension, leading to ligament sprains or carpal and forearm bone fractures. Wrist protectors are worn by snowboarders in an effort to reduce injury risk, by decreasing peak impact forces and limiting wrist extension to prevent hyperextension during falls. There is no international standard or universally accepted performance specification that snowboarding wrist protectors should conform to, resulting in an inability to judge which designs offer the best protection. This study investigated how surrogate arm design affected the stiffness of wrist protectors during quasi-static mechanical testing. Three surrogate arms with increasing design complexity were used to test three wrist protectors. The results show that surrogate design does influence the stiffness of snowboarding wrist protectors. Given that the surrogate does influence protector performance, it is recommended that a standard surrogate design is established for research and product testing

Finite element model of an impact on a palmar pad from a snowboard wrist protector

Wrist injuries are the most common types of injury in snowboarding. Protectors can reduce injury risk by limiting wrist hyperextension and attenuating impact forces. There are a range of wrist protector concepts available, but it is unclear if any particular design is more effective. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a finite element model of an impact on the palmar pad from a protector. Pad material from a protector was characterised to obtain stress vs strain data, and determine whether it was rate dependent. Material data was implemented into a finite element model to predict impact behavior at 2.5 J. Four material models were investigated, with an Ogden model paired with a Prony series providing the best agreement to experimental data. Future work will build a model of a complete protector for predicting the protective levels of these products

Automated Absorber Attachment for X-ray Microcalorimeter Arrays

Our goal is to develop a method for the automated attachment of large numbers of absorber tiles to large format detector arrays. This development includes the fabrication of high quality, closely spaced HgTe absorber tiles that are properly positioned for pick-and-place by our FC150 flip chip bonder. The FC150 also transfers the appropriate minute amount of epoxy to the detectors for permanent attachment of the absorbers. The success of this development will replace an arduous, risky and highly manual task with a reliable, high-precision automated process

Lightweight Bulldozer Attachment for Construction and Excavation on the Lunar Surface

A lightweight bulldozer blade prototype has been designed and built to be used as an excavation implement in conjunction with the NASA Chariot lunar mobility platform prototype. The combined system was then used in a variety of field tests in order to characterize structural loads, excavation performance and learn about the operational behavior of lunar excavation in geotechnical lunar simulants. The purpose of this effort was to evaluate the feasibility of lunar excavation for site preparation at a planned NASA lunar outpost. Once the feasibility has been determined then the technology will become available as a candidate element in the NASA Lunar Surface Systems Architecture. In addition to NASA experimental testing of the LANCE blade, NASA engineers completed analytical work on the expected draft forces using classical soil mechanics methods. The Colorado School of Mines (CSM) team utilized finite element analysis (FEA) to study the interaction between the cutting edge of the LANCE blade and the surface of soil. FEA was also used to examine various load cases and their effect on the lightweight structure of the LANCE blade. Overall it has been determined that a lunar bulldozer blade is a viable technology for lunar outpost site preparation, but further work is required to characterize the behavior in 1/6th G and actual lunar regolith in a vacuum lunar environment

Comparison of ISRU Excavation System Model Blade Force Methodology and Experimental Results

An Excavation System Model has been written to simulate the collection and transportation of regolith on the Moon. The calculations in this model include an estimation of the forces on the digging tool as a result of excavation into the regolith. Verification testing has been performed and the forces recorded from this testing were compared to the calculated theoretical data. A prototype lunar vehicle built at the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) was tested with a bulldozer type blade developed at the NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) attached to the front. This is the initial correlation of actual field test data to the blade forces calculated by the Excavation System Model and the test data followed similar trends with the predicted values. This testing occurred in soils developed at the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) which are a mixture of different types of sands and whose soil properties have been well characterized. Three separate analytical models are compared to the test data

The misappropriation of “woke” : discriminatory social media practices, contributory injustice and context collapse

This article aims to give an analysis of the phenomena of unjust misappropriation of marginalised groups’ terms online, using the example misappropriation of ‘woke’ from the Black community on Twitter. I argue that using terms such as these outside their original context warps their meaning, decreasing the intelligibility of the experiences of the marginalised agents who use them when attempting to express themselves both within their community and without. I intend to give an analysis of this phenomena, with the expectation that understanding it better will provide a crucial step in combatting it. To this end, I argue it can be understood as a specialised form of what Kristie Dotson calls ‘contributory injustice’, injustices which involve the suppression of a marginalised community’s existing hermeneutical resources, combined with a specific consequence of what Boyd and Marwick call ‘context collapse’, the removal of social norms created through the homogenising effect of social media sites like Twitter. The result is a novel misappropriation phenomenon, I label ‘Context-Collapsed Contributory Injustice’ or ‘CC.CI’. This type of misappropriation is particularly harmful due to it being faster-acting than historical varieties of misappropriation. Furthermore, unchecked continual cases of CC.CI can cause a novel from of what Miranda Fricker calls ‘hermeneutical injustice’, which is demarcated from standard cases by its ability to reintroduce conceptual lacunas through undermining existing hermeneutical resources. I finish by disambiguating cases of CC.CI from natural meaning change and critically analysing some existing philosophical treatments of “woke”.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe