Biomedical applications team tasks

The status of the biomedical applications team is discussed along with its activity in applications engineering. Various technology requests are summarized

An examination of the precipitation delivery mechanisms for Dolleman Island, eastern Antarctic Peninsula

Copyright @ 2004 Wiley-BlackwellThe variability of size and source of significant precipitation events were studied at an Antarctic ice core drilling site: Dolleman Island (DI), located on the eastern coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Significant precipitation events that occur at DI were temporally located in the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) reanalysis data set, ERA-40. The annual and summer precipitation totals from ERA-40 at DI both show significant increases over the reanalysis period. Three-dimensional backwards air parcel trajectories were then run for 5 d using the ECMWF ERA-15 wind fields. Cluster analyses were performed on two sets of these backwards trajectories: all days in the range 1979–1992 (the climatological time-scale) and a subset of days when a significant precipitation event occurred. The principal air mass sources and delivery mechanisms were found to be the Weddell Sea via lee cyclogenesis, the South Atlantic when there was a weak circumpolar trough (CPT) and the South Pacific when the CPT was deep. The occurrence of precipitation bearing air masses arriving via a strong CPT was found to have a significant correlation with the southern annular mode (SAM); however, the arrival of air masses from the same region over the climatological time-scale showed no such correlation. Despite the dominance in both groups of back trajectories of the westerly circulation around Antarctica, some other key patterns were identified. Most notably there was a higher frequency of lee cyclogenesis events in the significant precipitation trajectories compared to the climatological time-scale. There was also a tendency for precipitation trajectories to come from more northerly latitudes, mostly from 50–70°S. The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) was found to have a strong influence on the mechanism by which the precipitation was delivered; the frequency of occurrence of precipitation from the east (west) of DI increased during El Niño (La Niña) events

Family friendly? The impact on children of the family migration rules: a review of the financial requirements

This report, published by the Children's Commissioner, explores the impact on children of the financial requirements of the Immigration Rules (the ‘Rules’), in particular, the minimum income threshold of £18,600 per annum which came into force on 9th July 2012. The Rules govern the admission of spouses and partners from outside the European Economic Area

“I Don’t Think That’s Something I’ve Ever Thought About Really Before”: A Thematic Discursive Analysis of Lay People’s Talk about Legal Gender

© The Author(s) 2023. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, to view a copy of the license, see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article examines three divergent constructions about the salience of legal gender in lay people’s everyday lives and readiness to decertify gender. In our interviews (and survey data), generally participants minimised the importance of legal gender. The central argument in this article is that feminist socio-legal scholars applying legal consciousness studies to legal reform topics should find scrutinizing the construction of interview talk useful. We illustrate this argument by adapting and applying Ewick and Silbey’s (1998) ‘The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life', ‘before’, ‘with’ and ‘against’ typology to interview talk about legal gender, and critique their cognitivist approach by offering a constructionist alternative. In our analysis, we offer a detailed discursive explication of three key legal consciousness themes. These themes offer a balanced representation of a dataset problematically ‘skewed’ towards sex-based rights feminist perspectives, namely that ‘before’ legal gender is an anti-decertification account, decertification would be risky for natal females; a ‘with’ legal gender construction is neither for nor against decertification per se, though the impact of decertification is produced in accounts as limited and unimportant; and ‘against’ legal gender is a pro-decertification classification, as not abolished legal gender is constructed as harmful to already marginalised groups. In concluding, we explore the reasoning for the lack of readiness for decertification currently, and return to the value of examining the construction of lay discourse about legal matters as talk is a form of social action. We suggest that applying discursive analysis to themes in legal consciousness studies enables a refocusing on the how rather than purely the what of divergent legal consciousnesses, and that this approach is a fruitful addition to feminist socio-legal studies.Peer reviewe

An improved robot for bridge inspection

This paper presents a significant improvement from the previous submission from the same authors at ISARC 2016. The robot is now equipped with low-cost cameras and a 2D laser scanner which is used to monitor and survey a bridge bearing. The robot is capable of localising by combining a data from a pre-surveyed 3D model of the space with real-time data collection in-situ. Autonomous navigation is also performed using the 2D laser scanner in a mapped environment. The Robot Operating System (ROS) framework is used to integrate data collection and communication for navigation

Energy Re-Investment

Despite worsening climate change threats, investment in energy—in the United States and globally—is dominated by fossil fuels. This Article provides a novel analysis of two pathways in corporate and securities law that together have the potential to shift patterns of energy investment. The first pathway targets current investments and corporate decision-making. It includes efforts to influence investors to divest from owning shares in fossil fuel companies and to influence companies to address climate change risks in their internal decision-making processes. This pathway has received increasing attention, especially in light of the Paris Agreement and the Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw from it. But, alone, it will not be enough to foster transition to a cleaner mix of energy sources. Key to achieving this goal of energy reinvestment is a second pathway focused on fostering investments in new companies innovating in clean energy. This pathway —which has received far less attention—uses emerging legal mechanisms to support greater investment in entrepreneurial clean energy ventures. The Article’s analysis of this pathway looks beyond the well-established ways in which subsidies support fossil fuels and renewable energy. It instead examines the significance for energy reinvestment of changes in U.S. securities regulation permitting greater crowdsourcing of investment and in state laws allowing for new types of corporations. This Article is the first to examine how these two pathways can synergistically promote energy reinvestment. The first pathway moves money away from fossil fuels, while the second helps to spur needed reinvestment. The Article proposes strategies for deploying the tools in the two pathways together, taking into account the motivations and constraints of diverse investors and corporations

Energy Re-Investment

Despite worsening climate change threats, investment in energy — in the United States and globally — is dominated by fossil fuels. This Article provides a novel analysis of two pathways in corporate and securities law that together have the potential to shift patterns of energy investment.The first pathway targets current investments and corporate decision-making. It includes efforts to influence investors to divest from owning shares in fossil fuel companies and to influence companies to address climate change risks in their internal decision-making processes. This pathway has received increasing attention, especially in light of the Paris Agreement and the Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw from it. But, alone, it will not be enough to foster transition to a cleaner mix of energy sources.Key to achieving this goal of energy reinvestment is a second pathway focused on fostering investments in new companies innovating in clean energy. This pathway — which has received far less attention — uses emerging legal mechanisms to support greater investment in entrepreneurial clean energy ventures. The Article’s analysis of this pathway looks beyond the well-established ways in which subsidies support fossil fuels and renewable energy. It instead examines the significance for energy reinvestment of changes in U.S. securities regulation permitting greater crowdsourcing of investment and in state laws allowing for new types of corporations.This Article is the first to examine how these two pathways can synergistically promote energy reinvestment. The first pathway moves money away from fossil fuels, while the second helps to spur needed reinvestment. The Article proposes strategies for deploying the tools in the two pathways together, taking into account the motivations and constraints of diverse investors and corporations

Transport and Spectroscopic Studies of the Effects of Fullerene Structure on the Efficiency and Lifetime of Polythiophene-based Solar Cells

Time-dependent measurements of both power conversion efficiency and ultraviolet-visible absorption spectroscopy have been observed for solar cell blends containing the polymer poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT) with two different functionalized C60 electron acceptor molecules: commercially available [6,6]-phenyl C61 butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) or [6,6]-phenyl C61 butyric acid octadecyl ester (PCBOD) produced in this laboratory. Efficiency was found to decay with an exponential time dependence, while spectroscopic features show saturating exponential behavior. Time constants extracted from both types of measurements showed reasonable agreement for samples produced from the same blend. In comparison to the PCBM samples, the stability of the PCBOD blends was significantly enhanced, while both absorption and power conversion efficiency were decreased.Comment: manuscript submitted to Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cell

A multi-physics computational model of fuel sloshing effects on aeroelastic behaviour

AbstractA multi-physics computational method is presented to model the effect of internally and externally-carried fuel on aeroelastic behaviour of a pitch–plunge aerofoil model through the transonic regime. The model comprises three strongly coupled solvers: a compressible finite-volume Euler code for the external flow, a two-degree of freedom spring model and a smoothed particle hydrodynamics solver for the fuel. The smoothed particle hydrodynamics technique was selected as this brings the benefit that nonlinear behaviour such as wave breaking and tank wall impacts may be included. Coupling is accomplished using an iterative method with subcycling of the fuel solver to resolve the differing timestep requirements. Results from the fuel-structural system are validated experimentally, and internally and externally-carried fuel is considered using time marching analysis. Results show that the influence of the fuel, ignoring the added mass effect, is to raise the flutter boundary at transonic speeds, but that this effect is less pronounced at lower Mach numbers. The stability boundary crossing is also found to be less abrupt when the effect of fuel is included and limit cycles often appear. An external fuel tank is seen to exhibit a lower stability boundary, while the response shows a beating effect symptomatic of two similar frequency components, potentially due to interaction between vertical and horizontal fuel motion

Advanced sensors technology survey

This project assesses the state-of-the-art in advanced or 'smart' sensors technology for NASA Life Sciences research applications with an emphasis on those sensors with potential applications on the space station freedom (SSF). The objectives are: (1) to conduct literature reviews on relevant advanced sensor technology; (2) to interview various scientists and engineers in industry, academia, and government who are knowledgeable on this topic; (3) to provide viewpoints and opinions regarding the potential applications of this technology on the SSF; and (4) to provide summary charts of relevant technologies and centers where these technologies are being developed