Technique for pinpointing submicron particles in the electron microprobe

Series of electron micrographs at successively lower magnifications can localize the substrate area sufficiently for a particle to be picked up by the beam of the electron microprobe. This approach could be modified to apply to fractographic studies, particularly of oxidation products stripped from fractures

Impacts of farming practice within organic farming systems on below-ground ecology and ecosystem function

Maintaining ecosystem function is a key issue for sustainable farming systems which contribute broadly to global ecosystem health. A focus simply on the diversity of belowground organisms is not sufficient and there is a need to consider the contribution of below-ground biological processes to the maintenance and enhancement of soil function and ecosystem services. A critical literature review on the impacts of land management practices on below-ground ecology and function shows that farm management practices can have a major impact. A particular challenge for organic farming systems is to explore to what extent reduced tillage can be adopted to the benefit of below-ground ecology without critically upsetting the whole farm management balance

Poverty and Inequality in the UK: 2008

In this Commentary, we assess the changes to average incomes, inequality and poverty that have occurred under the first 10 years of the Labour government, with a particular focus on the changes that have occurred in the latest year of data. This analysis is based upon the latest figures from the DWP's Households Below Average Income (HBAI) series, published on 10 June 2008 (Department for Work and Pensions, 2008c). The HBAI series takes household income as its measure of living standards and is derived from the Family Resources Survey, a survey of around 28,000 households in the United Kingdom that asks detailed questions about income from a range of sources

Modelling diffusion in crystals under high internal stress gradients

Diffusion of vacancies and impurities in metals is important in many processes occurring in structural materials. This diffusion often takes place in the presence of spatially rapidly varying stresses. Diffusion under stress is frequently modelled by local approximations to the vacancy formation and diffusion activation enthalpies which are linear in the stress, in order to account for its dependence on the local stress state and its gradient. Here, more accurate local approximations to the vacancy formation and diffusion activation enthalpies, and the simulation methods needed to implement them, are introduced. The accuracy of both these approximations and the linear approximations are assessed via comparison to full atomistic studies for the problem of vacancies around a Lomer dislocation in Aluminium. Results show that the local and linear approximations for the vacancy formation enthalpy and diffusion activation enthalpy are accurate to within 0.05 eV outside a radius of about 13 Å (local) and 17 Å (linear) from the centre of the dislocation core or, more generally, for a strain gradient of roughly up to 6 × 10^6 m^-1 and 3 × 10^6 m^-1, respectively. These results provide a basis for the development of multiscale models of diffusion under highly non-uniform stress

Poverty and inequality in the UK: 2009

In this Commentary, we assess the changes to average incomes, inequality and poverty that have occurred since Labour came to power in 1997, with a particular focus on the changes that have occurred in the latest year of data. This analysis is based upon the latest figures from the DWP's Households Below Average Income (HBAI) series, published on 7 May 2009 (Department for Work and Pensions, 2009). The HBAI series takes household income as its measure of living standards, and is derived from the Family Resources Survey, a survey of around 25,000 households in the United Kingdom that asks detailed questions about income from a range of sources