Soot oxidation rates in gas turbine engines

A basis is proposed for extrapolating soot oxidation rate measurements obtained in laboratory flames to the more extreme operating conditions of gas turbine combustion chambers. The proposal is based on the observation that, within probable experimental uncertainty, the limited soot oxidation measurements correlate with the more extensive measurements of the surface oxidation rates of macroscopic samples of pyrographite. The soot oxidation rates thus determined for the conditions of a typical gas turbine combustion chamber are considerably lower than estimates which were based on simple extrapolations of the flame data

Shock-tube measurements of carbon to oxygen atom ratios for incipient soot formation with C2H2, C2H4 and C2H6 fuels

The critical atomic carbon to oxygen ratios, Phi sub C, for incipient soot formation in shock heated acetylene, ethylene, ethane/oxygen/ argon mixtures was measured over the temperature range 2000 K to 2500 K for reactant partial pressures between 0.1 and 0.4 atoms. Absorption of light from a He-Ne laser at 6328A was was used to detect soot. It was observed that the values of Phi sub C for all three fuels increased uniformly with temperature such that at the highest temperatures Phi sub C was considerably greater than unity, i.e. greater than the value of about unity at which solid carbon should have been precipitated on a thermochemical equilibrium basis. Observations were made over periods extending up to about one millisecond, which was well in excess of the time required for the major heat release of the combustion reactions. The relevance of these experimental findings to the problem of soot formation in gas turbine combustion chambers is discussed

Effects of hydrostatic pressure on the mechanical behavior of body centered cubic refractory metals and alloys Interim technical report

Effects of hydrostatic pressure on mechanical behavior of body centered cubic refractory metals and alloy

Training healthcare assistants working in adult acute inpatient wards in Psychological First Aid: An implementation and evaluation study.

WHAT IS KNOWN ON THE SUBJECT: Healthcare assistants are untrained and unregistered frontline staff but are expected to be proactive in preventing and responding to 'untoward' incidents quickly and efficiently when working within adult acute inpatient psychiatric settings. Healthcare assistants should be trained to provide enhanced care to service users residing in acute psychiatric settings. To date, a training programme in Psychological First Aid has not been expended in such a setting with nonregistered staff. WHAT THE PAPER ADDS TO EXISTING KNOWLEDGE: The study demonstrates that training healthcare assistants in Psychological First Aid is useful in improving their confidence in caring for service users, therapeutic engagement with service users and ward culture in general. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: A training programme in Psychological First Aid for healthcare assistants to enhance ward culture can be implemented in different practice environments. Psychological First Aid is harmonious with nursing values and provides healthcare assistants with a relevant, useful and easily understood toolkit to apply in acute psychiatric settings. ABSTRACT: Introduction Healthcare assistants working within adult acute inpatient psychiatric settings are untrained and unregistered, however, they can contribute to quality service if they receive some training. Psychological First Aid training has never been expended in these settings, so this study intends to fill this gap in the existing evidence with this category of healthcare personnel. Aim The aim of this study was to introduce and evaluate first aid training for healthcare assistants. Method A pre/post design was adopted to gather data using questionnaires and interviews. The groups of participants included 16 healthcare assistants trained in Psychological First Aid, a sample of service users and four ward managers. Results Post-training, (a) healthcare assistants and service users ranked the therapeutic milieu of the ward more favourably, (b) the self-efficacy of the healthcare assistants increased, and the number of 'untoward' incidents decreased, and (c) health care assistants' confidence in their skills was high. The ward manager interviews post-training revealed four themes: (a) staff utilization of new skills and renewed enthusiasm, (b) calmer atmosphere on the ward and staff togetherness, (c) confidence and reflection on practice and (d) therapeutic engagement. Discussion Training healthcare assistants is useful in improving staff confidence, therapeutic engagement with service users and ward culture in general. Implications for practice Techniques and skills learnt are relevant and useful to healthcare assistants and provide an easily understood toolkit that is harmonious with nursing values. If executed correctly, the training can enhance practice and care outcomes and the overall service user experience

A novel time independent asynchronous communication protocol and its applications

This paper proposes a novel communications protocol called Time Independent Asynchronous (TIA) communications. This protocol constitutes a new category which has unique properties very useful in a variety of applications including embedded controller communications. The 2-wire TIA communications system proposed is implemented using software controlled IO. Analysis of this system shows that traditional Signal Transition Graphs (STGs) may fail to predict livelock and deadlock in software based systems. A modified form of STG called STG For Threads (STG-FT) is proposed to better model the behaviour of software driven systems and is shown to correctly detect livelock and deadlock that a normal STG model may miss. The performance of the new 2-wire TIA system is reported and livelock and deadlock properties found to match the STG-FT simulation. The new 2-wire TIA communication system has particular application to communications in products and industrial systems with low end microprocessors and any microprocessor that is heavily loaded with time critical applications

The perceived psychological responsibilities of a strength and conditioning coach

Research is limited in exploring the specific psychology-oriented responsibilities of the strength and conditioning professional. The present research explored the psychological responsibilities adopted by accredited strength and conditioning coaches. Participants comprised 10 coaches working within the United Kingdom, 3 within the United States, and 5 within Australia offering a cross-section of experience from various sport disciplines and educational backgrounds. Participants were interviewed either in person or via Skype. Thematic clustering was followed using interpretative phonological analysis to identify common themes. Over half (61%) of the respondents reported that their position as a strength and conditioning coach required additional psychology-oriented responsibilities. These comprised a counseling role in the absence of a psychologist and the use of "softer skills" in a mentoring role to the athlete during a challenging situation. The coach could play an influential role in shaping the mentality of the team. The coach identifies how the role results in working to relay information from the athlete to other support staff and similarly from the support staff to the athlete. In addition to identifying the resonant psychology-oriented responsibilities, discussion is made with specific focus on the ethical boundary within which strength and conditioning coaches must reside regarding the competencies to provide psychological support

2-wire time independent asynchronous communications

Communications both to and between low end microprocessors represents a real cost in a number of industrial and consumer products. This thesis starts by examining the properties of protocols that help to minimize these expenses and comes to the conclusion that the derived set of properties define a new category of communications protocol : Time Independent Asynchronous ( TIA) communications. To show the utility of the TIA category we develop a novel TIA protocol that uses only 2-wires and general IO pins on each host. The protocol is analyzed using the Petri net based STG ( Signal Transition Graph) which is widely use to model asynchronous logic. It is shown that STGs do not accurately model the behavior of software driven systems and so a modified form called STG-FT ( STG For Threads) is developed to better model software systems. A simulator is created to take an STG-FT model and perform a full reachability tree analysis to prove correctness and analyze livelock and deadlock properties. The simulator can also examine the full reachability tree for every possible system state ( the cross product of all sub-system states), and analyze deadlock and livelock issues related to unexpected inputs and unusual situations. Reachability pruning algorithms are developed which decrease the search tree by a factor of approximately 250 million. The 2-wire protocol is implemented between a PC and an Atmel Tiny26 microprocessor, there is also a variant that works between microprocessors. Testing verifies the simulation results including an avoidable livelock condition with data throughput peaking at a useful 50 kilobits/second in both directions. The first practical application of 2-wire TIA is part of a novel debugger for the Atmel Tiny26 microprocessor. The approach can be extended to any microprocessor with general IO pins. TIA communications, developed in this thesis, is a serious contender whenever low end microprocessors must communicate with other processors. Consumer and industrial products may be able to achieve cost saving by using this new protocol

Can negative electricity prices encourage inefficient electrical energy storage devices?

This paper explores whether negative electricity prices can change the rationale that efficient energy storage devices are more economical for arbitrage in electricity markets. An established model algorithm to determine the maximum available arbitrage revenue and optimum schedule of electrical energy storage (EES) operation is used to simulate storage with a time-series of electricity prices which includes some negative prices. Our results suggest that at any likely frequency of negative electricity prices, inefficient EES is not encouraged, and can only be encouraged for EES devices with very low energy capacity to power ratios

Effects of hydrostatic pressure on the mechanical behavior of body centered cubic refractory metals and alloys Interim technical report no. 4, 1 Jun. 1965 - 1 Jun. 1966

Hydrostatic pressure effect on mechanical behavior of body centered cubic refractory metals and alloy