An interdigital capacitive sensor for quantitative characterization of wire insulation

An interdigital capacitive sensor has been developed to characterize the permittivity of wire insulation. A theoretical model has been developed to calculate the capacitance of such a sensor that is in intimate contact with the surface of a double-layer cylindrical dielectric surrounding a conductive core. The cylindrical form of the electrostatic Green’s function due to an exterior point source is utilized, with the final capacitance value being calculated using the Method of Moments. Example calculations are performed and a field optimization method is developed to improve the sensing efficiency of the electrodes

Interview with John Edgar, 15 June 2010

John Edgar is Assistant Headteacher at The Dean School in Essex. He discusses his own schooling in Essex in the 1970s and his decision to become a history teacher. He recalls teaching a traditional syllabus of British history in the early 1980s, but also introducing some of the new source-based approaches. GCSE brought attention to empathy in history, which was already popular in the lower school. He left teaching to work in publishing from 1988-91 and joined a large Kent City Technology College as head of humanities at the time of the introduction of the National Curriculum. He discusses the challenges of integrating history, geography and RE. He also discusses the impact of technology on history teaching in the 1990s. Interviewed by Nicola Sheldon

Interview with Kenneth Baker, 22 October 2009

Lord Baker of Dorking was Secretary of State for Education and Science from May 1986 until July 1989. He was responsible for the 1988 Education Reform Act which introduced,for the first time, a National Curriculum in England and Wales. He set up a series of working groups to devise the new school curriculum. He discusses the reasons for introducing a national curriculum and his expectations of the History Working Group. His preference was for an overarching 'timeline' in the history curriculum. He reflects on the benefits which have resulted from the National Curriculum, but regrets that history was not made compulsory between the ages of 14 and 16, as he has initially intended. Interviewed by Nicola Sheldon

Interview with Estelle Morris, 19 October 2009

Baroness Morris of Yardley was Secretary of State for Education from June 2001 until October 2002. She was also Schools Minister under David Blunkett (interview on this website). She recalls her own experience of being taught history and of teaching it as part of 'social studies' in the 1970s. Estelle Morris discusses the reasons why history might be losing out to other subjects, such as citizenship or media studies and the reasons why history should be optional after age 14. She agrees that history is important for national identity although it should reflect the diversity of modern Britain. Interviewed by Nicola Sheldon

Interview with Evelyn Hinde, 25 January 2010

Evelyn Hinde spent her teaching career in secondary modern schools in London and Kent. She trained to teach at Stockwell Training College in 1955 where she recalls an inspiring and lively lecturer. She taught first in a girls' school in Deptford, where the four-year curriculum ranged from the Stone Age to the present day. Most students left at 15 without taking exams. Although 'chalk and talk' predominated, Evelyn collected postcards and illustrations to accompany the most dramatic historical stories and organised visits to historical sites. In the sixties, she taught in Kent schools, saw the rise of CSEs and 'integrated humanities' and the impact of TV. From 1976-96, Evelyn Hinde was a headteacher, although she continued teaching some history. Interviewed by Nicola Sheldon

Interview with Linda Turner and Rob Snow, 1 July 2010

Linda Turner and Rob Snow are history teachers working at King James School in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. They both reflect on the deficiencies of their teacher training. Linda recalls her early career in a secondary modern in Buckinghamshire in the mid-1970s. Here she worked with an 'inspirational' head of department who engaged the students through local history. Rob by contrast recalls the challenge of moving to a multi-cultural school in Bradford where each teacher had to sort out their own curriculum. Rob and Linda talk about the changes in the teaching of history over their careers - the impact of GCSE, the National Curriculum, of technology and of the lack of time to do 'fun' things, such as the 'trip around Rome' in the school quad, with chariot races on hobby horses and mock gladiator fights, or the Arkwright song competition, which involved the singing of the songs as well as the writing of them! Interviewed by Nicola Sheldon

Social network centrality predicts dietary decisions in a wild bird population

How individuals balance costs and benefits of group living remains central to understanding sociality. In relation to diet, social foraging provides many advantages but also increases competition. Nevertheless, social individuals may offset increased competition by broadening their diet and consuming novel foods. Despite the expected relationships between social behavior and dietary decisions, how sociality shapes individuals’ novel food consumption remains largely untested in natural populations. Here, we use wild great tits to experimentally test how sociality predicts dietary decisions. We show that individuals with more social connections have higher propensity to use novel foods compared to socially peripheral individuals, and this is unrelated to neophobia, observations, and demographic factors. These findings indicate sociable individuals may offset potential costs of competition by foraging more broadly. We discuss how social environments may drive behavioral change in natural populations, and the implications for the causes and consequences of social strategies and dietary decisions

Intergovernmental Relations in the UK: Time for a Radical Overhaul?

Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic have put relationships between the UK government and its devolved counterparts under growing strain. Tensions generated by both of these developments have exposed the inadequacies of the existing, under-developed system for bringing governments together in the UK. The limitations of the current system include the ad hoc nature of intergovernmental meetings, and their consultative rather than decision-making character. Drawing upon an analysis of how intergovernmental relationships are structured in five other countries, the authors offer a number of suggestions for the reconfiguration of the UK model. They explore different ways of enabling joint decision making by its governments, and argue against the assumption that England can be represented adequately by the UK administration. Without a serious attempt to address this dysfunctional part of the UK’s territorial constitution, there is every prospect that relations between these different governments will continue to deteriorate

Arctic Ocean boundary exchanges: A review

The Arctic Ocean has long been—and to a large extent remains—a data-​sparse region. Paucity of ocean and atmosphere measurements impacts the fidelity of atmospheric reanalyses, and ungauged rivers lead to uncertainties in measurement-​based estimates of river runoff. However, there exists a data resource that can provide material help: sustained (long-term) ice and ocean measurements around the Arctic Ocean boundary. The Arctic Ocean is surrounded by land and connects to adjacent ocean basins via four main gateways: to the Pacific through Bering Strait, to the Atlantic through Davis Strait, and to the Nordic Seas via Fram Strait and the Barents Sea Opening. In addition, the Nordic Seas connect to the Atlantic across the Greenland-Iceland-Scotland Ridge, which has a substantial measurement history. Inverse methods combine these data sets to generate conservative velocity fields that are then used to generate estimates of surface fluxes of heat and freshwater as well as other quantities of interest, including net biogeochemical fluxes and (with other methods) estimates of ocean water transformation rates. Data resources are available to greatly extend the duration and the temporal resolution of present analyses

Personalized risk stratification through attribute matching for clinical decision making in clinical conditions with aspecific symptoms: the example of syncope

Background Risk stratification is challenging in conditions, such as chest pain, shortness of breath and syncope, which can be the manifestation of many possible underlying diseases. In these cases, decision tools are unlikely to accurately identify all the different adverse events related to the possible etiologies. Attribute matching is a prediction method that matches an individual patient to a group of previously observed patients with identical characteristics and known outcome. We used syncope as a paradigm of clinical conditions presenting with aspecific symptoms to test the attribute matching method for the prediction of the personalized risk of adverse events. Methods We selected the 8 predictor variables common to the individual-patient dataset of 5 prospective emergency department studies enrolling 3388 syncope patients. We calculated all possible combinations and the number of patients in each combination. We compared the predictive accuracy of attribute matching and logistic regression. We then classified ten random patients according to clinical judgment and attribute matching. Results Attribute matching provided 253 of the 384 possible combinations in the dataset. Twelve (4.7%), 35 (13.8%), 50 (19.8%) and 160 (63.2%) combinations had a match size 6550, 6530, 6520 and <10 patients, respectively. The AUC for the attribute matching and the multivariate model were 0.59 and 0.74, respectively. Conclusions Attribute matching is a promising tool for personalized and flexible risk prediction. Large databases will need to be used in future studies to test and apply the method in different conditions