COLD FLOW PERFORMANCE OF A RAMJET ENGINE

The design process and construction of the initial modular ramjet attachment to the Cal Poly supersonic wind tunnel is presented. The design of a modular inlet, combustor, and nozzle are studied in depth with the intentions of testing in the modular ramjet. The efforts undertaken to characterize the Cal Poly supersonic wind tunnel and the individual component testing of this attachment are also discussed. The data gathered will be used as a base model for future expansion of the ramjet facility and eventual hot fire testing of the initial components. Modularity of the inlet, combustion chamber, and nozzle will allow for easier modification of the initial design and the designs ability to incorporate clear walls will allow for flow and combustion visualization once the performance of the hot flow ramjet is determined. The testing of the blank ramjet duct resulted in an error of less than 10% from predicted results. The duct was also tested with the modular inlet installed and resulted in between a 13-30% error based on the predicted results. Hot flow characteristics of the ramjet were not achieved, and the final cold flow test with the nozzle installed was a failure due to improper configuration of the nozzle. The errors associated with this testing can largely be placed on the poor performance of the Cal Poly supersonic wind tunnel and the alterations made to the testing in an attempt to accommodate these flaws. The final tests were halted for safety concerns and could continue after a thorough safety review

Landscape as Symbol

I see my work as intentionally mistaken metaphors about the rural/suburban American landscape. Infecting burlap sacks of tobacco leaves with vinyl siding within the privileged frame of the gallery, I create a catalyst for multivalent readings and multiple meanings. Wrapping straw bales with Wal-Mart brand plastic wrap creates a new object-a simulated product generated from the dialectical material interaction of the suburban/agricultural and the agricultural/suburban. These aforementioned materials act as visual metaphors that could easily be mistaken for metallic forms or plastic rope. This visual slippage allows for a pseudo-narrative to wind its way through the work. The hope is that the works that I create act as reflective symbols to an audience, who I believe at their core are symbol-mongers, while at the same time presenting an everydayness. This everydayness would be like the smell of Sunday dinner in the living room

Identifying and prioritising services in European terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems

Ecosystems are multifunctional and provide humanity with a broad array of vital services. Effective management of services requires an improved evidence base, identifying the role of ecosystems in delivering multiple services, which can assist policy-makers in maintaining them. Here, information from the literature and scientific experts was used to systematically document the importance of services and identify trends in their use and status over time for the main terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems in Europe. The results from this review show that intensively managed ecosystems contribute mostly to vital provisioning services (e.g. agro-ecosystems provide food via crops and livestock, and forests provide wood), while semi-natural ecosystems (e.g. grasslands and mountains) are key contributors of genetic resources and cultural services (e.g. aesthetic values and sense of place). The most recent European trends in human use of services show increases in demand for crops from agro-ecosystems, timber from forests, water flow regulation from rivers, wetlands and mountains, and recreation and ecotourism in most ecosystems, but decreases in livestock production, freshwater capture fisheries, wild foods and virtually all services associated with ecosystems which have considerably decreased in area (e.g. semi-natural grasslands). The condition of the majority of services show either a degraded or mixed status across Europe with the exception of recent enhancements in timber production in forests and mountains, freshwater provision, water/erosion/natural hazard regulation and recreation/ecotourism in mountains, and climate regulation in forests. Key gaps in knowledge were evident for certain services across all ecosystems, including the provision of biochemicals and natural medicines, genetic resources and the regulating services of seed dispersal, pest/disease regulation and invasion resistance

Gangs, Guns, and Drugs: Recidivism among Serious, Young Offenders

The primary goal of this study is to understand the factors that best explain recidivism among a sample of 322 young men aged 17 to 24 years released from prison in a Midwestern state. Specific attention is paid to the predictive validity of gang membership, gun use, and drug dependence on the timing of reconviction and the current research on desistance frames the analyses. Results from a series of proportional hazard models indicate that race, gang membership, drug dependence, and institutional behavior are critical factors in predicting the timing of reconviction. Contrary to expectations, gun use was not related to postrelease involvement in the criminal justice system

Low Energy Nuclear Reaction Aircraft- 2013 ARMD Seedling Fund Phase I Project

This report serves as the final written documentation for the Aeronautic Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) Seedling Fund's Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) Aircraft Phase I project. The findings presented include propulsion system concepts, synergistic missions, and aircraft concepts. LENR is a form of nuclear energy that potentially has over 4,000 times the energy density of chemical energy sources. It is not expected to have any harmful emissions or radiation which makes it extremely appealing. There is a lot of interest in LENR, but there are no proven theories. This report does not explore the feasibility of LENR. Instead, it assumes that a working system is available. A design space exploration shows that LENR can enable long range and high speed missions. Six propulsion concepts, six missions, and four aircraft concepts are presented. This report also includes discussion of several issues and concerns that were uncovered during the study and potential research areas to infuse LENR aircraft into NASA's aeronautics research

The rise of the ‘yummy mummy’: popular conservatism and the neoliberal maternal in contemporary British culture

This article analyses the emergence of the new social type of the ‘yummy mummy’ by examining the constellation of narratives circulating through and around it in British culture. It contends that, whilst it has some notable precursors, the idea of the yummy mummy marks a fairly substantial cultural shift given the weight of the western Christian tradition that has overwhelmingly positioned the mother as asexual. Coming into being in part through an increasing social divide between rich and poor, this stock type most often serves to augment a white, thirtysomething position of privilege, shoring up its boundaries against the other side of the social divide (so-called ‘pramfaces’). At the same time it is part of a wider fetishisation of the maternal that coexists with profoundly gendered inequalities in relation to childcare in particular. Drawing from a range of sources, and in particular autobiographical celebrity guidebooks and ‘henlit’ novels, the article argues that the figure of the yummy mummy functions to elide such social contexts, instead espousing a girlish, high-consuming maternal ideal as a site of hyperindividualised psychological ‘maturity’. ‘Successful’ maternal femininity in this context is often articulated by rejecting ‘environmentally-conscious’ behaviour and in attempting to render what are presented as excessive eco-delusions both abject and transparent. This tendency, the article argues, is indicative of the conservative nature of the phenomenon, which is forced to belittle and disavow wider structures of social, political and ecological dependency in order for its conservative fantasy of autonomous, individualising retreatism to be maintained

Fluid Spatial Imaginaries: Evolving Estuarial City-regional Spaces

This article looks at successive attempts to create new spatial imaginaries around three estuary-based city regions in England: the London–Thames Gateway, the Atlantic Gateway/Mersey Belt (Manchester and Liverpool), and Hull and the Humber ports. We develop a framework of analysis for new planning and regeneration spaces that takes forward debates on relational and territorial geographies, spatial imaginaries and the creation of new regional identities as governance objects. Specifically, we adopt a long-term and comparative perspective that allows an examination of how successive efforts at regional building are both path-dependent and context-specific, as new approaches reflect emerging ideas about how best to construct successful regions in a changing global economy.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.1221

Aerodynamic investigations of ventilated brake discs.

The heat dissipation and performance of a ventilated brake disc strongly depends on the aerodynamic characteristics of the flow through the rotor passages. The aim of this investigation was to provide an improved understanding of ventilated brake rotor flow phenomena, with a view to improving heat dissipation, as well as providing a measurement data set for validation of computational fluid dynamics methods. The flow fields at the exit of four different brake rotor geometries, rotated in free air, were measured using a five-hole pressure probe and a hot-wire anemometry system. The principal measurements were taken using two-component hot-wire techniques and were used to determine mean and unsteady flow characteristics at the exit of the brake rotors. Using phase-locked data processing, it was possible to reveal the spatial and temporal flow variation within individual rotor passages. The effects of disc geometry and rotational speed on the mean flow, passage turbulence intensity, and mass flow were determined. The rotor exit jet and wake flow were clearly observed as characterized by the passage geometry as well as definite regions of high and low turbulence. The aerodynamic flow characteristics were found to be reasonably independent of rotational speed but highly dependent upon rotor geometry

Earthquakes: from chemical alteration to mechanical rupture

In the standard rebound theory of earthquakes, elastic deformation energy is progressively stored in the crust until a threshold is reached at which it is suddenly released in an earthquake. We review three important paradoxes, the strain paradox, the stress paradox and the heat flow paradox, that are difficult to account for in this picture, either individually or when taken together. Resolutions of these paradoxes usually call for additional assumptions on the nature of the rupture process (such as novel modes of deformations and ruptures) prior to and/or during an earthquake, on the nature of the fault and on the effect of trapped fluids within the crust at seismogenic depths. We review the evidence for the essential importance of water and its interaction with the modes of deformations. Water is usually seen to have mainly the mechanical effect of decreasing the normal lithostatic stress in the fault core on one hand and to weaken rock materials via hydrolytic weakening and stress corrosion on the other hand. We also review the evidences that water plays a major role in the alteration of minerals subjected to finite strains into other structures in out-of-equilibrium conditions. This suggests novel exciting routes to understand what is an earthquake, that requires to develop a truly multidisciplinary approach involving mineral chemistry, geology, rupture mechanics and statistical physics.Comment: 44 pages, 1 figures, submitted to Physics Report

Protein sequences bound to mineral surfaces persist into deep time.

Proteins persist longer in the fossil record than DNA, but the longevity, survival mechanisms and substrates remain contested. Here, we demonstrate the role of mineral binding in preserving the protein sequence in ostrich (Struthionidae) eggshell, including from the palaeontological sites of Laetoli (3.8 Ma) and Olduvai Gorge (1.3 Ma) in Tanzania. By tracking protein diagenesis back in time we find consistent patterns of preservation, demonstrating authenticity of the surviving sequences. Molecular dynamics simulations of struthiocalcin-1 and -2, the dominant proteins within the eggshell, reveal that distinct domains bind to the mineral surface. It is the domain with the strongest calculated binding energy to the calcite surface that is selectively preserved. Thermal age calculations demonstrate that the Laetoli and Olduvai peptides are 50 times older than any previously authenticated sequence (equivalent to ~16 Ma at a constant 10°C)