The work of the Association for Sandwich Education and Training (ASET)Research Network UK

I am an experienced manager having worked in manufacturing, IT, customer services and local government. I joined the University of Huddersfield in 2005 to project manage ‘Student employability and Good practice in Placement Provision’. In 2006 I became responsible for a programme 17 teaching and learning projects. I have recently been appointed to be Teaching and Learning Institute – Administration Manager. My own interest in WIL started as a placement student on my Maths degree where I became ‘hooked’ upon manufacturing. I believe wholeheartedly in the value of work placements. Since joining academia I have been an active member of ASET and WACE. I am very interested in the research agenda. I joined the first ASET Research network, which sadly never really got going. At the 2009, I found a group of researchers who were keen to restart the research network and quickly rejoined. I am interested in WIL research and practice on both a national and international stage. I would like to represent the research network at the conference and look for ways of working with other international delegates with an interest in research

Localized heating in nanoscale Pt constrictions measured using blackbody radiation emission

Using thermal emission microscopy, we investigate heating in Pt nanowires before and during electromigration. The wires are observed to reach temperatures in excess of 1000 K. This is beyond the thermal decomposition threshold for many organic molecules of interest for single molecule measurements with electromigrated nanogaps. Blackbody spectra of the hot Pt wires are measured and found to agree well with finite element modeling simulations of the electrical and thermal transport.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Upper‐level midlatitude troughs in boreal winter have an amplified low‐latitude linkage over Africa

In boreal winter, strong upper-level midlatitude troughs across the Atlantic–Africa–southwestern Asia sector generate substantial tropical–extratropical interaction and have become recognized as important factors in some extreme weather events. As such, they represent important dynamic features to understand and capture in weather forecasts, as well as in climate models for projections on longer timescales. Here, we empirically study the 20% of winter days with strongest trough signatures during 1982–2020 at each longitude across the sector, and show that the trough impact over northern Africa, most notably in central parts, is particularly strong in magnitude, low-latitude extent and persistence, leading to the characterization of a northern Africa mode of several-days weather fluctuation. Weather conditions that follow strong troughs from the eastern Atlantic to the Central Mediterranean include: (i) a warming tendency across much of northern Africa, generally of several Celsius magnitude ahead of the trough, and >1°C even extending to the south of 10° N in central parts and continuing eastward until the Ethiopian Highlands; (ii) precipitation development further north than normal across northern tropical Africa, especially strong over longitudes corresponding to a northward extension of the main Congo rain belt. The intertropical discontinuity and low-level heat low are also shifted significantly north, with the complex of anomalies persisting for several days, beyond the timescale of the trough. For context, at all other trough longitudes across the sector, a warming signal does emerge (statistically significant), but with much shorter persistence (2–3 days), smaller magnitude and extending southward clearly only to 15–20° N. Mid-level tropical plumes of moisture are also typically present for strong troughs from the eastern Atlantic to southwestern Asia, and these alone can lead to weather extremes. However, low-level warming and mid-level moistening are uniquely juxtaposed at low latitudes over central Africa, where a near-equatorial signature develops

Orbit Determination During Spacecraft Emergencies with Sparse Tracking Data - THEMIS and TDRS-3 Lessons Learned

This paper provides an overview of the lessons learned from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center s (GSFC) Flight Dynamics Facility s (FDF) support of the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) spacecraft emergency in February 2007, and the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-3 (TDRS-3) spacecraft emergency in March 2006. A successful and timely recovery from both of these spacecraft emergencies depended on accurate knowledge of the orbit. Unfortunately, the combination of each spacecraft emergency with very little tracking data contributed to difficulties in estimating and predicting the orbit and delayed recovery efforts in both cases. In both the THEMIS and TDRS-3 spacecraft emergencies, numerous factors contributed to problems with obtaining nominal tracking data measurements. This paper details the various causative factors and challenges. This paper further enumerates lessons learned from FDF s recovery efforts involving the THEMIS and TDRS-3 spacecraft emergencies and scant tracking data, as well as recommendations for improvements and corrective actions. In addition, this paper describes the broad range of resources and complex navigation methods employed within the FDF for supporting critical navigation activities during all mission phases, including launch, early orbit, and on-orbit operations

Kernel Approximation on Manifolds II: The L∞L_{\infty}-norm of the L2L_2-projector

This article addresses two topics of significant mathematical and practical interest in the theory of kernel approximation: the existence of local and stable bases and the L_p--boundedness of the least squares operator. The latter is an analogue of the classical problem in univariate spline theory, known there as the "de Boor conjecture". A corollary of this work is that for appropriate kernels the least squares projector provides universal near-best approximations for functions f\in L_p, 1\le p\le \infty.Comment: 25 pages; minor revision; new proof of Lemma 3.9; accepted for publication in SIAM J. on Math. Ana

Research Opportunities in Interdisciplinary Ground-Water Science

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has a long-standing reputation for providing unbiased scientific leadership and excellence in the field of ground-water hydrology and geological research. This report provides a framework for continuing this scientific leadership by describing six interdisciplinary topics for research opportunities in ground-water science in the USGS. These topics build on recommendations of the National Research Council (2000) contained in the report, “Investigating Groundwater Systems on Regional and National Scales,” and emphasize research topics that would benefit from the integrated capabilities of all parts of the USGS. Understanding the relations between ground water and the geological characteristics of aquifers within which ground water resides, and the relation of ground water to surface-water resources and terrestrial and aquatic biota is increasingly important and presents a considerable opportunity to draw on expertise throughout the USGS, including the science disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The National Research Council (2000) also emphasizes that USGS regional and national assessments of ground-water resources should focus on aspects that foster the sustainability of the resource. The need for a comprehensive program addressing the sustainability of ground-water resources can be stated very concisely—we need enough ground water of good quality to sustain our lives, our economy, and our aquatic ecosystems. Although societal needs for high-quality, objective ground-water science are increasing, current funding for USGS regional ground-water programs is about 40 percent of the funding available 20–25 years ago. Given the current challenges of budgetary constraints, however, this report provides a flexible set of interrelated research topics that enhance the ability of the USGS to focus limited fiscal resources on developing ground-water science tools and methods that provide high-quality, objective scientific information

The Roles of Extrinsic and Intrinsic Factors in the Freshwater Life-History Dynamics of a Migratory Salmonid

Key life-cycle transitions, such as metamorphosis or migration, can be altered by a variety of external factors, such as climate variation, strong species interactions, and management intervention, or modulated by density dependence. Given that these life-history transitions can influence population dynamics, understanding the simultaneous effects of intrinsic and extrinsic controls on life-history expression is particularly relevant for species of management or conservation importance. Here, we examined how life histories of steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) are affected by weather, pink salmon abundance (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha), experimental nutrient addition, and density-dependent processes. We tested for impacts on the size of steelhead smolts (juveniles migrating to the sea), as well as their age and abundance across four decades in the Keogh River, British Columbia, Canada. Larger steelhead smolts were associated with warmer years and artificial nutrient addition. In addition, higher pink salmon abundance and artificial nutrient addition correlated with juvenile steelhead migrating at younger ages. While density dependence appeared to be the primary factor regulating the abundance of steelhead smolts, nutrient addition and temperature were positively and negatively associated with smolt production, respectively, prior to 1991, and pink salmon spawning abundance was positively associated with smolt production after 1990. Thus, this study provides evidence that the temporal dynamics of one species of salmon is linked to the juvenile life history of co-occurring steelhead. A complex interplay of species interactions, nutrient subsidies, density dependence, and climatic variation can control the life-history expression of species with complex life cycles

Divergent Human Cortical Regions for Processing Distinct Acoustic-Semantic Categories of Natural Sounds: Animal Action Sounds vs. Vocalizations

A major gap in our understanding of natural sound processing is knowledge of where or how in a cortical hierarchy differential processing leads to categorical perception at a semantic level. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we sought to determine if and where cortical pathways in humans might diverge for processing action sounds vs. vocalizations as distinct acoustic-semantic categories of real-world sound when matched for duration and intensity. This was tested by using relatively less semantically complex natural sounds produced by non-conspecific animals rather than humans. Our results revealed a striking double-dissociation of activated networks bilaterally. This included a previously well described pathway preferential for processing vocalization signals directed laterally from functionally defined primary auditory cortices to the anterior superior temporal gyri, and a less well-described pathway preferential for processing animal action sounds directed medially to the posterior insulae. We additionally found that some of these regions and associated cortical networks showed parametric sensitivity to high-order quantifiable acoustic signal attributes and/or to perceptual features of the natural stimuli, such as the degree of perceived recognition or intentional understanding. Overall, these results supported a neurobiological theoretical framework for how the mammalian brain may be fundamentally organized to process acoustically and acoustic-semantically distinct categories of ethologically valid, real-world sounds

Basal dynamics of Kronebreen, a fast-flowing tidewater glacier in Svalbard: non-local spatio-temporal response to water input

We evaluate the variability in basal friction for Kronebreen, Svalbard, a fast-flowing tidewater glacier. We invert 3 years (2013–15) of surface velocities at high temporal resolution (generally 11 days), to estimate the changing basal properties of the glacier. Our results suggest that sliding behaviour of Kronebreen within a year is primarily influenced by changes in water input patterns during the meltwater season and basal friction is highly variable from a year to another. At present, models usually employ parameterisations to encompass the complex physics of glacier sliding by mathematically simulate their net effect. For such ice masses with strong seasonal variations of surface melt, the spatio-temporal patterns of basal friction imply that it is neither possible nor appropriate to use a parameterisation for bed friction that is fixed in space and/or time, at least in a timescale of a few years. Basal sliding may not only be governed by local processes such as basal topography or summer melt, but also be mediated by factors that vary over a larger distance and over a longer time period such as subglacial hydrology organisation, ice-thickness changes or calving front geometry