23,671 research outputs found
Towards an understanding of the social aspects of sustainability in product design: teaching HE students in the UK and Ireland through reflection and peer learning
This paper presents findings from a doctoral study, which investigated effective methods for teaching social sustainability within product design courses in British and Irish universities. This paper explores approaches for encouraging students to explore the social aspects of sustainable product design through workshops specifically designed to foster deep learning through collaboration, discovery and critical reflection. The importance of deep learning is reflected in both the sustainable design education (O’Rafferty et al., 2008, Griffith and Bamford, 2007) and education for sustainability literature (Warburton, 2003) as important to an understanding of the holistic and complex nature of sustainability. Three 'Rethinking Design' workshops were designed and developed as part of the doctoral main study to introduce students to the wider social aspects of sustainability and these were conducted in five universities in Britain and Ireland. The workshops were developed to foster principles that encourage students to adopt deep learning methods, taking into account the specific learning preferences of the current generation of students to enhance motivational factors such as relevance, appropriate teaching materials and opportunities for collaborative learning. The workshops were tested amongst 150 undergraduate and postgraduate students and found to be successful in fostering deep learning by facilitating learning through discovery, critical reflection, peer learning and creativity leading to an exploration of design thinking solutions
Status of reintroduced American marten in the Manistee National Forest within Michigan’s Northern Lower Peninsula
American martens (Martes americana) were extirpated from the Lower Peninsula of Michigan as a result of overharvest for fur and habitat loss in the early 1900s. More sustainable logging practices, forest regeneration, and improved understanding of wildlife habitat requirements, subsequently led to suitable marten habitat restoration within the Lower Peninsula. In the mid- 1980s in an attempt to re-establish a viable population in the Northern Lower Peninsula, 36 martens were reintroduced into the Manistee National Forest (MNF). In the 2011 summer field season we conducted a pilot study investigating the genetic structure of populations in Ward Hills and Caberfae in the MNF. We live trapped seven martens in Ward Hills (4 female, 3 male) and 4 martens in Caberfae (1 female, 3 male). We collected blood and hair samples for genetic analysis during health assessments. Hair snares were also deployed in Caberfae resulting in hair samples from 17 red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus), 10 unidentified rodent and 8 possible martens. We extracted DNA from marten blood samples and amplified 6 microsatellite loci using the polymerase chain reaction. Using the program KINGROUP (Konovalov et al. 2004), we determined whether pairs of individuals were more likely to be parent-offspring, full-siblings or unrelated. We found 3 martens in Caberfae and 2 martens in Ward Hills who were more likely to be parent-offspring than unrelated, and 5 martens in Ward Hills that were more likely to be full-siblings than unrelated. We calculated FST, a measure of genetic differentiation between the two populations, using program Arlequin (version 3.5) and found an FST of 0.141 with a p-value of 0.05, indicating that there was moderate genetic differentiation between the sites. These results are preliminary, but suggest restricted dispersal between these sites, with some loss of genetic diversity
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Best Practices of Honor Societies
Academic honor societies are widely available within
university communities. These student organizations can
fill valuable roles within engineering departments. The
inception of engineering-related honor societies followed
the establishment of engineering education within
American universities. Honor societies with their student
focus grew as complementary organizations to the
professional societies for engineering disciplines. The
national or international structure of honor societies
generally provides considerable resources for professional
education, leadership training, and service activity. For
departments, an honor society chapter can provide
engagement with students, alumni, community, etc.
However, the existence of an honor society chapter at an
institution does not necessarily mean that the chapter is
effectively serving the host department(s) and its
engineering students. This paper describes commonalities
among engineering honor societies, the possible roles of an
honor society within an engineering department, and some
best practices for effective honor society chapters. Specific
examples from the operation of IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu
(IEEE-HKN), the honor society of the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), are given.Cockrell School of Engineerin
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Driving in the wrong lane: towards a longer life-span of cars
Within the context of product longevity, one especially impactful and ubiquitous product demands further research: the car. Car longevity has been addressed in the context of product life extension and product lifetime optimisation but there have been a few studies on car longevity in the context of business and none specifically from an industrial design context. This paper presents initial findings from preliminary interviews with key industry representatives such as car designers and engineers. It discusses the barriers to and opportunities for designing a car with a longer life-span. This and further data will later be analysed in order to produce a design framework to inform car
designers on life-span and usage optimization through design. Strategies such as increased longevity or use-intensity can potentially reduce the throughput - and thereafter the consumption - of cars. Such a shift in the automotive sector would support the transition from a linear economy to a more sustainable one. The initial findings, however, suggest that a longer life car is not an uncompromised solution and important concessions would have to be made in order to make this an acceptable
product
Aspects of reheating in first-order inflation
Studied here is reheating in theories where inflation is completed by a first-order phase transition. In the scenarios, the Universe decays from its false vacuum state by bubble nucleation. In the first stage of reheating, vacuum energy is converted into kinetic energy for the bubble walls. To help understand this phase, researchers derive a simple expression for the equation of state of a universe filled with expanding bubbles. Eventually, the bubble walls collide. Researchers present numerical simulations of two-bubble collisions clarifying and extending previous work by Hawking, Moss, and Stewart. The researchers' results indicate that wall energy is efficiently converted into coherent scalar waves. Also discussed is particle production due to quantum effects. These effects lead to the decay of the coherent scalar waves. They also lead to direct particle production during bubble-wall collisions. Researchers calculate particle production for colliding walls in both sine-Gordon and theta (4) theories and show that it is far more efficient in the theta (4) case. The relevance of this work for recently proposed models of first order inflation is discussed
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Trypanosome mRNAs share a common 5' spliced leader sequence.
A 5'-terminal leader sequence of 35 nucleotides was found to be present on multiple trypanosome RNAs. Based on its representation in cDNA libraries, we estimate that many, if not all, trypanosome mRNAs contain this leader. This same leader was originally identified on mRNAs encoding the molecules responsible for antigenic variation, variant surface glycoproteins. Studies of selected cDNAs containing this leader sequence revealed that leader-containing transcripts can be stage-specific, stage-regulated, or constitutive. They can be abundant or rare, and transcribed from single or multigene families. No linkage between the genomic leader sequences and the structural gene exons was observed. Possible mechanisms by which the leader sequences are added to trypanosome mRNAs are discussed
What can we infer about the underlying physics from burst distributions observed in an RMHD simulation ?
We determine that the sizes of bursts in mean-square current density in a
reduced magnetohydrodynamic (RMHD)simulation follow power-law probability
density function (PDF). The PDFs for burst durations and waiting time between
bursts are clearly not exponential and could also be power-law. This suffices
to distinguish their behaviour from the original Bak et al. sandpile model
which had exponential waiting time PDFs. However, it is not sufficient to
distinguish between turbulence, some other SOC-like models, and other red noise
sources.Comment: In press, Planetary and Space Science. Proceedings of a session at
European Geophysical Society General Assembly, Nice, 200
Proto-Brown Dwarf Disks as Products of Protostellar Disk Encounters
The formation of brown dwarfs via encounters between proto-stars has been
confirmed with high-resolution numerical simulations with a restricted
treatment of the thermal conditions. The new results indicate that young brown
dwarfs (BDs) formed this way are disk-like and often reside in multiple
systems. The newly-formed proto-BDs disks are up to 18 AU in size and spin
rapidly making small-scale bipolar outflows, fragmentation and the possible
formation of planetary companions likely as have recently been observed for
BDs. The object masses range from 2 to 73 Jupiter masses, distributed in a
manner consistent with the observed sub-stellar initial mass function. The
simulations usually form multiple BDs on eccentric orbits about a star. One
such system was hierarchical, a BD binary in orbit around a star, which may
explain recently observed hierarchical systems. One third of the BDs were
unbound after a few thousand years and interactions among orbiting BDs may
eject more or add to the number of binaries. Improvements over prior work
include resolution down to a Jupiter mass, self-consistent models of the
vertical structure of the initial disks and careful attention to avoid
artificial fragmentation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter
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