Making Public Media Personal: Nostalgia and Reminiscence in the Office

In this paper we explore the notion of creating personally evocative collections of content from publicly available material. Compared to the personal media that we look at, reminisce over, or personalise our offices with, public media offers the potential for a different type of nostalgia, signifiers of an era such as entertainment, products, or fashions. We focus on an office environment, where the use of filtered public media may mitigate concerns over protecting privacy and disclosing too much of one's identity, while keeping the existing benefits of office personalisation in terms of reminiscence, improving mood, and developing identity. After preliminary explorations of content and form, we developed a two-screen ambient display that cycled through 500 images automatically retrieved based on four simple user questions. We ran a two-week trial of the display with six users. We present qualitative results of the trial from which we see that it is possible to bring the delight associated with personal content into the workplace, while being mindful of issues of appropriateness and privacy. Images of locations from childhood were particularly evocative for all participants, while simple objects such as stickers, music, or boardgames were more varied across participants. We discuss a number of avenues for future work in the workplace and beyond: improving the chance of an evocative moment, capturing the mundane, and the crowdsourcing of nostalgia

Space Shuttle Propulsion System Reliability

This session includes the following sessions: (1) External Tank (ET) System Reliability and Lessons, (2) Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME), Reliability Validated by a Million Seconds of Testing, (3) Reusable Solid Rocket Motor (RSRM) Reliability via Process Control, and (4) Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) Reliability via Acceptance and Testing

Design and characterisation of titanium nitride sub-arrays of kinetic inductance detectors for passive terahertz imaging

We report on the investigation of titanium nitride (TiN) thin films deposited via atomic layer deposition (ALD) for microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKID). Using our in-house ALD process, we have grown a sequence of TiN thin films (thickness 15, 30, 60 nm). The films have been characterised in terms of superconducting transition temperature Tc , sheet resistance Rs and microstructure. We have fabricated test resonator structures and characterised them at a temperature of 300 mK. At 350 GHz, we report an optical noise equivalent power NEPopt≈2.3×10−15 W/√Hz , which is promising for passive terahertz imaging applications

Space Shuttle Propulsion Materials, Manufacturing, and Operational Challenges

Presentations in this session include: (1) External Tank (ET) Materials, Manufacturing, and Operational Challenges; (2) Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) Materials, Manufacturing, and Operational Challenges,(3) Reusable Solid Rocket Motor (RSRM) Materials, Manufacturing, and Operational Challenges and (4) Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) Materials, Manufacturing, and Operational Challenges

Designing the Space Shuttle Propulsion System

The major elements of the Space Shuttle Main Propulsion System include two reusable solid rocket motors integrated into recoverable solid rocket boosters, an expendable external fuel and oxidizer tank, and three reusable Space Shuttle Main Engines. Both the solid rocket motors and space shuttle main engines ignite prior to liftoff, with the solid rocket boosters separating about two minutes into flight. The external tank separates after main engine shutdown and is safely expended in the ocean. The SSME's, integrated into the Space Shuttle Orbiter aft structure, are reused after post landing inspections. Both the solid rocket motors and the space shuttle main engine throttle during early ascent flight to limit aerodynamic loads on the structure. The configuration is called a stage and a half as all the propulsion elements are active during the boost phase, and the SSME's continue operation to achieve orbital velocity approximately eight and a half minutes after liftoff. Design and performance challenges were numerous, beginning with development work in the 1970 s. The solid rocket motors were large, and this technology had never been used for human space flight. The SSME s were both reusable and very high performance staged combustion cycle engines, also unique to the Space Shuttle. The multi body side mount configuration was unique and posed numerous integration and interface challenges across the elements. Operation of the system was complex and time consuming. This paper discusses a number of the system level technical challenges including development and operations