Construction of Road Embankments over Very Soft Soil Using Band Drains and Preloading

As part of a new national road being constructed in South Africa an embankment was built over a deep deposit of very soft soil. To enhance stability the embankment was built in several stages and in order to reduce the time required for consolidation between stages, band drains were installed in the foundation soils. The soils were instrumented to monitor pore water pressure and settlement. The results of the monitoring phase showed that the band drains were effective and operated as designed. This paper presents the results of the monitoring and discusses the prediction of degree of consolidation from settlement readings as opposed to pore water pressure along

Labour market experiences of young UK Bangladeshi men: Identity, inclusion and exclusion in inner-city London

Detailed qualitative data are used to explore the processes perpetuatinglabour market disadvantage among young UK-Bangladeshi men living in central London. Strong forces of inclusion within the Bangladeshi community are found to interact with forces of exclusion from ‘mainstream’ society to constrain aspirations and limit opportunities. Though diverse forms of young Bangladeshi masculinity are found, a common pattern is heavy dependency on intra-ethnic networks. Negative experiences of and isolation from ‘mainstream’ society further reinforce reliance on ‘our own people’. However, acute ambivalence towards belonging to a dense Bangladeshi community exists, exemplified in the widespread denigration of the restaurant trade. Many respondents express the desire to ‘break out’ and access new experiences. The findings support current policy emphasis on ‘connecting people to work’ but highlight the more fundamental need to connect people across ethnic boundaries. The paper urges researchers to ‘unpack’ ethnicity to consider carefully what ethnic identity implies in terms of access to resources and opportunities for different individuals in different contexts in order better to understand the diversity of labour market outcomes and the persistence of disadvantage

Optopalatograph: Real-time feedback of tongue movement in 3D

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Schottky Diodes on ZnO Thin Films Grown by Plasma-Enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition

Enhancement of the properties of zinc oxide (ZnO)-based Schottky diodes has been explored using a combination of plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PE-ALD) ZnO thin films and silver oxide Schottky contacts deposited by reactive radio-frequency sputtering. The electrical properties of the ZnO thin films were systematically tuned by varying the deposition temperature and oxygen plasma time during PE-ALD to optimize the performance of the diode. Low temperature (80 °C) coupled with relatively long oxygen plasma time (>30 s) PE-ALD is the key to produce ZnO films with net doping concentration lower than 10 17 cm -3 . Under the optimal deposition conditions identified, the diode shows an ideality factor of 1.33, an effective barrier height of 0.80 eV, and an ON/OFF ratio of 3.11 × 10 5