An internet of laboratory things

By creating “an Internet of Laboratory Things” we have built a blend of real and virtual laboratory spaces that enables students to gain practical skills necessary for their professional science and engineering careers. All our students are distance learners. This provides them by default with the proving ground needed to develop their skills in remotely operating equipment, and collaborating with peers despite not being co-located. Our laboratories accommodate state of the art research grade equipment, as well as large-class sets of off-the-shelf work stations and bespoke teaching apparatus. Distance to the student is no object and the facilities are open all hours. This approach is essential for STEM qualifications requiring development of practical skills, with higher efficiency and greater accessibility than achievable in a solely residential programme

Does poverty cause conflict? Isolating the causal origins of the conflict trap

Does poverty cause civil conflict? A considerable literature seeks to answer this question, yet concerns about reverse causality threaten the validity of extant conclusions. To estimate the impact of poverty on conflict and to determine whether the relationship between them is causal, it is necessary to identify a source of exogenous variation in poverty. We do this by introducing a robust instrument for poverty: a time-varying measure of international inequalities. We draw upon existing theories about the structural position of a country in the international economic network—specifically, the expectation that countries in the core tend to be wealthier and those on the periphery struggle to develop. This instrument is plausibly exogenous and satisfies the exclusion restriction, which suggests that it affects conflict only through its influence upon poverty. Instrumental variables probit regression is employed to demonstrate that the impact of poverty upon conflict appears to be causal

Should energy labels for washing machines be expanded to include a durability rating?

Washing machines are a key household appliance that can be found in the majority of UK homes. Over 2.5 million are sold in the UK every year and account for one of the highest material and production impacts of householder products in the UK (WRAP, 2011). Energy efficiency ratings are provided as a method for consumers to make an informed purchasing decision and were brought in by EU legislation to reduce energy use and enable users to reduce running costs, as it is known that the greater environmental impact of a washing machine is during use. From 2014, all washing machines sold must be at a minimum A rated, with ratings increasing to A+++. However, under this current labelling system the embodied impacts and durability of the machines are ignored. Through semi-structured interviews with consumers, manufacturers and distributors, this paper explores different perceptions of longevity and expectations of performance and durability. The paper explores whether energy labels should be expanded to include durability information, as this could enable consumers to make a decision based not only on cost and energy efficiency but also on expected lifespan. Existing manufacturer’s guarantees may give an indication of the expected durability of the product and this is investigated to explore if there is a positive correlation. The findings will further discuss the potential impacts of providing durability information and how this could enable manufacturers and consumers to shift towards a low material and energy future

Dialogues through design: ethnographic explorations of creative process

Ethnography has traditionally examined fashion in the context of consumption. This aligns with material culture's inclination for examining the meaning of objects through consumption rather than design, which should be considered the actual starting point of their meaningfulness. In spite of the wealth of perspectives interrogating fashion, there is a marked absence of literature exploring how it is actually created. Using an ethnographic study of women's shoe designers, this paper unpacks the real creative process. The research focused on the practical, material and social processes that bring the creative ideas of designers into the commercial sphere of the fashion system. Ethnography will be seen to be an integral method for revealing design from the perspective of its practitioners. Central to the paper is an ethnographic dialogue between researcher, designers, ideas, materials and commerciality, bringing a more emotive perspective to design. Lasting eighteen months, the study involved observations of the practical stages of design and interviews with studio based designers, who apply a more handmade approach to their creativity. Ethnography was used to understand how design happens practically and commercially, as well as how it is experienced from the perspective of individual practitioners. A phenomenological approach was applied with the researcher learning to design and make shoes, enabling a reflective interpretation of data. Design was revealed to be fluid, sensory and reliant on tacit knowledge. The creative process for each designer was both experiential and personal, yet grounded in commerciality. The paper will tease out these tensions

Sensing creativity: the role of materials in shoe design

This essay is about designing and making shoes. Classical notions of design present it as a process whereby drawing is prefigured by a concept. This understanding overlooks the importance of materials, which through their particular technical, functional, and sensorial properties direct the nature of design (Kϋchler 2011). Materials such as leathers, suede, snakeskin and other textiles form the aesthetic characteristics of shoes. These materials are significant to creativity, not just in terms of their look, but also in how they influence the designer through their sensual qualities. The latter both inspire the future design and shape the final form of the shoe. Little is known of how designers physically engage with these materials. Drawing from ethnography of the creative practice of studio-based shoe designers and the author’s own experience of learning shoemaking this essay seeks to address this gap by illustrating the significance of materials to the creative process of shoe design. I observed the creative process of 23 women’s shoe designers with particular attention to their sourcing of different materials, and their engagement with the materials. This engagement involved wrapping the materials around the shoe last and imagining through the manipulation of the flat surface how it might transform through making into a structured form. Starting first with the look of the material the designers would engage tacitly, feeling the flat texture and then wrapping and pulling it around the last, manipulating it to resemble a three-dimensional shape. The senses worked together, fuelling the creative imagination and it was this that led to the conceptualization of design ideas. Materials were seen to be the sources of inspiration and for these designers’ creativity was revealed as a craft process that emerged through the interrelationship of the senses

Delivering authentic online practical science teaching – geoscience perspectives from the OpenScience Laboratory

Teaching practical science at a distance is challenging – how do you give students studying online a meaningful practical experience? In July 2013, the Open University (OU) launched the Wolfson OpenScience Laboratory (OSL) to deliver a wide a range of authentic practical science activities for their distance learning undergraduates. Prompted by the recognition that modern science is increasingly conducted via a computer screen (e.g. remote sensing, Martian fieldwork), the OSL presents a variety of opportunities for students to observe, investigate, gather and analyse data. The rationale is to foster problem-based, active learning, which has been proven effective by numerous studies. Simulation is kept to a minimum; most activities either generate or use real data, with authentic anomalies and ‘noise’ included – an aspect valued by the students. Geoscience is rooted in raw data collected during practical investigations, notably fieldwork. A key skill is observation, so the OSL includes digital collections of minerals, rocks and fossils, as zoomable, high resolution images and 360° videos for the 3D perspective. The Virtual Microscope enables petrographic examination of thin sections using high-quality zoomable images, in both plane- and cross polarised light, with rotation of the sample for certain points of interest. There is a virtual field trip based in a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE), as well as an exercise on maps and landforms. Developed primarily for OU undergraduates, many of the assets in the OSL are being made more openly accessible, with free registration. We are developing partnerships with other universities and schools, both as users and contributors to further assets (e.g. thin section collections). We have also gathered feedback from several surveys of OU undergraduates, as well as external users. Feedback on the pedagogical aspects of the OSL is broadly positive, with some assets (e.g. the virtual microscope) garnering particular praise; respondents value the potential for interaction with experts but also desire an explicit connection to the materials’ original field context. However, technological issues at times present a barrier to learning – perhaps reflecting the high diversity of OU cohorts, especially in terms of their individual hardware, software and IT skills. Some students resent the time investment required to master specialised scientific software, though it could be argued that acquiring such IT skills is an essential part of practising modern science

Search for Stable Magnetohydrodynamic Equilibria in Barotropic Stars

It is now believed that magnetohydrodynamic equilibria can exist in stably stratified stars due to the seminal works of Braithwaite & Spruit (2004) and Braithwaite & Nordlund (2006). What is still not known is whether magnetohydrodynamic equilibria can exist in a barotropic star, in which stable stratification is not present. It has been conjectured by Reisenegger (2009) that there will likely not exist any magnetohydrodynamical equilibria in barotropic stars. We aim to test this claim by presenting preliminary MHD simulations of barotropic stars using the three dimensional stagger code of Nordlund & Galsgaard (1995).Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of IAUS 302: "Magnetic Fields Throughout Stellar Evolution

High-Frequency-Induced Cathodic Breakdown during Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation

The present communication shows the possibility of observing microdischarges under cathodic polarization during plasma electrolytic oxidation at high frequency. Cathodic microdischarges can ignite beyond a threshold frequency found close to 2 kHz. The presence (respectively, absence) of an electrical double layer is put forward to explain how the applied voltage can be screened, which therefore prevents (respectively, promotes) the ignition of a discharge. Interestingly, in the conditions of the present study, the electrical double layer requires between 175 and 260 μs to form. This situates the expected threshold frequency between 1.92 and 2.86 kHz, which is in good agreement with the value obtained experimentally

The role of consumption in material reduction opportunities: the impact of product lifetime in supplying the UK steel demand

Most of the products purchased in the UK are manufactured in other countries. As a result, worldwide greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions released to manufacture all products purchased in the UK are significantly higher than the UK territorial emissions. More than one half of global industrial emissions result from the use of steel, cement, paper, plastics, and aluminium. In this paper, the UK consumption of products that embody these five materials is estimated. For steel, which is the most widely used among these five materials, consumption and accumulation patterns are examined across four product categories. The impact of steel product lifetime extension is examined for the UK as one option for material demand reduction at the consumption stage of the supply chain. Different levels of steel product lifetimes are simulated for the UK in 2050 and their impacts are examined in terms of UK steel production, implicit steel imports, and global carbon dioxide emissions. Steel product lifetime extension promotes a reduction in the need for steel imports, by reducing the demand for new steel, which leads to lower carbon dioxide emissions required to supply the UK steel demand. The results demonstrate the criticality of a focus on the consumption stage, since any interventions made towards demand reduction of end-use goods leads to material reduction across the supply chain