Flash@Hebburn Urban Art in the New Century

The publication of Flash@Hebburn, explores the creation of the public art installation Flash@Hebburn featuring light and electricity, by Charles Quick, on the banks of the River Tyne at Hebburn Riverside Park in South Tyneside, which spanned a period of seven and a half years and was inaugurated on March 9th 2009. It extensively documents the testing, making and installing of a public art installation that resembles a technical functional placement, which serves to evoke a largely post-industrial site without resorting to nostalgia, while strongly relating to the community where it is placed. Jonthan Vickery’s essay, Infrastructures: Creating Flash@Hebburn, places the work not only in its context of site and its relation to the audience but also in the development of an art world discourse on new urban arts. This is supported by an interview with the artist by Dr John Wood, Henry Moore Institute which discusses the project as a piece of art work in relationship to other contemporary works the artist and others have carried out

A robust procedure for the measurement of Serum Magnesium on the Hitachi 704 using Calmagite

peer-reviewedA robust procedure for measurement of magnesium in serum is described using calmagite in CAPS buffer at pH 11.5. Interference from other magnesium reagents was reduced and evaluated for chromophoric interference. The procedure was not effected by bilirubin or hemoglobin in serum samples

Evaluation of Stainless Steel Press Fittings for Use in Transcritical R744 Refrigeration Systems

Successful implementation of R744 (CO2) as a refrigerant on a large scale and its introduction to new applications has motivated the development of new system components tailored specifically for use in high-pressure R744 systems, including reliable, low-cost refrigeration fittings. One option for fittings to be used in R744 systems are quick and reliable press fittings. Previous research has shown that this type of fitting can undergo extended vibration and thermal (pressure and temperature) cycling without compromising the fitting. This paper investigates the durability of stainless steel press fittings designed specifically for R744 systems, with particular focus on the effects of rapid decompression and carbonic acid exposure on the fittings. Rapid decompression is of concern due to the tendency of O-ring material to absorb CO2 molecules at high pressure and temperature, resulting in possible expansion and bursting of the O-rings when pressure drops and the CO2 absorbed by the O-rings attempts to escape very rapidly. Additionally, the presence of moisture in an R744 system can result in the reaction of CO2 and H2O, resulting in the formation of carbonic acid; the exposure of the refrigeration system components to this weak acid over time can compromise parts different of the refrigeration system, possibly including joints. The effects of decompression and acidity on stainless steel press fittings and their O-rings have been tested and are reported in this paper

Accelerated fatigue testing of aluminum refrigeration press fittings for HVAC & R applications

Failed brazed joints causing refrigerant leakage is a multi-billion dollar problem for the global HVAC&R industry. Leaks are frequently caused due to mechanical fatigue from extreme pressure cycling, temperature cycling including exposure to freeze/thaw cycles, or vibrational wear induced from rotating electrical machinery. In this study, a new, cost-effective type of press fitting suitable for a wide variety of refrigerants and applications is investigated experimentally. Three tests to accelerate mechanical fatigue were devised to simulate real world extreme conditions to determine possible failure modes of refrigerant components and joining technologies. The first test is a combined thermal/pressure shock test designed to simulate abrupt temperature and pressure changes due to start/stop cycles and frost/defrost mode changes. Field failures of brazed joints have been detected due to water being trapped in tight spaces and expanding during freezing, causing high stress on brazed joints. The second test is a vibration test, designed to simulate vibrational loads induced from rotating components in the system. The third and final series of testing is a freeze/thaw cycling profile which simulates ice buildup and defrost observed during heat pump operation. The investigated press fittings are made from aluminum and utilize o-ring seals. Test specimen of six different sizes designed to connect to aluminum tubes having outer diameters between 9.5 mm and 28.5 mm were subjected to the accelerated tests described above. Pressure, temperature, strains and acceleration were measured and analyzed. At the end of each test the exposed specimen were carefully investigated for possible damage and leak tightness confirmed. The results were also compared to earlier test results conducted with an all-copper version of same press fitting technology

A Model for Transforming Engineering Education Through Group Learning

Electrical engineering educators at Technological University Dublin (DIT) have successfully implemented pedagogical change. They now use group-based, student-centered and inquiry-driven approaches to teach emerging engineers. The objective of this was to foster students’ personal as well as professional skills (i.e., teamwork, communication, self-directed learning, etc.). This paper explores how such change was achieved and provides graphic models that draw from prior phenomenological studies and incorporates aspects of Rogers’ (1962) product adoption curve and Lowe’s (2012) interpretations of it

Innovations in nutrition education and global health: the Bangalore Boston nutrition collaborative

Background: India has a wide range of nutrition and health problems which require professionals with appropriate skills, knowledge and trans-disciplinary collaborative abilities to influence policy making at the national and global level. Methods: The Bangalore Boston Nutrition Collaborative (BBNC) was established as collaboration between St. John’s Research Institute (SJRI), Harvard School of Public Health and Tufts University, with a focus on nutrition research and training. The goals of the BBNC were to conduct an interdisciplinary course, develop web-based courses and identify promising Indian students and junior faculty for graduate training in Boston. Results: From 2010, an annual two-week short course in nutrition research methods was conducted on the SJRI campus taught by international faculty from Indian and US universities. More than 100 students applied yearly for approximately 30 positions. The course had didactic lectures in the morning and practical hands-on sessions in the afternoon. Student rating of the course was excellent and consistent across the years. The ratings on the design and conduct of the course significantly improved (p <0.001) from 2010 to 2012. Through open-ended questions, students reported the main strengths of the course to be the excellent faculty and practical “hands-on” sessions. A web based learning system TYRO, was developed, which can be used for distance learning. Four faculty members/graduate students from SJRI have visited Boston for collaborative research efforts. Conclusion: The BBNC has become a well-established capacity building and research training program for young professionals in nutrition and global health. Efforts are ongoing to secure long term funding to sustain and expand this collaboration to deliver high quality nutrition and global health education enabled by information and communication technologies

Dynamic legislative policy making

Abstract We prove existence of stationary Markov perfect equilibria in an infinite-horizon model of legislative policy making in which the policy outcome in one period determines the status quo for the next. We allow for a multidimensional policy space and arbitrary smooth stage utilities, and we assume preferences and the status quo are subject to arbitrarily small shocks. We prove that all such equilibria are essentially in pure strategies and that proposal strategies are continuous almost everywhere. We establish upper hemicontinuity of the equilibrium correspondence, and we derive conditions under which each equilibrium of our model determines a unique invariant distribution characterizing long run policy outcomes. We provide a convergence theorem giving conditions under which the invariant distributions generated by stationary equilibria must be close to the core in a canonical spatial model

Genetic Sharing with Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors and Diabetes Reveals Novel Bone Mineral Density Loci.

Bone Mineral Density (BMD) is a highly heritable trait, but genome-wide association studies have identified few genetic risk factors. Epidemiological studies suggest associations between BMD and several traits and diseases, but the nature of the suggestive comorbidity is still unknown. We used a novel genetic pleiotropy-informed conditional False Discovery Rate (FDR) method to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with BMD by leveraging cardiovascular disease (CVD) associated disorders and metabolic traits. By conditioning on SNPs associated with the CVD-related phenotypes, type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, high density lipoprotein, low density lipoprotein, triglycerides and waist hip ratio, we identified 65 novel independent BMD loci (26 with femoral neck BMD and 47 with lumbar spine BMD) at conditional FDR < 0.01. Many of the loci were confirmed in genetic expression studies. Genes validated at the mRNA levels were characteristic for the osteoblast/osteocyte lineage, Wnt signaling pathway and bone metabolism. The results provide new insight into genetic mechanisms of variability in BMD, and a better understanding of the genetic underpinnings of clinical comorbidity