A second-generation high speed civil transport: Stingray

The Stingray is the second-generation High Speed Civil Transport (HSCT) designed for the 21st Century. This aircraft is designed to be economically viable and environmentally sound transportation competitive in markets currently dominated by subsonic aircraft such as the Boeing 747 and upcoming McDonnell Douglas MD-12. With the Stringray coming into service in 2005, a ticket price of 21 percent over current subsonic airlines will cover operational costs with a 10 percent return on investment. The cost per aircraft will be $202 million with the Direct Operating Cost equal to$0.072 per mile per seat. This aircraft has been designed to be a realistic aircraft that can be built within the next ten to fifteen years. There was only one main technological improvement factor used in the design, that being for the engine specific fuel consumption. The Stingray, therefore, does not rely on technology that does not exist. The Stingray will be powered by four mixed flow turbofans that meet both nitrous oxide emissions and FAR 36 Stage 3 noise regulations. It will carry 250 passengers a distance of 5200 nautical miles at a speed of Mach 2.4. The shape of the Stingray, while optimized for supersonic flight, is compatible with all current airline facilities in airports around the world. As the demand for economical, high-speed flight increases, the Stingray will be ready and able to meet those demands

Performance of a Large-area GEM Detector Read Out with Wide Radial Zigzag Strips

A 1-meter-long trapezoidal Triple-GEM detector with wide readout strips was tested in hadron beams at the Fermilab Test Beam Facility in October 2013. The readout strips have a special zigzag geometry and run along the radial direction with an azimuthal pitch of 1.37 mrad to measure the azimuthal phi-coordinate of incident particles. The zigzag geometry of the readout reduces the required number of electronic channels by a factor of three compared to conventional straight readout strips while preserving good angular resolution. The average crosstalk between zigzag strips is measured to be an acceptable 5.5%. The detection efficiency of the detector is (98.4+-0.2)%. When the non-linearity of the zigzag-strip response is corrected with track information, the angular resolution is measured to be (193+-3) urad, which corresponds to 14% of the angular strip pitch. Multiple Coulomb scattering effects are fully taken into account in the data analysis with the help of a stand-alone Geant4 simulation that estimates interpolated track errors.Comment: 30 pages, 28 figures, submitted to NIM

Managing the Tensions at the Intersection of the Triple Bottom Line: A Paradox Theory Approach to Sustainability Management

Corporate sustainability management encompasses multiple dimensions: environmental, social, and economic. Companies are increasingly evaluated within the public sphere, and within their own organizations, according to the degree to which they are perceived to simultaneously promote this nexus of virtues. This article seeks to explore the tensions frequently faced by organizations that strive to manage these dimensions and the role of public policy in that pursuit. A multiple–case study approach is utilized in which the authors selected case organizations according to whether they were attempting to manage the three dimensions of sustainability. The authors utilize paradox theory and a typology provided by previous research to understand the nature of the tensions that emerge in the selected case study organizations. They extend this previous work by examining the role of public policy in providing the situational conditions to make these paradoxical tensions salient, and they examine organizational responses to these conditions. Directions for firms, policy makers, and future researchers are provided on the basis of this study’s findings

Managing the Tensions at the Intersection of the Triple Bottom Line: A Paradox Theory Approach to Sustainability Management

Corporate sustainability management encompasses multiple dimensions: environmental, social, and economic. Companies are increasingly evaluated within the public sphere, and within their own organizations, according to the degree to which they are perceived to simultaneously promote this nexus of virtues. This article seeks to explore the tensions frequently faced by organizations that strive to manage these dimensions and the role of public policy in that pursuit. A multiple–case study approach is utilized in which the authors selected case organizations according to whether they were attempting to manage the three dimensions of sustainability. The authors utilize paradox theory and a typology provided by previous research to understand the nature of the tensions that emerge in the selected case study organizations. They extend this previous work by examining the role of public policy in providing the situational conditions to make these paradoxical tensions salient, and they examine organizational responses to these conditions. Directions for firms, policy makers, and future researchers are provided on the basis of this study’s findings

Age, but not amyloidosis, induced changes in global levels of histone modifications in susceptible and disease-resistant neurons in Alzheimer's disease model mice

There is increasing interest in the role of epigenetic alterations in Alzheimer's disease (AD). The epigenome of every cell type is distinct, yet data regarding epigenetic change in specific cell types in aging and AD is limited. We investigated histone tail modifications in neuronal subtypes in wild-type and APP/PS1 mice at 3 (pre-pathology), 6 (pathology-onset) and 12 (pathology-rich) months of age. In neurofilament (NF)-positive pyramidal neurons (vulnerable to AD pathology), and in calretinin-labeled interneurons (resistant to AD pathology) there were no global alterations in histone 3 lysine 4 trimethylation (H3K4me3), histone 3 lysine 27 acetylation (H3K27ac) or histone 3 lysine 27 trimethylation (H3K27me3) in APP/PS1 compared to wild-type mice at any age. Interestingly, age-related changes in the presence of H3K27ac and H3K27me3 were detected in NF-labeled pyramidal neurons and calretinin-positive interneurons, respectively. These data suggest that the global levels of histone modifications change with age, whilst amyloid plaque deposition and its sequelae do not result in global alterations of H3K4me3, H3K27ac and H3K27me3 in NF-positive pyramidal neurons or calretinin-labeled interneurons

Listening to teachers: a qualitative exploration of teaching practices in higher and further education, and the implications for digital

To bring about lasting changes around the use of technology to support teaching and learning in colleges and universities, we need to understand the practices that teaching staff undertake and the challenges they face. Effective, sustained change comes from a place of working in service to pedagogies. This report captures the findings of our recent work to develop a thorough understanding of the practices of teaching in colleges and universities. Our starting point A Jisc co-design project in 2016 was the starting point for a consultation to gain a richer understanding of what next generation digital learning environments might look like. In a wide-ranging and in-depth consultation we asked questions that focused on the potential of technology, the range of activities that staff currently undertake and what activities they would like in the future. The resulting report, next generation [digital] learning environments: present and future focused on many of these areas, providing a baseline of current and emerging technology-based practices. During that consultation many contributors raised questions about how behaviours of staff working in learning and teaching have changed since the first widespread deployment of virtual learning environments (VLEs) and other educational technologies in the 1990s. As it’s our mission to continue to provide solutions, advice and guidance on the use of technology to support learning and teaching we must remain focused on what the sector needs and wants from digital learning environments. This imperative is the driver for the current report. We wanted to develop deeper understanding about practice around learning and teaching with the aim of gaining insights beyond the technology-led. We’ve captured the voices and experiences of teachers in higher and further education, drawing on senior and junior teaching scholars across a broad range of academic disciplines. From more than 22 hours of interviews and several workshops we’ve distilled a series of themes and ideas for future development. The authors have provided indicative quotes from interviewees in the text rather than a comprehensive catalogue. We used a contextual inquiry approach. This is a process whereby individuals are interviewed about their practices in an open-ended format and within a particular frame designed to find out what they do, what their motivations are, what personal history contributes to these practices and how they are impacted by current macro- and micro-contexts. This is standard practice in user experience research, especially at the beginning of design processes, and it is valued in particular for being distinct from ‘lab’ investigations of behaviour that are distanced from the context in which people habitually do their work. In what follows, we describe the motivations for the contextual inquiry project and the themes that have emerged, and then explore the implications of some of those themes for Jisc’s next generation digital

Toward a Sustainable Marketplace: Expanding Options and Benefits for Consumers

While popular interest in sustainable consumption continues to grow, there is a persistent gap between consumers’ typically positive explicit attitudes towards sustainability and their actual consumption behaviours. This gap can be explained, in part, by the belief that choosing to consume sustainably is both constraining and reduces individual-level benefits. While the belief that sustainable consumption depends on making trade-offs is true in some contexts, increasingly consumers are finding that more sustainable forms of consumption can provide both an expanded set of options and additional, individual-level benefits. In this essay, we discuss and illustrate an expanded set of options and benefits across the consumption cycle: from acquisition to usage and disposition. An underlying theme is the separation of material ownership from the extraction of consumer benefits across the consumption cycle. We believe that this ongoing evolution of products - and even business models - has the potential to simultaneously increase value to consumers as well as speed progress towards a more sustainable marketplace

Best practices to maximize the use and reuse of quantitative and systems pharmacology models: recommendations from the United Kingdom quantitative and systems pharmacology network

The lack of standardization in the way that quantitative and systems pharmacology (QSP) models are developed, tested, and documented hinders their reproducibility, reusability, and expansion or reduction to alternative contexts. This in turn undermines the potential impact of QSP in academic, industrial, and regulatory frameworks. This article presents a minimum set of recommendations from the UK Quantitative and Systems Pharmacology Network (UK QSP Network) to guide QSP practitioners seeking to maximize their impact, and stakeholders considering the use of QSP models in their environment

Anderson's ethical vulnerability: animating feminist responses to sexual violence

Pamela Sue Anderson argues for an ethical vulnerability which “activates an openness to becoming changed” that “can make possible a relational accountability to one another on ethical matters”. In this essay I pursue Anderson’s solicitation that there is a positive politics to be developed from acknowledging and affirming vulnerability. I propose that this politics is one which has a specific relevance for animating the terms of feminist responses to sexual violence, something which has proved difficult for feminist theorists and activists alike. I will demonstrate the contribution of Anderson’s work to such questions by examining the way in which “ethical vulnerability” as a framework can illuminate the intersectional feminist character of Tarana Burke’s grassroots Me Too movement when compared with the mainstream, viral version of the movement. I conclude by arguing that Anderson’s “ethical vulnerability” contains ontological insights which can allay both activist and academic concerns regarding how to respond to sexual violence