Longley Building: Reuse and Rehabilitation Feasibility Report

The southern, eastern, and northern façades (the principal façades) have a great amount of decorative masonry including granite, slate coursing, brownstone coursing, and brick veneer (Photo 2). All of these materials are in good condition, except for the brownstone, which is deteriorating in areas that are connected to a wrought iron balustrade. The surface of the brownstone is face-beded, and the corrosion of the iron in contact with the stone has caused oxide jacking. All of the masonry has environmental staining

Fault location and diagnosis in a medium voltage EPR power cable

This paper presents a case study on fault location, characterization and diagnosis in a length of shielded 11 kV medium voltage ethylene-propylene rubber (EPR) power cable. The defect was identified on-site as a low resistance fault occurring between the sheath and the core. A 43 m section was removed for further analysis. The fault resistance was characterized and the location of the defect pinpointed to within a few cm using a combination of time-difference-of-arrival location and infra-red imaging. A combination of X-ray computed tomography, scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy were then applied to characterize any abnormalities in the dielectric surrounding the breakdown region. A significant number of high density contaminants were found to be embedded in the dielectric layer, having an average diameter of the order of 100 um, a maximum diameter of 310 um and an average density of 1 particle per 2.28 mm3 . Scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy were used to determine the geometry and elemental composition of some initial contaminant samples. It was concluded that contamination of the EPR layer, combined with an observed eccentricity of the cable’s core and sheath resulting in a reduced insulation gap, may have led to an electric field concentration in the region of the defect sufficient to initiate breakdown. Preventative strategies are discussed for similar families of cables, including more stringent dielectric testing requirements at the manufacturing stage and PD monitoring to detect incipient failure

Teacher Education for a Rural-Ready Teaching Force: Swings, Roundabouts, and Slippery Slides?

The preparation of teachers for rural schools has been a significant focus of research for many decades. In this paper we update previous reports of the extent of Initial Teacher Education courses that prepare teachers for rural schools in Australia. We found that despite significant and continued calls for rural teacher education, there are still very few rural-teaching units offered in teacher education courses, and there are no courses at all that seek this as an explicit outcome. As the Australian Professional Standards for Teaching claim the importance of teachers understanding students and their contexts, we argue that effective teacher education must not only focus on understanding rurality, and developing awareness of the affordances of place, but must also address the pedagogical requirements for present day rural teaching. We argue that the lack of teacher preparation for locational, geographic forms of social difference works to produce and sustain educational disadvantage when these intersect with economic and cultural difference. On this basis we call for government to address this major failing in the provision of educatio

3D Structures on Relativistic Jets

The properties of wave-like helically twisted normal mode structures on steady relativistic jets are summarized. Wave speeds are a function of the wavelength and less than the jet speed. However, normal mode interference can lead to both stationary and superluminal phase effects. A maximum pressure fluctuation criterion suggested by numerical simulations of axisymmetric relativistic jets is used to find the maximum asymmetric jet distortions and velocity fluctuations. Cyclic transverse velocity fluctuation can lead to variation in the flow direction on the order of the relativistic beaming angle. Resulting variation in the Doppler boost factor can lead to significant brightness asymmetries as helical structures twist around the jet beam. Growth of these structures is reduced as the jet density, Lorentz factor or Mach number are increased. Maximum jet distortion is reduced as the Lorentz factor increases and this suggests a reduction in mass entrainment or other non-linear disruptive processes that influence the morphological development of radio sources.Comment: to appear in Life Cycles of Radio Galaxies, ed. J. Biretta et al., New Astronomy Reviews; 8 pages, including 3 figure

Embarrassment as a Key Emotion in Young People Talking About Sexual Health

This paper highlights embarrassment as one of the often-ignored emotions of young people when it comes to discussing issues around sexual health. There have been many sexual health studies on knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of young people over the past two decades, but emotional aspects have been largely ignored, despite a growing literature in the sociology of emotion. A qualitative approach was adopted in the form of focus group discussions, which included questions on sex education, sexual health campaigns and formal and informal sources of sexual health information and advice. Focus groups were conducted in secondary schools in and around Edinburgh and Aberdeen as part of a four-year evaluation study of a Scottish Demonstration Project on young people's sexual health: 'Healthy Respect'. We conclude that is it important for policy makers and sexual health promoters to understand young people's notions of embarrassment. Not only are there elements of sex education that (some) young people perceive as embarrassing, they also sense embarrassment in those people providing them with sex education. Young people reported that both professionals (e.g. teachers and doctors) and their parents could be embarrassed about raising the topic of sexual health. Moreover, as one of the goals of sex education is to ensure an open and non-embarrassing attitude towards sex and sexuality, there is still a major gap between the aspirations of health educators and policy makers and the ways that young people experience such education.Sexual Health Services, Adolescence, School, Scotland, Emotion, Qualitative Research, Sex Education, Parents, Focus Groups, Relationships

A technique for chronic repuncture micropuncture of dog kidney

The precision of kidney micropuncture for exploring changes in glomerular and tubular function was strikingly enhanced by the introduction of the repuncture and re-collection technique [1], thus permitting the use of each tubule as its own control. This procedure has allowed detection of changes in function that were not appreciated previously. However, the technical design of re-collection micropuncture is such that it is mainly applicable to the study of rapid and usually massive changes in homeostasis; exploration of the renal response to chronic, more physiologic maneuvers has been limited to clearance and non-repuncture micropuncture studies.This paper describes a technique for chronic repuncture micropuncture that allows repeat proximal tubule sampling in dogs at an interval of up to 14 days

714-6 Increased Action Potential Prolongation by Low Voltage Biphasic versus Monophasic Field Stimuli

In an in-vitro model for defibrillation, we compared action potential prolongation (APP) by monophasic (MONO) and biphasic (BI) field stimulus shocks in epicardial tissue strips from 10 dogs. Strips were paced at one end while cellular impalements were maintained in the center (cell A) to measure APP and at the other end (cell B) to determine if shocks produced propagated activations. Rectangular shocks (0.5 to 10V/cm) were delivered with MONO (8 ms) or BI (4.8/3.2 ms) waveforms at times ranging from 44% to 112% of the APD90 of cell A. Recordings were made during 3975 shocked and 2578 control action potentials. APP was the % increase in shocked repolarization time relative to the interlaced controls.While weaker MONO and BI shocks produced propagated activations, the threshold intensity ABOVEwhich shocks did NOTproduce activations was 25.9% lower (p<0.0005) for BI (2.78V/cm) versus MONO (3.75 V/cm). At most intensities and timings, MONO produced more APP than BI. However, for 2 to 4 V/cm shocks at 90% to 100% of APD90, BI produced more APP than MONO (36.9% versus 17.7%, P < 0.0001) shocks.Thus, increased defibrillation efficacy of BI waveforms may result from a greater APP by BI in the low-voltage gradient regions of the heart during defibrillation