Leeds Edible Schools Sustainability Network

There is a growing interest in both urban agriculture and the issue of sustainability, as framed in terms of climate change, landscape, economic uncertainty and resource shortages, while issues around child health and wellbeing are increasingly causing concern. Education, especially in terms of sustainability teaching and the production of food by schools on school premises is key. The Leeds Edible Schools Sustainability Network is, at this date, an un-constituted, informal group of organisations and academics, all based or active within the Leeds district, who share core values around the wellbeing and sustainability agenda and who are all, in various ways, involved in supporting educational establishments and related organisations in the growing (often on school premises) and consumption of local food, the promotion of resilient and healthy practices, including outdoor work and teaching about healthy school food, and the development of effective education around the topic of sustainability

Regulatory Reform: Toward More Balanced and Flexible Federal Agency Regulation

The Reagan administration\u27s desire to stimulate the national economy has resulted in a fundamental change in our federal regulatory scheme. By executive order No. 12,291, the regulatory process has been brought under the scrutiny and control of the President in order to insure the pursuit of rational economic objectives. This recent executive decree represents the latest attempt to meet the challenge of a decade long attack on federal regulation. The author critically examines the scope of this order while prospectively analyzing the attendant problems this particular type of reform will encounter. Mr. Bliss ultimately suggests the Reagan administration\u27s approach to agency regulation may cause purely economic factors to be weighed above other social concerns. This writing also presents a comprehensive discussion of other proposed reforms, including both the congressional veto and expanded judicial review. The author concludes by offering a novel approach to regulatory reform that would evenly balance both economic and social interests while establishing a regulatory scheme that would be administered in the most efficient and least burdensome way

Performance optimization for rotors in hover and axial flight

Performance optimization for rotors in hover and axial flight is a topic of continuing importance to rotorcraft designers. The aim of this Phase 1 effort has been to demonstrate that a linear optimization algorithm could be coupled to an existing influence coefficient hover performance code. This code, dubbed EHPIC (Evaluation of Hover Performance using Influence Coefficients), uses a quasi-linear wake relaxation to solve for the rotor performance. The coupling was accomplished by expanding of the matrix of linearized influence coefficients in EHPIC to accommodate design variables and deriving new coefficients for linearized equations governing perturbations in power and thrust. These coefficients formed the input to a linear optimization analysis, which used the flow tangency conditions on the blade and in the wake to impose equality constraints on the expanded system of equations; user-specified inequality contraints were also employed to bound the changes in the design. It was found that this locally linearized analysis could be invoked to predict a design change that would produce a reduction in the power required by the rotor at constant thrust. Thus, an efficient search for improved versions of the baseline design can be carried out while retaining the accuracy inherent in a free wake/lifting surface performance analysis

Diagnosis of Helicobacter pylori by carbon-13 urea breath test using a portable mass spectrometer

CONTEXT: In the non-invasive detection of markers of disease, mass spectrometry is able to detect small quantities of volatile markers in exhaled air. However, the problem of size, expense and immobility of conventional mass spectrometry equipment has restricted its use. Now, a smaller, less expensive, portable quadrupole mass spectrometer system has been developed. Helicobacter pylori has been implicated in the development of chronic gastritis, gastric and duodenal ulcers and gastric cancer. OBJECTIVES: To compare the results obtained from the presence of H. pylori by a carbon-13 urea test using a portable quadrupole mass spectrometer system with those from a fixed mass spectrometer in a hospital-based clinical trial. METHODS: Following ethical approval, 45 patients attending a gastroenterology clinic at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital exhaled a breath sample into a Tedlar gas sampling bag. They then drank an orange juice containing urea radiolabelled with carbon and 30 min later gave a second breath sample. The carbon-13 content of both samples was measured using both quadrupole mass spectrometer systems. If the post-drink level exceeded the pre-drink level by 3% or more, a positive diagnosis for the presence of H. pylori was made. RESULTS: The findings were compared to the results using conventional isotope ratio mass spectrometry using a laboratory-based magnetic sector instrument off-site. The results showed agreement in 39 of the 45 patients. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that a portable quadrupole mass spectrometer is a potential alternative to the conventional centralised testing equipment. Future development of the portable quadrupole mass spectrometer to reduce further its size and cost is indicated, together with further work to validate this new equipment and to enhance its use in mass spectrometry diagnosis of other medical conditions

A Bio-Logical Theory of Animal Learning

This article provides the foundation for a new predictive theory of animal learning that is based upon a simple logical model. The knowledge of experimental subjects at a given time is described using logical equations. These logical equations are then used to predict a subject’s response when presented with a known or a previously unknown situation. This new theory suc- cessfully anticipates phenomena that existing theories predict, as well as phenomena that they cannot. It provides a theoretical account for phenomena that are beyond the domain of existing models, such as extinction and the detection of novelty, from which “external inhibition” can be explained. Examples of the methods applied to make predictions are given using previously published results. The present theory proposes a new way to envision the minimal functions of the nervous system, and provides possible new insights into the way that brains ultimately create and use knowledge about the world

The racialization of the occult in British novels, 1850-1900

This thesis examines the ways in which the occult and its practitioners are represented in British novels from 1850-1900 and asserts that their representations are racialized in each case. Specifically, this thesis analyzes how the practice of the occult is portrayed in Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (1854), A Strange Story by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1861), The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868), Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886), Trilby by George Du Maurier (1894), The Blood of the Vampire by Florence Marryat (1897), The Beetle by Richard Marsh (1897), and Cleo the Magnificent by Louis Zangwill (1899). I argue that these novels are emblematic of the ways that British novels participated in, contributed to, and commented on the racialization of the occult that occurred across different genres of fiction published in the second half of the nineteenth century, emphasizing that while individual characters are shaped more specifically by the prevailing discussions of race and the occult that existed during the time of their publication. To demonstrate how pervasive this trend was, this thesis deliberately incorporates a range of canonical and non-canonical texts across several genres that participate in the racialization of the occult, organized by the type of occult practice being racialized. This racialization is accomplished through an emphasis on five key elements regarding occult characters in the novel: physical darkness, a comparison to dangerous animals, a threat posed to the white characters, the framing of the occult character as representative of their entire race, and the eventual removal of the occult character from the story. The novels I examine here contain these elements with minor variations. They are also present in representations of different races, classes, and genders, reinforcing the association of “the Occult” with “the Other.

Large area silicon sheet by EFG

Progress in a program to produce high speed, thin, wide silicon sheets for fabricating 10% efficient solar cells is reported. An EFG ribbon growth system was used to perform growth rate and ribbon thickness experiments. A new, wide ribbon growth system was developed. A theoretical study of stresses in ribbons was also conducted. The EFG ribbons were observed to exhibit a characteristic defect structure which is orientation dependent in the early stages of growth