The legal pendulum swings back

Comments on the Court of Appeal judgment in Abou-Rahmah v Abacha on liability for dishonest assistance to a breach of trust. Discusses whether an objective standard should apply to determine whether the accessory acted dishonestly. Reviews case law, examining whether the combined test proposed in the House of Lords judgment in Twinsectra Ltd v Yardley is still good law.

Levitated liquid droplets in AC and DC magnetic field

Electromagnetic levitation of liquid metal droplets can be used to measure the properties of highly reactive liquid materials. Two independent numerical models, the commercial COMSOL and the spectral-collocation based free surface code SPHINX, have been applied to solve the transient electromagnetic, fluid flow and thermodynamic equations, which describe the levitated liquid motion and heating processes. The SPHINX model incorporates free surface deformation to accurately model the oscillations that result from the interaction between the electromagnetic and gravity forces, temperature dependent surface tension, magnetically controlled turbulent momentum transport. The models are adapted to incorporate periodic laser heating at the top of the droplet, which is used to measure the thermal conductivity of the material. Novel effects in the levitated droplet of magnetically damped turbulence and nonlinear growth of velocities in high DC magnetic field are analysed.