Application of fibre assemblies as damping elements in the automotive industry

This investigation aims to characterise the damping properties of the nonwoven materials with potential applications in automotive and aerospace industry. Nonwovens are a popular choice for many applications due to their relatively low manufacturing cost and unique properties. It is known that nonwovens are efficient energy dispersers for certain applications such as acoustic damping and ballistic impact. It is anticipated that these energy absorption properties could eventually be used to provide damping for mechanical vibrations. However the behaviour of nonwovens under dynamic load and vibration has not been investigated before. Therefore we intend to highlight these aspects of the behaviour of the nonwovens through this research. In order to obtain an insight to the energy absorption properties of the nonwoven fabrics, a range of tests has been performed. Forced vibration of the cantilever beam is used to explore damping over a range of resonance modes and input amplitudes. The tests are conducted on aramid, glass fibre and polyester fabrics with a range of area densities and various coatings. The tests clarified the general dynamic behaviour of the fabrics tested and the possible response in more real application condition as well. The energy absorption in both thickness and plane of the fabric is tested. The effects of the area density on the results are identified. The main absorption mechanism is known to be the friction. The frictional properties are improved by using a smaller fibre denier and increasing fibre length, this is a result of increasing contact surface between fibres. It is expected the increased friction result in improving damping. The results indicate different mechanism of damping for fiber glass fabrics compared to the aramid fabrics. The frequency of maximum efficiency of damping is identified for the fabrics tested. These can be used to recommend potential applications.

Comparison of methods used to calculate typical threshold values for potentially toxic elements in soil

The environmental quality of land can be assessed by calculating relevant threshold values, which differentiate between concentrations of elements resulting from geogenic and diffuse anthropogenic sources and concentrations generated by point sources of elements. A simple process allowing the calculation of these typical threshold values (TTVs) was applied across a region of highly complex geology (Northern Ireland) to six elements of interest; arsenic, chromium, copper, lead, nickel and vanadium. Three methods for identifying domains (areas where a readily identifiable factor can be shown to control the concentration of an element) were used: k-means cluster analysis, boxplots and empirical cumulative distribution functions (ECDF). The ECDF method was most efficient at determining areas of both elevated and reduced concentrations and was used to identify domains in this investigation. Two statistical methods for calculating normal background concentrations (NBCs) and upper limits of geochemical baseline variation (ULBLs), currently used in conjunction with legislative regimes in the UK and Finland respectively, were applied within each domain. The NBC methodology was constructed to run within a specific legislative framework, and its use on this soil geochemical data set was influenced by the presence of skewed distributions and outliers. In contrast, the ULBL methodology was found to calculate more appropriate TTVs that were generally more conservative than the NBCs. TTVs indicate what a "typical" concentration of an element would be within a defined geographical area and should be considered alongside the risk that each of the elements pose in these areas to determine potential risk to receptors.

Elements of A New Framework for the principle of Equal Treatment of persons in EC Law

In June and November 2000, the European Parliament and the Council adopted two Directives referring to ‘the principle of equal treatment irrespective of’ in their title, one relating to racial and ethnic origin, the other to disability, age, religion and belief or sexual orientation. A thorough reform of Directive 76/207/EEC on the principle of equal treatment for women and men in employment matters is pending between the European Parliament's second reading and adoption while this is written. Community secondary legislation on equal treatment of persons has thus expanded in scope and number of reasons which must not serve as starting points for differentiation. Does this signify progress in legal protection against personal discrimination? While not providing a ready answer, this article proposes an analytical framework to answer this question, concentrating on conceptions of equality in general and in particular on the problems multi-dimensional discrimination might pose for the law.

Integrating elements of undergraduate curriculum learning

Integrating elements of undergraduate curriculum learning Rapidly advancing practice and recognition of nursing, midwifery and medicine as a vital interrelated workforce, implies a need for a variety of curricula opportunities. This project addresses the challenge for healthcare educators to widen student engagement and participation through inter-professional education by creating learning environments whereby student interactions foster the desire to develop situational awareness, independent learning and contribution to patient advocacy. Overall aim of this ‘Feeding and Nutrition in Infants and Children’ project is to provide opportunities for integrated learning to enable students to advance their knowledge and understanding of current best practice. This Inter-professional (IPE) student-lead workshop was initially implemented in 2006-07 in collaboration with the Centre for Excellence in IPE, within the curricula of medical and nursing programmes¹. Supported by the development of a student resource pack, this project is now being offered to Learning Disability nursing and Midwifery students since September 2014. Methods: Fourth year medical students, undertaking a ‘Child Healthcare module’, alongside nursing and /or midwifery students are divided into groups with three or four students from each profession. Each group focuses on a specific feeding problem that is scenario-based on a common real-life issue prior to the workshop and then present their findings / possible solutions to feeding problem. They are observed by both facilitators and peers, who provide constructive feedback on aspects of performance including patient safety, cultural awareness, communication, decision making skills, teamwork and an appreciation of the role of various professionals in managing feeding problems in infants and children. Results: Participants complete a Likert-scale questionnaire to ascertain their reactions to this integrated learning experience. Ongoing findings suggest that students evaluate this learning activity very positively and have stated that they value the opportunity to exercise their clinical judgement and decision making skills. Most recent comments: ‘appreciate working alongside other student’s / multidisciplinary team approach’ As a group students engage in this team problem-solving exercise, drawing upon their strengths and abilities to learn from each other. This project provides a crucial opportunity for learning and knowledge exchange for all those medical, midwifery and nursing students involved. Reference: 1. Purdy, J. & Stewart, M (2009) ‘Feeding and Nutrition in Infants and Children: An Interprofessional Approach’. The Clinical Teacher, vol 6, no.3. Authors: Dr. Angela Bell, Centre for Medical Education, Queen’s University Belfast. Doris Corkin, Senior Lecturer (education), Children’s Nursing, School of Nursing & Midwifery, Queen’s University Belfast. Carolyn Moorhead, Midwifery Lecturer, School of Nursing & Midwifery, Queen’s University Belfast. Ann Devlin, Lecturer (education), Learning Disability Nursing, School of Nursing & Midwifery, Queen’s University Belfast.

Levels of Arsenic and Other Trace Elements in Southern Libyan Agricultural Irrigated Soil and Non-irrigated Soil Projects

The levels of As and various other trace elements found in the irrigated agricultural soil (Tsoil) of southern Libya were compared with non-irrigated soil (Csoil) from the same sampling campaign collected between April and May 2008. The soil samples represented agronomic practice in the southern Libyan regions of Maknwessa (MAK), Aril (ARL) and Taswaa (TAS), and were analyzed by Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) for Co, Ni, Cu, Se, Mo, Zn, As, Pb, Cd and P. Concentrations of P and As in TAS and MAK were found to be higher in Tsoil compared to Csoil, while the opposite was true for ARL. In general, As concentrations in these areas were 2-3 times lower than the global average. In ARL, the average P concentrations of the Csoil samples were significantly higher than those of Tsoil samples: this site is composed mainly of pasture for animal production, where phosphate fertilizers are used regularly. Distance from the source of irrigation was found to be of an important influence on the heavy metal concentration of the soil, with greater concentrations found closer to the irrigation source. It can be concluded from the results that irrigation water contains elevated levels of As, which finds its way into the soil profile and can lead to accumulation of As in the soil over time.

Evaluating Asymmetric Multicore Systems-on-Chip using Iso-Metrics

The end of Dennard scaling has pushed power consumption into a first order concern for current systems, on par with performance. As a result, near-threshold voltage computing (NTVC) has been proposed as a potential means to tackle the limited cooling capacity of CMOS technology. Hardware operating in NTV consumes significantly less power, at the cost of lower frequency, and thus reduced performance, as well as increased error rates. In this paper, we investigate if a low-power systems-on-chip, consisting of ARM's asymmetric big.LITTLE technology, can be an alternative to conventional high performance multicore processors in terms of power/energy in an unreliable scenario. For our study, we use the Conjugate Gradient solver, an algorithm representative of the computations performed by a large range of scientific and engineering codes.

Overview of the current ISO tests for photocatalytic materials

The current eight published ISO standards associated with semiconductor photocatalysis are considered. These standards cover: (1) air purification (specifically, the removal of NO, acetaldehyde and toluene), (2) water purification (the photobleaching of methylene blue and oxidation of DMSO) (3) self-cleaning surfaces (the removal of oleic acid and subsequent change in water droplet contact angle), (4) photosterilisation (specifically probing the antibacterial action of semiconductor photocatalyst films) and (5) UV light sources for semiconductor photocatalytic ISO work. For each standard, the background is first considered, followed by a brief discussion of the standard particulars and concluding in a discussion of the pros and cons of the standard, with often recommendations for their improvement. Other possible standards for the future which would either compliment or enhance the current ones are discussed briefly. 

Iso-Quality of Service: Fairly Ranking Servers for Real-Time Data Analytics

We present a mathematically rigorous Quality-of-Service (QoS) metric which relates the achievable quality of service metric (QoS) for a real-time analytics service to the server energy cost of offering the service. Using a new iso-QoS evaluation methodology, we scale server resources to meet QoS targets and directly rank the servers in terms of their energy-efficiency and by extension cost of ownership. Our metric and method are platform-independent and enable fair comparison of datacenter compute servers with significant architectural diversity, including micro-servers. We deploy our metric and methodology to compare three servers running financial option pricing workloads on real-life market data. We find that server ranking is sensitive to data inputs and desired QoS level and that although scale-out micro-servers can be up to two times more energy-efficient than conventional heavyweight servers for the same target QoS, they are still six times less energy efficient than high-performance computational accelerators.

The nitric oxide ISO photocatalytic reactor system: Measurement of NOx removal activity and capacity

Although the NO removal-based air-purification ISO method ISO 22197-1:2007 is well established, its preconditioning requirements mean that only the initial activity of the photocatalyst under test is measured owing to the often-reported, gradual alteration of the surface kinetics for NO oxidation by air through the accumulation of surface HNO3. Herein, we compare the photocatalytic NO removal abilities of a number of different, common TiO2 materials, surface-saturated with photogenerated HNO3, with their behaviours observed during the typical 5 h-long ISO standard test. It is found that all the TiO2 materials studied eventually become largely NO to NO2 converters after sufficient exposure to NO under irradiation (>5 h) due to the accumulation of surface HNO3. The UV exposure time, t*, necessary to reach this HNO3 saturated condition is different for each different catalyst. As a consequence, an alternative preconditioning process for the ISO method is proposed which can be used to provide a more realistic measure of the photocatalytic activity of the underlying material and provide a measure of the NOx removing capacity of the photocatalytic material under test.