Specifications for and preliminary design of a plant growth chamber for orbital experimental experiments

It was proposed that plant experiments be performed on board the space shuttle. To permit the proper execution of most tests, the craft must contain a plant growth chamber which is adequately designed to control those environmental factors which can induce changes in a plant's physiology and morphology. The various needs of, and environmental factors affecting, plants are identified. The permissilbe design, construction and performance limits for a plant-growth chamber are set, and tentative designs were prepared for units which are compatible with both the botanical requirements and the constraints imposed by the space shuttle

Using Web 2.0-Based Groupware to Facilitate Collaborative Design in Engineering Education Scheme Projects

Employee collaboration is vital for manufacturing organisations wishing to be successful in an ever-changing global market place; it is commonly referred to as the joining of people and interests to meet a common goal via visual or oral interaction, information and knowledge sharing and the coordination of tasks; product development teams operating within the aerospace and defence industry rely extensively on this. To this end, the purpose of this paper is to present the results of a validation study carried out during an Engineering Education Scheme (EES) project initiated by a leading aerospace and defence manufacturing organisation, to confirm the benefits of using bespoke Web 2.0-based groupware to improve employee collaboration between dispersed teams. The results of a cross-sectional survey concluded that employees in the collaborating organisations would welcome greater usage of Web 2.0-based technologies. The study confirmed that groupware offers the potential to deliver a more effective collaborative environment with additional communication channels on offer to end users

Integrating social knowledge and collaboration tools into dispersed product development

Employee collaboration and knowledge sharing is vital for manufacturing organisations wishing to be successful in an ever-changing global market place; Product Development (PD) teams, in particular, rely heavily on these activities to generate innovative designs and enhancements to existing product ranges. To this end, the purpose of this paper is to present the results of a validation study carried out during an Engineering Education Scheme project to confirm the benefits of using bespoke Web 2.0-based groupware to improve collaboration and knowledge sharing between dispersed PD teams. The results of a cross-sectional survey concluded that employees would welcome greater usage of social computing technologies. The study confirmed that groupware offers the potential to deliver a more effective collaborative and knowledge sharing environment with additional communication channels on offer. Furthermore, a series of recommended guidelines are presented to show how PD teams, operating in globally-dispersed organisations, may use Web 2.0 tools to improve employee collaboration and knowledge sharing

A new paradigm for virtual knowledge sharing in product development based on emergent social software platforms

The UK Government considers its Aerospace Industry a remarkable success story, enjoying a global market share of 17% in 2015. The capture, management and sharing of employee knowledge is seen as vital if the industry is to remain highly innovative and retain its pre-eminent position internationally. Aerospace manufacturers, such as BAE Systems, often have to re-engineer business processes routinely to ensure their survival. Knowledge sharing in the industry is seen as challenging due to the dispersed nature of its operations and multi-tier supply chains. This article, through a 5-year participant-observation study at the World’s second largest aerospace and defence organisation, BAE Systems, proposes a new paradigm for virtual knowledge sharing in dispersed aerospace product development based on emergent social software platforms such as Enterprise 2.0 technologies. The developed framework and methodologies are applied to the bespoke BAE Systems’ engineering lifecycle process to validate its effectiveness with results indicating that Enterprise 2.0 technologies offer a more openly innovative environment in which employees may share and interact with knowledge more effectively and easily across geographical and functional boundaries, compared with conventional engineering information systems

Remote Sensing and Control of Phase Qubits

We demonstrate a remote sensing design of phase qubits by separating the control and readout circuits from the qubit loop. This design improves measurement reliability because the control readout chip can be fabricated using more robust materials and can be reused to test different qubit chips. Typical qubit measurements such as Rabi oscillations, spectroscopy, and excited-state energy relaxation are presented.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figure

Tables and charts of equilibrium thermodynamic properties of ammonia for temperatures from 500 to 50,000 K.

Equilibrium thermodynamic properties for pure ammonia were generated for a range of temperature from 500 to 50,000 K and pressure from 0.01 to 40 MN/sq m and are presented in tabulated and graphical form. Properties include pressure, temperature, density, enthalpy, speed of sound, entropy, molecular-weight ratio, specific heat at constant pressure, specific heat at constant volume, isentropic exponent, and species mole fractions. These properties were calculated by the method which is based on minimization of the Gibbs free energy. The data presented herein are for an 18-species ammonia model. Heats of formation and spectroscopic constants used as input data are presented. Comparison of several thermodynamic properties calculated with the present program and a second computer code is performed for a range of pressure and for temperatures up to 30,000 K

The turbulent wake of a monopile foundation

publisher: Elsevier articletitle: The turbulent wake of a monopile foundation journaltitle: Renewable Energy articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2016.02.050 content_type: article copyright: Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

A phononic bandgap shield for high-Q membrane microresonators

A phononic crystal can control the acoustic coupling between a resonator and its support structure. We micromachine a phononic bandgap shield for high Q silicon nitride membranes and study the driven displacement spectra of the membranes and their support structures. We find that inside observed bandgaps the density and amplitude of non-membrane modes are greatly suppressed, and membrane modes are shielded from an external mechanical drive by up to 30 dB.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure