Multiple orifice throttle valve Patent

Throttle valve for regulating fluid flow volum

Multiple-orifice throttle valve

Multiple-orifice throttle valve is not subject to cold welding in a vacuum environment and is compatible with strong oxidizing fluid. The valve is of all metal construction using simple components that do not slide or rotate and excludes static or dynamic seals

Poking fun at the surface: exploring touch-point overloading on the multi-touch tabletop with child users

In this paper a collaborative game for children is used to explore touch-point overloading on a multi-touch tabletop. Understanding the occurrence of new interactional limitations, such as the situation of touch-point overloading in a multi-touch interface, is highly relevant for interaction designers working with emerging technologies. The game was designed for the Microsoft Surface 1.0 and during gameplay the number of simultaneous touch-points required gradually increases to beyond the physical capacity of the users. Studies were carried out involving a total of 42 children (from 2 different age groups) playing in groups of between 5-7 and all interactions were logged. From quantitative analysis of the interactions occurring during the game and observations made we explore the impact of overloading and identify other salient findings. This paper also highlights the need for empirical evaluation of the physical and cognitive limitations of interaction with emerging technologies

In advance of a broken attestant, or where is art’s critical subject?

Two concurrent understandings of criticality in art assign it as a potential property of artworks themselves, or bemoan it as lacking in art’s audiences. This division can be traced to its roots in the Romantic conception of criticality, in which the critical procedure completes an unfinished work. This act of completion, and an accompanying conception of transformatory potential, is generally held to occur in the presence of a primary audience: an idea that is undermined by recent attributions of critical force to non-present secondary audiences. This article traces these orientations of thought as they structure recent approaches to practice, then offers an example of a mode of practice that refuses to attribute any critical or transformatory capacity to either its original material effects or a primary audience. Any critical or transformatory force is played out as the work propagates and adjusts itself in its afterlife

Turning Up the Heat on Energy Monitoring in the Home

The use of domestic electrical energy monitoring systems is becoming more common however gas usage has received comparatively little attention. This paper presents a new technique for monitoring gas-powered heating and hot water usage in the home integrated into a prototype energy monitoring platform. Compared to usual meter-based approaches this technique provides finer-grained usage data and uses simple temperature sensors. The main motivation for this work is to provide more meaningful energy information to users for inclusion in novel mobile and embedded applications. This is part of ongoing work which aims to reduce energy use among teenagers in the UK and make lasting attitude changes. The development and findings from a prototype deployed in a typical UK house over 7 days are presented. The findings highlight the utility of the technique and simplicity of the sensing approach. The novel requirements that inspired the development of this technique are also presented

Carboniferous and Permian magmatism in Scotland

Extensional tectonics to the north of the Variscan Front during the Early Carboniferous generated fault-controlled basins across the British Isles, with accompanying basaltic magmatism. In Scotland Dinantian magmatism was dominantly mildly alkaline-transitional in composition. Tournaisian activity was followed by widespread Visean eruptions largely concentrated within the Scottish Midland Valley where the lava successions, dominantly of basaltic-hawaiitic composition, attained thicknesses of up to 1000 m. Changing stress fields in the late Visean coincided with a change in the nature of the igneous activity; subsequently, wholly basic magmatism persisted into the Silesian. As sedimentary basin fills increased, sill intrusion tended to dominate over lava extrusion. In the Late Carboniferous (Stephanian) a major melting episode, producing large volumes of tholeiitic magma, gave rise to a major dyke swarm and sills across northern England and Scotland. Alkali basaltic magmatism persisted into the Permian, possibly until as late as 250 Ma in Orkney. Geochemical data suggest that the Carboniferous-Permian magmas were dominantly of asthenospheric origin, derived from variable degrees of partial melting of a heterogeneous mantle source; varying degrees of interaction with the lithosphere are indicated. Peridotite, pyroxenite and granulite-facies basic meta-igneous rocks entrained as xenoliths within the most primitive magmas provide evidence for metasomatism of the lithospheric mantle and high-pressure crystal fractionation

Supporting the Mobile In-situ Authoring of Locative Media in Rural Places: Design and Expert Evaluation of the SMAT app

Providing users with carefully authored Locative media experiences (which can be consumed via their GPS equipped smartphones or tablets) has significant potential for fostering a strong engagement with their current surroundings. However, the availability of mobile tools to support the authoring of locative media experiences in-situ, and by non-technical users, remains scarce. In this article we present the design and field-trial expert evaluation of a mobile app developed under the SHARC project (Investigating Technology Support for the Shared Curation of Local History in a Rural Community). The app is named SMAT (SHARC Mobile Authoring Tool) and supports the authoring of Locative Media experiences with a focus on the creation of POIs (Points of Interest) and associated geo-fences which trigger the pushed delivery of media items such as photos, audio clips, etc. One important requirement of SMAT is the ability to support authoring in places where connectivity is intermittent or unavailable, e.g. many rural areas

Too Cool at School - Understanding Cool Teenagers

Cool can be thought about on three levels; the having of cool things, the doing of cool stuff and the being of cool. Whilst there is some understanding of cool products, the concept, of being cool is much more elusive to designers and developers of systems. This study examines this space by using a set of pre-prepared teenage personas as probes with a set of teenagers with the aim of better understanding what is, and isn’t cool about teenage behaviours. The study confirmed that teenagers are able to rank personas in order of cool and that the process of using personas can provide valuable insights around the phenomenon of cool. The findings confirm that cool is indeed about having cool things but in terms of behaviours cool can be a little bit, but not too, naughty