Continuity tester screens out faulty socket connections

A device, used before and after assembly, tests the continuity of an electrical circuit through each pin and socket of multiple connector sockets. Electrically insulated except at the contact area, a test probe is dimensioned to make contact only in properly formed sockets

The university must be defended: collateral damage, part 37

The address takes as its leading point Foucault's well-known, Society Must Be Defended, and delivers an eloquent, passionate argument of why it matters that the 'arts and humanities' are central to the contemporary University. It develops the role of corporatism, protest and liberal arts as foundational to our future endeavours at the University

Not for God Queen or Country

Much has been written about volunteers who offer nursing aid during times of conflict or natural disaster both before and since Florence Nightingale's high profile mission in the Crimean war. Adventure and travel, religious conviction, national pride and a desire to care for the wounded are cited as motivators. Military nursing is now well established, the lack of immediate threat of war or invasion removes any perception of necessity to volunteer and the secularisation of health care minimises the presence of religion as a factor. Furthermore women can travel and seek adventure without further justification than the pleasure of doing so. This research grew out of curiosity to understand in what ways nurses, who volunteered for humanitarian work at the close of the 20th century, were similar to those who did so 100 years earlier. Following ethical approval oral histories were recorded with 7 nurses, who happen to be female, who worked for Médecins Sans Frontières during the 1990s and early 2000s. Médecins Sans Frontières was chosen as it espouses a strongly secular and international philosophy. Their histories illuminate the ways in which they came to work for Médecins Sans Frontières, locating their experiences within their life story and identity as nurses and women. Drawing on extracts from the oral history accounts, this paper will explore the extent to which motivations have remained constant over time, and the way in which their ordinary and extraordinary experiences coexist

The structural developments of regional television in Britain and Germany

This paper compares the structural developments of regional television in Britain and Germany from the early days of broadcasting to the present from an institutional and organisational perspective. Drawing on a series of interviews with policy-makers and other key personalities, it is argued that the combination of political administrative borders and regional television boundaries, as exists in the German Länder, provides a fruitful basis for a strong regional television service. During the post-war period divergences between Länder borders and Consortium of Public-Law Broadcasting Institutions of the Federal Republic of Germany (ARD) broadcasting boundaries, palpably manifest in south-west Germany, have been harmonised, leading to thorough conformity. However, in centralised England questions of regionalism have strangely played such an important role in the evolution of television, and there are evident disjunctures between regional boundaries and television regions. This applies to the regional structure of Independent Television (ITV) as well as to the regional initiatives of the BBC, which, since the mid-1980s, increasingly takes over ITV's regional duties, fulfilling primarily political demands

Schools’ Strategies for Promoting Girls’ Participation in Mathematics

Fewer girls than boys in England participate in post-compulsory mathematics. Previous studies have shown the significance to girls of their mathematics lessons and teachers, of cultural constructions of gender and mathematics, of career perceptions A multiple case-study project investigated institutions with unusually high participation by girls in mathematics. Focus groups and lesson observations were used to explore school pedagogy and culture. Common factors were: early preparation for demanding mathematics, a departmental ethos which encouraged student-teacher interactions in and out of lessons, teachers who explicitly and repeatedly confirmed that girls would succeed at mathematics A-level, appreciation of mathematics as opening doors to many careers