Optimum design of composite laminates with thermal effects

An analytical approach to determine an optimum laminate for a variety of thermal and mechanical loading combinations is presented. The analysis is performed for a linear elastic material under static mechanical and uniform thermal loadings. The problem is restricted to a unit width and length laminate with angle orientations resulting in an orthotropic, symmetric, and balanced configuration. An objective function defining total strain energy, is formulated and an optimum laminate design determined subject to constraints on stiffness, average coefficient of thermal expansion, and strength. The objective function is formulated in terms of the orientation angles, number of plies, and material properties. The method presented has, in varying degrees, shown that the design of a laminate can be accomplished using strain energy minimization as the primary criteria. The results of various combinations of applied constraints in the optimized design process are presented and discussed

Neither playing the game nor keeping it real: media logics and Big Brother

Sam Pepper, one of the contestants in Big Brother 11, at one point accused fellow housemates Josie and John James of feigning romantic feelings for each other in order to cash in on lucrative deals with celebrity magazines such as OK! and Hello!. The provocation caused much apparent offence, and led to a prolonged and predominantly rancorous debate about authenticity and inauthenticity, soon extending to revelations that other housemates (Rachel, Corinne) aimed to appear in soft pornography titles like Nuts and Zoo, and as such, ‘couldn’t be trusted’. The clear subtext was that any economic motivation was considered a breach of the rules of the Big Brother game – not the explicit parameters of the competition, but the spirit in which it should be played. Being a worthy winner is a matter of who you are rather than what you do, which raises the question of how we came to know Josie and co, as well as how we come to know celebrity selves generally. If BB has taught us anything about the formation of mediated selves, it is that an authentic mediated self cannot exist – and yet authenticity still matters. This piece reflects on this tension and its implications for our increasingly reflexive media culture

Thermal Studies on Rubidium Dinitramide

The present study has been carried out to investigate conflicting reports in the literature on the nature of the thermal decomposition of the energetic oxidant rubidium dinitramide in the liquid state. The techniques employed included DSC, simultaneous TG-DTA, simultaneous TG-mass spectrometry and thermomicroscopy. The measurements were supplemented by quantitative chemical analysis of the reaction products. The results showed that, following fusion at 106 °C, the overall decomposition proceeded in a single exothermic reaction stage forming a mixture of rubidium nitrate and rubidium nitrite in the molar ratio 1.2 : 1

The uses and functions of ageing celebrity war reporters

This article starts from the premise that recognition of professional authority and celebrity status depends on the embodiment and performance of field-specific dispositional practices: there’s no such thing as a natural, though we often talk about journalistic instinct as something someone simply has or doesn’t have. Next, we have little control over how we are perceived by peers and publics, and what we think are active positioning or subjectifying practices are in fact, after Bourdieu, revelations of already-determined delegation. The upshot is that two journalists can arrive at diametrically opposed judgements on the basis of observation of the same actions of a colleague, and as individuals we are blithely hypocritical in forming (or reciting) evaluations of the professional identity of celebrities. Nowhere is this starker than in the discourse of age-appropriate behaviour, which this paper addresses using the examples of ‘star’ war reporters John Simpson, Kate Adie and Martin Bell. A certain rough-around-the-edges irreverence is central to dispositional authenticity amongst war correspondents, and for ageing hacks this incorporates gendered attitudes to sex and alcohol as well as indifference to protocol. And yet perceived age-inappropriate sexual behaviour is also used to undermine professional integrity, and the paper ends by outlining the phenomenological context that makes possible this effortless switching between amoral and moralising recognition by peers and audiences alike

It is Not Black and White: A Comparison of Skin Tone by Playing Position in the Premier League and English Football

Within the present manuscript we explore the role of skin tone on playing position within English football’s top four professional leagues. Player data (N = 4,515) was collected across five seasons (2010-2015). Results indicate that in general, darker skin toned players are more likely to operate within peripheral rather than central positions. Using both one and two-way ANOVAs, results suggest significant differences between skin tone and individual playing positions. Between league differences were, however, non-significant. Although darker skin toned players are still more likely to occupy peripheral positions, the situation is more nuanced than first thought. Instead of segregating players by central versus peripheral roles, it appears that darker skin toned players occupy positions associated with athleticism and strength. In contrast, lighter skin toned players appear to fulfill positions requiring organizational skills and creativity

The geometric measure of entanglement for a symmetric pure state with positive amplitudes

In this paper for a class of symmetric multiparty pure states we consider a conjecture related to the geometric measure of entanglement: 'for a symmetric pure state, the closest product state in terms of the fidelity can be chosen as a symmetric product state'. We show that this conjecture is true for symmetric pure states whose amplitudes are all non-negative in a computational basis. The more general conjecture is still open.Comment: Similar results have been obtained independently and with different methods by T-C. Wei and S. Severini, see arXiv:0905.0012v

New Protocols and Lower Bound for Quantum Secret Sharing with Graph States

We introduce a new family of quantum secret sharing protocols with limited quantum resources which extends the protocols proposed by Markham and Sanders and by Broadbent, Chouha, and Tapp. Parametrized by a graph G and a subset of its vertices A, the protocol consists in: (i) encoding the quantum secret into the corresponding graph state by acting on the qubits in A; (ii) use a classical encoding to ensure the existence of a threshold. These new protocols realize ((k,n)) quantum secret sharing i.e., any set of at least k players among n can reconstruct the quantum secret, whereas any set of less than k players has no information about the secret. In the particular case where the secret is encoded on all the qubits, we explore the values of k for which there exists a graph such that the corresponding protocol realizes a ((k,n)) secret sharing. We show that for any threshold k> n-n^{0.68} there exists a graph allowing a ((k,n)) protocol. On the other hand, we prove that for any k< 79n/156 there is no graph G allowing a ((k,n)) protocol. As a consequence there exists n_0 such that the protocols introduced by Markham and Sanders admit no threshold k when the secret is encoded on all the qubits and n>n_0