Novel Jet Stability Evaluating Method for DC Plasma Torch

The version of record of this article, first published in Plasma Chemistry and Plasma Processing, is available online at Publisher’s website: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11090-025-10634-4.The jet stability of a DC plasma torch affects not only the service life of the torch but also processing consistency in industrial applications. To evaluate both instantaneous and longstanding jet stabilities of a plasma torch, a novel jet stability evaluation method has been developed in this study. The collected raw signals were first analyzed using the fast Fourier transform and filtered with identified characteristic frequencies. Based on the filtered signals, a 200 ms sliding window method was employed to evaluate the relative fluctuation of arc voltage in terms of both longstanding and instantaneous jet stabilities of the plasma torch. The results show that: (1) the proposed method can effectively evaluate both instantaneous and longstanding jet stability of a DC plasma torch; (2) the arc voltage and arc current signals contain a characteristic frequency, which is strongly influenced by the gas flow rate; (3) the laminar plasma torch operates stably at an arc current of 90 A, and its longstanding jet stability improves with increasing gas flow rate. The findings and proposed method provide informative guidance to those interested in the improvement of plasma jet stability and processing consistency.The authors appreciate the supports of the Scientific Research and Innovation Team Program of Sichuan University of Science and Technology (No. SUSE652A004), the Luzhou City Science and Technology Plan Project (No.2024JYJ004) and the Key Laboratory of Mechanical Structure Optimization & Material Application Technology of Luzhou (No.SCHYZSA-2025-01)

Community, Cholera, Chapel and Children: The History of Chester Royal Infirmary’s Surviving Stained-glass Windows

The installation of two sets of stained-glass windows at Chester Royal Infirmary in the early twentieth century represent one of the ways in which Florence Nightingale’s suggested improvements to the lives of patients could be achieved through attractive and colourful objects in the hospital environment. Generations of patients were thus able to benefit from these artefacts until the closure of the hospital in 1994 and the removal of the windows from the original building. Four of these windows were installed at the University of Chester’s Wheeler Building (formerly County Hall) as a community project in 2023. Background research was undertaken to piece together the stories behind these windows and the many people involved, who themselves contributed to the hospital, city and beyond in many different ways. Therefore, this article explores the history behind the windows and their time as popular features of this key medical institution, which provided care for Chester’s patients for over 230 years

Re-Claiming the Past by Re-Living in the Present: The ≠Khomani San Living Museum and the Restoration of Dignity in the Southern Kalahari

This article critiques dominant development frameworks by examining the ≠Khomani San of the Southern Kalahari, who despite winning one of South Africa's largest post-Apartheid land claims, remain marginalised and impoverished. Mainstream approaches continue to frame their future through Eurocentric binaries of “traditional” and “modern,” forcing the community to navigate imposed categories that fracture social cohesion and commodify identity. Development framed as economic progress reproduces the very marginalisation it seeks to overcome. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, we analyse the ≠Khomani San Living Museum as an act of resistance to developmentalist logics, a resistance that unsettles the epistemic hegemony of development discourses. The Museum is symbolic of the need for an alternative that builds collective action for emancipation, rooted in a reclamation and reconnection with the past as well as dignity and social cohesion for the future. The museum demonstrates that development projects must centre reparative justice, dignity, and the restoration of social fabric to be meaningful for historically dispossessed communities.N/

Book Review: Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans Under Hitler

This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in [German History] following peer review. The version of record [Grady, T. (2021). [Review of the book Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans Under Hitler by M. Geheran]. German History, 39(3), 478–479] is available online at: https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/39/3/478/6308748Book review of Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans Under HitlerUnfundedAAM out of embargo 24/06/2023, output uploaded to CR 30/01/202

The evolution and implementation of Norway’s ultimate penalty: An exceptional approach to life imprisonment?

© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Bar FoundationThough formal life sentences have been abolished in Norway, forvaring (post-conviction indefinite preventive detention) – a type of informal life sentence – can be imposed on individuals convicted of certain offenses who are considered to be at high risk of future offending. While great attention has been paid to Norway as an “exceptional” penal outlier globally, there is a notable lack of comprehensive knowledge about its indefinite penal sanction. Drawing on extensive historical research and legal and policy documentary analysis as well as leveraging a unique national dataset on the total forvaring population, this article provides the first international in-depth assessment of the evolution and implementation of Norway’s ultimate penalty. In so doing, it highlights significant disparities between policy ambitions and current practice and questions the extent to which the sanction of forvaring can be considered an “exceptional” approach to life imprisonment. It is argued that the development and growth of this type of informal life sentence can be seen as the epicenter of the impact of a more punitive ideology in Norway, emphasizing the need to move away from the concept of penal exceptionalism to better understand the full spectrum and practice of Norwegian and Nordic penality.Unfunde

Sustainable manufacturing of a Conformal Load-bearing Antenna Structure (CLAS) using advanced printing technologies and fibre-reinforced composites for aerospace applications

Conformal load-bearing antenna structures (CLAS) offer significant advantages in aerospace by reducing drag and weight through highly integrated designs. However, challenges remain in manufacturing, as traditional PCB methods create discontinuous arrays, while directly printed antennas on flexible substrates often lack mechanical strength. Additionally, neither approach integrates well with fibre-reinforced composites, which are widely used in modern aircraft. To address this, the next generation of CLAS must employ continuous surface substrates to maintain aerodynamic profiles and embed antenna systems within composite structures. This research introduces an innovative CLAS manufacturing method that integrates inkjet-printed silver nanoparticle antennas with composite fabrication. The antenna is printed onto Kapton film, which is then co-cured with woven glass fibre composites to ensure mechanical robustness and compatibility with aerospace materials. Flat and 100mm curvature samples were fabricated to investigate electromagnetic performance, with curvature effects analysed. Results confirm that the proposed method achieves both reliability and sustainability, producing smoothly curved CLAS with embedded antenna elements. However, frequency shifts and impedance mismatches were observed, attributed to discrepancies in dielectric constants and substrate volume variations. The conformality study revealed that curvature lowers resonant frequencies due to extended effective electric fields. This research establishes a promising CLAS fabrication approach, integrating sustainable printing with composites. The findings provide a benchmark for future conformal antenna studies and support industry-level advancements in high-integration aerospace antenna systems

A figurational examination of the working lives of backroom staff in men’s professional football clubs in the United Kingdom

Backroom staff have various important roles in supporting professional footballers and first team managers. Over time, the number of support staff in football clubs has grown, as the game has become increasingly professionalised and commodified to ensure athletes are provided the most effective support. Yet, what we know about their working lives is limited. Given the growth in academic research related to those who backroom staff support, who could not do the job without them, it is also important to explore their working lives. Therefore, this study examines the working lives of backroom staff in the first team at men’s professional football clubs in the United Kingdom. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 51 backroom staff, exploring their football background, employment within the industry, aspects of their working day and relationships with key stakeholders. The study tested a figurational sociological perspective for its adequacy to make sense of their experiences. Working in men’s professional football involved accepting challenges, such as excessive working hours, work-life imbalances, job insecurity, relocation, workplace transitions and familial sacrifices, which participants felt meant the role was more akin to a lifestyle choice. Many were motivated to work in football due to their love of the game, contributing to their perseverance through the challenges experienced. Alongside their emotional motivations, constant job insecurity and a saturated job market meant staff felt they had to accept the sacrifices until they started questioning the long-term sustainability of a career in football. The relationship with the first team manager impacted participants’ current roles and future job opportunities. Backroom staff were split into the manager’s staff, referred to as the inner circle, and club staff. The inner circle was seen as a double-edged sword, as it appeared to come with greater influence and responsibility within their roles. However, such roles came with greater job insecurity during managerial change. The inner circle represents the importance of interdependent relationships in understanding the structure and functioning of football clubs as workplaces. Backroom staff developed close, personal relationships with players. Some backroom staff offered a ‘safe-haven’ to players to speak about personal issues, who would not speak to teammates or the manager about these issues through concerns of stigmatisation and risking their place in the team. Participants explained the balance they had to strike between having personal relationships to support players and ensuring their professional position would not be compromised. This provides greater insight into relationships and workplace dynamics characterised by unequal power balances. Overall, this study has provided insight into the working lives of backroom staff and developed a greater understanding of these workplaces from the unique perspective of those perceived to be lower down the organisational hierarchy

From Kenya to Kendal: Colonel Edgar Garston Harrison’s taxidermy collection, Kendal Museum

The collections at Kendal Museum date back to 1796 when the museum was first formed as a private collection. Today the collections are publicly owned by Westmorland and Furness Council, cared for by longstanding curators Carol Davies and Morag Clement, and managed through Kendal College. One of the major donors to, and benefactors of, the museum in the 20th century was a local man called Edgar Garston Harrison (1863-1947), of High Hundhowe, near Staveley. A soldier and big game hunter, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Kings African Rifles, Harrison was active in several military campaigns related to British colonialism in eastern Africa between 1895 and 1905. During this time Harrison acquired a significant number of ‘hunting trophies,' mounted taxidermy animal heads and animal skins of the characteristic fauna of the region. In 1937 Harrison proposed to donate £2,000 towards the building of an extension to the museum’s existing buildings, on condition that this be used to display his collection of hunting trophies and other artefacts to the public, the majority of which were at that time housed in his purpose-built trophy room at High Hundhowe.Unfunde

Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit 15

A contribution to the scholarship on jurisdictional immunities, this chapter uses the ideas of Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari on the relationship between materiality and virtuality to analyse the creation of the Liberty of Whitby Strand in the late twelfth century. Building on the conception of jurisdictional immunities as constitutional structures, social phenomena, and mediums for communication, this chapter argues they were virtual realities emerging from an ongoing dialogue between the material and the virtual. It suggests that an existing physical space - matter, the problems it posed and the human solutions to those problems - was already virtualised in ways which made the invention of a jurisdictional immunity possible and probable, and considers how the people of Whitby Strand actualised this immunity.Unfunde

An examination of inpatient ward and secondary community care stay costs for individuals with complex mental health needs in the UK

Copyright: © 2025 Saini et al.Some people with mental health problems have such high levels of complex clinical and/or risk needs that those needs cannot be adequately met within generic mental health services. To design health and social provisions to better serve these people’s needs, it is necessary to first characterise the current provision. This study examines the cost element of this provision. This retrospective observational cohort study examined routinely collected healthcare service administrative data from a large UK-based NHS provider of community and hospital-based mental health services. Data were collected from medical records of individuals with complex mental health (CMH) needs aged ≥18 years old who had an inpatient ward stay between February 2000 until August 2021. Predictors of annual inpatient ward and secondary community care stay (residential/supported living/independent) costs were estimated using generalised linear models. Mean (median) annual total healthcare costs for 185 included adults were £106,847 (£109,651), comprising 16.4% from inpatient ward stay costs of £17,512 (£10,723) and 83.6% from secondary community care stay costs of £89,336 (£97,739). Associations varied across care context. Key predictors of inpatient stay cost included age, deprivation, and substance abuse. The primary diagnostic group of schizophrenia, schizotypal and delusional disorders (ICD10 codes: F20-F29) was found to be a predictor of greater secondary community care stay costs. Inpatient ward and secondary community care stay costs varied across patient characteristics. Additional research is warranted to further explore predictors identified in this study to prevent, promote, and monitor activities for individuals with differing CMH needs.Wirral Borough Council; Grant(s): 1582 CW