The Royal Military College

The Royal Military College (RMC), founded in 1801 and established in 1802 at Great Marlow and High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, but moved in October 1812 to Sandhurst, Berkshire, was a British Army military academy for training infantry and cavalry officers of the British and Indian Armies.

The RMC was reorganised at the outbreak of the Second World War, but some of its units remained operational at Sandhurst and Aldershot. In 1947, the Royal Military College was merged with the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, to form the present-day all-purpose Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

                                            The New College Buildings at RMC Sandhurst

Notable Cadets

The most notable cadets of RMC Sandhurst include:

• Sir William Denison (1825–1826), Governor of New South Wales
• Field Marshal Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar (1840–1841)
• Field Marshal Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts (1850–1851)
• Frederick Stanley, 16th Earl of Derby (1861–1862), Governor General of Canada
• King Alfonso XII of Spain (1876)
• Field Marshal Herbert Plumer, 1st Viscount Plumer (1875–1876)
• John Hope, 1st Marquess of Linlithgow (1878–1879), Governor-General of Australia
• Ronald Munro Ferguson, 1st Viscount Novar (1879–1880), Governor-General of Australia
• Field Marshal Viscount Allenby (1881–1882)
• Sir Charles Fergusson, 7th Baronet (1882–1883), Governor-General of New Zealand
• Field Marshal Earl Haig (1884–1885)
• Sir Winston Churchill (1894)
• Prince Alexander of Teck (1894), later the Earl of Athlone, Governor-General of the Union of South Africa and Governor General of Canada
• Field Marshal Earl Wavell (1900–1901), Viceroy of India
• Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (1907–1908)
• Sir Oswald Mosley (1914)
• Field Marshal Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester (1919), Governor General of Australia
• Ayub Khan (1926–1927), later President of Pakistan
• Ian Fleming (1927), author, creator of James Bond

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Military_College,_Sandhurst

Bosses Never Create Meaningful Work

Meaningful Work Not Created – Only

Destroyed – By Bosses, Study Finds

By James Hakner, University of Sussex

June 3, 2016 -- Bosses play no role in fostering a sense of meaningfulness at work - but they do have the capacity to destroy it and should stay out of the way, new research shows.

The study by researchers at the University of Sussex and the University of Greenwich shows that quality of leadership receives virtually no mention when people describe meaningful moments at work, but poor management is the top destroyer of meaningfulness.

Published in  MIT Sloan Management Review, the research indicates that, rather than being similar to other work-related attitudes, such as engagement or commitment, meaningfulness at work tends to be intensely personal and individual, and is often revealed to employees as they reflect on their work.

Thus what managers can do to encourage meaningfulness is limited, though what they can do to introduce meaninglessness is unfortunately of far greater capacity.

The study was carried out by Professor Katie Bailey, an employee engagement expert at Sussex’s School of Business, Management and Economics, and Dr Adrian Madden of Greenwich’s business school.

They interviewed 135 people working in 10 very different occupations, from priests to garbage collectors, to ask about incidents or times when the workers found their work to be meaningful and, conversely, times when they asked themselves, “What’s the point of doing this job?”

Professor Bailey says: “In experiencing work as meaningful, we cease to be workers or employees and relate as human beings, reaching out in a bond of common humanity to others.

“For organizations seeking to manage meaningfulness, the ethical and moral responsibility is great, since they are bridging the gap between work and personal life.”

The authors identified five qualities of meaningful work:

1. Self-Transcendent. Individuals tend to experience their work as meaningful when it matters to others more than just to themselves. In this way, meaningful work is self-transcendent.

2. Poignant. People often find their work to be full of meaning at moments associated with mixed, uncomfortable, or even painful thoughts and feelings, not just a sense of unalloyed joy and happiness.

 3. Episodic. A sense of meaningfulness arises in an episodic rather than a sustained way. It seems that no one can find their work consistently meaningful, but rather that an awareness that work is meaningful arises at peak times that are generative of strong experiences.

4. Reflective. Meaningfulness is rarely experienced in the moment, but rather in retrospect and on reflection when people are able to see their completed work and make connections between their achievements and a wider sense of life meaning.

5. Personal. Work that is meaningful is often understood by people not just in the context of their work but also in the wider context of their personal life experiences.

The researchers also identified the ‘seven deadly sins’ of meaninglessness: disconnecting people from their values; taking them for granted; handing out pointless work; treating staff unfairly; overriding peoples’ better judgment; disconnecting people from supporting relationships; and putting them at risk.

While the challenges of helping employees find meaningful work are great, “the benefits for individuals and organizations that accrue from meaningful workplaces can be even greater,” the authors write.

Dr Madden adds: “Organizations that succeed in this are more likely to attract, retain, and motivate the employees they need to build sustainably for the future, and to create the kind of workplaces where human beings can thrive.”

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/newsandevents/index?id=35796

How Microbes Make Methane

Chemists Settle Longstanding Debate

on How Methane Is Made Biologically

ANN ARBOR—University of Michigan – May 19, 2016; Like the poet, microbes that make methane are taking chemists on a road less traveled: Of two competing ideas for how microbes make the main component of natural gas, the winning chemical reaction involves a molecule less favored by previous research, something called a methyl radical.

Reported today in the journal Science, the work is important for both producing methane as a fuel source and tempering its role as a powerful greenhouse gas. Understanding how microbes generate methane might help scientists find ways to control pollution or make fuels.

"Methane is a greenhouse gas and, at the same time, one of the major sources of energy used worldwide," said study lead author Stephen Ragsdale, University of Michigan professor of biological chemistry. "Detailed knowledge of the microbial mechanism may lead to major breakthroughs for designing efficient catalytic processes for converting methane into other chemicals."

Although other types of radicals are common—think hydrogen peroxide and ozone—this study demonstrates one of a very few known instances of nature using a highly reactive methyl radical, different because it contains carbon, in its biological machinations.

"We were totally surprised," said computational chemist Simone Raugei, a co-author at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "We thought we'd find evidence for other mechanisms."

Ragsdale and his research team have been pursuing the answer to the methane question for 25 years.

Origins story
More than 90 percent of methane is (and has been) generated by microbes known as methanogens, which are related to bacteria. To make the gas, methanogens use a particular protein known as an enzyme. Enzymes aid chemical reactions in the biological realm like synthetic catalysts do in industrial chemical conversions. Also, the enzyme can run the reaction in reverse to break down methane for energy consumption.

Scientists know a lot about this microbial enzyme. It creates the burnable gas by slapping a hydrogen atom onto a molecule called a methyl group. A methyl group contains three hydrogens bound to a carbon atom, just one hydrogen shy of full-grown methane.

To generate methane, the enzyme pulls the methyl group from a helper molecule called methyl-coenzyme M. Coenzyme M's job is to nestle the methyl group into the right spot on the enzyme. What makes the spot just right is a perfectly positioned nickel atom, which is largely responsible for transferring the last hydrogen.

How the nickel atom does this, however, has been debated for decades in the highly complex world of chemical reactions. Different possible paths create different fleeting, ephemeral intermediate molecules, but the reaction happens too fast for scientists to distinguish between them.

The path chemists have most sided with involves the nickel atom on the enzyme directly attacking the methyl group and stealing it from coenzyme M. The methyl-nickel molecule exists temporarily, until the methyl in its turn steals a hydrogen atom from another molecule in the enzyme's workspace, coenzyme B, and becomes methane.

Many experiments lend support for this idea, which creates an intermediate methyl-nickel molecule.

A second possibility, according to a much smaller group of supporters, is via a methyl radical. Radicals (free radicals) are unstable molecules that have an unpaired electron. Commonly found in hydrogen peroxide and ozone, they can do a lot of damage by breaking down weaker bonds in molecules.

It's that unpaired electron that causes problems. Bonds between atoms routinely involve two electrons, like a pair of ballroom dancers. The unpaired electron will do everything in its power to find a second, just as a single dancer in search of a partner will cut into another couple.

In this path to methane, the nickel atom bonds to a sulfur atom in coenzyme M rather than the methyl group. This knocks the methyl away and sends it off sans an electron. Hungry and irritated, the methyl radical immediately snags a hydrogen atom from coenzyme B, generating methane.

Process of elimination
To find out which mechanism was correct, the U-M/PNNL band of researchers came up with a way to rule out one or the other. The first thing they had to do was slow down the reaction. They slowed it down a thousand times by hobbling the second half of the path to methane, after the intermediate came alive. Doing so let the intermediate build up.

Then, they performed a biochemical analysis called electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy at Michigan that allowed them to distinguish between the two intermediate molecules. If the reaction created the methyl-nickel molecule, methyl-nickel would show up as a blip on their instruments. If the reaction created a methyl radical that sauntered off, the molecule remaining with the protein—nickel bound to coenzyme M—would not register at all.

The team found no blip in the EPR profile of the post-reaction products, making the most likely intermediate the methyl radical. But, to be sure, the team performed additional biochemical analyses that ruled out other potential molecules. They also performed another biochemical test and showed that the structure of the major intermediate was the nickel stuck to coenzyme M, the expected result if the reactions took the methyl radical path.

"The impact of radicals on living matter, such as biological material, can be devastating, and involvement of a methyl radical, one of the most unstable radicals, is truly surprising," Raugei said. "For this to happen and make methane 100 percent of the time, the protein has to perform and control this reaction with an extremely high degree of precision, placing that methyl radical specifically beside only one atom—the hydrogen atom bound to the sulfur of coenzyme B."

Energy block
To further substantiate their results, the team modeled the reaction computationally. They zoomed in on the action within the enzyme, known as methyl-coenzyme M reductase.

"We found that the methyl radical required the least amount of energy to produce, making that mechanism the frontrunner yet again," said Bojana Ginovska, a computational scientist part of the PNNL team.

In fact, one of the other intermediates required three times as much energy to make, compared to the methyl radical, clearly putting it out of the running.

Modeling the reaction computationally also allowed the team to look inside the reductase. Experiments showed that the reaction happens faster at higher temperatures and why: Parts of the protein that helped move the reaction along would move the nickel closer to the methyl-coenzyme M. Shorter distances allowed things to happen faster.

The team used supercomputing resources at two DOE scientific user facilities: EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory at PNNL, and NERSC, the National Energy Research Computing Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The results might help researchers, including Ragsdale and Raugei, learn to control methane synthesis—either in the lab or in bacteria that make it in places like the Arctic—and how to break it down.

"Nature has designed a protein scaffold that works very precisely, efficiently and rapidly, taking a simple methyl group and a seemingly innocent hydrogen atom and turning it into methane as well as running that reaction in both directions," Ragsdale said. "Now how can chemists design a scaffold to achieve similar results?"

Raugei said that it would be a major breakthrough if they were able to devise a biomimetic strategy to activate methane, which means to turn it into more useful fuels.

"If nature figured out how to do it in mild conditions, then perhaps we can devise an inexpensive way to design catalysts to convert methane into liquid fuels like we use in our vehicles and jets," he said.

This work was supported by the Department of Energy Offices of Science (BES) and ARPA-E (TT).

Reference: Thanyaporn Wongnate, Dariusz Sliwa, Bojana Ginovska, Dayle Smith, Matthew W. Wolf, Nicolai Lehnert, Simone Raugei, and Stephen W. Ragsdale. The Radical Mechanism of Biological Methane Synthesis by Methyl-Coenzyme M Reductase, Science May 20, 2016, doi:10.1026/science.aaf0616.

http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/23929-chemists-settle-longstanding-debate-on-how-methane-is-made-biologically

Jobs Nearing Automation

 

1.                  Telemarketers

2.                  Tax preparers

3.                  Time device assemblers and adjusters

4.                  Loan officers

5.                  Tellers

6.                  Umpires and referees

7.                  Procurement clerks

8.                  Packaging and filling machine operators and tenders

9.                  Milling and planning machine setters, operators and tenders

10.              Credit analysts

11.              Drivers

12.              Fashion models

13.              Legal secretaries

14.              Bookkeepers

15.              Cashiers

16.              Grinding and polishing workers

17.              Restaurant cooks

18.              Jewelers and precious stone and metal workers

19.              Postal service workers

20.              Electrical and electronic equipment assemblers

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/jobs-robots-are-most-likely-to-take-over-2015-5

Muhammad Ali Dies

Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016) was an American professional boxer, generally considered among the greatest heavyweights in the history of the sport. Early in his career, Ali was known for being a controversial and polarizing figure both in the boxing ring and out. He was one of the most recognized sports figures of the past 100 years, crowned "Sportsman of the Century" by Sports Illustrated and "Sports Personality of the Century" by the BBC. He also wrote several best-selling books about his career, including The Greatest: My Own Story and The Soul of a Butterfly.

Ali, originally known as Cassius Clay, began training at 12 years old and at the age of 22 won the world heavyweight championship in 1964 from Sonny Liston in a stunning upset. Shortly after that bout, Ali joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name. He converted to Sunni Islam in 1975, and 30 years later began adhering to Sufism.

                                                                          Ali in 1967

In 1967, three years after winning the heavyweight title, Ali refused to be conscripted into the U.S. military, citing his religious beliefs and opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War. He was eventually arrested and found guilty on draft evasion charges and stripped of his boxing title. He did not fight again for nearly four years—losing a time of peak performance in an athlete's career. Ali's appeal worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court where, in 1971, his conviction was overturned. Ali's actions as a conscientious objector to the war made him an icon for the larger counterculture generation.

Ali remains the only three-time lineal world heavyweight champion; he won the title in 1964, 1974, and 1978. Between February 25, 1964 and September 19, 1964 Muhammad Ali reigned as the undisputed heavyweight boxing champion.

Nicknamed "The Greatest", Ali was involved in several historic boxing matches. Notable among these were the first Liston fight, three with rival Joe Frazier, and one with George Foreman, in which he regained titles he had been stripped of seven years earlier.

At a time when most fighters let their managers do the talking, Ali, inspired by professional wrestler "Gorgeous" George Wagner, thrived in—and indeed craved—the spotlight, where he was often provocative and outlandish. He controlled most press conferences and interviews, and spoke freely about issues unrelated to boxing. Ali transformed the role and image of the African American athlete in America by his embrace of racial pride and his willingness to antagonize the white establishment in doing so. In the words of writer Joyce Carol Oates, he was one of the few athletes in any sport to "define the terms of his public reputation".

Decline in Health and Death

On February 3, 2013, in a Washington Times article, Ali's brother, Rahman Ali, said Muhammad could no longer speak and could be dead within days. Ali's daughter, May May Ali, responded to the rumors, stating that she had talked to him on the phone the morning of February 3 and he was fine. On December 20, 2014, Ali was hospitalized for a mild case of pneumonia. Ali was once again hospitalized on January 15, 2015, for a urinary tract infection after being found unresponsive at a guest house in Scottsdale, Arizona. He was released the next day. Ali was hospitalized again on June 2, 2016 with a respiratory condition. His condition was initially described as "fair". However, the following day, Ali was placed on life support. His condition declined due to serious issues. His condition did not improve and late on June 3, it was announced that Ali had died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Ali talked a man out of committing suicide in 1981:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3625686/Dramatic-moment-Muhammad-Ali-talked-suicidal-man-jumping-ninth-floor-window.html?ITO=1490

 

2016 Kavli Prizes Named

Nine Scientific Pioneers to
Receive 2016 KAVLI Prizes

JUNE 2 2016 - OSLO - NINE PIONEERING SCIENTISTS from Germany, Switzerland, the UK and the USA have been named this year’s recipients of the Kavli Prizes – prizes that recognize scientists for their seminal advances in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience.

This year’s laureates were selected for the direct detection of gravitational waves, the invention and realization of atomic force microscopy, and for the discovery of mechanisms that allow experience and neural activity to remodel brain function.
The Kavli Prize in Astrophysics goes to Ronald W.P. Drever, Kip S. Thorne and Rainer Weiss. Gerd Binnig, Christoph Gerber and Calvin Quate share the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience. The Kavli Prize in Neuroscience goes to Eve Marder, Michael Merzenich and Carla Shatz.
The Kavli Prize is awarded by The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and consists of a cash award of 1 million US dollars in each field. The laureates receive in addition a gold medal and a scroll. Today’s announcement was made by Ole M. Sejersted, President of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and transmitted live to New York as part of the opening event at the World Science Festival, where France Córdova, Director of the National Science Foundation, delivered the keynote address.

THE KAVLI PRIZE IN ASTROPHYSICS is shared between Ronald W.P. Drever and Kip S. Thorne, both from the California Institute of Technology, USA, and Rainer Weiss of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. They receive the prize “for the direct detection of gravitational waves”.
The signal picked up by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in the US on September 14, 2015, lasted just a fifth of a second but brought to an end a decades-long hunt to directly detect the ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves. It also opened up a completely new way of doing astronomy, which uses gravitational rather than electromagnetic radiation to study some of the most extreme and violent phenomena in the universe.

This detection has, in a single stroke and for the first time, validated Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity for very strong fields, established the nature of gravitational waves, demonstrated the existence of black holes with masses 30 times that of our sun, and opened a new window on the universe.

The detection of gravitational waves is an achievement for which hundreds of scientists, engineers and technicians around the world share credit. Drever, Thorne and Weiss stand out: their ingenuity, inspiration, intellectual leadership and tenacity were the driving force behind this epic discovery.

THE KAVLI PRIZE IN NANOSCIENCE  is shared between Gerd Binnig, Former Member of IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, Switzerland, Christoph Gerber, University of Basel, Switzerland, and Calvin Quate, Stanford University, USA. They receive the prize “for the invention and realization of atomic force microscopy, a breakthrough in measurement technology and nanosculpting that continues to have a transformative impact on nanoscience and technology”.

The realization of the atomic force microscope was reported by Binnig, Gerber and Quate in 1986, with a demonstration that the instrument could be used to obtain profiles of a solid-state surface with close to atomic resolution.

In the last 30 years the instrument has evolved dramatically and has provided fundamental insight into the chemistry and physics of a large variety of surfaces. It is still widely used today as a versatile tool for imaging and manipulation in a broad range of scientific disciplines.

THE KAVLI PRIZE IN NEUROSCIENCE is shared between Eve Marder, Brandeis University, USA, Michael Merzenich, University of California San Francisco, USA, and Carla Shatz, Stanford University, USA. They receive the prize “for the discovery of mechanisms that allow experience and neural activity to remodel brain function”.

Until the 1970s, neuroscientists largely believed that by the time we reach adulthood the architecture of the brain is hard-wired and relatively inflexible. The ability of nerves to grow and form abundant new connections was thought mainly to occur during infancy and childhood. This view supported the notion that it is easier for children to learn new skills such as a language or musical instrument than it is for adults.

Over the past 40 years, however, the three Kavli neuroscience prize-winners have challenged these assumptions and provided a convincing view of a far more flexible adult brain than previously thought possible – one that is ‘plastic’, or capable of remodelling. Working in different model systems, each researcher has focused on how experience can alter both the architecture and functioning of nerve circuits throughout life, given the right stimulus and context. They have provided a physical and biochemical understanding of the idea of ‘use it, or lose it’.

This new picture of a more adaptable brain offers hope for developing new ways to treat neurological conditions that were once considered untreatable.

About the Kavli Prizes

The Kavli Prize is a partnership between the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, The Kavli Foundation (USA) and the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. The Kavli Prizes were initiated by and named after Fred Kavli (1927-2013), founder of The Kavli Foundation, which is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity, promoting public understanding of scientific research, and supporting scientists and their work.

Kavli Prize recipients are chosen biennially by three prize committees comprised of distinguished international scientists recommended by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the French Academy of Sciences, the Max Planck Society, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society.

After the prize committees have selected the award recipients, their recommendations are confirmed by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

The 2016 Kavli Prizes will be awarded in Oslo, Norway, on 6 September. His Royal Highness Crown Prince Haakon will present the prizes to the laureates. This year’s ceremony will be hosted by Alan Alda and Lena Kristin Ellingsen. Prime Minister Erna Solberg will host a banquet at Oslo City Hall in honour of the laureates.

The ceremony is part of Kavli Prize Week - a week of special programmes to celebrate extraordinary achievements in science.

http://www.kavliprize.org/events-and-features/9-scientific-pioneers-receive-2016-kavli-prizes

A Cheaper Strong Magnet

Rare-Earth-Free Magnet Made
from Cheap Materials
US researchers have created a powerful permanent magnet out of iron and nitrogen, two plentiful cheap materials, as part of a programme to cut the need for ‘rare earth’ metals.
By Steve Bush, Electronics Weekly, May 17, 2016

US researchers have created a powerful permanent magnet out of iron and nitrogen, two plentiful cheap materials, as part of a programme to cut the need for ‘rare earth’ metals.

It is only a tiny sample, a film 500nm thick, but it is the real thing.

“To the best of our knowledge, this could be the first experimental evidence of the existence of a giant saturation magnetisation, an obviously large coercivity, with a magnetic energy product of up to 20 MGOe, in a bulk-type FeN sample.” said the team in ‘Synthesis of Fe₁₆N₂ compound free-standing foils with 20MGOe magnetic energy product by nitrogen ion-implantation‘, a Nature Scientic Reports paper written by a team from the University of Minnesota, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

While the elements iron and nitrogen are simple and well-understood, and the excellent magnetic properties of Fe₁₆N₂ have been long-predicted (theoretical BHmax=135MGOe), the material has proved extraordinarily difficult to make.

This is partly because the desirable α˝-martensite crystal structure is only stable below 214°C, whist >300°C is needed to give the material the correct grain microstructure.

By bonding an iron layer to a silicon wafer, implanting nitrogen into the iron, then heat-treating the assemby, the researchers have created a nano-structured material, with 25-30nm grains, in which the desirable α˝-Fe₁₆N₂ martensite structure has been encouraged by introducing strain – strain which is generated during the post-annealing process by what appears to be the mismatch of thermal coefficients between iron foil and silicon substrate (although the paper said it is between iron foil and iron substrate).

It is estimated that the material has ~35% of Fe₁₆N₂, with the rest made from less desirable Fe₄N and an iron-nickel nitride (Fe₄−yNi_xN). Nickel compounds results from a nickel film deposited on the iron to keep nitrogen inside during annealing. Some iron silicide also formed.

At the crystal level (see diagram), both hard magnet Fe₁₆N₂ and soft magnet Fe₄N possess N- centered Fe-N octahedral cluster. In Fe₁₆N₂ Fe-N clusters are separated from each other, while in Fe₄N Fe-N clusters share corner Fe atoms.

This project was started six years ago the US Government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E), along with a number of others aimed at reducing reliance on rare earth elements.

Demand for permanent magnets is increasing as, in the search for higher efficiency and smaller size, they replace electromagnets in motors and generators. This demand is expected to rocket as more electric cars and wind turbines are made.

The most powerful, durable and useful permanent magnets contain either neodymium or samarium – two materials that are rare in the Earth’s crust – hence the term ‘rare earth’ – although gold is rarer than almost all rare earths. Most supplies come from China.

The environment could also benefit from rare earth-free magnets.

“Rare earth elements are not really rare in principle,” project lead Professor Jian-Ping Wang of the University of Minnesota told Electronics Weekly. “However, mining and refining rare earth elements is difficult, does damage, and pollutes the environment.”

Wang pointed out that, although his team has demonstrated free-standing FeN permanent magnet foil, “it still needs some time to implement a manufacture synthesis process, meanwhile further improving its energy product,” he said.

Steel (alnico) magnets are available that are just as powerful as their rare-earth cousins (they have high ‘remanence’), but their usefulness is restricted because they are easily de-magnetised (their ‘coercivity’ is low: ~51kA/m) compared to rare-earth magnets (~1MA/M).

It is the existance of coercivity>0 that differentiates permanent (‘hard’) magnets from ‘soft’ magnetic materials that cannot support a permanent field. Coercivity is so low in alnico magnets, that their own field can de-magnetise themselves – hence the need for ‘keepers’ on horseshoe magnets.

A combined measure of remanence and coercivity is the figure-of-merit ‘BHmax’, measured in MGOe or kJ/m3 for which Nd, Sm and alnico magnets score 10-48, 16-33 and 5.5MGOe respectively.

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/research-news/rare-earth-free-magnet-made-from-cheap-materials-2016-05/