Impact Foam Testing for Multi-Mission Earth Entry Vehicle Applications

Multi-Mission Earth Entry Vehicles (MMEEVs) are blunt-body vehicles designed with the purpose of transporting payloads from outer space to the surface of the Earth. To achieve high-reliability and minimum weight, MMEEVs avoid use of limited-reliability systems, such as parachutes and retro-rockets, instead using built-in impact attenuators to absorb energy remaining at impact to meet landing loads requirements. The Multi-Mission Systems Analysis for Planetary Entry (M-SAPE) parametric design tool is used to facilitate the design of MMEEVs and develop the trade space. Testing was conducted to characterize the material properties of several candidate impact foam attenuators to enhance M-SAPE analysis. In the current effort, two different Rohacell foams were tested to determine their thermal conductivity in support of MMEEV design applications. These applications include thermal insulation during atmospheric entry, impact attenuation, and post-impact thermal insulation in support of thermal soak analysis. Results indicate that for these closed-cell foams, the effect of impact is limited on thermal conductivity due to the venting of the virgin material gas and subsequent ambient air replacement. Results also indicate that the effect of foam temperature is significant compared to data suggested by manufacturer's specifications

Examining Emergent Systems Management Strategies in Overseas Operations

Stadler, Mayer, and Hautz (2015) believed that most global companies did not possess the right management capabilities to make overseas movement profitable. Businesses must manage a bevy of internal and external organizational and process interdependencies to achieve success globally (Dynes, 2008), and these organizational processes have become increasingly more complex and adaptive (Anderson, 1999; McKelvey, 2001; Stacey, 1992; Wheatley, 1999). Today’s business leaders still develop reductionist solutions to solve complex problems despite this type of thinking\u27s practical limitations (Menkes, 2011). Comstock (2016) foresaw emergent management as a necessity in the current era, which requires organizations to unify around information flows and empowered individuals. As globalization intensifies the demand for international operations and global partnerships, business leaders must confront an evolving leadership paradigm (Baumgartner & Korhonen, 2010; Menkes, 2011). For organizations to survive amidst the rapid connectivity and complexity that defines today’s global business environment, they need to balance their traditional, planned, structural change methods with the unpredictability and emergence of new approaches (Livne-Tarandach & Bartunek, 2009)

Qualitative Study of Collaboration Between Independent Reading Specialists and Elementary Classroom Teachers

Abstract The failure of educators to meet the needs of elementary students who require separated, differentiated, and intensive reading interventions (Tier 3) has been attributed to the scarcity of administrative resources and a lack of effective collaboration between reading specialists and classroom teachers. Experts opine that common barriers to effective collegial collaboration between institutional reading specialists, who are employed by the school, and classroom teachers include: an unsupportive school culture, the classroom teachers’ fear of losing pedagogical autonomy, the absence of mutual trust and interdependence between the reading specialists and their students’ classroom teachers, and the inability of reading specialists and classroom teachers to resolve interprofessional conflicts. These perceived barriers are heighted when engaged independent reading specialists, who are not employed by the school, attempt to collaborate with unengaged classroom teachers of their students for the purpose of coherent lesson planning. The findings of this qualitative case study revealed five recommendations for practical application that enable independent reading specialists to more effectively collaborate with their struggling readers’ elementary school classroom teachers and also support the readers’ classroom curriculum. Successful collaboration between independent reading specialists and classroom teachers is essential to improving the academic achievement of struggling readers who depend on effective Tier 3 reading intervention. Keywords: reading specialist, elementary education teacher, collaboration, conflict resolution, leadershi

A Correlation Between Generalized Joint Hypermobility and KT-1000 Values: A Prediction of Knee Pathology

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a correlation exists between students identified with generalized joint hypermobility and their values of knee joint mobility as measured by the KT-1000 knee ligament arthrometer. Sixty healthy female high school sophomores, active in basketball, participated in this study. They were evaluated using: 1) the Beighton hypermobility criteria and 2) the KT-1000 knee ligament arthrometer. The KT- 1000 variables identified were the anterior 20 lb. displacement, compliance index, and the total anterior-posterior displacement. With an alpha level set at .05, one-tailed, the T-test for independent samples identified no significant difference in the KT -1000 displacement values when the subjects were separated into normal mobility « four) and hypermobility (\u3e four) groups. The related samples T-test identified a significant difference between the right and left KT-1000 displacement measures with significantly positive correlations between the two groups. The Pearson coefficient identified a positive correlation between the total hypermobility score and the KT-1000 values for the right knees. This statistical analysis shows a general trend toward higher KT-1 000 values in those individuals identified with generalized joint hypermobility

The case for an inhabited institutionalism in organizational research: interaction, coupling, and change reconsidered

This paper makes the case for an inhabited institutionalism by pondering questions that continue to vex institutional theory: How can we account for local activity, agency, and change without reverting to a focus on individual actors—the very kinds of actors that institutional theory was designed to critique? How is change possible in an institutional context that constructs interests and sets the very conditions for such action? Efforts to deal with these questions by inserting various forms of individual, purposive actors into institutional frameworks have created inconsistencies that threaten the overall coherence of institutional theory and move it farther from its sociological roots. To provide alternative answers, we turn to the growing line of work on “inhabited” institutions. Our exegesis of this literature has two goals. The first goal is to shift focus away from individuals and nested imagery and towards social interaction and coupling configurations. This move opens new avenues for research and helps to identify the spaces—both conceptual and empirical—and the supra-individual processes that facilitate change. This shift has important theoretical implications: incorporating social interaction alters institutional theory, and our second goal is to specify an analytic framework for this new research, an inhabited institutionalism. Inhabited institutionalism is a meso-approach for examining the recursive relationships among institutions, interactions, and organizations. It provides novel and sociologically consistent means for dealing with issues of agency and change, and a new agenda for research that can reinvigorate and reunite organizational sociology and institutional theory

Chapter 12: What Fascinates You? Infographics as Research-Based Inquiry for Artists

While student artists can usually articulate their personal motivations in artistic production, they often do not place their work within the context of research that can add complexity, nuance, and generalized perspective until later in their careers. To help students develop this practice, a librarian and a studio art instructor created and co-taught one assignment in 2D Foundations: Color and Visual Literacy, a required two-dimensional (2D) art studio class for all art majors at the University of Nebraska Omaha. In this chapter, the authors share the infographic assignment, which takes inspiration from information-based art generated by artists such as Laurie Frick, Giorgia Lupi, David McCandless, and Mark Dion who base their creations on scientific data and historical or social context in order to present visually pleasing and nuanced information for the general public. In this case study chapter, the authors explain the assignment, share student work and anonymized research reflections, and reflect on assumptions, challenges, and successes experienced while designing and teaching this nontraditional research assignment