Community perspective: Widening inequality hurts us all

The former Secretary of Labor discusses the causes and consequences of our nation's rising inequality.Income distribution

Understanding the negative thermal expansion in planar graphite–metal composites

The addition of graphitic fibers and flakes as fillers is commonly used to control the thermal expansion of metals. Sintered metal matrix composites with a planar distribution of graphite flakes show a low or negative thermal expansion coefficient perpendicular to the orientation plane of the graphite (z-CTE). Since the metal matrix has a positive isotropic expansion and graphite has a high z-CTE, this effect cannot be explained by a simple model of stapled metal–graphite layers. Instead, a mechanical interaction between graphite and matrix must be considered. With neutron scattering measurements, we show that there is little or no strain of the graphite flakes caused by the matrix, which can be explained by the high modulus of graphite. Instead, we suggest that a macroscopic crumpling of the flakes is responsible for the low z-CTE of the composite. The crumpled flakes are thicker at low temperature and get stretched and flattened by the expanding matrix at high temperature, explaining the reduction in the thermal expansion across the orientation plane

The Impact of Competition on the Interconnection Industry

One of the most critical problems facing the telecommunications industry is the extent to which competition will be introduced into what has been, for the most part, a regulated industry. In the forefront of the competitive environment has been the telephone interconnection industry. The genesis of this industry was the Carterfone decision by the Federal Communications Commission which allowed competition in the interconnection field. It is the thesis of this project that the most significant factor affecting the telephone interconnection industry today is the continued impact of competition on the industry. To insure that the project stayed within manageable limits the authors chose to examine the issues dealing with that part of the interconnect industry providing for the connection of answering devices, acoustic couplers, personal custom telephones, intercom systems, key business systems, or private branch exchanges (PBX) to the telephone system. Issues surrounding the competitive interconnect services of microwave and satellite links provided by the specialized common carriers are beyond the scope of this project. The specialized common carrier area is a critical issue on its own right and should be the subject of investigation by future participants in the Telecommunications Program. An analysis of present, past and potential interconnect manufacturers is provided to show how the lure and promise of competition has affected the industry. Because there are hundreds of companies involved in the manufacture and marketing of interconnect devices, only a limited cross section has been chosen for this project

The remapped particle-mesh advection scheme

We describe the remapped particle-mesh method, a new mass-conserving method for solving the density equation which is suitable for combining with semi-Lagrangian methods for compressible flow applied to numerical weather prediction. In addition to the conservation property, the remapped particle-mesh method is computationally efficient and at least as accurate as current semi-Lagrangian methods based on cubic interpolation. We provide results of tests of the method in the plane, results from incorporating the advection method into a semi-Lagrangian method for the rotating shallow-water equations in planar geometry, and results from extending the method to the surface of a sphere

Services within a busy period of an M/M/1 queue and Dyck paths

We analyze the service times of customers in a stable M/M/1 queue in equilibrium depending on their position in a busy period. We give the law of the service of a customer at the beginning, at the end, or in the middle of the busy period. It enables as a by-product to prove that the process of instants of beginning of services is not Poisson. We then proceed to a more precise analysis. We consider a family of polynomial generating series associated with Dyck paths of length 2n and we show that they provide the correlation function of the successive services in a busy period with (n+1) customers

Process for a Reactive Monomer Alignment Layer for Liquid Crystals Formed on an Azodye Sublayer

In this work, the detailed studies of surface polymerization stabilizing liquid crystal formed on an azodye sublayer are presented. The surface localized stabilization is obtained by free-radical polymerization of a dilute solution of a bi-functional reactive monomer (RM) in a liquid crystal (LC) solvent. To optimize the process for surface localized stabilization, we investigate the effects of several process parameters including RM concentration in LC hosts, the types of materials (either RM or LC), the photo-initiator (PI) concentration, ultra-violet (UV) polymerization intensity, and the UV curing temperature. The quality of surface localized stabilization is characterized and/or evaluated by optical microscopy, electro-optical behavior (transmission/voltage curve), the life test, and photo-bleaching. Our results show that, by carefully selecting materials, formulating mixtures, and controlling the polymerizing variables, the RM polymerization can be realized either at the surface or through the bulk. Overall, the combination of surface localized stabilization and photo-alignment offers an elegant and dynamic solution for controlling the alignment for LC, which could play a profound role in almost all liquid crystal optical devices. Keywords: photoalignment; liquid crystals; reactive monomers; azo dyeUnited States. Army Research Office (Contract W911NF-14-1-0650

Seeing the big PICTURE: A framework for improving the communication of requirements within the Business-IT relationship

The relationship between the business and IT departments in the context of the organisation has been characterised as highly divisive. Contributing problems appear to revolve around the failure to adequately communicate and understand the required information for the alignment of business and IT strategies and infrastructures. This study takes a communication-based view on the concept of alignment, in terms of the relationship between the retail business and IT within a major high street UK bank. A research framework (PICTURE) is used to provide insight into this relationship and guide the analysis of interviews with 29 individuals on mid-high management level for their thematic content. The paper highlights the lessons that can be derived from the study of the BIT relationship and how possible improvements could be made

Multivalued SK-contractions with respect to b-generalized pseudodistances

A new class of multivalued non-self-mappings, called SK-contractions with respect to b-generalized pseudodistances, is introduced and used to investigate the existence of best proximity points by using an appropriate geometric property. Some new fixed point results in b-metric spaces are also obtained. Examples are given to support the usability of our main result