231 research outputs found

    Surface temperatures and glassy state investigations in tribology, part 4

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    Measurements were made of the limiting shear stress for two naphthenic oils of differing molecular weight and three blends of the lower molecular weight oil and polyalkylmethacrylate polymers of differing molecular weight. The two base oils reached the same limiting shear stress for the same temperature and pressure. This was also true for all the polymer solutions although the polymer reduced the limiting shear stress by about 15 percent. It is shown that limiting stress is more a function of material type than viscosity or molecular weight. A new falling body viscometer was constructed to operate to 230 C and 0.6 GPa. Another viscometer was constructed to extend the pressure range to 1.1 GPa. A concentrated contact simulator was developed which allows recording of the traction force while the slide-roll ratio is continuously varied and the rolling speed is maintained essentially constant by a single drive motor. The configuration is that of a crowned roller against a disk. Measurement of lubricant minimum film thickness of elliptical EHD contacts of various aspect ratios were made by optical interferometry. The data collected were used to evaluate the Hamrock and Dowson minimum film thickness model over a range of contract ellipticity ratio where the major axis of the contact ellipse was aligned both parallel and perpendicular to the direction of motion. A statistical analysis of the measured film thickness data showed that on the average the experimental data were 30 percent greater than the film thickness predicted by the model. Preliminary development of the application of a scanning infrared radiation system to a tribo-system was completed

    The Determinants of Agriculture Growth in China, 1978-89

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    Agriculture growth in China during the first dozen years of the economic reform could be attributed to an increase in inputs, technological progress, and institutional innovation. This paper introduces a couple of measurements for technological change and institutional reform, which include the imported capital for advanced technology, the number of high school graduates for improved human capital and the size of the free market for price reform. The study examines the effects of education, foreign capital, and price reform in rural China using data for both agriculture and farming over the period of 1978-89. Descriptions are made regarding the changes in those areas; regression is conducted for the econometric models generated from Cobb-Douglas production function. By providing an estimation of the function, the study identifies education, advanced technology and price liberalization as the major determinants of economic growth. As China is limited in terms of significant increases in the use of conventional inputs, in particular land, technological change is crucial to sustained production growth. To gain the maximum use from resources and technological progress, China also needs complete and continued institutional change

    The Determinants of Agriculture Growth in China, 1978-89

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    Agriculture growth in China during the first dozen years of the economic reform could be attributed to an increase in inputs, technological progress, and institutional innovation. This paper introduces a couple of measurements for technological change and institutional reform, which include the imported capital for advanced technology, the number of high school graduates for improved human capital and the size of the free market for price reform. The study examines the effects of education, foreign capital, and price reform in rural China using data for both agriculture and farming over the period of 1978-89. Descriptions are made regarding the changes in those areas; regression is conducted for the econometric models generated from Cobb-Douglas production function. By providing an estimation of the function, the study identifies education, advanced technology and price liberalization as the major determinants of economic growth. As China is limited in terms of significant increases in the use of conventional inputs, in particular land, technological change is crucial to sustained production growth. To gain the maximum use from resources and technological progress, China also needs complete and continued institutional change

    English in French Commercial Advertising: simultaneity, bivalency, and language boundaries

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    In recent decades, sociolinguists have begun to challenge the traditional view that multilingualism is fundamentally composed of discrete systems known as ‘languages’. Supporting the assessment that languages are not bounded entities but sociocultural and ideological constructions, this article explores commercial advertisements in France, which are subject to language policies assuming that ‘French’ is easily separable from ‘foreign languages’. Employing the Bakhtinian-influenced notion of bivalency developed by Woolard (1998), the article argues for a special consideration of mixed-language advertising in France, rooted not only in linguistic form, but also in the specific contextual tension produced by the socio-political statuses of French and English. The resulting creativity challenges the monolectal assumptions within French language management, indicating a clash of segregational language ideology with integrational language practices. The article further argues that this language mixing is bidirectional, as advertisements may both erase and emphasise the assumed boundaries between codes. Dans des décennies récentes, la sociolinguistique commence à disputer le point de vue traditionnel que le plurilinguisme se compose de systèmes discrets connus comme des « langues ». Conforme à la position que les langues ne sont pas des entités bornées mais des constructions socioculturelles et idéologiques, cet article examine la publicité commerciale en France, elle-même sujette aux contraintes exercées par la politique linguistique pour laquelle « le français » est facilement séparable des « langues étrangères ». Au vu du concept Bakhtinien de la bivalence conçue par Woolard (1998), l’article maintient une considération spéciale de la publicité plurilingue en France, enracinée non seulement dans la forme linguistique, mais également dans la tension contextuelle spécifique produite par les statuts sociopolitiques du français et de l’anglais. La créativité qui en découle met au défi les suppositions monolectales dans la gestion de langue française, ce qui indique un conflit entre l’idéologie ségrégationniste de langue et ces pratiques plus intégrationnistes. L’article propose que ce mélange soit bidirectionnel, car les publicités sont capables d’effacer ainsi que de souligner les frontières entres les codes

    Why We Use a New Currency: The Role of Trust and Control in Explaining the Perception and Usage of Bitcoin

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    Social media, e-commerce, global peer-to-peer technologies, and the near ubiquity of computers and smartphones allow people to interact, trust, and exchange value across traditional socio-economic control boundaries and over significant distances. Since the creation in 2008 of a new cryptographic currency system called Bitcoin, a financial technology market sector of about 250 billion USD has rapidly emerged, raising questions about the nature of currency in society and whether new types of non-national money are warranted and viable. This debate has pitted heterodox economic interests against orthodox economic interests while it has rekindled interest in theories that view money as a social construct with a multitude of potential forms beyond ‘state’ or fiat money, and in forms that are increasingly predicted to be purely digital in the future. This study seeks to explain the policy, social, and economic factors that underlie perceptions and usage of these new currency types. First, I develop a novel theoretical matrix of trust and control to explain the conditions under which people choose to use any monetary system. Then, I test this theory with a quantitative analysis of policy, trust, socio-economic, and cultural factors affecting the perceptions and usage of the new currency systems of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in 28 countries. This analysis draws on usage metrics recorded from the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency network systems, attitudinal data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and European Values Study (EVS), and a proprietary survey of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency perceptions and usage in 15 countries conducted by Ipsos for the behavioral economics research department at ING Group. I performed principal component analyses (PCA) to reduce factors among collected metrics, and I then integrated the findings of the PCA into a series of ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions along three primary vectors: trust, control, and culture. Based on my empirical findings, I group these new currency system users’ personality perspectives into four categories: Evangelists, Pragmatists, Skeptics, and Speculators. The analysis finds Bitcoin and cryptocurrency perceptions and usage are not correlated with the strictness or laxness of public policies concerning Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. The analysis also finds Bitcoin interest as measured by Google Search Trends is not correlated to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency perceptions and usage but is correlated to several lower socio-economic metrics related to crime and lack of confidence in law enforcement and government control. There is more favorable perception and usage of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in countries with less developed socio-economic profiles, and less favorable perceptions and usage in countries with more developed socio-economic profiles. There is more favorable perception and usage of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in countries with aggregate lower generalized trust and lower democratic tendencies, and less favorable perceptions and usage in countries with aggregate higher generalized trust and higher democratic tendencies. Overall, the findings show the extent to which trends in usage and perception of the emergent currencies of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are associated with basic cultural and attitudinal tendencies that are not necessarily related to public policy or other typical monetary theory-based controls. I conclude that a matrix of trust and control is effective at demonstrating how sociological factors explain the landscape of historical, extant, and emergent currency systems and this matrix predicts where Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies situate in society relative to these other currency systems

    Volume 9 - Issue 2 - November, 1899

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    https://scholar.rose-hulman.edu/technic/1526/thumbnail.jp

    A phytosociological survey of British arable-weed and related communities

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    Weed communities of British arable land have been extensively surveyed and classified using Zurich-Montpellier ("Braun-Blanquet") methods of analysis. After comparison of British results with continental literature it is concluded that most stands are referable to the class Stellarietea. A number of associations can be distinguished, classified as follows: Order: Polygono – Chenopodietalia Alliance: Fumario – Euhorbion Five associations Alliance: Spergulo – Oxalidion Seven associations Order: Eragrostietalia Alliance: Panico – Setarion One association Order: Centauretalja cyani Alliance: Arnoseridion Two associations Alliance: Aphanion Two associations Alliance: Caucalidion Three associations. Other communities of undefined rank have also been distinguished. Three new associations are provisionally described within the Spergulo-Oxalidion. Additionally, it has been found that some arable stands are referable to syntaxa of the classes Agroyretea or Plantainetea. Such stands are related to the effects of soil deterioration and selective herbicides. Limited investigation of annual communities of other disturbed ruderal habitats has shown that they are usually referable to the order Sisymbrietalia of the Stellarietea. Association between species has been investigated in some areas by chi-squared analysis. Plexus diagrams showing inter-specificassociation have been prepared for the Outer Hebrides, Dorset, the Isles of Scilly, the Brecklands, the Lower Greensand plus Bagshot Sands formations and arable bryophyte synusiae. Results from these are compared with those of the Zurich-Montpellier analysis. Factors affecting arable communities are extensively reviewed. Special consideration has been given to the floristic and ecological nature of the field boundary

    Robustness of Multiple Objective Decision Analysis Preference Functions

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    This research investigated value and utility functions in multiobjective decision analysis to examine the relationship between them in a military decision making context. The impact of these differences was examined to improve implementation efficiency. The robustness of the decision model was examined with respect to the preference functions to reduce the time burden imposed on the decision maker. Data for decision making in a military context supports the distinction between value and utility functions. Relationships between value and utility functions and risk attitudes were found to be complex. Elicitation error was significantly smaller than the difference between value and utility functions. Risk attitudes were generally neither constant across the domain of the evaluation measure nor consistent between evaluation measures. An improved measure of differences between preference functions, the weighted root means square, is introduced and a goodness of fit criterion established. An improved measure of risk attitudes employing utility functions is developed. Response Surface Methodology was applied to improve the efficiency of decision analysis utility model applications through establishing the robustness of decision models to the preference functions. An algorithm was developed and employs this information to provide a hybrid value-utility model that offers increased elicitation efficiency

    The Channeled Scabland

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    The geomorphology and hydrodynamics of high velocity flood erosion in the channeled scabland of the Columbia Basin are discussed

    Illustrated travel: steel engravings and their use in early 19th century topographical books, with special reference to Henry Fisher & Co..

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    The aim of this thesis is to investigate the introduction, production and sale of steel engravings in the illustrated picture books of the first half of the nineteenth century with particular reference to the publications of Henry Fisher, who began his career in Liverpool and continued it together with his son Robert in London. By looking at the processes from the initial artist's design through to its engraving and printing, and by establishing the interaction between the artist, author, publisher and engraver, this study will lead to a better understanding of both the economics and aesthetics of print production and determine the destination of these illustrated picture books by examining the relationship between the publisher and the public. Previous work on nineteenth-century topographical steel engraving has largely had a bibliographical rather than historiographical aim and has concentrated on the classification of images into regional units. Although useful these publications are not intended to be critical and do not lead to an understanding of the contextual background necessary to explain the enormous output and consumption of topographical steel-engraved books in the 1830s and 1840s. The two leading specialist topographical print-publishers were the London firms of Fisher, Son & Co. and George Virtue. The early career of Henry Fisher as a master printer of mainly religious publications issued in numbers is examined, and this study shows how his innovative marketing, selling and distribution methods led to these being adopted by others in the publishing trade. His transition from publisher of religious numbers in Liverpool to leading publisher of illustrated topographical works in London is investigated for the first time. As no records, account books or archives appear to have survived, this dissertation is based on the substantial number of illustrated travel books with steel-engraved plates that both firms produced between 1829 and 1844 as well as correspondence from Robert Fisher to the Irish artist George Petrie, in which Fisher explains some of 'the peculiarities of our business'. The two most prolific designers of illustrations for topographical picture books in this period were Thomas Allom (1804-1872) who worked for Fisher, and William Henry Bartlett (1809-1854) who worked for Virtue. Their contribution to the field of topographical book illustration has largely passed unnoticed by art historians who question whether mass produced images can be valued as art. Allom and Bartlett are usually classified as jobbing topographical artists or, at best, as architectural draughtsmen. A secondary aim of this dissertation is to offer a counterbalance to this view and show that their art was more genuinely creative than merely reproductive and moreover that their motives for doing this work were far from being similar
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