The Effect of Compositional Tailoring on the Thermal Expansion and Tribological Properties of PS300: A Solid Lubricant Composite Coating

This paper describes a research program in which the goal is to alter the thermal expansion coefficient of a composite solid lubricant coating, PS300, by compositional tailoring. PS300 is a plasma sprayed coating consisting of chrome oxide, silver and barium fluoride/calcium fluoride eutectic in NiCr binder. By adjusting the composition, the thermal expansion coefficient can be altered, and hence chosen, to more closely match a selected substrate preventing coating spallation at extreme temperatures. Thermal expansion coefficients (CTE) for a variety of compositions were measured from 25 to 800 C using a commercial dilatometer. The CTE's ranged from 7.0 to 13 x lO(exp -6)/deg C depending on the binder content. Subsequent tribological testing of a modified composition indicated that friction and wear properties were relatively insensitive to compositional tailoring

624 Evolution of

grid computing architecture and grid adoption models During recent years, we have witnessed a major paradigm shift in distributed computing principles, with a focus towards service orientation, open standards integration, collaboration, and virtualization. One particular area of interest centers on the evolution of grid computing principles into the mainstream of distributed computing and Web services. In this paper, we focus our analysis on this evolution and the significance of achieving some form of standardization of gridcomputing architecture principles. This paper presents the technology standards that are driving major grid initiatives and explains in simple terms how these standards and technologies are aligned with the IBM on demand business concepts. In addition, we discuss the recent Web services specifications related to stateful resources (i.e., resources whose behavior is defined with respect to their underlying state) and how these standards relate to grid computing. We conclude with discussions exploring major aspects of grid-computing adoption models and some significant attributes that influence the transformation, collaboration, and virtualization features of these models. A distributed system consists of a set of software agents that work together to implement some intended functionality. Because the agents in a distributed system do not operate in a uniform processing environment, they must communicate by protocol stacks that are intrinsically less reliable than direct code invocation and shared memory. Grid-comput

The Role of Culture and Gender in E-commerce Entrepreneurship: Three Jordanian Case Studies

The number of entrepreneurs using e-commerce to start their own online business up is continuously growing. In this chapter, the current literature on e-commerce entrepreneurship is reviewed and attention is paid to the situation in Jordan, a representative Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) country. In particular, our focus is on the role of culture and gender on local potential, nascent and new e-entrepreneurs. Three Jordan case studies are presented (ZINC, Oasis500 and CashBasha), showing an increased attention and support for entrepreneurship in general, and e-entrepreneurship in particular, in Jordan. In addition, some special programs are aimed at promoting women e-entrepreneurship, since it is seen as a way to overcome some of the cultural barriers to female entrepreneurial activity

Construction and performance of the PHENIX pad chambers

We present the Pad Chamber detector system in the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The three station system provides space points along each track in the spectrometer arms at mid-rapidity and covers a total area of 88 m(2). Its main functions are to provide the track coordinate along the beam and to ensure reliable pattern recognition at very high particle multiplicity. A new concept for two dimensional wire chamber readout via its finely segmented cathode was developed. The full readout system, comprising 172 800 electronic channels, is described together with the challenging design of the chambers. The electronics, mounted on the outer chamber face, together with the chamber itself amounts to 1.2% of a radiation length. Results from cosmic ray tests, showing an average efficiency better than 99.5% for all chambers are presented. The experiences from the full scale operation in the first run are reported. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved