1,904 research outputs found
Fiduciary Principles: Corporate Responsibilities to Stakeholders
The recent corporate scandals and financial crisis has increased demand for accountability in business decisions. Corporate governance reform initiatives designed to increase financial disclosure and responsibility are insufficient to rebuild public trust in business. Corporate boards and officers must comply with the legal norms to which they are already subject; as fiduciaries they have duties of care, loyalty and good faith. This article examines modern fiduciary duties that currently govern corporate conduct and thus severely limit corporate responsibility. Revisiting the historical and religious origins of fiduciaries that shaped the ethical and moral duties gives insight into the true role of a fiduciary. We propose a new, well-defined definition of fiduciary duties that could offer corporate managers guidance in developing new stakeholder relationships
Non-Newtonian and flow pulsatility effects in simulation models of a stented intracranial aneurysm
Permission to redistribute provided by publishers.Three models of different stent designs implanted in a cerebral aneurysm, originating from the Virtual Intracranial Stenting Challenge'07, are meshed and the flow characteristics simulated using commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software in order to investigate the effects of non-Newtonian viscosity and pulsatile flow. Conventional mass inflow and wall shear stress (WSS) output are used as a means of comparing the cfd simulations. In addition, a WSS distribution is presented, which clearly discriminates in favour of the stent design identified by other groups. It is concluded that non-Newtonian and pulsatile effects are important to include in order to avoid underestimating wss, to understand dynamic flow effects, and to discriminate more effectively between stent designs. © Authors 2011
Effect of surface roughness on friction behaviour of steel under boundary lubrication
The friction behaviour of grinded and polished surfaces was evaluated by using a reciprocal sliding tester under lubrication with PAO, PAO + ZnDTP and PAO + ZnDTP + MoDTC. Friction coefficients on the smooth surfaces showed higher values compared to those on the rough surfaces. For lubrication incorporating PAO and PAO + ZnDTP + MoDTC, friction coefficients on both the smoothest and the roughest surfaces decreased with sliding time. On the other hand, friction coefficients between these extremes decreased with sliding time. In this paper, the effects of surface roughness on friction behaviour are discussed
- and -spin relaxation time limitations of phosphorous donor electrons near crystalline silicon to silicon dioxide interface defects
A study of donor electron spins and spin--dependent electronic transitions
involving phosphorous (P) atoms in proximity of the (111) oriented
crystalline silicon (c-Si) to silicon dioxide (SiO) interface is
presented for [P] = 10 and [P] =
10 at about liquid He temperatures (
). Using pulsed electrically detected magnetic
resonance (pEDMR), spin--dependent transitions between the \Phos donor state
and two distinguishable interface states are observed, namely (i) \Pb centers
which can be identified by their characteristic anisotropy and (ii) a more
isotropic center which is attributed to E defects of the \sio bulk
close to the interface. Correlation measurements of the dynamics of
spin--dependent recombination confirm that previously proposed transitions
between \Phos and the interface defects take place. The influence of these
electronic near--interface transitions on the \Phos donor spin coherence time
as well as the donor spin--lattice relaxation time is then
investigated by comparison of spin Hahn--echo decay measurements obtained from
conventional bulk sensitive pulsed electron paramagnetic resonance and surface
sensitive pEDMR, as well as surface sensitive electrically detected inversion
recovery experiments. The measurements reveal that both and of
\Phos donor electrons spins in proximity of energetically lower interface
states at K are reduced by several orders of magnitude
Nonlinearity-assisted quantum tunneling in a matter-wave interferometer
We investigate the {\em nonlinearity-assisted quantum tunneling} and
formation of nonlinear collective excitations in a matter-wave interferometer,
which is realised by the adiabatic transformation of a double-well potential
into a single-well harmonic trap. In contrast to the linear quantum tunneling
induced by the crossing (or avoided crossing) of neighbouring energy levels,
the quantum tunneling between different nonlinear eigenstates is assisted by
the nonlinear mean-field interaction. When the barrier between the wells
decreases, the mean-field interaction aids quantum tunneling between the ground
and excited nonlinear eigenstates. The resulting {\em non-adiabatic evolution}
depends on the input states. The tunneling process leads to the generation of
dark solitons, and the number of the generated dark solitons is highly
sensitive to the matter-wave nonlinearity. The results of the numerical
simulations of the matter-wave dynamics are successfully interpreted with a
coupled-mode theory for multiple nonlinear eigenstates.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, accept for publication in J. Phys.
MMTF: The Maryland-Magellan Tunable Filter
This paper describes the Maryland-Magellan Tunable Filter (MMTF) on the
Magellan-Baade 6.5-meter telescope. MMTF is based on a 150-mm clear aperture
Fabry-Perot (FP) etalon that operates in low orders and provides transmission
bandpass and central wavelength adjustable from ~5 to ~15 A and from ~5000 to
over ~9200 A, respectively. It is installed in the Inamori Magellan Areal
Camera and Spectrograph (IMACS) and delivers an image quality of ~0.5" over a
field of view of 27' in diameter (monochromatic over ~10'). This versatile and
easy-to-operate instrument has been used over the past three years for a wide
variety of projects. This paper first reviews the basic principles of FP
tunable filters, then provides a detailed description of the hardware and
software associated with MMTF and the techniques developed to observe with this
instrument and reduce the data. The main lessons learned in the course of the
commissioning and implementation of MMTF are highlighted next, before
concluding with a brief outlook on the future of MMTF and of similar facilities
which are soon coming on line.Comment: 38 pages, 12 figures, 3 tables, now accepted for publication to the
Astronomical Journa
Mechanism, dynamics, and biological existence of multistability in a large class of bursting neurons
Multistability, the coexistence of multiple attractors in a dynamical system,
is explored in bursting nerve cells. A modeling study is performed to show that
a large class of bursting systems, as defined by a shared topology when
represented as dynamical systems, is inherently suited to support
multistability. We derive the bifurcation structure and parametric trends
leading to multistability in these systems. Evidence for the existence of
multirhythmic behavior in neurons of the aquatic mollusc Aplysia californica
that is consistent with our proposed mechanism is presented. Although these
experimental results are preliminary, they indicate that single neurons may be
capable of dynamically storing information for longer time scales than
typically attributed to nonsynaptic mechanisms.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figure
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