Optical conductivity of alpha-Mn

The optical constants were measured at room temperature in the photon-energy range 0.6 to 6.5 eV on evaporated thin films. Evaporation conditions were chosen that gave the alpha-Mn crystal structure with reasonably large grains. The optical conductivity was separated into intraband and interband contributions by fitting to the Drude formula at low energies. The results are anomalous in comparison to other 3d transition metals. The free-electron lifetime is exceptionally sort (in agreement with the large dc resistivity of Mn), and the interband transitions seem unusually weak at the lower energies. Possible explanations related to the complicated crystal structure of alpha-Mn are discussed

A Phenomenological Study of Balanced Leadership

The purpose of this study was to describe, interpret and analyze the experiences of six elementary principals in the Stewart district who have effectively balanced the instructional and managerial roles of the principalship. The research question for this study is: How do effective principals balance managerial tasks and instructional leadership responsibilities? By analyzing these experiences, principals would be able to provide valuable insights into principal\u27s needs and feelings about instructional leadership. This study centers around six elementary principals that provided information regarding the skills needed to become an instructional leader and their interpretation of experiences that contributed to their development as a successful instructional leader. This qualitative research study using phenomenology methods focused on research questions about principals\u27 feelings, knowledge, and actions around how to balance managerial duties and instructional leadership practices. Several interviews and a shadowing of each participant gave principals the opportunity to identify instructional leadership strategies used to create a successful learning environment. The researcher conducted, recorded, transcribed, and evaluated the interviews with selected elementary principals. Principals participated in a shadowing activity also. The researcher analyzed the results for repeating themes regarding problems and potential solutions to achieve balance between management and instructional leadership among interviewed principals. The study used the results of principal interview data and the shadowing data to determine the balance between managerial and instructional responsibilities. Several emerging themes surfaced from this study. The emerging themes included principals having a teaching background, collaboration, setting goals and planning, prioritizing instructional tasks, arranging meetings before and after school, possessing knowledge of teaching and learning, providing data analysis from central office, providing differentiated professional development and providing additional office personnel when needed. The principals in this study were applying several successful strategies: They fostered a school culture that valued shared leadership, group responsibility, and teacher professionalism. Principals prioritized their work and time to create opportunities for instructional leadership (Boris-Schacter& Lange, 2005, p. 33). Principals used the following universal strategies to balance managerial tasks and instructional responsibilities restructuring schedules, delegating tasks, prioritizing time and work to create opportunities for instructional leadership, hiring people who are open-minded and flexible, fostering a school culture that values shared leadership group responsibility, and teacher professionalism. Each participant provided insights in ways to balance leadership in a productive climate

The World Is Upside Down : Women\u27s Participation in Religious Movements in Mozambique

In recent years, new Pentecostal-style churches have proliferated around the world. Expanding at astonishing rates in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, the growth of Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches has shifted the global center of gravity of Christianity from the West to the global South. This dissertation takes a new approach to studying the impacts of such powerful new religious developments. Rather than study a single type of religious group, the study follows women, the striking majority of participants in Pentecostal churches and in emergent forms of “traditional” religion, through new networks of spiritual healing. Drawing on over ten years of personal connections and more than three years of ethnographic field research in central Mozambique, this dissertation examines the dynamics of these religious developments in the lives of women participants, providing a view into how larger forces associated with globalization differentially impact women. Central to the dissertation is an illustration of how, through participation in new networks of religious and spiritual healing, women are creating and adopting new strategies to cope with increasing strain in their daily lives

Shuffle on array languages generated by array grammars

Motivated by the studies done by G. Siromoney et al. (1973) and Alexan- dru Mateescu et al. (1998) we examine the language theoretic results related to shuf- fle on trajectories by making use of Siromoney array grammars such as (R : R)AG, (R : C F )AG, (C F : R)AG, (C F : C F )AG, (C S : R)AG, (C S : C S)AG and (C F : C S)AG which are more powerful than the Siromoney matrix grammars (1972) and are used to make digital pictures

Optical conductivity of amorphous Ta and beta-Ta films

Tantalum films evaporated in high vacuum onto liquid-nitrogen-cooled substrates had an amorphous structure that persisted even after warming to room temperature. The optical conductivity (as well as the dc conductivity) of the amorphous films differed significantly from that of the bcc films

Velocity measurement during evaporation of seeded, sessile drops on heated surfaces

This paper was presented at the 2nd Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2009), which was held at Brunel University, West London, UK. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, IPEM, the Italian Union of Thermofluid dynamics, the Process Intensification Network, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.Evaporation of sessile drops has been studied extensively in an attempt to understand the effect of wetting on the evaporation process. Recently interest has also increased in the deposition of particles from such drops, with evaporative mass flux being deemed to be responsible for ring-like deposits and Marangoni convection counteracting this mass flux explaining more uniform deposition patterns. Understanding of such deposition processes is important in ink-jet printing and other micro-scale deposition technologies, where the nature of deposition can have a dramatic effect on the quality or effectiveness of the finished product. In most cases where deposition from evaporating drops has been studied, velocity information is inferred from the final deposition pattern or from mathematical modeling based on simplified models of the physics of the evaporation process. In this study we have directly measured the flow velocities in the base of sessile drops, using micro-PIV, viewing the drop from below, through the cover slide. The images obtained have also enabled us to observe the formation of holes in the liquid film during the latter stages of evaporation

Suboptimal eye movements for seeing fine details.

Human eyes are never stable, even during attempts of maintaining gaze on a visual target. Considering transient response characteristics of retinal ganglion cells, a certain amount of motion of the eyes is required to efficiently encode information and to prevent neural adaptation. However, excessive motion of the eyes leads to insufficient exposure to the stimuli, which creates blur and reduces visual acuity. Normal miniature eye movements fall in between these extremes, but it is unclear if they are optimally tuned for seeing fine spatial details. We used a state-of-the-art retinal imaging technique with eye tracking to address this question. We sought to determine the optimal gain (stimulus/eye motion ratio) that corresponds to maximum performance in an orientation-discrimination task performed at the fovea. We found that miniature eye movements are tuned but may not be optimal for seeing fine spatial details

Outer independent square free detour number of a graph

For a connected graph , a set  of vertices is called an outer independent square free detour set if   is a square free detour set of  such that either  or is an independent set. The minimum cardinality of an outer independent square free detour set of  is called an outer independent square free detour number of  and is denoted by  We determine the outer independent square free detour number of some graphs. We characterize the graph which realizes the result that for any pair of integers  and  with there exists a connected graph  of order  with square free detour number and outer independent square free detour number