A Thousand Splendid Guns: Chinese ASCMs in Competitive Control

Implementing distributed lethality, developing antiship cruise missile programs, and acquiring affordable small- to medium-sized surface combatants—constituting a revival of antisurface warfare capability from near zero—must be a priority for the U.S. Navy in the Pacific

The Growth of Part-Time Employment in the Service Sector: Employer Rationales and Trade Union Implications

This research project set out to examine the factors determining the growth of part-time labour in the service sector in Great Britain and to consider the industrial implications of this growth. It is argued that the appropriate theoretical framework for analysing the demand for this form of labour starts from the position that managements labour use decisions are influenced, but not exclusively determined by, the range of products or service to be delivered and the nature of the production technology chosen. Given these decisions, how work is actually allocated and the mix of labour forms employed will be shaped by the economic environment within which the organisation operates; the constraints on labour utilisation applying within the organisation; and the labour supply conditions it experiences. The fact that each organisation is a physical entity shaped by its development and past decisions on technology, product lines, managerial styles, and so on, will ensure that even when these environmental factors apparently leave little room for manoeuvre organisations will not react uniformly across sectors or industries. Labour use decisions are not simply constrained by exogenous factors but also shaped by these internal considerations

Acculturation, Family Variables, and Cognition of a Subgroup of American Indian Children Ages 3-9

A study was conducted to examine the relationship between specific family variables and measures of cognitive abilities for preschool and young school-aged children of an American Indian ancestry. More specifically, the study used two cognitive measures, the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children and the Embedded Figures Test, and examined the influence that 23 family variables and cultural background (acculturation) had on measures of spatial abilities. Past studies suggested that American Indian children, as a group, perform above the standardization sample on measures of visual-spatial skills, have higher simultaneous processing skills, and are more field independent. It was anticipated that at least 40% of the children tested in this study would have statistically significant discrepancy scores in favor of the Simultaneous Scale and have an effect size of .40 or above on subtests reported to measure visual-spatial skills. It was further hypothesized that the children of this study would be more field independent (reach an effect size of .67 or higher) and that the Embedded Figures Tests would have correlations of r = .50 or above with the total Simultaneous Scale, Magic Windows, Gestalt Closure, Triangles, and Spatial Memory. Results found that 40% of this sample did not obtain significant discrepancy scores, and only Gestalt Closure for the preschool children and Spatial Memory for the school-aged children reached an effect size of .40. In addition, only school-aged children were considered more field independent, and field independence was associated with the total Simultaneous Scale, the Mental processing Composite, the Achievement Scale, and the following subtests: Triangles, Arithmetic, and Reading/Understanding. A principal component analysis was conducted to determine the factor structure of the Acculturation Scale (the Rosebud Personal Opinion Survey). This analysis found that the survey lacked empirical support for the dimensions suggested by the authors and only the first component, Language-Ancestry, was a useful indicator of acculturation. Nine family variables and the Language-Ancestry component were used as independent variables and accounted for or predicted the visual-spatial scores of American Indian children. None of the variables used reached a significance level of p ≤ .005

Enterprise Social Networking Sites and Knowledge Sharing Intentions in Virtual Teams

The use of virtual teams have become an essential component for successful organizations competing in the global marketplace. Virtual teams are formed to leverage various expertise throughout the organization, yet a challenge facing these teams is knowledge sharing. This is often due to the lack of trust and reciprocity which is traditionally formed during initial face-to-face interactions. The current research explores how the use of an Enterprise Social Networks (ESN) acts as an alternative to FtF interactions allowing individuals to form perceptions of future team members without meeting. Through the use of the Elaboration Likelihood Model, this study proposes exploring the formation of social capital perceptions through the use of ESN profiles. These perceptions are then evaluated to understand their impact on knowledge sharing intention within the team. The goal of this research is to understand how an ESN can help alleviate issues surrounding knowledge sharing in virtual teams

Anomalous Cosmic Rays

Anomalous cosmic rays (ACRs) first started showing up in observations 40 years ago. Within a few years a paradigm was developed to explain their origin: they begin their life as interstellar neutral atoms that drift into the heliosphere, become singly ionized by chargeexchange with a solar wind ion or by photoionization, are picked up by the expanding solar wind, and accelerated to the observed energies by diffusive shock acceleration at the solar wind termination shock. This paradigm became widely accepted and withstood the tests of further observations until 16 December 2004, when Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock and didn't find their source. In August 2007, Voyager 2 crossed the termination shock and also did not find the source location of ACRs. Clearly, the source location was not at the termination shock where the two Voyagers crossed. Alternative models have been proposed with acceleration elsewhere on the shock or by other acceleration processes in the heliosheath. We discuss the latest observations of ACRs from the Voyager spacecraft and hopefully shed more light on this ongoing puzzle

Transverse vibrations of a thin rectangular porous plate saturated by a fluid

International audienceA simple model of the transverse vibrations of a thin rectangular porous plate saturated by a fluid is proposed. The model is based on the classical theory of homogeneous plates and on Biot's stress}strain relations in an isotropic porous medium with a uniform porosity. Two coupled dynamic equations of equilibrium relating the plate detection and the fluid/solid relative displacement are found and their physical interpretation is given. The energy dissipation by viscous friction is included in the model. An approximate calculation of the natural frequencies of vibration is given for rigid plates with various boundary conditions at the edges. The influence of porosity, tortuosity and permeability on the resonances is studied and a condition of maximum damping involving these parameters is given

Situation Normality and the Shape of Search: The Effects of Time Delays and Information Presentation on Search Behavior

Delays have become one of the most often cited complaints of web users. Long delays often cause users to abandon their searches, but how do tolerable delays affect information search behavior? Intuitively, we would expect that tolerable delays should induce decreased information search. We conducted two experiments and found that as delay increased, a point occurs at which time within-page information search increases; that is, search behavior remained the same until a tipping point occurs where delay increases the depth of search. We argue that situation normality explains this phenomenon; users have become accustomed to tolerable delays up to a point (our research suggests between 7 and 11 s), after which search behavior changes. That is, some delay is expected, but as delay becomes noticeable but not long enough to cause the abandonment of search, an increase occurs in the “stickiness” of webpages such that users examine more information on each page before moving to new pages. The net impact of tolerable delays was counterintuitive: tolerable delays had no impact on the total amount of data searched in the first experiment, but induced users to examine more data points in the second experiment

Voyager 2 Observations of Plasma and Pressure Pulses

This paper provides the latest data from Voyager 2 on plasma characteristics in the heliosheath including the observations of pressure waves in the plasma and particle data. Models and observations show that solar transients drive pressure waves through the heliosphere. Pressure pulses that could drive heliosheath waves are observed near the previous solar maximum upstream of the termination shock. We show that the most recent data is consistent with the presence of pressure waves and compare the heliosheath waves with the pressure increases in the heliosheath. The magnetic field is better correlated with density and galactic cosmic ray intensities in the supersonic solar wind than in the heliosheath. The galactic cosmic rays are correlated with the plasma and particles with a ~30-day lag in both the supersonic wind and heliosheath

Radio Astronomy

Contains research objectives and reports on three research projects.U. S. Navy (Office of Naval Research) under Contract Nonr- 3963(02)-Task 2National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NsG-264-62)National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NsG-250-62)National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Contract NaSr-l01