Wild capitalism, privatisation and employment relations in Serbia

This paper aims to examine the phenomenom of wild capitalism under post Communist transformation. Many commentators on post Communist transformation focus their attention on dysfunctional corporate governance and the deleterious consequences of liberalisation on business ethics. Poor business ethics and bad corporate governance may be a consequence of labour exploitation for comparative advantage, and the abandonment of party authority. This allowed rapacious rent-seeking by a minority well placed to benefit from the newly de-regulated regime. A by-product is a burgeoning informal economy encouraged by insider dealing of privatised state assets. State regulation, where it exists, is often ignored. Employment relations are fragmented, with state-owned enterprises retaining some form of collective regulation, while newly privatised enterprises seek to marginalise union activity

Determination of water content using mass spectrometry

Mass spectrometer is used to measure small quantities of water present in different materials. System has been applied in measuring water and gases desorbed from microcircuitry insulation, can also be used with foods, polymeric materials, and organic solvents

Dynamic delta method for trace gas analysis

Method has been developed in which measurements are made only over viscous flow range, eliminating fractionation before the molecular leak and problems due to surface elution

On-line mass spectrometric monitoring of the polymerization of a phenolic-resin-based material

Polymerization of phenolic-resin-based materials requires elevated temperatures. The low thermal conductivity of these materials has led to the use of dielectric heating techniques in lieu of standard convection oven heating to obtain a satisfactory cure. The curing rate and therefore the quality of the cured material depends on the heating rate and maximum temperature attained, parameters which are extremely difficult to measure in dielectric heating units. The dielectric curing of these materials was monitored by using a mass spectrometer to measure the partial pressure of phenol in the gas evolved during polymerization. The resulting plots of phenol partial pressure as a function of time have a characteristic shape, and these may be used to indicate the attainment of complete curing. The validity of the mass spectrometric technique was confirmed by chemical analysis of the polymerized samples

Spectrum, trajectory and the role of the state in workers' self-management

This article examines self-management in the wider context of political economy and the role of the state. Most literature focuses either on labour process analysis or on social movement aspects of the phenomenon. Most importantly, there appears less emphasis on understanding the role of the state in shaping or reshaping practice, or the state is even eschewed as an inevitably conservative and bureaucratic independent agent. In developing our understanding, we utilise documents from Titoist Yugoslavia, and surveys and case study interviews conducted in Argentina and Venezuela. First, we examine self-management in Titoist Yugoslavia in the aftermath of the Tito–Stalin split of 1948. Self-management was a central policy of the Titoist regime as it sought to distance itself from authoritarian and bureaucratic Communism. Indeed, Yugoslavia has been used as a comparator yardstick in recent discussions of other experiments such as those in Chávez's Venezuela. To pursue this comparison, and make more sense of the role of the state and the market, we examine the particularities of the new movements for self-management and cooperative working in the contemporary Latin American arc of protest against neoliberalism, focusing on both Argentina and Venezuela. The national specificities of each of these two countries are different, with the recovered companies having emerged ‘from below’ in Argentina contrasting with the movement ‘from above’ as part of Hugo Chávez' Bolivarian Revolution and ‘Twenty First Century Socialism’ in Venezuela. In our examples, we present a model of spectrum and trajectory from which self-management can be judged within a frame of socialist transformation. We record the contextual factors which shaped the movements, and isolate the state's influence to either promote or contain them. In our conclusion, we analyse factors of continuity and change, and discuss the state's role in relation to these different episodes of workers' self-management

Platinized tin oxide catalysts for CO2 lasers: Effects of pretreatment

Platinized tin oxide surfaces used for low-temperature CO oxidation in CO2 lasers have been characterized before and after reduction in CO at 125 and 250 C using ion scattering spectroscopy (ISS) and X ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). XPS indicates that the Pt is present initially as PtO2. Reduction at 125 C converts the PtO2 to Pt(OH)2 while reduction at 250 C converts the PtO2 to metallic Pt. ISS shows that the Pt in the outermost atomic layer of the catalyst is mostly covered by substrate species during the 250 C reduction. Both the ISS and XPS results are consistent with Pt/Sn alloy formation. The surface dehydration and migration of substrate species over surface Pt and Sn appear to explain why a CO pretreatment at 250 C produces inferior CO oxidation activities compared to a 125 C pretreatment

Ten more years of discovery: revisiting the quality of the sauropodomorph dinosaur fossil record

Spatiotemporal changes in fossil specimen completeness can bias our understanding of a group's evolutionary history. The quality of the sauropodomorph fossil record was assessed a decade ago, but the number of valid species has since increased by 60%, and 17% of the taxa from that study have since undergone taxonomic revision. Here, we assess how 10 years of additional research has changed our outlook on the group's fossil record. We quantified the completeness of all 307 sauropodomorph species currently considered valid using the skeletal completeness metric, which calculates the proportion of a complete skeleton preserved for each taxon. Taxonomic and stratigraphic age revisions, rather than new species, are the drivers of the most significant differences between the current results and those of the previous assessment. No statistical differences appeared when we use our new dataset to generate temporal completeness curves based solely on taxa known in 2009 or 1999. We now observe a severe drop in mean completeness values across the Jurassic–Cretaceous boundary that never recovers to pre‐Cretaceous levels. Explaining this pattern is difficult, as we find no convincing evidence that it is related to environmental preferences or body size changes. Instead, it might result from: (1) reduction of terrestrial fossil preservation space due to sea level rise; (2) ecological specificities and relatively high diagnosability of Cretaceous species; and/or (3) increased sampling of newly explored sites with many previously unknown taxa. Revisiting patterns in this manner allows us to test the longevity of conclusions made in previous quantitative studies

Dispersal limitation and the assembly of soil Actinobacteria communities in a long‐term chronosequence

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90536/1/ECE3_210_sm_suppmat.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90536/2/ece3.210.pd

Catalyst for carbon monoxide oxidation

A catalyst is disclosed for the combination of CO and O2 to form CO2, which includes a platinum group metal (e.g., platinum); a reducable metal oxide having multiple valence states (e.g., SnO2); and a compound which can bind water to its structure (e.g., silica gel). This catalyst is ideally suited for application to high-powered pulsed, CO2 lasers operating in a sealed or closed-cycle condition