Firm Size and R&D Intensity: A Re-Examination

Using data from the Federal Trade Commission's Line of Business Program and survey measures of technological opportunity and appropriability conditions, this paper finds that overall firm size has a very small, statistically in- significant effect on business unit R & D intensity when either fixed industry effects or measured industry characteristics are taken into account. Business unit size has no effect on the R & D intensity of business units that perform R & D, but it affects the probability of conducting R & D. Business unit and firm size jointly explain less than one per cent of the variance in R & D intensity; industry effects explain nearly half the variance.

Rapidly reconfigurable optically induced photonic crystals in hot rubidium vapor

Through periodic index modulation, we create two different types of photonic structures in a heated rubidium vapor for controlled reflection, transmission and diffraction of light. The modulation is achieved through the use of the AC Stark effect resulting from a standing-wave control field. The periodic intensity structures create translationally invariant index profiles analogous to photonic crystals in spectral regions of steep dispersion. Experimental results are consistent with modeling.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Formal design specification of a Processor Interface Unit

This report describes work to formally specify the requirements and design of a processor interface unit (PIU), a single-chip subsystem providing memory-interface bus-interface, and additional support services for a commercial microprocessor within a fault-tolerant computer system. This system, the Fault-Tolerant Embedded Processor (FTEP), is targeted towards applications in avionics and space requiring extremely high levels of mission reliability, extended maintenance-free operation, or both. The need for high-quality design assurance in such applications is an undisputed fact, given the disastrous consequences that even a single design flaw can produce. Thus, the further development and application of formal methods to fault-tolerant systems is of critical importance as these systems see increasing use in modern society

Of Persons and Property: The Politics of Legal Taxonomy

To talk of law without politics or history is nonsensical. All lawyers must concede that what they do takes place in historical circumstances and has political consequences. Every piece of law-making and law-application is a governmental act; it relies on political authority and claims binding force. Moreover, all legal activity occurs within a particular historical context; it is intended to respond to or influence a past, existing or anticipated state of affairs. This means that the study of law must concern itself with politics and history generally: it must not confine itself to only the politics and history of law. To do otherwise would be to distort and trivialise any understanding of law. Within such a broad political and historical appreciation, the focus of enquiry is not so much on \u27law\u27 as on \u27law-government\u27 because the idea of law without government is almost oxymoronic.1 Law is not only a symbol and act of power; it is also a major component of the social context in which those symbols and acts of power acquire meaning, significance and effect

The Schwinger mechanism and graphene

The Schwinger mechanism, the production of charged particle-antiparticle pairs in a macroscopic external electric field, is derived for 2+1 dimensional theories. The rate of pair production per unit area for four species of massless fermions, with charge $q$, in a constant electric field $E$ is given by $\pi^{-2} \hbar^{-3/2} \tilde{c}^{-1/2} (q E)^{3/2}$ where $\tilde{c}$ is the speed of light for the two-dimensional system. To the extent undoped graphene behaves like the quantum field-theoretic vacuum for massless fermions in 2+1 dimensions, the Schwinger mechanism should be testable experimentally. A possible experimental configuration for this is proposed. Effects due to deviations from this idealized picture of graphene are briefly considered. It is argued that with present day samples of graphene, tests of the Schwinger formula may be possible.Comment: Extensive revisions. The distinction between the vacuum decay rate and the pair production rate in the Schwinger mechanism is now stressed. The discussion of quality of sample needed for a viable experimental test has been significantly expanded. References adde

Of Persons and Property: The Politics of Legal Taxonomy

To talk of law without politics or history is nonsensical. All lawyers must concede that what they do takes place in historical circumstances and has political consequences. Every piece of law-making and law-application is a governmental act, it relies on political authority and claims binding force. Moreover, all legal activity occurs within a particular historical context, it is intended to respond to or influence a past, existing or anticipated state of affairs. This means that the study of law must concern itself with politics and history generally: it must not confine itself to only the politics and history of law. To do otherwise would be to distort and trivialize any understanding of law. Within such a broad political and historical appreciation, the focus of inquiry is not so much on \u27law\u27 as on \u27law-government\u27 because the idea of law without government is almost oxymoronic. Law is not only a symbol and act of power, it is also a major component of the social context in which those symbols and acts of power acquire meaning, significance and effect