Micelle Formation and the Hydrophobic Effect

The tendency of amphiphilic molecules to form micelles in aqueous solution is a consequence of the hydrophobic effect. The fundamental difference between micelle assembly and macroscopic phase separation is the stoichiometric constraint that frustrates the demixing of polar and hydrophobic groups. We present a theory for micelle assembly that combines the account of this constraint with a description of the hydrophobic driving force. The latter arises from the length scale dependence of aqueous solvation. The theoretical predictions for temperature dependence and surfactant chain length dependence of critical micelle concentrations for nonionic surfactants agree favorably with experiment.Comment: Accepted for publication in J. Phys. Chem.

Strange Bedfellows at Work: Neomaternalism in the Making of Sex Discrimination Law

In contests about pregnancy discrimination during the 1970s, feminists, the business lobby, and anti-abortion activists disputed the meaning of sex equality. Existing scholarship has yet to take account of the dynamic interaction between these groups. This Article fills that void by analyzing the legal and political debates that resulted in the passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (“PDA”). The Article reveals how competing ideas about the family, wage work, and reproductive choice shaped the evolution of pregnancy discrimination law. Feminists, the business lobby, and anti-abortion activists drew upon two legal discourses in debating pregnancy discrimination: liberal individualism and “neomaternalism.” Each of these discourses, in turn, encompassed dual valences. Liberal individualist discourse challenged sex-role stereotypes, but it also reinforced the idea that private reproductive choice rendered reproduction a private economic responsibility. Neomaternalism leveraged the social value of motherhood to gain entitlements for pregnant women, but also reinforced the normative primacy of motherhood. Feminists’ legal goals and rhetorical frames at times overlapped with and at other times diverged from those of both the business lobby and anti-abortion activists. Feminists used liberal individualist principles of equal treatment and neutrality to challenge gender stereotypes that states and employers used to justify the exclusion of pregnancy from public and private insurance schemes. The business lobby used liberal individualist principles of private choice to advance a market libertarian interpretation of sex equality that justified the denial of pregnancy-related benefits. In opposition to the business lobby, both feminists and anti-abortion activists forged a fragile alliance. Both groups made neomaternal arguments in advocating the PDA. While feminists emphasized the value of pregnancy as a form of socially productive labor, however, anti-abortion activists stressed the need to protect pregnant women and fetuses. The points of confluence and departure between the arguments of feminists, business opponents, and anti-abortion allies both advanced sex equality under the law and also limited its scope. Feminist advocates for the PDA synthesized liberal individualist and neomaternal discourses to pursue the elimination of sex-role stereotypes under the law as well as collective societal responsibility for the costs of reproduction. While the PDA took a significant step toward the realization of this vision, it remains illusory. Our legal culture evolved to embrace not only the valences of liberal individualist and maternalist ideologies that advance sex equality but also those valences that reinforce gender inequality. Market libertarianism continues to privatize the costs of reproduction, while maternalism reinforces the sexual division of reproductive labor. Ultimately, this Article points to the persistence of tensions in the definition of sex equality and the consequent need for new legal paradigms

Factors that Influence the Synergy between Development and IT Operations in a DevOps Environment

Software development processes have been associated with severe conflicts between the development and operations teams. The problems further worsened by the occasional performance of activities such as planning, testing, integration, and releases. Many developing software development concepts reveal attempts to address these challenges. For instance, continuous integration is a practice that has emerged to reduce disconnects between development and IT operational deployments. In a comparable thread, the current emphasis on DevOps acknowledges that the integration between software development and its operational deployment needs to be a continuous whole. Problems involving the integration of software development and operations require positive synergy within DevOps teams. Team synergy brings about team effectiveness and performance as well as creating opportunities for innovation. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that influence team synergy between the development and operations teams in a DevOps environment. The researcher conducted a case study at one of South Africa's leading information and communication technology services providers. Thirteen participants were interviewed to provide insight into the research questions. Interviews were conducted at the premises of the participating organization in Cape Town. The participants in the study preferred pseudonyms instead of their actual names to preserve anonymity. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. During the analysis of the transcribed data, themes and categories were identified. The themes and categories that emerged from the data sources were aligned to the theoretical framework. The findings from this study describe enabling and inhibiting factors that influence the synergy between development and operations teams in a DevOps environment. Recognizing that DevOps teams face several challenges, the factors identified in this study provide insights into how organizations can influence the build and motivate their DevOps teams to achieve team synergy. The contribution to DevOps research is the application of a theoretical framework that suggests the importance of team social capital dimensions in the formation of team synergy. Based on its findings, this study recommends that further investigation and improvement on strategies to mitigate the factors that inhibit the dimensions of team social capital and prevent team synergy in a DevOps environment. The study also recommends a more detailed and practical demonstration to validate the value of the theoretical framework and continue to improve or extend it. This study revealed that DevOps teams operate in a complex and dynamic environment with many stakeholders and complex technical infrastructure. Based on this outcome, the study also suggests that future studies can take a different approach to create a different perspective on the synergy between DevOps teams by focusing on the behavior of the actors and complex problematic situations involving social activities

Seeking Liberty, Finding Patriarchy: The Common Law\u27s Historical Legacy

Anita Bernstein’s important new book argues that the common law might be used to advance women’s liberation. In this short essay, I analyze Bernstein’s three modes of historical analysis: redeeming the common law where it enforced oppression, recovering it when it promoted women’s rights, and facilitating its evolution toward a feminist future. I argue that Bernstein’s account, though learned and compelling, sidelines the centrality of patriarchy to the common law. Adopting the liberty of the patriarch cannot realize true freedom for women. By appropriating common law doctrines, feminists risk forging a conceptual alliance with the very ideologies that enforced gender, race, and class subordination. Women’s freedom must be realized not through patriarchy’s tools but through legal theories that stress relationship, vulnerability, and social welfare obligations

Steered Transition Path Sampling

We introduce a path sampling method for obtaining statistical properties of an arbitrary stochastic dynamics. The method works by decomposing a trajectory in time, estimating the probability of satisfying a progress constraint, modifying the dynamics based on that probability, and then reweighting to calculate averages. Because the progress constraint can be formulated in terms of occurrences of events within time intervals, the method is particularly well suited for controlling the sampling of currents of dynamic events. We demonstrate the method for calculating transition probabilities in barrier crossing problems and survival probabilities in strongly diffusive systems with absorbing states, which are difficult to treat by shooting. We discuss the relation of the algorithm to other methods.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure