A Comparison of The Personal Property Tax Burden of Five Separate Groups of Business In Norton County

The subject of this thesis, A Comparison of the Personal Property tax burden of Five Separate Groups of Business in Norton County , was selected after much consideration and investigation. The purpose of the investigation is to find to what extent the personal property tax burden is borne by business and what group bears the heaviest burden. The first four chapters of this thesis cover materiel and data considered essential in discussing the problem of personal property tax burden of business in the state as it might be expected to affect Norton County. These chapters lay the background concerning the wealth of the several counties selected, the general trends in taxation in the state, and the data covering the general business of the five selected groups of business. Five principal groups of business have been selected as the basis of this thesis because of the completeness of the obtainable information. Seventy counties picked at random beginning at the north edge of Kansas and omitting every other tier of counties were selected as being a cross section of the entire business activity in the State. Certain other counties were included representing vital trade centers having larger cities and unusual importance in business. Adjoining counties were included in several instances because a large portion of the city\u27s population lived in the neighboring county or counties. These seventy counties represented two-thirds of the total counties of the state. The population of these counties represented 55 .4 per cent of the total population in the state. The sales in the seventy counties were equal to 81.31 per cent of the total sales for the entire state. The five groups of business operated 73.0 per cent of the stores in the state. The percentages indicate a cross section of the business activity in the selected counties during the year 1935

The reinforcement of polymeric structures by asbestos fibrils Final report, 1 Apr. 1965 - 30 Apr. 1966

Dispersion techniques for asbestos fibril reinforcement of polymeric structures, and tensile strength data on reinforced composite

Laser-induced persistent photovoltage on the surface of a ternary topological insulator at room temperature

Using time- and angle-resolved photoemission, we investigate the ultrafast response of excited electrons in the ternary topological insulator (Bi$_{1 x}$Sb$_{x}$)$_2$Te$_3$ to fs-infrared pulses. We demonstrate that at the critical concentration $x$=0.55, where the system becomes bulk insulating, a surface voltage can be driven at room temperature through the topological surface state solely by optical means. We further show that such a photovoltage persists over a time scale that exceeds $\sim$6 $\mu$s, i.e, much longer than the characteristic relaxation times of bulk states. We attribute the origin of the photovoltage to a laser-induced band-bending effect which emerges near the surface region on ultrafast time scales. The photovoltage is also accompanied by a remarkable increase in the relaxation times of excited states as compared to undoped topological insulators. Our findings are relevant in the context of applications of topological surface states in future optical devices.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

From natural history to science: display and the transformation of American museums of science and nature

This paper explains how and why many American museums of science and nature moved away from the traditional content and methods of natural history in the period from 1930 to 1980. It explores diverse motivations for the shift from dead, stuffed displays to live, interactive exhibits, and the consequences of that shift for museums as both educational institutions and as institutions of research. Ultimately, it argues that debates over museums’ content and display strategies drew strength from and reinforced a profound transformation in the institutional history of twentieth-century American science and technology: namely, the separation of research and public education. By the late 1960s, the American museum landscape had been transformed by this development. Older natural history museums competed for visitors and resources with ‘new’ style science museums, and although both remained popular cultural institutions, neither had achieved a coherent new institutional identity because debates about the role of the museum in science continued. Thus, we suggest, in the mid-twentieth century natural history and science museums were more important in both the history of biology and the history of science’s public culture than has previously been acknowledged

A Systematic Review of Ecological and Production Outcomes under Rest-Grazing Systems

With increasing pressure on grazing lands throughout the world, there is a growing need to balance sustainable management of livestock to meet food production and environmental impacts. Grazing management practices that incorporate periods of planned rest between grazing events (RG) may achieve both ecological and production goals simultaneously. We conducted a systematic review of global literature that compared ecological and production outcomes of RG systems with either continuously grazed (CG) or ungrazed (UG) areas. In addition, we evaluated the extent to which ecological and livestock production outcomes have been assessed simultaneously in these studies and identified future research needs. A large proportion of the literature reported no difference (neutral response) between the different management systems. However, where differences did occur, the response of biodiversity, land condition and livestock production metrics was more often positive under RG than CG. When RG was compared to UG areas, differences were predominantly positive for plant biodiversity metrics, but negative for invertebrate biodiversity, ground cover and plant biomass. Only a small proportion of studies considered the effect of RG on both ecological and production outcomes simultaneously. An understanding of both ecological and production trade-offs associated with different grazing management strategies is essential to make informed decisions about best-management practices for joint production and ecological outcomes across the world’s grazing lands

Ultrafast spin polarization control of Dirac fermions in topological insulators

Three-dimensional topological insulators (TIs) are characterized by spin-polarized Dirac-cone surface states that are protected from backscattering by time-reversal symmetry. Control of the spin polarization of topological surface states (TSSs) using femtosecond light pulses opens novel perspectives for the generation and manipulation of dissipationless surface spin currents on ultrafast timescales. Using time-, spin-, and angle-resolved spectroscopy, we directly monitor for the first time the ultrafast response of the spin polarization of photoexcited TSSs to circularly-polarized femtosecond pulses of infrared light. We achieve all-optical switching of the transient out-of-plane spin polarization, which relaxes in about 1.2 ps. Our observations establish the feasibility of ultrafast optical control of spin-polarized Dirac fermions in TIs and pave the way for novel optospintronic applications at ultimate speeds.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Dead Angles of Personalization, Integrating Curation Algorithms in the Fabric of Design

International audienceThe amount of information available on the web is too vast for individuals to be able to process it all. To cope with this issue, digital platforms started relying on algorithms to curate, filter and recommend content to their users. This problem has generally been envisioned from a technical perspective, as an optimization issue and has been mostly untouched by design considerations. Through 16 interviews with daily users of platforms, we analyze how curation algorithms influence their daily experience and the strategies they use to try to adapt them to their own needs. Based on these empirical findings, we propose a set of four speculative design alternatives to explore how we can integrate curation algorithms as part of the larger fabric of design on the web. By exploring interactions to counter the binary nature of curation algorithms, their uniqueness, their anti-historicity and their implicit data collection, we provide tools to bridge the current divide between curation algorithms and people

Topological surface state under graphene for two-dimensional spintronics in air

Spin currents which allow for a dissipationless transport of information can be generated by electric fields in semiconductor heterostructures in the presence of a Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling. The largest Rashba effects occur for electronic surface states of metals but these cannot exist but under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. Here, we reveal a giant Rashba effect ({\alpha}_R ~ 1.5E-10 eVm) on a surface state of Ir(111). We demonstrate that its spin splitting and spin polarization remain unaffected when Ir is covered with graphene. The graphene protection is, in turn, sufficient for the spin-split surface state to survive in ambient atmosphere. We discuss this result along with evidences for a topological protection of the surface state.Comment: includes supplementary informatio

Mechanically switchable polymer fibers for sensing in biological conditions

The area of in vivo sensing using optical fibers commonly uses materials such as silica and polymethyl methacrylate, both of which possess much higher modulus than human tissue. The mechanical mismatch between materials and living tissue has been seen to cause higher levels of glial encapsulation, scarring, and inflammation, leading to failure of the implanted medical device. We present the use of a fiber made from polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) for use as an implantable sensor as it is an easy to work with functionalized polymer that undergoes a transition from rigid to soft when introduced to water. This ability to switch from stiff to soft reduces the severity of the immune response. The fabricated PVA fibers labeled with fluorescein for sensing applications showed excellent response to various stimuli while exhibiting mechanical switchability. For the dry fibers, a tensile storage modulus of 4700 MPa was measured, which fell sharply to 145 MPa upon wetting. The fibers showed excellent response to changing pH levels, producing values that were detectable in a range consistent with those seen in the literature and in proposed applications. The results show that these mechanically switchable fibers are a viable option for future sensing applications