The effect of mass transport on deposit quality in copper electrowinning

Roughness and nodulation of copper electrodeposits depend strongly on mass transfer conditions of copper ions to the electrode surface. Mass transfer properties in electrowinning electrolytes were first characterized. The effective diffusivity of cupric ion was measured with a rotating disk electrode in CuSO4-H2SO4 electrolytes at temperatures relevant to electrowinning, with and without additives. Adding 20 mg L-1 of chloride ion increased the measured diffusion coefficient, but commercial smoothing additives had little effect. An empirical formula to predict cupric diffusivity was generated for later use in mass transport modeling. Boundary layer thickness information for commercial cells was taken from the literature. The rotating cylinder Hull cell (RCHC) was then used to produce copper deposits with similar boundary layer thicknesses. The current distribution was calculated with a finite element method and a Fourier series. Nodulation appears at 20-50% of the limiting current density, and this was termed the permissible current density. The amount of nodulation, as well as surface roughness, increases with increasing current density. The simulated air sparged cell enabled current densities 2-3 times higher than the conventional electrowinning cell while still producing smooth deposits. Pulsed plating with three rectangular waveforms was also examined A pulse-rest waveform with a 50% duty cycle gave a finer deposit morphology. Pulse-reverse and pulse-rest-reverse waveforms were also used but were inferior to the pulse-rest deposits. Addition of a smoothing additive, Hydrostar 10, significantly reduced the amount of nodulation, but did not completely suppress it --Abstract, p. i

Surface study of the (100) and (010) faces of the quasicrystalapproximant Al4(Cr, Fe)

Low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) results are used to study the pseudo-6-fold nature of the (100) surface of the orthorhombic quasicrystal approximant Al4(Cr, Fe). LEED patterns are also presented from the pseudo-10-fold (010) surface of this material. In each case the results are compared with the known bulk structure of this complex metallic alloy

Understanding how organizations operate their IT capacity-management processes

There is a lack of understanding of how organizations operate their IT capacity-management processes. Within the body of literature on IT capacity-management there is an abundance of advice for organizations on how to set up or run the processes for IT capacity-management, but very little in the way of describing the processes as performed and operated in organizations out in the field. Using qualitative methods this research sought to gain an understanding of how organizations are operating their IT capacity-management processes in the field. A dozen subjects from 10 organizations were interviewed and the data were analyzed with a grounded theory approach. Cloud computing was found to be a disruptive technology providing the occasion for major changes in the structures of IT capacity-management. The differences in these structures were expressed through an IT capacity-management structures spectrum. The relative relationships between the roles in these structures as plotted along this spectrum were found to have the IT capacity-management role migrate from mediator, to directly linked to the data center, to largely absent. The results provide the IT capacity-management field and managers in IT a starting point from which to shape career development and organizational change management efforts as an organization migrates from a classic structure to a cloud structure

The Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act: Do We Really Want to Return to American Banana?

It keeps getting worse and worse. Over the past three and a half decades, the Supreme Court has made countless changes to substantive antitrust doctrine, making successful assertion of an antitrust claim more and more difficult. We have known for at least a century—at least since the Standard Oil decision—that the language in section 1 of the Sherman Act, providing that “every contract, combination . . . , or conspiracy, in restraint of trade . . . , is declared to be illegal” is not to be read literally. “Every” does not mean “every.” It means only “some”—generally, only those restraints of trade which are “unreasonable.” The procedural obstacles facing a plaintiff even hoping for its day in court, to attempt to prove the harms it suffered from a defendant’s anti-competitive behavior, have also gotten much higher. Section 4 of the Clayton Act provides that “any person who shall be injured in his business or property by reason of anything forbidden in the antitrust laws may sue therefor . . . and shall recover threefold the damages by him sustained . . . .” But we know that this language is also not to be taken literally. Once again, “any” only means “some.” There are numerous limitations with respect to the persons who may sue, including in particular requirements for showing standing and antitrust injury

Professional Activities and the Antitrust Laws

Few subjects in international law raise such incorrigible conflicts of interest as the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction in the antitrust context. As one commentator asked with respect to a U.S. court\u27s assertion of jurisdiction over British defendants, [h]ow could American law, how could an American judgment applying American law possibly vary the rights and obligations created by an English contract to be performed outside the United States? Indeed, international law is based on the notion that a state occupies a definite territory, within which it normally exercises exclusive jurisdiction. Yet this traditional doctrine of territorial jurisdiction has slowly given way to more and more assertions of extraterritorial jurisdiction and international law has reluctantly recognized such encroachments. Most significantly, the past forty to fifty years have evidenced a remarkable willingness by courts, especially courts in the United States, to assert jurisdiction over foreign defendants when their foreign conduct produces adverse effects upon domestic commerce. Proponents argue that such extraterritorial jurisdiction is necessary for a state effectively to regulate the anticompetitive activities of foreign undertakings. Opponents counter that a liberal understanding of territoriality can easily address such concerns without sacrificing fidelity to the fundamental principles of international law, among them the principle of sovereign equality of states. In broad strokes, this divergence of perspectives represents the respective views of the United States and the European Community regarding the extraterritorial application of antitrust laws. This Article compares the differing approaches of the United States and the European Community as they wrestle with the question of how to regulate foreign anticompetitive activity. More specifically, this Article highlights the distinctive features of the U.S. effects doctrine and the European Community\u27s implementation approach and analyzes the differences that exist between the two systems. Only the U.S. doctrine openly provides for the consideration of international comity concerns, but both approaches have been used liberally to assert jurisdiction over foreign defendants

The Erie Doctrine Revisited: How a Conflicts Perspective Can Aid the Analysis

I have taught Civil Procedure for the past twenty-five years. Having returned to teaching Conflict of Laws last year, after not having taught that course since the mid-1980s, I was interested in re-examining the Erie doctrine from the vantage point of both of these subject areas. My goal was to see whether a combination of learning from these two related disciplines would introduce additional coherence into the analysis of this topic. In one sense, the Erie doctrine and traditional choice of law determinations present analogous questions, since they both involve making a selection between competing legal rules. Choice of law determinations are of course made in a horizontal setting, i.e., in determining which state\u27s or country\u27s law to apply to an issue, with respect to a transaction touching on two or more jurisdictions. Erie, on the other hand, is implicated in a vertical setting, where the action is being heard in a federal court based on a claim arising under state law, and where it is necessary to determine whether the federal court may apply federal law or whether it must apply state law to an issue in the lawsuit. One alternative would be for the forum always to apply its own law-whether that forum is a state court deciding whether to apply its own rule or that of another jurisdiction, or whether it is a federal court deciding whether to apply state or federal law. That approach would certainly be simpler and more efficient. Instead, both choice of law rules and Erie counsel that on some occasions, the forum will, or even must, defer to the law of another sovereign. The question then is whether, despite these differences, the similarities are sufficient to allow principles from the choice of law arena to inform the Erie analysis. Although it is probable that many of the determinations that must be made by the federal courts would be unaffected by invocation of learning from horizontal conflict of law determinations, I conclude that some aspects of this methodology - and particularly interest analysis and other modern policy-based choice of law principles - would prove useful in the Erie setting. First, the extension to Erie cases of one important device employed in many modern conflicts cases-the characterization of certain differences in legal rules as false conflicts, leading to the use of the law of the only jurisdiction with a real interest in having its legal rule applied to the dispute - would reduce the number of situations in which Erie questions must be resolved. In addition, these modern techniques for resolving true conflicts between the laws of two or more states would prove instructive for resolving clashes between state law and federal judge-made law

Joe Bauer presented Enforcement Issues under American Antitrust Laws at the University of Tilburg (Holland) Center for Law and Economics on December 19, 2013

Joe Bauer presented a seminar at the University of Tilburg (Holland) Center for Law and Economics on December 19. His topic was Enforcement Issues under American Antitrust Laws. View PowerPoint slides of lecture by clicking pdf link

The Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act: Do We Really Want to Return to American Banana?

The extra-territorial reach of the antitrust laws is subject to multiple constraints, including the Commerce Clause of the constitution, the text of the antitrust statutes, and a variety of policy considerations. At the beginning of the twentieth century, in the American Banana case, the Supreme Court severely limited the application of the antitrust laws to anti-competitive behavior beyond our shores. The next eighty years saw an expansion of their extra-territorial reach, by including within their coverage a range of foreign conduct which had domestic effects. However, confusion among the lower courts as to the extent of this coverage, as well as a concern about the application of American antitrust laws against exporters whose conduct principally affected competition in foreign markets, led to the passage in 1982 of the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act. FTAIA expressly excludes certain conduct from the antitrust laws, while maintaining the principle that they should continue to apply to import commerce and to foreign behavior having a domestic effect. In the intervening three decades, however, courts have given improperly broad readings to the FTAIA’s exclusionary provisions. The result has been to deny to American competitors and American consumers the appropriate level of protection afforded them by the antitrust laws. This Article reviews the history leading up to the passage of FTAIA and discusses its provisions. It then examines and critiques the judicial treatment FTAIA has received. It concludes that many of these decisions are wrong – both as a matter of statutory interpretation and as a matter of policy – and urges either a judicial redirection or legislative correction