Photovoltaic design integration at Battery Park City, New York

This paper is a study of the photovoltaic (PV) systems in the buildings’ design of the Battery Park City (BPC) residential development, in New York. The BPC development is the first in the US to mandate, through the 2000 Battery Park City Authority guidelines, the use of PV as renewable energy generation system in its individual buildings. The scope of this study is to show how PV is integrated in the BPC buildings’ design process, and what can be learned for future PV applications. The study draws directly from the design decision making sources, investigating on the concerns and suggestions of the BPC architects, PV installers and real estate developers. It attempts to contrast a theoretical approach that sees PV as a technology to domesticate in architecture and bring, through grounded research, PV industry closer to the architectural design process. The findings of the study suggest that while stringent environmental mandates help, in the short term, to kick-start the use of PV systems in buildings, it is the recognition of the PV’s primary role as energy provider, its assimilation in the building industry, and its use in a less confining building program that allows for its evolution in architecture

An Overture to Equality: Preventing Subconscious Sex and Gender Biases from Influencing Hiring Decisions

In many industries, women are less likely than men to be hired, and research suggests that this is due to subconscious gender bias rather than meritorious difference. To combat this bias, some orchestras use gender-blind auditions to hire their musicians. Orchestral hopefuls sit behind a screen to play their pieces, and directors listen to determine whom they want to hire. Some orchestras require applicants to remove their shoes before walking onstage, as even the perceived sound of high heels can affect a director’s decision. Before instituting gender-blind auditions, the top five American orchestras had fewer than five percent women players. But once such procedures were put in place, the percentage of women musicians jumped to twenty-five to thirty percent. American law does not adequately protect against employment discrimination. In discrimination cases, plaintiffs face a very high burden, making claims difficult to win. This is especially true when it comes to subconscious bias. In this Note, I argue that federal legislation is necessary to remedy the effects of subconscious bias by mandating that employers remove all sex and gender markers from job application materials in the preinterview stage of hiring. I will draft a model statute aiming to remove one aspect of gender bias in the hiring process as a step toward gender equality. In Part I, I explain how gender is a social construct by examining sociological data and evaluating neurological studies that claim to establish the existence of inherent behavioral differences between the sexes. Using this information, I argue that subconscious gender bias is problematic in the context of workplace equality. In Part II, I evaluate the current state of anti-discrimination law, showing how subconscious bias claims are nearly impossible to win. Then, in Part III, I propose and draft federal legislation that would require employers to remove gender markers from preinterview application materials in an attempt to stymie subconscious gender bias

On Failure of Determinism in Classical Mechanics

Newtonian mechanics is generally considered to be deterministic: Once the initial conditions are known, all the future behaviour of a system can be predicted by solving the equations of motion. (That is the idea of Laplace’s demon.) But a simple example will reveal that the solution of the initial value problem need not be unique. A prediction thus becomes impossible. An effect can happen without a cause, so that causality is annulled

Classical Mechanics recast with Mach’s Principle

Newton introduced the absolute space as a basis of his mechanics. Inertia causes the resistance of masses against an acceleration with respect to this space. Mach raised the objection that this space is unphysical since it is not tangible. He proposed to describe inertial forces in a similar manner like gravitational ones, namely as produced by all masses of the universe. The paper at hand gives the mathematical exploitation of Mach’s concept. Only relative motions of masses enter the resulting equations. Their solutions, however, do not differ from   those of Newton’s approach

An Overture to Equality: Preventing Subconscious Sex and Gender Biases from Influencing Hiring Decisions

In many industries, women are less likely than men to be hired, and research suggests that this is due to subconscious gender bias rather than meritorious difference. To combat this bias, some orchestras use gender-blind auditions to hire their musicians. Orchestral hopefuls sit behind a screen to play their pieces, and directors listen to determine whom they want to hire. Some orchestras require applicants to remove their shoes before walking onstage, as even the perceived sound of high heels can affect a director’s decision. Before instituting gender-blind auditions, the top five American orchestras had fewer than five percent women players. But once such procedures were put in place, the percentage of women musicians jumped to twenty-five to thirty percent. American law does not adequately protect against employment discrimination. In discrimination cases, plaintiffs face a very high burden, making claims difficult to win. This is especially true when it comes to subconscious bias. In this Note, I argue that federal legislation is necessary to remedy the effects of subconscious bias by mandating that employers remove all sex and gender markers from job application materials in the preinterview stage of hiring. I will draft a model statute aiming to remove one aspect of gender bias in the hiring process as a step toward gender equality. In Part I, I explain how gender is a social construct by examining sociological data and evaluating neurological studies that claim to establish the existence of inherent behavioral differences between the sexes. Using this information, I argue that subconscious gender bias is problematic in the context of workplace equality. In Part II, I evaluate the current state of anti-discrimination law, showing how subconscious bias claims are nearly impossible to win. Then, in Part III, I propose and draft federal legislation that would require employers to remove gender markers from preinterview application materials in an attempt to stymie subconscious gender bias

Efficient Integration in the Plasticity of Crystals with Pencil Glide and Deck Glide

A stress update algorithm is proposed based on an approximate additive decomposition of the elastic predictor strain. It yields acceptable results even if the strain increments are an order of magnitude larger than the elastic strains. Moreover, it is shown that, in the context of the models of pencil glide and deck glide, at most four nonlinear equations for the computation of the unknown increments of plastic shear are needed in the case of b.c.c. and f.c.c. crystals

The Statics of Fluid Films with Bending Stiffness

Based on the principles of rational mechanics, a general formulation for the bending of a fluid monolayer is given. The internal forces of the surface turn out to be by far more copious than for the classical theory of capillarity, in which case the energy density is independent of the local curvature. There are two striking consequences of the investigation: the membrane forces are not isotropic and hence cannot be characterized by one single surface tension and the tangential component of the surface force must vanish if no torque density acts on the surface. The results should be noted in the study of amphiphiles

Parallel versus Conventional Elastoplasticity

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