Principles of Sociology in Systems Engineering

Systems engineering involves both the integration of the system and the integration of the disciplines which develop and operate the system. Integrating the disciplines is a sociological effort to bring together different groups, often with different terminology, to achieve a common goal, the system. The focus for the systems engineer is information flow through the organization, between the disciplines, to ensure the system is developed and operated with all relevant information informing system decisions. Robert K. Merton studied the sociological principles of the sciences and the sociological principles he developed apply to systems engineering. Concepts such as specification of ignorance, common terminology, opportunity structures, role-sets, and the reclama (reconsideration) process are all important sociological approaches that should be employed by the systems engineer. In bringing the disciplines together, the systems engineer must also be wary of social ambivalence, social anomie, social dysfunction, insider-outsider behavior, unintended consequences, and the self-fulfilling prophecy. These sociological principles provide the systems engineer with key approaches to manage the information flow through the organization as the disciplines are integrated and share their information. This also helps identify key sociological barriers to information flow through the organization. This paper will discuss this theoretical basis for the application of sociological principles to systems engineering

Principles of Sociology in Systems Engineering

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The helium atom in a strong magnetic field

We investigate the electronic structure of the helium atom in a magnetic field b etween B=0 and B=100a.u. The atom is treated as a nonrelativistic system with two interactin g electrons and a fixed nucleus. Scaling laws are provided connecting the fixed-nucleus Hamiltonia n to the one for the case of finite nuclear mass. Respecting the symmetries of the electronic Ham iltonian in the presence of a magnetic field, we represent this Hamiltonian as a matrix with res pect to a two-particle basis composed of one-particle states of a Gaussian basis set. The corresponding generalized eigenvalue problem is solved numerically, providing in the present paper results for vanish ing magnetic quantum number M=0 and even or odd z-parity, each for both singlet and triplet spin symmetry. Total electronic energies of the ground state and the first few excitations in each su bspace as well as their one-electron ionization energies are presented as a function of the magnetic fie ld, and their behaviour is discussed. Energy values for electromagnetic transitions within the M=0 sub space are shown, and a complete table of wavelengths at all the detected stationary points with respect to their field dependence is given, thereby providing a basis for a comparison with observed ab sorption spectra of magnetic white dwarfs.Comment: 21 pages, 4 Figures, acc.f.publ.in J.Phys.

The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey IX: The Color Distributions of Globular Cluster Systems in Early-Type Galaxies

We present the color distributions of globular cluster (GC) systems for 100 Virgo cluster early-type galaxies observed in the ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. The color distributions of individual GC systems are consistent with continuous trends across galaxy luminosity, color, and stellar mass. On average, almost all galaxies possess a component of metal-poor GCs, with the average fraction of metal-rich GCs ranging from 15 to 60%. The colors of both subpopulations correlate with host galaxy luminosity and color, with the red GCs having a steeper slope. To convert color to metallicity, we also introduce a preliminary (g-z)-[Fe/H] relation calibrated to Galactic, M49 and M87 GCs. This relation is nonlinear with a steeper slope for [Fe/H] < -0.8. As a result, the metallicities of the metal-poor and metal-rich GCs vary similarly with respect to galaxy luminosity and stellar mass, with relations of [Fe/H]_MP ~ L^0.16 ~ M_star^0.17 and [Fe/H]_MR ~ L^0.26 ~ M_star^0.22, respectively. Although these relations are shallower than the mass-metallicity relation predicted by wind models and observed for dwarf galaxies, they are very similar to the mass-metallicity relation for star forming galaxies in the same mass range. The offset between the two GC populations varies slowly (~ M_star^0.05) and is approximately 1 dex across three orders of magnitude in mass, suggesting a nearly universal amount of enrichment between the formation of the two populations of GCs. We also find that although the metal-rich GCs show a larger dispersion in color, it is the *metal-poor GCs* that have an equal or larger dispersion in metallicity. Like the color-magnitude relation, these relations derived from globular clusters present stringent constraints on the formation and evolution of early-type galaxies. (Abridged)Comment: 25 pages, 16 figures, 7 tables. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Version with Figures 1,5-9,11-16 in color is available at http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~pcote/acs/acsvcs_9.pd

What is the 'dominant model' of British policymaking? Comparing majoritarian and policy community ideas

The aim of this article is to help identify the fundamental characteristics of the British policymaking system. It highlights an enduring conflict of interpretation within the literature. On the one hand, most contemporary analysts argue that the ‘Westminster model' is outmoded and that it has been replaced by modern understandings based on ‘governance'. On the other, key ideas associated with the Westminster model, regarding majoritarian government and policy imposition, are still in good currency in the academic literature, which holds firm to Lijphart's description of the United Kingdom as a majoritarian democracy. These very different understandings of British government are both commonly cited, but without much recognition that their conclusions may be mutually incompatible. To address this lack of comparison of competing narratives, the article outlines two main approaches to describe and explain the ‘characteristic and durable' ways of doing things in Britain: the ‘policy styles' literature initiated by Richardson in Policy Styles in Western Europe and the Lijphart account found in Democracies and revised in 1999 as Patterns of Democracy. The article encourages scholars to reject an appealing compromise between majoritarian and governance accounts

Bouncing Braneworlds Go Crunch!

Recently, interesting braneworld cosmologies in the Randall-Sundrum scenario have been constructed using a bulk spacetime which corresponds to a charged AdS black hole. In particular, these solutions appear to `bounce', making a smooth transition from a contracting to an expanding phase. By considering the spacetime geometry more carefully, we demonstrate that generically in these solutions the brane will encounter a singularity in the transition region.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, ref adde

A stacked search for intermediate-mass black holes in 337 extragalactic star clusters

Forbes et al. recently used the Hubble Space Telescope to localize hundreds of candidate star clusters in NGC 1023, an early-type galaxy at a distance of 11.1 Mpc. Old stars dominate the light of 92% of the clusters and intermediate-age stars dominate the light of the remaining 8%. Theory predicts that clusters with such ages can host intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) with masses M_BH \lesssim 10^5 M_sun. To investigate this prediction, we used 264 s of 5.5 GHz data from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to search for the radiative signatures of IMBH accretion from 337 candidate clusters in an image spanning 492 arcsec (26 kpc) with a resolution of 0.40 arcsec (22 pc). None of the individual clusters are detected, nor are weighted-mean image stacks of the 311 old clusters, the 26 intermediate-age clusters, and the 20 clusters with stellar masses M_star \gtrsim 7.5 x 10^5 M_sun. The clusters thus lack radio analogs of HLX-1, a strong IMBH candidate in a cluster in the early-type galaxy ESO 243-49. This suggests that HLX-1 is accreting gas related to its cluster's light-dominating young stars. Alternatively, the HLX-1 phenomenon could be so rare that no radio analog is expected in NGC 1023. Also, using a formalism heretofore applied to star clusters in the Milky Way, the radio-luminosity upper limit for the massive-cluster stack corresponds to a mean 3$\sigma$ IMBH mass of M_BH(massive) < 2.3 x 10^5 M_sun, suggesting mean black-hole mass fractions of M_BH(massive)/M_star < 0.05-0.29.Comment: 19 pages; 6 figures; accepted by A