A Comparison of Pressure-less Silver Sintering Materials with Conventional Electronic Die Attach Practices

This thesis contains information on an experiment which validates silver sintering paste manufacturer’s die attach processes and examines feasibility for use in commercial products. Four silver pastes were used in constructing die attach samples, which were then void and shear tested. The silver sintering materials that are investigated in this work are compared with manufacturer data and also with data from conventional attaches such as conductive epoxy and solder. In addition, materials demonstrating the highest shear strength were down-selected and processed to compare thermal characteristics with solder and conductive epoxy. Under theoretical analysis, the characteristics of silver provide the most optimal solution as a die attach material for extreme conditions. Additionally, silver sintering paste technology has been significantly increasing over the last decade, leading to the potential for silver sintering pastes to be the next standard in power electronic die attaches, specifically in high temperature and rugged designs [1]

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationTongues of Men and of Angels is a collection of short works exploring E.L. Doctorow's claim that, "There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative." Though the individual pieces in Tongues might be conventionally categorized as short memoirs and personal essays (and thus thought of as works generated by a singular author about the life of that author as a singular person), the book as a whole seeks to problematize popular notions of writing about the self. By subverting formal elements held to be the foundations of personal nonfiction narrative, these pieces, each in their own way, question the prevalent opinion that a given narrative is capable of posing as strictly fiction or nonfiction. Written as present-tense memoirs, my collection's opening pieces, "Mother Moves Us, Father" and "College, Art, Et al: An Evolution," highlight the slippery ground between the self recounted and the self in the act of recounting. The narrator of "Mother Moves Us, Father" attempts to investigate the meaning behind a memory of his adolescence and, in the process of elucidating this memory, loses track of his original intent in a spin of florid language, strange characterizations, and interpolated stories. Conversely, the narrator of "College, Art, Et al: An Evolution" holds tight to his narrative trajectory but, in doing so, exposes the artifice and absurdity of trapping one's personal history in the guise of linear recollection. The pieces "What's He Got?" "Thriftstore," "Paralyzed by the Immediate," and "Cut but not Dried," interrogate the convention of first-person POV as crucial to nonfiction or realistic narrators. On the other hand, works such as "Pornography," "Loop," and "Tongues of Men and of Angels," perform an overwrought first-person narrative. These greedy, interruptive, lyrical, and tangential voices blur the tentative lines meant to distinguish story and storyteller, experience and authority, and the subject and its traces. Freud famously said, "Writing is the record of an absent person," and, years later, Leonard Michaels expounded upon this idea in "Writing About Myself," arguing that author-personalized narratives bring subjective notions of presence and absence into extreme tension. Just the basic awareness of this tension, Michaels continued, allows the writer, when writing about himself, to place more interest on "the expressive value of form and its relation to the personal more than [an interest in] particular revelations of [one's] individual life." Hoping to expose this writerly tension for the reader while also seeking a sense of ineffable (in)completion, Tongues of Men and of Angels assembles a multivalent, polyphonic narrator who, through gaps, tangents, liminal spaces, and "fictional" elements, is more human and more real than any conventional subject of nonfictional writing might hope to be: a narrator who lets the reader listen, as Barry Hannah puts it, "to the orchestra of living.

Fox in the Henhouse: A Study of Police Officers Arrested for Crimes Associated with Domestic and/or Family Violence

The problem of violence within police families has been increasingly recognized as an important socio-legal issue, but there is a lack of empirical data on what has commonly been referred to as officer-involved domestic violence (OIDV). There are no comprehensive statistics available on OIDV and no government entity collects data on the criminal conviction of police officers for crimes associated with domestic and/or family violence. Prior self-report officer surveys are limited by the tendency to conceal instances of family violence and the interests of officers to maintain a code of silence to protect their careers. The purpose of the current study is to provide empirical data on OIDV cases. The study identifies and describes cases in which police were arrested for criminal offenses associated with an incident of family and/or domestic violence through a content analysis of published newspaper articles. Data on these cases is presented in terms of the arrested officer, employing agency, victim, charged offense(s), and criminal case dispositions. The paper includes a discussion regarding OIDV police crime and policy implications

Research Brief One-Sheet No.4: Officer-Involved Domestic Violence

Officer-Involved Domestic Violence (OIDV) refers to instances of domestic and/or family violence that occur within police families. OIDV has been recognized as an important issue for both police scholars and practitioners. The movement to recognize OIDV gained momentum through the last two decades, beginning with exploratory research that linked police stress and family violence (Johnson, 1991). The movement also involved enactment of the Violence Against Women Act (1994) and the Lautenberg Amendment to the federal Gun Control Act that prohibits individuals—including police officers—from owning or using a firearm if they are convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. The International Association of Police Chiefs (IACP) promulgated a model policy on OIDV in 1999 and issued a revised policy on OIDV in 2003. The purpose of the research is to provide empirical data on violence within police families. Our research identifies and describes incidents in which police were arrested for criminal offenses associated with an incident of family and/or domestic violence. Our primary goal is to provide information on actual OIDV cases to inform policies and further initiatives designed to mitigate the problem

Research Brief One-Sheet No.7: Police Integrity Lost: Introducing a Study of Law Enforcement Officers Arrested

There are no comprehensive statistics available on problems with police integrity, and no government entity collects data on all criminal arrests of law enforcement officers in the United States. Police crimes are those crimes committed by sworn law enforcement officers with the general powers of arrest. These crimes can occur while the officer is either on‐ or off‐duty and include offenses committed by officers employed by state and local law enforcement agencies. This study provides a wealth of data on a phenomena that relates directly to police integrity—data that previously did not exist in any useable format

Bad Cops at Home: An Exploratory Study of Officer-Involved Domestic Violence

Officer-involved domestic violence is a problem that should concern researchers, policymakers, the policing community, and the general public. Yet there is very little research in the area and no official data is available to discern the nature and prevalence of domestic violence in police families. Victims are reluctant to report officer-involved domestic violence and often feel helpless in the criminal justice system where the abuser is employed. This is complicated by provisions of the Lautenberg Amendment of 1996 which prohibit anyone convicted of a crime of domestic violence from carrying a firearm. This study explores 324 cases of state and local police officers from agencies across the United States arrested during 2005-2007 for crimes involving family violence. The analysis includes an examination of preferential charging decisions in cases of officer-involved domestic violence, as well as other factors including case and employment outcomes