Solid-state Isotopic Power Source for Computer Memory Chips

Recent developments in materials technology now make it possible to fabricate nonthermal thin-film radioisotopic energy converters (REC) with a specific power of 24 W/kg and a 10 year working life at 5 to 10 watts. This creates applications never before possible, such as placing the power supply directly on integrated circuit chips. The efficiency of the REC is about 25 percent which is two to three times greater than the 6 to 8 percent capabilities of current thermoelectric systems. Radio isotopic energy converters have the potential to meet many future space power requirements for a wide variety of applications with less mass, better efficiency, and less total area than other power conversion options. These benefits result in significant dollar savings over the projected mission lifetime

Bridges

This entry discusses the linguistic (prosodic) features of the Ancient Greek poetic phenomenon of the metrical bridge, a position in a line of verse where a word division is either disallowed or strongly disfavored

Quantum homogeneous spaces of connected Hopf algebras

Let H be a connected Hopf k-algebra of finite Gel'fand-Kirillov dimension over an algebraically closed field k of characteristic 0. The objects of study in this paper are the left or right coideal subalgebras T of H. They are shown to be deformations of commutative polynomial k-algebras. A number of well-known homological and other properties follow immediately from this fact. Further properties are described, examples are considered, invariants are constructed and a number of open questions are listed.Comment: 26 pages; comments welcom

The Irrelevance of Trade Union Recognition? A Comparison of Two Matched Companies

Two UK business services companies are compared both to each other and to their common state-owned industry background in order to assess the implications of trade union recognition and changed bargaining structure. Union recognition had been abandoned by one company under the agenda of "individualization" and "personal contracts" but retained by the other under the agenda of "partnership". Changes in the level at which employment relationships are regulated occurred at both companies relative to their ancestral public enterprises. The similarity of the companies in terms of products, technologies and institutional history provides an approximation to a natural experiment. The evidence suggests only secondary effects from union presence upon operational attributes and economic performance, but major effects from the decentralization of employment relations, which formed part of a wider and more radical set of changes in the relevant markets, technologies, ownership structures and labour law

Hopf algebras under finiteness conditions

This is a brief survey of some recent developments in the study of infinite dimensional Hopf algebras which are either noetherian or have finite Gelfand-Kirillov dimension. A number of open questions are listed.Comment: Comments welcom

Reversibility of cell surface label rearrangement

Cell surface labeling can cause rearrangements of randomly distributed membrane components. Removal of the label bound to the cell surface allows the membrane components to return to their original random distribution, demonstrating that label is necessary to maintain as well as to induce rearrangements. With scanning electron microscopy, the rearrangement of concanavalin A (con A) and ricin binding sites on LA-9 cells has been followed by means of hemocyanin, a visual label. The removal of con A from its binding sites at the cell surface with alpha- methyl mannoside, and the return of these sites to their original distribution are also followed in this manner. There are labeling differences with con A and ricin. Under some conditions, however, the same rearrangements are seen with both lectins. The disappearance of labeled sites from areas of ruffling activity is a major feature of the rearrangements seen. Both this ruffling activity and the rearrangement of label are sensitive to cytochalasin B, and ruffling activity, perhaps along with other cytochalasin-sensitive structure, may play a role in the rearrangements of labeled sites

Health, hygiene and biosecurity: tribal knowledge claims in the UK poultry industry

Since 1997 the world has been facing the threat of a human influenza pandemic that may be caused by an avian virus and the poultry industry around the globe has been grappling with the highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza H5N1, or in more informal terms bird flu. The UK poultry industry has lived with and through this threat and its consequences since 2005. This study investigates knowledge claims about health, hygiene and biosecurity as tools to ward off the threat from this virus. It takes a semi-ethnographic and discourse analytic approach to analyse a small corpus of semi-structured interviews carried out in the wake of one of the most publicised outbreaks of H5N1 in Suffolk in 2007. It reveals that claims about what best to do to protect flocks against the risk of disease are divided along lines imposed on the one hand by the structure of the industry and on the other by more 'tribal' lines drawn by knowledge and belief systems about purity and dirt, health and hygiene