SAMP, the Simple Application Messaging Protocol: Letting applications talk to each other

SAMP, the Simple Application Messaging Protocol, is a hub-based communication standard for the exchange of data and control between participating client applications. It has been developed within the context of the Virtual Observatory with the aim of enabling specialised data analysis tools to cooperate as a loosely integrated suite, and is now in use by many and varied desktop and web-based applications dealing with astronomical data. This paper reviews the requirements and design principles that led to SAMP's specification, provides a high-level description of the protocol, and discusses some of its common and possible future usage patterns, with particular attention to those factors that have aided its success in practice.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for Virtual Observatory special issue of Astronomy and Computin

The MOLICEL(R) rechargeable lithium system: Multicell battery aspects

MOLICEL rechargeable lithium cells were cycled in batteries using series, parallel, and series/parallel connections. The individual cell voltages and branch currents were measured to understand the cell interactions. The observations were interpreted in terms of the inherent characteristics of the Li/MoS2 system and in terms of a singular cell failure mode. The results confirm that correctly configured multicell batteries using MOLICELs have performance characteristics comparable to those of single cells

Do Labor Markets Provide Enough Short Hour Jobs? An Analysis of Work Hours and Work Incentives

This paper examines the role that work incentives play in the determination of work hours. Following previous research by Lang (1989), we use a conventional efficiency wage model to analyze how firms respond to worker preferences regarding wage-hours packages. We find that when workers are homogeneous, the role of worker preferences in determining work hours is similar to the simple neoclassical model of labor supply. For instance, if worker preferences shift in favor of shorter hours, firms will respond by offering jobs entailing shorter hours. When workers have heterogeneous preferences, however, employers will want to use a worker's hours preferences as a signal for the responsiveness of the worker to the work incentives used by the firm, and workers in turn may not reveal their hours preferences. Our key finding in this instance is that the labor market equilibrium may be characterized by a sub-optimal number of short-hour jobs. This shortage of short-hour jobs is likely to be found in high wage labor markets.

"When Knowledge is an Asset: Explaining the Organizational Structure of Large Law Firms"

We study the economics of employment relationships through theoretical and empirical analyses of an unusual set of firms, large law firms. Our point of departure is the "property rights" approach that emphasizes the centrality of ownership's legal rights to control important, nonhuman assets of the enterprise. From this perspective, large law firms are an interesting and potentially important object of study, because the most valuable assets of these firms take the form of knowledge--particularly knowledge of the needs and interests of clients. We argue that the two most distinctive organizational features of large law firms, the use of "up or out" promotion contests and the practice of having winners become residual claimants in the firm, emerge naturally in this setting. In addition to explaining otherwise anomalous features of the up-or-out partnership system, this paper suggests a general framework for analyzing organizations where assets reside in the brains of employees.

Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motives: Standard and Behavioral Approaches to Agency and Labor Markets

Employers structure pay and employment relationships to mitigate agency problems. A large literature in economics documents how the resolution of these problems shapes personnel policies and labor markets. For the most part, the study of agency in employment relationships relies on highly stylized assumptions regarding human motivation, e.g., that employees seek to earn as much money as possible with minimal effort. In this essay, we explore the consequences of introducing behavioral complexity and realism into models of agency within organizations. Specifically, we assess the insights gained by allowing employees to be guided by such motivations as the desire to compare favorably to others, the aspiration to contribute to intrinsically worthwhile goals, and the inclination to reciprocate generosity or exact retribution for perceived wrongs. More provocatively, from the standpoint of standard economics, we also consider the possibility that people are driven, in ways that may be opaque even to themselves, by the desire to earn social esteem or to shape and reinforce identity.agency, motivation, employment relationships, behavioral economics

Energy dynamics in a simulation of LAPD turbulence

Effects of laser energy fluence on the onset and growth of the Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities and its influence on the topography of the Fe thin film grown in pulsed laser deposition facility Phys. Plasmas 19, 103504 (2012) Halo formation and self-pinching of an electron beam undergoing the Weibel instability Phys. Plasmas 19, 103106 (2012) Energy dynamics in a simulation of LAPD turbulence Phys. Plasmas 19, 102307 (2012) Free boundary ballooning mode representation Phys. Plasmas 19, 102506 (2012) Additional information on Phys. Plasmas The influence of shear-flow on stability of plasma ballooning modes is important for Tokamak experiments. In a static plasma, the growth rate of ballooning modes is readily determined using the ''ballooning transformation,'' but this is ineffective for plasmas with flow. One then has only the quasi-static approximation. This gives the growth rate in the limit that shear velocity ⍀Ј→0, but no other information on the effect of shear-flow. Furthermore, it is invalid in typical cases because of the intervention of the stable magnetohydrodynamic continuum. In this paper, a simple model is used to investigate the influence of shear-flow on ballooning modes. This shows that the intervention of the continuum leads to a reduction in the growth rate proportional to ͉⍀Ј͉ for small ⍀Ј. This is in accord with some numerical simulations-but contrary to the (⍀Ј) 2 variation expected from a perturbation expansion. In fact, since the effect is nonanalytic in ⍀Ј, it cannot be obtained from a perturbation expansion in ⍀Ј and an alternative formalism is first developed for dealing with this problem. ͓S1070-664X͑99͒00406-1