Fusion-Fission Hybrid Reactors

to the design of hybrid reactors and to inform the new generation of hybrid reactor researchers of the hybrid reactor data base developed in the seventies and early eighties

Surface Modification of Ethylene Propylene Diene Terpolymer Rubber by Plasma Polymerization Using Organosilicon Precursors

The effect of Atmospheric Pressure Plasma-Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (AP-PECVD) on Ethylene Propylene Diene Terpolymer (EPDM) with the precursors hexamethyldisiloxane (HMDSO) and tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) on roughness, chemical composition as well as wetting and friction properties has been investigated. For the first time, topography analysis like Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), White Light Interferometry (WLI), Digital Microscopy as well as surface analytical methods by using X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) were combined with contact angle and friction experiments to obtain a detailed analysis of plasma polymer surfaces. This work shows that different plasma coatings can be utilized to tailor wettability, surface energies and reduce friction of EPDM rubber, which are important for various applications. Wettability investigations have shown that both coatings are more polar compared to the untreated surface but less polar than the surface activated EPDM without precursor. The carbon content is decreased, and the content of oxygen and silicon is increased after plasma polymerization as shown by XPS investigations. ToF-SIMS investigations have revealed that the ion spectra of both coatings are very similar with a comparable surface chemistry. A lower penetration depth is considered for the contact angle measurements in contrast to the other surface-sensitive methods. The surface energy of the activated EPDM surface without precursor increases significantly compared to the untreated EPDM due to the incorporation of polar groups in the elastomer surface. Both coatings with the corresponding precursors also have a higher surface energy compared to the uncoated EPDM, whereas the TEOS coating reveals a higher surface energy than the HMDSO coating. However, both coatings have lower surface energies than the activated EPDM. The coefficient of friction and the stick-slip phenomenon can be significantly reduced using plasma polymer coatings based on organosilicon precursors sliding on glass substrates. The lowest friction values with absence of stick-slip on EPDM were achieved by using the precursor TEOS as friction partner

Design in synthetic biology

Significant transformations in biological technique and biological work are taking place in the aftermath of genomics. Although existing accounts of genomics and biotechnology contend that species differences and evolutionary histories have undergone ‘flattening’ by molecular techniques and concepts, analysis of design practices in synthetic biology suggests that vertical aggregations of biological technique, substance and work are occurring. This article analyses the movement of design processes into biology by examining software, diagrams and forms of collaboration intersecting in the production of biological constructs such as metabolic pathways, minimal genomes and biological standard parts. In characterising the design processes taking shape in synthetic biology, it develops the concepts of ‘meta-technique’ and ‘meta-material’. The notion of design as a meta-technique shows how synthetic biology assembles techniques and renders them available via practices of collaboration and standardisation. The notion of meta-material suggests ways of thinking about the dynamism of living things infused by models, constructs and layered work-processes. The practical re-deployment of biological techniques we see in the design software, the development of increasingly extensive and interlinked biological constructs assembled by design, and the shifting enrolments of biological work associated with design as a decoupled work process alter what counts as biological work and what counts as biological substance. The increasing salience of biological design has significant implications for how we conceptualise participation in biotechnology and biomedicine more generally

Organizational Kitsch

Kitsch as a descriptive and evaluative term is popularly deployed in the context of art and artifacts, contemporarily denoting that which is perhaps poor in taste, quality or refinement yet which retains some sort of mildly perverse attractiveness. It prettifies the problematic, makes the disturbing reassuring, and establishes an easy (and illusory) unity of the individual and the world. This article draws on historical sources and contemporary theory across a range of critical disciplines to expand our current awareness of the range of the concept and its organizational relevance. It examines how its acceptation has developed to incorporate mass production techniques and development in the reproductive technologies which can allow us to apply it with more precision to the field of organization studies. Kitsch is not so much a metaphor as a multifaceted response to modernity of great complexity in its very simplicity, and its key features are summarized. The article then identifies the presence of kitsch in two examples of thinking about organizing—the work of Abraham Maslow as an example of needs-based organization theory, and Peters and Waterman's In Search of Excellence, the founding example of the `excellence' school which claims the status of theory. It is not the identification of kitsch as an aesthetic style in organizing which is significant, but the recognition of kitsch as an ontology of being which effectively masks the experience of being—interposing itself as a comforting buffer between ourselves and the `real', and often being taken for it. Kitsch, rather than being a mere matter of stylistics, can be seen as one of the key philosophical problems of modernity and should therefore be taken seriously by organization theory