Deformable vehicle wheel Patent

Resilient vehicle wheel for lunar surface trave

Editorial:Fostering Creative Organizations: Antecedents, Processes, and Consequences of Individual and Team Creativity

Creativity, defined as the ability or process to generate novel and useful ideas, is the key engine of organizational innovation. It is a critical differentiator of mind from machine, a core driver of our uniqueness in an increasingly automated world. An important question, then, is how best to improve people's creativity, to enhance our collective innovativeness, enjoyment, and global living standards. Despite ample attention—including theory- and application-focused research—to this question, there remains much to learn about creativity..

English as a Court Language in Continental Courts

__Abstract__ Most recently, several countries on the European continent have admitted, or are discussing to admit, English as an optional court language. This article provides some information about the background of these recent initiatives, projects and reforms, clarifies the idea on which they are based and explores the purposes they pursue. It then identifies in a theoretical way the various possible degrees of admitting English as a court language and the surrounding questions of practical implementation. These general issues are followed by a presentation of the initiatives, projects and reforms in France, Switzerland and Germany. Not surprisingly, the idea of admitting English as a court language has not only found support, but has also been criticised in legal academia and beyond. Therefore, the article then attempts to give a structured overview of the debate, followed by some own thoughts on the arguments which are being put forward. It concludes with an appeal not to restrict the arguments in favour of admitting English as a court language to merely economic aspects, but also to give due weight to the fact that admitting English may facilitate access to justice and may result in bringing back cases to the public justice system

Origin of Rashba-splitting in the quantized subbands at Bi2Se3 surface

We study the band structure of the $\text{Bi}_2\text{Se}_3$ topological insulator (111) surface using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. We examine the situation where two sets of quantized subbands exhibiting different Rashba spin-splitting are created via bending of the conduction (CB) and the valence (VB) bands at the surface. While the CB subbands are strongly Rashba spin-split, the VB subbands do not exhibit clear spin-splitting. We find that CB and VB experience similar band bending magnitudes, which means, a spin-splitting discrepancy due to different surface potential gradients can be excluded. On the other hand, by comparing the experimental band structure to first principles LMTO band structure calculations, we find that the strongly spin-orbit coupled Bi 6$p$ orbitals dominate the orbital character of CB, whereas their admixture to VB is rather small. The spin-splitting discrepancy is, therefore, traced back to the difference in spin-orbit coupling between CB and VB in the respective subbands' regions

Transmission measurement at 10.6 microns of Te2As3Se5 rib-waveguides on As2S3 substrate

The feasibility of chalcogenide rib waveguides working at lambda = 10.6 microns has been demonstrated. The waveguides comprised a several microns thick Te2As3Se5 film deposited by thermal evaporation on a polished As2S3 glass substrate and further etched by physical etching in Ar or CF4/O2 atmosphere. Output images at 10.6 microns and some propagation losses roughly estimated at 10dB/cm proved that the obtained structures behaved as channel waveguides with a good lateral confinement of the light. The work opens the doors to the realisation of components able to work in the mid and thermal infrared up to 20 microns and even more.Comment: The following article appeared in Vigreux-Bercovici et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 90, 011110 (2007) and may be found at http://link.aip.org/link/?apl/90/01111

Semelparous Death as one Element of Iteroparous Aging Gone Large

The aging process in semelparous and iteroparous species is different, but how different? Death in semelparous organisms (e.g., Pacific salmon) results from suicidal reproductive effort (reproductive death). Aging (senescence) in iteroparous organisms such as humans is often viewed as a quite different process. Recent findings suggest that the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, widely used to study aging, undergoes reproductive death. In post-reproductive C. elegans hermaphrodites, intestinal biomass is repurposed to produce yolk which when vented serves as a milk to support larval growth. This apparent benefit of lactation comes at the cost of intestinal atrophy in the mother. Germline removal and inhibition of insulin/IGF-1 signaling (IIS) suppress C. elegans reproductive pathology and greatly increase lifespan. Blocking sexual maturity, e.g., by gonadectomy, suppresses reproductive death thereby strongly increasing lifespan in semelparous organisms, but typically has little effect on lifespan in iteroparous ones. Similarly, reduced IIS causes relatively modest increases in lifespan in iteroparous organisms. We argue that the more regulated and plastic mechanisms of senescence in semelparous organisms, involving costly resource reallocation under endocrine control, exist as one extreme of an etiological continuum with mechanisms operative in iteroparous organisms. We suggest that reproductive death evolved by exaggeration of mechanisms operative in iteroparous species, where other mechanisms also promote senescence. Thus, knowledge of C. elegans senescence can guide understanding of mechanisms contributing to human aging