Overpaid Older Workers and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act

Congress passed the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) to prohibit discrimination against older workers. The legislative history of the ADEA shows that Congress recognized that this discrimination most commonly stemmed from inaccurate stereotypes about the older worker. A review of ADEA cases decided between 1984 and 1995 demonstrates the frequent incidence of cases in which older workers allegedly were fired or not hired because of the higher salaries typically earned by these relatively experienced workers. This review also reveals that, applying an unduly mechanical version of the McDonnell Douglas/Burdine test, courts did not effectively identify (1) employment actions purportedly based on salary where salary served as a pretext for age animus and (2) actions in fact based on salary but infected with illegal age stereotyping. This Comment proposes adapting the McDonnell Douglas/Burdine test to more accurately evaluate these cases

Low temperature sintering of solid oxide fuel cell electrolytes

Solid oxide fuel cells provide a clean and efficient means to produce electricity. Gadolinium oxide doped ceria is considered to be an ideal electrolyte material for SOFC’s operating at temperatures between 500-600°C. Typically, this material is sintered to high density at approximately 1300°C. Reducing this temperature to ~1000°C will enable ferritic stainless steel to be used as a cell supporting material, thus significantly reducing cost and potentially enhancing the mechanical reliability of the stack. The aim of this study is to devise a method for sintering Gd doped ceria to high density at temperatures between 900-1000°C with no detrimental effects on its electrical properties. A number of experimental techniques were employed to characterise the sintering process and the resulting materials including, a.c. impedance spectroscopy, dilatometry, four-point d.c resistivity, Raman spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Gd doped ceria was successfully sintered to high density at <1000°C by additions of cobalt oxide. A 2cat%Co addition to commercially available 10mol%Gd doped ceria reduced the ‘gas tight’ densification temperature to 930°C. Furthermore, the Co addition was not detrimental to the electrical properties of Gd doped ceria under SOFC operating conditions at 500-600°C. Copper oxide was also shown to be a suitable sintering aid. The mechanism of enhanced sintering rate has been explored in detail and does not conform to any of the standard models. Evidence is presented to indicate that redistribution of the Gd dopant is also involved. The Co addition reduces the grain size of the sintered product, but this is mainly due to the reduced sintering temperature and not to reduced grain boundary mobility by the additive which is preferentially segregated to the grain boundaries. By careful control of the amount of additive and the heat treatment schedule it has proved possible to actually improve the ionic conductivity of Gd doped ceria, probably by optimising the lattice parameter. Co was also found to be effective in reducing the sintering temperature of yttria-stabilised zirconia.Open Acces

VideoTag: Encouraging the Effective Tagging of Internet Videos Through Tagging Games

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyAbstract The tags and descriptions entered by video owners in video sharing sites are typically inadequate for retrieval purposes, yet the majority of video search still uses this text. This problem is escalating due to the ease with which users can self-publish videos, generating masses that are poorly labelled and poorly described. This thesis investigates how users tag videos and whether video tagging games can solve this problem by generating useful sets of tags. A preliminary study investigated tags in two social video sharing sites, YouTube and Viddler. YouTube contained many irrelevant tags because the system does not encourage users to tag their videos and does not promote tags as useful. In contrast, using tags as the sole means of categorisation in Viddler motivated users to enter a higher proportion of relevant tags. Poor tags were found in both systems, however, highlighting the need to improve video tagging. In order to give users incentives to tag videos, the VideoTag project in this thesis developed two tagging games, Golden Tag and Top Tag, and one non-game tagging system, Simply Tag, and conducted two experiments with them. In the first experiment VideoTag was a portal to play video tagging games whereas in the second experiment it was a portal to curate collections of special interest videos. Users preferred to tag videos using games, generating tags that were relevant to the videos and that covered a range of tag types that were descriptive of the video content at a predominately specific, objective level. Users were motivated by interest in the content rather than by game elements, and content had an effect on the tag types used. In each experiment, users predominately tagged videos using objective language, with a tendency to use specific rather than basic tags. There was a significant difference between the types of tags entered in the games and in Simply Tag, with more basic, objective vocabulary entered into the games and more specific, objective language entered into the non-game system. Subjective tags were rare but were more frequent in Simply Tag. Gameplay also had an influence on the types of tags entered; Top Tag generated more basic tags and Golden Tag generated more specific and subjective tags. Users were not attracted to use VideoTag by the games alone. Game mechanics had little impact on motivations to use the system. VideoTag used YouTube videos, but could not upload the tags to YouTube and so users could see no benefit for the tags they entered, reducing participation. Specific interest content was more of a motivator for use than games or tagging and that this warrants further research. In the current game-saturated climate, gamification of a video tagging system may therefore be most successful for collections of videos that already have a committed user base.University of Wolverhampto

Nanosecond Pulsed Electric Field Induced Changes in Cell Surface Charge Density

This study reports that the surface charge density changes in Jurkat cells with the application of single 60 nanosecond pulse electric fields, using atomic force microscopy. Using an atomic force microscope tip and Jurkat cells on silica in a 0.01 M KCl ionic concentration, we were able to measure the interfacial forces, while also predicting surface charge densities of both Jurkat cell and silica surfaces. The most important finding is that the pulsing conditions varyingly reduced the cells\u27 surface charge density. This offers a novel way in which to examine cellular effects of pulsed electric fields that may lead to the identification of unique mechanical responses. Compared to a single low field strength NsPEF (15 kV/cm) application, exposure of Jurkat cells to a single high field strength NsPEF (60 kV/cm) resulted in a further reduction in charge density and major morphological changes. The structural, physical, and chemical properties of biological cells immensely influence their electrostatic force; we were able to investigate this through the use of atomic force microscopy by measuring the surface forces between the AFM\u27s tip and the Jurkat cells under different pulsing conditions as well as the interfacial forces in ionic concentrations