Teleological Essentialism: Generalized

Natural/social kind essentialism is the view that natural kind categories, both living and non-living natural kinds, as well as social kinds (e.g., race, gender), are essentialized. On this view, artifactual kinds are not essentialized. Our view—teleological essentialism—is that a broad range of categories are essentialized in terms of teleology, including artifacts. Utilizing the same kinds of experiments typically used to provide evidence of essentialist thinking—involving superficial change (study 1), transformation of insides (study 2) and inferences about offspring (study 3)—we find support for the view that a broad range of categories—living natural kinds, non-living natural kinds and artifactual kinds—are essentialized in terms of teleology. Study 4 tests a unique prediction of teleological essentialism and also provides evidence that people make inferences about purposes which in turn guide categorization judgments

Ups and Downs: Does the American Economy Still Promote Upward Mobility?

Examines trends in absolute intragenerational mobility by analyzing short- and long-term income fluctuations from 1967-2004, rates of recovery from declines, recovery time, and rates of gains compared with those of declines

Technology readiness and segmentation profile of mature consumers

Self-service technologies (SSTs) play a major role in enabling consumers to perform service delivery themselves. The purpose of this study was to test extensions of the original Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) aimed at predicting mature consumers’ attitude and behaviour towards using self-service banking technologies (SSBTs). A survey methodology was employed to gather data from 208 mature consumers on variables captured by the extended TAM. Path analysis indicated that self-efficacy, technology discomfort, perceived risk, and personal contact were determinants of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness and also direct and indirect determinants of attitude towards and intention to use SSBTs. These findings have theoretical implications for models of technology acceptance and practical interventions designed at increasing use of SSBTs among mature consumers

Marketing an Established Institutional Repository: Marquette Libraries\u27 Research Stewardship Survey [poster presentation]

This poster illustrates the planning of a strategic marketing campaign for Marquette University\u27s institutional repository, E-Publications@Marquette. The IR was established in 2008 for the deposit of theses and dissertations and has expanded to include faculty publications and research. Despite active participation by some faculty, universal participation remains an elusive goal. The Coordinators of Digital Programs and Marketing and Outreach collaborated to better promote the services and capabilities of the IR. This process involved the identification of faculty participation and needs as well as an assessment of the IR’s capabilities in addressing those needs. Faculty participation was identified through the faculty permissions database, providing an accurate number of faculty contributors. A needs assessment survey was sent to Marquette University faculty, identifying areas of potential growth. Consideration was given to the IR’s ability to meet the identified needs. Equipment, staffing, software, and other resources were evaluated. Based upon the assessment survey and the IR’s available resources, planning for a promotional plan and the evaluation of its effectiveness can then occur

Endurance testing of downstream cathodes on a low-power MPD thruster

A low-power MPD thruster with downstream cathode was tested for endurance with a series of hollow cathode designs. Failure modes and failure mechanisms were identified. A new hollow cathode (with rod inserts) has emerged which shows promise for long life. The downstream positioning of the cathode was also changed from an on-axis location to an off-axis location. Data are presented for a 1332-hour life test of this new hollow cathode located at the new off-axis location. Xenon propellant was used

Inclusive and effective bulk viscosities in the hadron gas

We estimate the temperature dependence of the bulk viscosity in a relativistic hadron gas. Employing the Green-Kubo formalism in the SMASH (Simulating Many Accelerated Strongly-interacting Hadrons) transport approach, we study different hadronic systems in increasing order of complexity. We analyze the (in)validity of the single exponential relaxation ansatz for the bulk-channel correlation function and the strong influence of the resonances and their lifetimes. We discuss the difference between the inclusive bulk viscosity of an equilibrated, long-lived system, and the effective bulk viscosity of a short-lived mixture like the hadronic phase of relativistic heavy-ion collisions, where the processes whose inverse relaxation rate are larger than the fireball duration are excluded from the analysis. This clarifies the differences between previous approaches which computed the bulk viscosity including/excluding the very slow processes in the hadron gas. We compare our final results with previous hadron gas calculations and confirm a decreasing trend of the inclusive bulk viscosity over entropy density as temperature increases, whereas the effective bulk viscosity to entropy ratio, while being lower than the inclusive one, shows no strong dependence to temperature.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figure

Universal binding energy relations in metallic adhesion

Rose, Smith, and Ferrante have discovered scaling relations which map the adhesive binding energy calculated by Ferrante and Smith onto a single universal binding energy curve. These binding energies are calculated for all combinations of Al(111), Zn(0001), Mg(0001), and Na(110) in contact. The scaling involves normalizing the energy by the maximum binding energy and normalizing distances by a suitable combination of Thomas-Fermi screening lengths. Rose et al. have also found that the calculated cohesive energies of K, Ba, Cu, Mo, and Sm scale by similar simple relations, suggesting the universal relation may be more general than for the simple free electron metals for which it was derived. In addition, the scaling length was defined more generally in order to relate it to measurable physical properties. Further this universality can be extended to chemisorption. A simple and yet quite accurate prediction of a zero temperature equation of state (volume as a function of pressure for metals and alloys) is presented. Thermal expansion coefficients and melting temperatures are predicted by simple, analytic expressions, and results compare favorably with experiment for a broad range of metals