Women in technical/scientific professions: results of two nationalsurveys

A survey to study women in technical and scientific fields was conducted in 1993. The study examined the environment in which women work, the relationship between women's personal lives and their work, and women's interpersonal communication styles. Results of the study supported some of the previous research findings related to glass ceilings and career paths. However, results related to sexual harassment and benefits prompted new questions, and results related to communication styles conflicted with the findings of much previous research. To further investigate these conflicting results, a follow-up survey was conducted in 1993. Results of this survey supported the 1993 findings. Results appear to indicate that the workplace and the women in it are changing. The workplace is becoming more family-oriented, and women are practicing strategies for working effectively in traditionally male-dominated organizations. In technical/scientific fields, men and women have adopted androgynous language patterns, and little difference exists between the interpersonal communication styles of men and women     

How to be a gamer! Exploring personal and social indicators of gamer identity

Over the past decades, digital games have continued to extend their audience as they moved into the cultural mainstream. Despite this fact, however, only a portion of those who play games consider themselves a gamer. Drawing on insights from social identity theory, this study explores the factors that contribute to why people attribute a gamer identity to self or others. It does so by considering 2 sites of identity construction: the social context of players and the broader cultural milieu. Results suggest that a gamer identity is first and foremost associated with stereotypical behaviors that find their origin in a consumption logic. Friendship networks, however, provide an important environment in which a gamer identity can be performed.     

Fixed abrasive machining of non-metallic materials

This paper summaries advancements in fixed abrasive machining of non-metallic materials, which include reinforced concretes, stones, rocks, carbon fiber reinforced plastic, metal and ceramic matrix composites, wood, wood-fiber plastic composite, biomaterials (bone, plaque, and enamel), and structural and electronic ceramics. The broad impacts, diverse applications, and innovations of fixed abrasive machining processes are presented. Benefits of the engineered deterministic distribution of abrasive grain grinding tools are demonstrated. Industrial perspectives and future research on innovative fixed abrasive machining technologies that enable new processes and improve the productivity are highlighted.     

Linear Concepts and Hidden Variables

We study a learning problem which allows for a “fair” comparison between unsupervised learning methods—probabilistic model construction, and more traditional algorithms that directly learn a classification. The merits of each approach are intuitively clear: inducing a model is more expensive computationally, but may support a wider range of predictions. Its performance, however, will depend on how well the postulated probabilistic model fits that data. To compare the paradigms we consider a model which postulates a single binary-valued hidden variable on which all other attributes depend. In this model, finding the most likely value of any one variable (given known values for the others) reduces to testing a linear function of the observed values. We learn the model with two techniques: the standard EM algorithm, and a new algorithm we develop based on covariances. We compare these, in a controlled fashion, against an algorithm (a version of Winnow) that attempts to find a good linear classifier directly. Our conclusions help delimit the fragility of using a model that is even “slightly” simpler than the distribution actually generating the data, vs. the relative robustness of directly searching for a good predictor.     

The influence of blood on targeted microbubbles

The ability to successfully target the delivery of drugs and other therapeutic molecules has been a key goal of biomedical research for many decades. Despite highly promising in vitro results, however, successful translation of targeted drug delivery into clinical use has been extremely limited. This study investigates the significance of the characteristics of whole blood, which are rarely accounted for in vitro assays, as a possible explanation for the poor correlation between in vitro and in vivo experiments. It is shown using two separate model systems employing either biochemical or magnetic targeting that blood causes a substantial reduction in targeting efficiency relative to saline under the same flow conditions. This finding has important implications for the design of targeted drug delivery systems and the assays used in their development.     

Inactivation of foodborne viruses of significance by high pressure and other processes

The overall safety of a food product is an important component in the mix of considerations for processing, distribution, and sale. With constant commercial demand for superior food products to sustain consumer interest, nonthermal processing technologies have drawn considerable attention for their ability to assist development of new products with improved quality attributes for the marketplace. This review focuses primarily on the nonthermal processing technology high-pressure processing (HPP) and examines current status of its use in the control and elimination of pathogenic human viruses in food products. There is particular emphasis on noroviruses and hepatitis A virus with regard to the consumption of raw oysters, because noroviruses and hepatitis A virus are the two predominant types of viruses that cause foodborne illness. Also, application of HPP to whole-shell oysters carries multiple benefits that increase the popularity of HPP usage for these foods. Viruses have demonstrated a wide range of sensitivities in response to high hydrostatic pressure. Viral inactivation by pressure has not always been predictable based on nomenclature and morphology of the virus. Studies have been complicated in part from the inherent difficulties of working with human infectious viruses. Consequently, continued study of viral inactivation by HPP is warranted.     

Residual stress formation after re‐contouring of micro‐plasma welded Ti−6Al−4 V parts by means of ball end milling

During the regeneration of damaged components such as compressor blades, the weld repair is followed by machining processes. Excess weld material is removed in a cutting process in order to reproduce the final contour. Therefore, both processe have to be considered regarding the resulting surface and functional properties of the repaired component. In this study, bead on plate welds are produced on 10 mm Ti‐6Al‐4 V sheets using micro‐plasma welding with different levels of welding current. They are subsequently re‐contoured via ball end milling using tools of different cutting edge radii. The residual stress depth profile is measured using X‐ray diffractometry. It is shown that the final residual stress depth profile is mainly influenced by the milling process when machining with rounded cutting edges.     

The ASTER spectral library version 2.0

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA's Terra platform has been widely used in geological and other science studies. In support of ASTER studies, a library of natural and man-made materials was compiled as the ASTER Spectral Library v1.2 and made available from http://speclib.jpl.nasa.gov. The library is a collection of contributions in a standard format with ancillary data from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). A new version of the library (v2.0) is now available online or via CD, which includes major additions to the mineral and rock spectra. The ASTER library provides a comprehensive collection of over 2300 spectra of a wide variety of materials covering the wavelength range 0.4-15.4 µm.     

Tycho: a wide-area messaging framework with an integrated virtual registry

In a distributed environment remote entities, usually the producers or consumers of services, need a means to publish their existence so that clients, needing their services, can search and find the appropriate ones that they can then interact with directly. The publication of information is via a registry service, and the interaction is via a high-level messaging service. Typically, separate libraries provide these two services. Tycho is an implementation of a wide-area asynchronous messaging framework with an integrated distributed registry. This will free developers from the need to assemble their applications from a range of potentially diverse middleware offerings, which should simplify and speed application development and more importantly allow developers to concentrate on their own domain of expertise. In the first part of the paper we outline our motivation for producing Tycho and then review a number of registry and messaging systems popular with the Grid community. In the second part of the paper we describe the architecture and implementation of Tycho. In the third part of the paper we present and discuss various performance tests that were undertaken to compare Tycho with alternative similar systems. Finally, we summarise and conclude the paper and outline future work.