Die (Wieder-)Entdeckung von Eulers Mondtafeln

Up to now only three lunar tables by Leonhard Euler (1707?C1783), published in 1745, 1746, and 1772, were known. For a long time, however, it was assumed that the first two of these tables were identical. The author compared these tables with each other and proved the contrary. This fact also transpires from an examination of their history, which was reconstructed using Euler??s correspondence. In addition, evidence has been found in Euler??s voluminous scientific correspondence and in contemporary publications of the eighteenth century that, between 1742 and 1750, Euler published additional lunar tables anonymously. The author proved Euler??s authorship of at least five lunar tables containing some 100 pages, which were neither recorded in the list of his works nor published in the Leonhardi Euleri Opera Omnia.     

Impact evaluation of the voluntary early retirement policy on research and technology outputs of the faculties of science in Morocco

Scientometric indicators or science metrics, conventional and derived ones, are used in ex-post evaluating of a government policy with impact on research system. Publications, citations, h-index, Glänzel model, and patents are applied in both micro and meso levels. This provides useful insight into the impact of the voluntary early retirement policy on research and technological outputs of the faculties of science in Morocco and consequently on the overall Morocco??s research system. The use of these metrics showed that the effect of the initiative was quite limited by affecting an average of 8% of the professor staffs of these institutions. Furthermore, each professor benefiting from this initiative had produced an average of 3.7 publications indexed in SCI in all his (her) career. The few number of the publications attributed to these professors had been gradually decreasing even 6 years before the initiative. No specific scientific field had intensively been struck. The findings also support that these professors were in general more ??author?? than ??inventor??. Inventor-professor institutions were likely more affected by the initiative. By means of these metrics, even if the initiative had not contributed to rejuvenate the professor-staffs of the faculties of science in Morocco, would nevertheless be a stimulus of their research system with respect to their scientometric indicators.     

The Impact of Cultural Distance on Bilateral Arm��s Length Exports

• Prior studies have argued and regularly found that cultural distance is negatively related to bilateral export flows, which are the sum of arm??s length and intra-firm exports. However, these macro-level studies overlook the firm-level insights that arm??s length exports are a substitute for arm??s length affiliate sales, and that firms?? choices between these substitutes are influenced by cultural distance.
• Moreover, intra-firm exports are a complement to arm??s length affiliate sales and hence likely to respond in the same way to cultural distance as such sales. The inclusion of intra-firm exports in export flows has thus obscured the effect of cultural distance on aggregate arm??s length exports.
• We overcome these conceptual and methodological deficiencies by examining how cultural distance influences aggregate arm??s length exports, while simultaneously considering its impact on aggregate arm??s length affiliate sales. Drawing on several strands of firm-level international business (IB) research, we argue that while arm??s length affiliate sales are likely to decline with cultural distance, this is not necessarily the case with arm??s length exports, which may in fact increase with cultural distance.
• Analyzing a panel dataset of US foreign affiliate sales and US exports to unaffiliated parties, we find that cultural distance negatively affects arm??s length affiliate sales but positively affects arm??s length exports. Our study thus shows that the explicit consideration of firm-level entry mode choices helps us better understand and explain macro-level IB activity.

     

Research evaluation. Part I: productivity and citedness of a German medical research institution

An evaluation exercise was performed involving 313 papers of research staff (66 persons) of the Deutsche Rheuma-Forschungszentrum (DRFZ) published in 2004?C2008. The records and citations to them were retrieved from the Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) in March 2010. The authors compared productivity and citedness of ??group leaders?? vs. ??regular scientists??, of ??male scientists?? vs. ??female scientists?? using citation-based indexes. It was found that ??group leaders?? are more prolific and cited more often than ??regular scientists??, the same is true considering ??male?? vs. ??female scientists??. The greatest contrast is observed between ??female leaders?? and ??female regular scientists??. The above mentioned differences are significant in indexes related to the number of papers, while values of indexes characterizing the quality of papers (average citation rate per paper and similar indexes) are not substantially different among the groups compared. The mean value of percentile rank index for all the 313 papers is 58.5, which is significantly higher than the global mean value of about 50. This fact is evidence of a higher citation status, on average, of the publications from the DRFZ.     

The impact factor: its place in Garfield’s thought, in science evaluation, and in library collection management

This paper is a response to that of Vanclay, who proposes, that since the impact factor (IF) is so seriously flawed, Thomson Reuters should either correct the measure or??preferably??no longer publish it and restrict itself to journal certification. It is argued here that Vanclay??s analysis is itself seriously flawed, because he appears totally ignorant of the thought structure of Eugene Garfield, IF??s creator. As a result, Vanclay appears unaware of the importance of total cites and the close connection of IF with review journals, where the paradigms of science are defined. This paper??s author agrees that IF is a defective measure, analyzing its defects from the perspective of the frequency theory of probability, on which modern inferential statistics is based. However, he asserts that abandoning it would be counterproductive because of its demonstrated ability??even with its defects??to identify small important journals like review journals, giving it an important role in science evaluation and library collection management.     

Foreign Direct Investment vs. Foreign Portfolio Investment

• We examine the effect of a country??s governance environment on the foreign investment it attracts. We classify countries based on the dominant mode of governance into three types: (1) rule-based (strong public rule of law), (2) relation-based (weak rule of law and strong informal networks), and (3) family-based (absence of both public rules and informal networks).
• We then examine how different governance types affect foreign investment patterns among 45 countries. Our main argument is that the choice of investment??direct or portfolio??is influenced by the type of property protection associated with different governance modes.
• We find that rule-based countries attract the lowest amount of FDI relative to the total amount of foreign investment, and they have the largest stock market size relative to their economies.
• Our study contributes to the foreign investment literature by bringing the governance environment into the equation and more successfully explaining why some countries have relatively large foreign direct investment ratios and relatively small foreign portfolio investment ratios.

     

Unsteady three-dimensional sources for a two-layer fluid of finite depth and their applications

To our friend Ernie Tuck, in celebration of his multi-faceted talents. The velocity potentials of various unsteady point sources are derived in this paper for a two-layer fluid of finite depth. Two-layer fluids are often used to study effects of density stratification on hydrodynamics of marine systems. The sources here are restricted to the upper fluid layer and the potentials of the induced flows are given for the whole fluid domain. The velocity potentials of a transient source of arbitrary strength and in arbitrary three-dimensional motion are derived first. The potentials of a time-harmonic source without forward speed, and then with forward speed, are obtained from the transient source by specifying the appropriate source strength and motion. These potentials are fundamental to the analyses of various types of body motion in finite water depths under the influence of surface and interfacial waves. As a sample application, a numerical solution of the radiation and diffraction problem for a floating rectangular barge is presented. The results indicate that internal waves can have a strong effect on the motions of the floating barge over a wide range of incident-wave frequencies.     

Mechanism of gas bubble shoot-off and motion during spark discharge in liquid

The conditions of the excitation of a pulsed plasma discharge on the surface of a processed metal (copper) sample immersed in a conducting aqueous solution have been studied. Cathode polarization of the metal was provided by a high-voltage capacitor bank (4??F) charged to U = 200?C1100 V after each discharge. It is established that electric breakdown with a duration not exceeding 0.1 ??s is always preceded by the formation of small hydrogen bubbles (with radii r ?? 37?C40 ??m) on the polarized metal surface, which takes about 139?C159 ??s. A mechanism of passivation of the processed metal surface by these hydrogen bubbles, which are synchronously shot off from the electrode surface under the action of the spark discharge, is proposed. Consistent matching of the experimental data and model calculations is used to estimate the main parameters determining the kinetics of bubble detachment from the electrode surface at various voltages U on the capacitor bank.     

The success-index: an alternative approach to the h-index for evaluating an individual’s research output

Among the most recent bibliometric indicators for normalizing the differences among fields of science in terms of citation behaviour, Kosmulski (J Informetr 5(3):481?C485, 2011) proposed the NSP (number of successful paper) index. According to the authors, NSP deserves much attention for its great simplicity and immediate meaning??equivalent to those of the h-index??while it has the disadvantage of being prone to manipulation and not very efficient in terms of statistical significance. In the first part of the paper, we introduce the success-index, aimed at reducing the NSP-index??s limitations, although requiring more computing effort. Next, we present a detailed analysis of the success-index from the point of view of its operational properties and a comparison with the h-index??s ones. Particularly interesting is the examination of the success-index scale of measurement, which is much richer than the h-index??s. This makes success-index much more versatile for different types of analysis??e.g., (cross-field) comparisons of the scientific output of (1) individual researchers, (2) researchers with different seniority, (3) research institutions of different size, (4) scientific journals, etc.     

Zur Rezeption von Hallers medizinischem und medizinhistorischem Werk im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert

A survey of the secondary literature of Albrecht Haller’s medical work after his death (1777) reveals that already in the 19th century most of his topics and his method were discussed and appreciated. Within physiology his doctrine of irritability and sensibility received most attention. The 20th century shows a considerable expansion of the secondary literature. However, there is still a lack of monographs dealing with Haller’s medical work in a comprehensive way. Not only was the appreciation of Haller’s medical work in the more than 200 years since his death constantly high but, for whatever reasons, it is even characterized by an increasing interest of researchers from many fields.     

A computational model and experimental validation of shielding and amplifying effects at a crack tip near perpendicular strength-mismatched interfaces

The stress field around the crack tip near an elastically matched but strength-mismatched interface body in a bimetallic system is influenced when the crack tip yield or cohesive zone spreads to the interface body. The concept of crack tip stress intensity parameter, K _tip, is therefore employed in fracture analysis of the bimetallic body. A computational model to determine K _tip is reviewed in this paper. The model, based upon i) Westergaard??s complex potentials coupled with Kolosov?CMuskhelishvili??s relations between a crack tip stress field and complex potentials and ii) Dugdale??s representation of the cohesive zone clearly indicates shielding or amplifying effects of strength mismatch across the interface, depending upon the direction of the strength gradient, over the crack tip. The model is successfully validated by conducting series of high cycle fatigue tests over Mode I cracks advancing towards various strength-mismatched interfaces in bimetallic compact tension specimens prepared by electron beam welding of elastically identical weak ASTM 4340 alloy and strong MDN 250 maraging steels.     

Effect of conditions of pulsed electron-beam melting for Al (film)/Ti (substrate) systems on phase formation and properties of Ti-Al surface alloys

Findings of comparative investigations are presented for phase formation, characteristics of hardening, tribological properties, and oxidation resistance of Ti-Al intermetallic surface alloys formed by multiple alternation of deposition of an Al film (0.1?C1 ??m) on a Ti substrate and pulsed liquid-phase mixing of Al and Ti by intense low-energy (??15 keV) electron beams with microsecond (??3 ??s) and submillisecond (100 ??s) duration. It is found that microsecond synthesis is effective for formation of ??(TiAl) oxidation-resistant surface alloys. In turn, submillisecond synthesis allows one to form Ti₃Al surface alloys with enhanced wear resistance.     

Roland G. Rood

Abstract

Roland G. Rood (1863–1927) is an enigmatic, yet fascinating, figure in the history of American art criticism. Very little about his education and career is known. His published writings as well as unpublished drafts for essays on aesthetics, however, provide a comprehensive framework for his ideas. Dating or referring to the period 1904–1907, this body of work indexes a significant direction of change in the relationship of art to science. Featured in Alfred Stieglitz's avant-garde journal Camera Work, Rood's criticism also illuminates the probing, psychological, and intertextural nature of Stieglitz's modernism.     

Grim tales about the impact factor and the h-index in the Web of Science and the Journal Citation Reports databases: reflections on Vanclay’s criticism

This paper reflects on the most current and some of the recent contributions of JK Vanclay, focusing on his methods, findings, and criticism about the journal citations reports and the web of science databases, the journal impact factor and the h-index. It is argued and demonstrated that some of the recent papers of the author about scientometric issues, measures and sources show so much demagoguery, ignorance and arrogance, have so much prejudice and bias, so profound errors in using the databases, calculating metrics, and interpreting search results that the papers are very unlikely to be meant as a genuine contribution from an academic who is a graduate of??among others??Oxford University, professor and dean in a respected university, a well-published and well-cited author and a recipient of the Queen??s Award (all the above in forest science). The papers are much more likely to serve as props for a staged, mock-up scenario based on slipshod research in an experiment, to illustrate the deficiencies in the processes and in the assessment of scholarly publishing productivity and impact in order to present the idealized solution of Vanclay: using the h-index, portrayed as the Prince, mounted on the shoulder of the White Horse, Google Scholar.     

The Influence of SnO2 Nano-Particles Addition on the Vickers Microhardness of (Bi, Pb)-2223 Superconducting Phase

The Vickers microhardness of Bi_1.6Pb_0.4Sr₂Ca₂Cu₃O_10+?? superconducting phase with added SnO₂ nano-particles was investigated. The concentration of SnO₂ nano-particles x varied from 0.0 to 2.0 of the sample??s total mass. The experimental data of the Vickers microhardness were analyzed using Meyer??s law, the elastic/plastic deformation model, Hays?CKendall??s approach and the proportional specimen resistance model. The Vickers microhardness number H _v increased as x increased up to 0.4?wt%. The load dependence of H _v exhibited a normal indentation-size effect, H _v increased as the applied load increased. Moreover, this dependence was well fitted with the Hays?CKendall approach rather than the elastic/plastic deformation and proportional specimen resistance models. In addition, we calculated Young modulus, yield strength, fracture toughness and brittleness index as a function of both applied load and SnO₂ nano-particle concentration.     

David A. Sinclair's Pilgrimage

Abstract

The secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association has spent the last few days in bidding farewell and receiving the best wishes of his friends, as he prepared to leave them in search of his health. The large number of friends gathered about him last Sunday showed the hold he has upon the people of this city.     

Homogeneous cooling of hard ellipsoids

We study the homogeneous cooling of hard, smooth ellipsoids in three dimensions using event driven numerical simulation. The elongation of the particle has a strong effect on the cooling behavior. Weakly elongated ellipsoids display two distinct cooling regimes. For small times, the translational and rotational energy decay at a different rates. Once their ratio reaches a time-independent value (different from equipartition), the overall temperature of the system decays like t ^?2, as predicted by Haff??s law. For more elongated ellipsoids the translational and rotational temperatures rapidly reach a constant ratio near unity. The cooling behavior in the homogeneous state can be predicted from Haff??s law and the equilibrium collision rate.     

Progressive Focusing and Trustworthiness in Qualitative Research

• The business and management community increasingly recognises that qualitative research is a ??messy??, non-linear and often unpredictable undertaking. Yet, a considerable proportion of the qualitative research published in top journals is still presented as the result of a linear, predictable research process, thus wrongly suggesting deductive reasoning.
• In this paper, we focus on a particular type of ??messiness?? where during fieldwork, the research context is revealed to be more complex than anticipated, forcing the researcher to gradually refine/shift their focus to reflect ??what really matters??. We adopt Stake??s notion of progressive focusing for this gradual approach.
• Progressive focusing is well-suited to qualitative research in international business requiring complex iteration between theory and data, and the truthful yet coherent presentation of the research process. We propose that this dual challenge of complexity and trustworthiness may be addressed by using computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS).
• We present conceptual considerations and guidelines and offer a view on a ??messy??, non-linear doctoral research project conducted using a progressive focusing approach, to demonstrate how CAQDAS can help to develop and re-negotiate insights from theory and interview data, as well as enhance trustworthiness, transparency and publication potential.

     

Effects of temperature and strain rate on fracture properties of amorphous silicon nitride

The high temperature mechanical behaviours of silicon nitride are difficult to be investigated because it is hard to measure these structural changes in the mechanical test. Atomistic simulation is a proper way to investigate the structural-mechanical mechanism at high temperatures. In this paper, the structural and fracture properties of amorphous silicon nitride (a-Si₃N₄) were studied at different temperatures. The simulation results consist with the experiments on radial distribution function, temperature-dependent yield stress and Young??s modulus. Moreover, the effects of strain rate on mechanical properties were also studied, the results show a higher strain rate lead to larger yield stress and Young??s modulus.