The Applied Mathematics and Computer Science Schism

Isolating applied mathematics from computer science harms the profession and those who depend on it.     

Using a multicultural lens to understand illnesses among Haitians living in America.

Currently, ethnic and racial minority individuals represent a large proportion of the U.S. population, and researchers expect that they will represent the majority of the population by 2050. This shift in U.S. demographics calls for a greater awareness and integration of cultural issues into the assessment and treatment of ethnically and linguistically diverse clients. This article examines the unique beliefs and manifestations of illnesses among Haitians in connection with the American Psychological Association's (APA, 2002) Multicultural Guidelines. The authors use a common culture-bound syndrome, Séizisman, to illustrate the cultural beliefs, assessment, and treatment of illnesses among Haitians. In so doing, they demonstrate how to incorporate the APA Multicultural Guidelines into treatment with clients of diverse cultural and racial backgrounds. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Improved homogenization of Ni in sintered steels through the use of Cr-containing prealloyed powders

The homogenization of Ni in powder metal (PM) steel compacts is usually difficult even after high-temperature sintering at 1250°C. An earlier study by the authors demonstrated that this problem can be alleviated through the addition of 0.5 wt pct Cr in the form of stainless steel powders. To further improve the microstructure and mechanical properties of Ni-containing PM steels and to understand the mechanisms, an attempt was made in this study using the Fe-3Cr-0.5Mo prealloyed powder as the base material. The results showed that the distribution of the Ni additives was significantly improved. As a result, the tensile strength of the Fe-3Cr-0.5Mo-4Ni-0.5C compact sintered at 1250°C reached 1323 MPa. The elongation was higher than 1 pct. These sinter-hardened properties, which were attained using a slow furnace cooling rate, were comparable to those of the sinter-hardened alloys reported in the literature using accelerated cooling and were equivalent to those of the best quenched-and-tempered alloys registered in the Metal Powder Industries Federation (MPIF) standards. These improvements were attributed to the positive effect of Cr addition on alloy homogenization due to the reduction of the repelling effect between Ni and C, as was demonstrated through the thermodynamic analysis using the Thermo-Calc program.     

Interview mit Hans-Christian Boos zum Thema „Unternehmertum in der IT-Branche“

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Comprehensive heat exchange model for a semiconductor laser diode

By measuring the total energy flow from an optical device, we can develop new design strategies for thermal stabilization. Here we present a comprehensive model for heat exchange between a semiconductor laser diode and its environment that includes the mechanisms of conduction, convection, and radiation. We perform quantitative measurements of these processes for several devices, deriving parameters such as a laser's heat transfer coefficient, and then demonstrate the feasibility of thermal probing for the nondestructive wafer-scale characterization of optical devices.     

Growing of Tubes with a Small Inner Diameter from the Melt by the Stepanov Method

A mathematical model is suggested for describing the growth of a crystal tube with a small inner diameter from the melt by the modified Stepanov method with the tube being affected by temperature pulses. The behavior of the inner and outer radii of the tube as a function of the amplitude and duration of temperature jumps is studied.     

Note on B-splines, wavelet scaling functions, and Gabor frames

Let g be a continuous, compactly supported function on such that the integer translates of g constitute a partition of unity. We show that the Gabor system (g,a,b), with window g and time-shift and frequency-shift parameters a,b>0 has no lower frame bound larger than 0 if b=2,3,... and a>0. In particular, (g,a,b) is not a Gabor frame if g is a continuous, compactly supported wavelet scaling function and if b=2,3,... and a>0. We give an example for our result for the case that g=B/sub 1/, the triangle function supported by [-1,1], by showing pictures of the canonical dual corresponding to (g,a,b) where ab=1/4 and b crosses the lines N=2,3,.     

Understanding silica-supported metal catalysts: Pd/silica as a case study

Supported metal catalysts, particularly noble metals supported on SiO₂, have attracted considerable attention due to the importance of the silica–metal interface in heterogeneous catalysis and in electronic device fabrication. Several important issues, e.g., the stability of the metal–oxide interface at working temperatures and pressures, are not well-understood. In this review, the present status of our understanding of the metal–silica interface is reviewed. Recent results of model studies in our laboratories on Pd/SiO₂/Mo(1 1 2) using LEED, AES and STM are reported. In this work, epitaxial, ultrathin, well-ordered SiO₂ films were grown on a Mo(1 1 2) substrate to circumvent complications that frequently arise from the silica–silicon interface present in silica thin films grown on silicon.     

On the origin of strain hardening in glassy polymers

The influence of network density on the strain hardening behaviour of amorphous polymers is studied. The network density of polystyrene is altered by blending with poly(2,6-dimethyl-1,4-phenylene-oxide) and by cross-linking during polymerisation. The network density is derived from the rubber-plateau modulus determined by dynamic mechanical thermal analysis. Subsequently uniaxial compression tests are performed to obtain the intrinsic deformation behaviour and, in particular, the strain hardening modulus. At room temperature, the strain hardening modulus proves to be proportional to the network density, irrespective of the nature of the network, i.e. physical entanglements or chemical cross-links. With increasing temperature, the strain hardening modulus is observed to decrease. This decrease appears to be related to the influence of thermal mobility of the chains, determined by the distance to the glass-transition temperature (T−T_g).     

Performance study of iSCSI-based storage subsystems

iISCSI is emerging as an end-to-end protocol for transporting storage I/O block data over IP networks. By exploiting the ubiquitous Internet infrastructure, iSCSI greatly facilitates remote storage, remote backup, and data mirroring. This article evaluates the performance of two typical iSCSI storage subsystems by measuring and analyzing block-level I/O access performance and file-level access performance. In the file-level performance study, we compare file access performance in an NAS scheme with that in an iSCSI-based SAN scheme. Our test results show that Gigabit Ethernet-based iSCSI can reach very high bandwidth, close to that of a direct FC disk access in block I/O access. However, when the iSCSI traverses through longer distance, throughput relies heavily on the available bandwidth between the initiator and the target. On the other hand, the file-level performance shows that iSCSI-based file access (SAN scheme) provides higher performance than using NFS protocol in Linux and SMB protocol in Windows (NAS scheme). However, the advantage of using iSCSI-based file accesses decreases as the file size increases. The obtained experimental results shed some light on the performance of applications based on iSCSI storage.