New Jersey's Family Cap and Welfare Births: An Examination of Racial Differences in Fertility Within the Framework of Proximate Determinants

Abstract New Jersey's family cap policy was designed to encourage responsible childbearing among welfare recipients by placing an economic disincentive on births conceived while the mother was receiving welfare. In this study, we use data from an experiment conducted with 8,400 women from October 1992 to December 1996 to determine which of the proximate determinants (abortion, contraception, or family planning visits) are critical in women's decisions to give birth while on welfare. We use structural equations modeling to trace the total effect of these proximate determinants on births and the indirect effect of family cap, time on welfare, mother's age, and race. Our analysis shows that length of time on welfare, family cap limitations, and mother's race are indicative of distinctive patterns of proximate determinant use.     

Nanoindentation measurements of Teflon‐AF nanosheets

We report the formation of cohesive, mechanically robust thin films of Teflon‐AF formed via self‐assembly of nanoparticles at both air/water and oil/water interfaces of micro‐emulsion droplets. We also present results of morphological and mechanical investigations of thin films formed at these oil/water interfaces. Scanning electron microscope and low angle X‐ray diffraction characterization of drop cast thin films from the micro‐emulsions showed the presence of stacks of nanosheets with an average thickness of 6 nm. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) characterization put the thickness at a much lower value of around 2 nm implying that these sheets are comprised of molecular sheets of Teflon‐AF. AFM characterization also indicated that these sheets are stretched molecular films comprising inter‐diffused molecular chains, arranged in a regular fashion. Nanoindentation studies of these films unambiguously demonstrated the “tablet sliding” mechanism, similar to nacre, for dissipating applied stress. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015 , 132, 41360.     

Flattening tuples in an SSA intermediate representation

For functional programs, unboxing aggregate data structures such as tuples removes memory indirections and frees dead components of the decoupled structures. To explore the consequences of such optimizations in a whole-program compiler, this paper presents a tuple flattening transformation and a framework that allows the formal study and comparison of different flattening schemes. We present our transformation over functional SSA, a simply-typed, monomorphic language and show that the transformation is type-safe. The flattening algorithm defined by our transformation has been incorporated into MLton, a whole-program, optimizing compiler for SML. Experimental results indicate that aggressive tuple flattening can lead to substantial improvements in runtime performance, a reduction in code size, and a decrease in total allocation without a significant increase in compilation time.     

Structure, nucleation and Eu luminescence in alkaline earth rare earth borate glass

In La₂O₃-MO-B₂O₃ ternary system, various glasses/ glass ceramics with M=Ca, Sr and Ba have been prepared. In this ternary system, homogeneous nucleation occuring in the B₂O₃ melt appears to be the cause for the formation of nanocrystallites, hence glass ceramics. The nucleation process is very much dependent on the alkaline earth used viz., with smaller alkaline earths like Ca, boron prefers (BO₄)⁵⁻ tetrahedral coordination with oxygen, while in the case of bigger alkaline earths like Ba and Sr, (BO₃)³⁻ triangular coordination seems to be predominant. Eu³⁺ in this glass system yields intense ⁵D₀→⁷F_j emission. A cursory view on the dependence of the various Judd-Ofelt parameters (Ω_k) indicates that Ω₂ parameter is very much dependent on the immediate vicinity of the luminescent ion (Eu³⁺) while Ω₄ is not. Various results based on these are discussed.     

Analysis of regularly perturbed lattices and reaction rate distributions from TIC experiments for X7 lattices

Temporary International Collective (TIC) was established in 1972 by an agreement among seven countries, namely, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The main objective of TIC was to provide the experimental data for the reactor physics analysis of water cooled and water moderated power reactors (WWER). Extensive experimental work for different core configurations was carried out by TIC countries to investigate the physics behavior of WWER lattices and the results were published in TIC volumes.     

低成本电子系统印刷电子技术的开发与应用现状

近年来,印刷电子技术作为一种可实现低成本、大面积电子系统的技术,已获得了可观的收益.印刷允许进行充分有效的处理,从而降低了过程的复杂性,减少了材料的使用种类.加上使用如塑料、金属箔等低成本基板,预计印刷电子技术能实现更多领域电子系统的简单开发,包括显示器,传感器和RFID标签等.回顾印刷电子技术开发及应用工作,通过合成无机纳米粒子和有机材料的结合,可以制成一系列的印刷电子"油墨",并用于印刷无源元件、多层互联结构、二极管、晶体管、存储器、电池、不同类型的气体和生物传感器.通过拓展印刷能力,进一步降低将多种功能材料集成在相同基板上的成本.因此,开发出具有该优势的印刷系统是有可能的.     

Neuro-controller for reducing cyclic variation in lean combustion spark ignition engines

Literature shows that by controlling engines at extreme lean operating conditions (equivalence ratio <0.75) can reduce emissions by as much as 30% (Inoue, Matsushita, Nakanishi, & Okano (1993). Toyota lean combustion system—the third generation SAE, 930,873) and also it improves fuel efficiency by as much as 5-10%. However, the engine exhibits strong cyclic variation in heat release which may lead to instability and poor performance. A novel neural network (NN) controller is developed to control spark ignition (SI) engines at extreme lean conditions. The purpose of neuro-controller is to reduce the cyclic variation in heat release at lean engine operation even when the engine dynamics are unknown. The stability analysis of the closed-loop control system is given and the boundedness of all the signals is ensured. The adaptive NN does not require an offline learning phase and the weights can be initialized at zero or random. Results demonstrate that the cyclic variation is reduced significantly using the proposed controller developed using an experimentally validated engine model. The proposed approach can also be applied to a class of nonlinear systems that have a similar structure as that of the engine dynamics.