Project failures in small companies

The author relates his experiences in a small software development company. These experiences show that project management is challenging and if the project manager is an obstacle, the project is bound to fail. When it does, it can spell disaster for the manager and anyone who accompanies him or her on a software development journey.     

On the nonuniformity of a capillary flow

It is established that the capillary rise of a liquid has an oscillatory character, in contrast to the commonly accepted opinion that a vertical capillary is filled at a monotonically varying velocity. The value of the tangential shear stress arising in an ascending liquid is evaluated for ethyl alcohol and distilled water.     

Experimental Electronuclear Setup at the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics

The purpose and current construction status, at the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, of an experimental electronuclear setup, combining a pulsed proton linear accelerator (36 MeV, 0.5 mA) and a subcritical blanket thermal-power assembly 100 kW, are discussed. The main equipment is already available or is being built in industry. The setup can be used to investigate the dynamics of the interaction of a linac–driver and a subcritical reactor and problems concerning the accelerator–driver and the target–blanket assembly. The proton beams and neutron fluxes will be used for applied purposes. In the future it will be possible to increase substantially the current and energy of the proton beam.     

Vapor pressure and thermodynamic functions of TeI<Subscript>4</Subscript> and its decomposition products

Using a flow method, we have measured the vapor pressure of tellurium tetraiodide, an attractive reagent for chemical vapor deposition technology. The results, combined with earlier tensimetric data, have been used to evaluate the basic thermodynamic functions of TeI₄ and its thermolysis products.     

Phase-change optical recording: Past, present, future

We discuss specific features of Te-based compounds that made them the best materials for the phase-change data storage. It is demonstrated that the phase-change recording is due to a switch of Ge atoms between octahedral and tetrahedral symmetry positions within the Te face-centered cubic lattice. It is this nature of the transition that makes the Te-based media fast and stable. The driving force for this transition is also discussed. The chapter is concluded by introduction of a concept of the super-resolution near-field structure (super-RENS) disc that allows to reduce a bit size well below the diffraction limit and makes 100 GB/disc storage a reality.     

Influence diagnostics in multiple discriminant analysis

Various influence diagnostics in Multiple Discriminant Analysis can be found in the literature. Almost all of them are based on the overall probability of misclassification. Two case-deletion diagnostics which evaluate the effect of the omission on the linear functions which determine Fisher’s Linear Discriminant Rule are proposed in this paper. Both measures are based on the L ₂-norm: The first diagnostic is calculated from the data set and the second diagnostic is calculated in the minimum hypercube which covers it.     

The structure and properties of a Cr<Subscript>3</Subscript>C<Subscript>2</Subscript>-Ni coating deposited by a high-velocity plasma jet onto a copper substrate

Chromium carbide-nickel coatings were deposited onto a technical grade copper substrate by means of a high-velocity plasma jet of a plasmatron operating in specially selected regimes. An analysis of the coatings showed evidence of the formation of a Ni-based solid solution, a complex chromium carbide (Cr₇C₃), and an fcc crystal phase with a lattice parameter of 3.614 Å. The surface of the coatings exhibits a characteristic relief resulting from a dynamic interaction between melted and fused particles of the initial powder. The local hardness on some areas of the surface and in depth of the coating reaches 66±4.5 HRC, while the coating adhesion strength varies from 25 to 300 MPa.