Methodological Challenges in Union Commitment Studies.

Methodological problems in studies of union commitment were identified and illustrated with data from 4,641 members and 479 stewards in 297 local teachers' unions. Using a 20-item union commitment scale, results confirmed the existence of 3 substantive factors and 1 method factor at the individual level of analysis: loyalty to the union, responsibility to the union, willingness to work for the union, and a factor of negatively worded items. Tests of measurement invariance showed that the scale captured commitment for rank-and-file members but not for union stewards. The authors also found partial measurement invariance between long-time and newer members and full measurement invariance between men and women. Finally, the authors found that violation of the statistical assumption of independence reduced model fit when individual commitment scores were analyzed without attention to the hierarchical nature of the data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A highway in state space for reactors with minimum entropy production

Thousands of numerical solutions of an optimal control problem for plug flow reactors were found to give, what we call a “highway in the reactors’ state space”. The problem was to find the heat transfer strategy which minimise the entropy production in reactors with fixed chemical conversion. The control variable was always the temperature of the heating/cooling medium along the reactor. The highway represents the most energy efficient way to travel far in state space. Such highways were studied for five reactor systems, endothermic and exothermic ones. Numerical analysis showed that the reactor highway is characterised by approximately constant thermodynamic driving forces/local entropy production for reasonable process intensities. Each solution represents a compromise between the entropy production of reactions, heat transfer and frictional flow (pressure drop). The solutions enter and leave the highway at different positions depending on how far from the highway their initial and final destinations are. Knowledge about the nature of the highway, e.g. when the reactor operates in a reaction mode or a heat transfer mode, may be important for energy efficient reactor design. The theoretical formulation of the optimisation problem is valid for plug flow as well as batch reactors. We showed that important results in literature like the Spirkl-Ries quantity, the theorems of equipartition of entropy production and equipartition of forces are contained in our general formulation. The numerical results showed that the analytical results are good approximations to the optimum also in problems where they do not apply in a strictly mathematical sense.     

Will musculoskeletal and visual stress change when Visual Display Unit (VDU) operators move from small offices to an ergonomically optimized office landscape?

This study investigated the effect of moving from small offices to a landscape environment for 19 Visual Display Unit (VDU) operators at Alcatel Denmark AS. The operators reported significantly improved lighting condition and glare situation. Further, visual discomfort was also significantly reduced on a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). There was no significant correlation between lighting condition and visual discomfort neither in the small offices nor in the office landscape. However, visual discomfort correlated significantly with glare in small offices i.e. more glare is related to more visual discomfort. This correlation disappeared after the lighting system in the office landscape had been improved. There was also a significant correlation between glare and itching of the eyes as well as blurred vision in the small offices, i.e. more glare more visual symptoms. Experience of pain was found to reduce the subjective assessment of work capacity during VDU tasks. There was a significant correlation between visual discomfort and reduced work capacity in small offices and in the office landscape. When moving from the small offices to the office landscape, there was a significant reduction in headache as well as back pain. No significant changes in pain intensity in the neck, shoulder, forearm, and wrist/hand were observed.The pain levels in different body areas were significantly correlated with subjective assessment of reduced work capacity in small offices and in the office landscape.By careful design and construction of an office landscape with regard to lighting and visual conditions, transfer from small offices may be acceptable from a visual-ergonomic point of view.     

Mechanisms and Kinetics of Liquid Silicon Oxidation During Industrial Refining

During oxidative ladle refining (OLR) of silicon, the metal surface is partly oxidized, resulting in the formation of a condensed silica fume (SiO₂). This fugitive emission of silica represents a potential health hazard to the workers in the silicon and ferrosilicon industry. In the current work, industrial measurement campaigns aimed at recording the fume generation during OLR were performed at the Elkem Salten plant in Norway. The measured amounts of silica produced were 2.5–5.1?kg/h, depending on the gas flow rate in the refining process. The rate of silica production correlates with the total flow rate and amount of air in the purge gas, and increases as the flow rate increases. The results of this work suggest that fume generation during OLR primarily results from oxidation of the exposed metal surface, with oxygen transport from the surrounding atmosphere to the metal surface being the limiting factor. Other identified mechanisms of SiO₂ formation were splashing of the metal and/or oxidation of SiO gas carried with the refining purge gas.     

Influence of different carbon nanostructures on the electrocatalytic activity and stability of Pt supported electrocatalysts

Commercially available graphitized carbon nanofibers and multi-walled carbon nanotubes, two carbon materials with very different structure, have been functionalized in a nitric–sulfuric acid mixture. Further on, the materials have been platinized by a microwave assisted polyol method. The relative degree of graphitization has been estimated by means of Raman spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction while the relative concentration of oxygen containing groups has been estimated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, which resulted in a graphitic character trend: Pt/GNF > Pt/F-GNF ? Pt/MWCNT > Pt/F-MWCNT. Transmission electron microscopy showed that the Pt particle size is around 3 nm for all samples, which was similar to the crystallite size obtained by X-ray diffraction. The activity towards electrochemical reduction of oxygen has been quantified using the thin-film rotating disk electrode, which has shown that all the samples have a better activity than the commercially available electrocatalysts. The trend obtained for the graphitic character maintained for the electrochemical activity, while the reverse trend has been obtained for the accelerated ageing test. Long-term potential cycling has demonstrated that the functionalization improves the stability for multi-walled carbon nanotubes, at the cost of decreased activity.     

Solidification of Silicon for Solar Cells

Silicon is the dominating material in solar cells. Monocrystalline and multicrystalline cells have approximately equal market shares and are produced from wafers, cut from single crystals produced by Czochralski (CZ) pulling or from polycrystalline ingots made by directional solidification, respectively. The present paper reviews how demands for lower cost, better yield, higher efficiency and use of less pure silicon in solar cells are addressed by advanced solidification processing. In monocrystalline solar silicon, careful growth control results in less point defects, and better efficiency. Continuous- or semi-continuous CZ growth processes are being developed for better productivity and lower cost. In multicrystalline solar silicon, extended defects such as dislocations and grain boundaries decrease efficiency, particularly in combination with new, less expensive, but more contaminated silicon feedstock. This problem is addressed by control of nucleation and growth of ingots with larger grains, preferred grain orientation and lower dislocation density.     

Thermobaric stratification in very deep Norwegian freshwater lakes

Thermobaric stratification was investigated in very deep lakes of elongated shape. We considered the spring time configuration when large freshwater lakes may have their deepest recirculation. In five very deep freshwater lakes in Norway, profiles were measured in spring 2006 with multiparameter probes. Temperature profiles confirmed thermobaric stratification in all of these lakes, i.e. the temperature profiles crossed the 4 °C line and thus were affected by pressure effects on the temperature of maximum density. Electrical conductance was low in all of the investigated lakes, and vertical gradients were too small to play a role in the density stratification. In all lakes, deep water was well supplied with oxygen. Three out of five lakes showed a temperature gradient close to Eklund's stability theorem. However, the remaining two lakes clearly opposed the theorem. Bottom temperatures were more closely related to lake length than their maximum depths. Oxygen saturation profiles documented recent intensive gas exchange with the atmosphere. They agree well with the possible formation of deep water from density driven flows at horizontal temperature gradients close to 4 °C.     

Electrical characterization of individual metal‐coated polymer spheres used in isotropic conductive adhesives

Isotropic conductive adhesives (ICAs) filled with metal‐coated polymer spheres (MPS) have been proposed to improve the mechanical reliability compared to conventional ICAs filled with silver flakes. The electrical properties of MPS play an important role in the electrical performance of macroscopic MPS‐based ICAs. This article deals with the electrical characterization of individual MPS using a nanoindentation‐based flat punch method, in which the resistance and the deformation of single MPS were monitored simultaneously. Four groups of silver‐coated polymer spheres (AgPS) with identical polymer cores but different silver coating thicknesses were tested. The resistance of AgPS decreases gradually with increasing deformation degree of particles, and increases when the deformation of particles is reduced. In addition, the resistance of individual AgPS is dependent on the physical properties of the silver coating, such as thickness, uniformity, and porosity. The thicker the silver coating is, the lower and more stable the resistance of AgPS is. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016 , 133, 43764.     

Enhanced performance in the deteriorated area of multicrystalline silicon wafers by internal gettering

The deteriorated area of the multicrystalline silicon (mc‐Si) ingots grown by directional solidification, commonly known as the Red Zone, is usually removed before wafering. This area, characterized by poor minority carrier lifetime, is located on the sides, at the top, and the bottom of the mc‐Si ingots. In this study, the effect of internal gettering by oxygen precipitates and structural defects has been investigated on the bottom zone of a mc‐Si ingot. Nucleation and growth of oxygen precipitates as well as low temperature annealing were studied. Photoluminescence imaging, lifetime mapping, and interstitial iron measurements performed by μ‐PCD reveal a considerable reduction of the bottom Red Zone. An improvement of lifetime from below 1 µs to about 20 µs and a reduction of interstitial iron concentration from 1.32 × 10¹³ at/cm³ to 8.4 × 10¹⁰ at/cm³ are demonstrated in this paper. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.