Breaking down the boundaries to storing, sharing and publishing research data

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

New methods for controlling twin configurations and characterizing twin boundaries in 5M Ni-Mn-Ga for the development of applications

Traditional methods for studying the magnetic shape memory (MSM) alloys Ni-Mn-Ga include subjecting the entire sample to a uniform magnetic field or completely actuating the sample mechanically. These methods have produced significant results in characterizing the MSM effect, the properties of Ni-Mn-Ga and have pioneered the development of applications from this material. Twin boundaries and their configuration within a Ni-Mn-Ga sample are a key component in the magnetic shape memory effect. Applications that are developed require an understanding of twin boundary characteristics and, more importantly, the ability to predictably control them. Twins have such a critical role that the twinning stress of a Ni-Mn-Ga crystal is the defining characteristic that indicates its quality and significant research has been conducted to minimize this property. This dissertation reports a decrease in the twinning stress, predictably controlling the twin configuration and characterizing the dynamics of twin boundaries. A reduction of the twinning stress is demonstrated by the discovery of Type II twins within Ni-Mn-Ga which have as little as 10% of the twinning stress of traditional Type I twins. Furthermore, new methods of actuating a Ni-Mn-Ga element using localized unidirectional or bidirectional magnetic fields were developed that can predictably control the twin configuration in a localized area of a Ni-Mn-Ga element. This method of controlling the local twin configuration was used in the characterization of twin boundary dynamics. Using a localized magnetic pulse, the velocity and acceleration of a single twin boundary were measured to be 82.5 m/s and 2.9 × 107 m/s2, and the time needed for the twin boundary to nucleate and begin moving was less than 2.8 μs. Using a bidirectional magnetic field from a diametrically magnetized cylindrical magnet, a highly reproducible and controllable local twin configuration was created in a Ni-Mn-Ga element which is the fundamental pumping mechanism in the MSM micropump that has been co-invented and extensively characterized by the author.

Herbert A. Simon and the concept of rationality: boundaries and procedures

This paper discusses Herbert A. Simon's conception of rationality in two of its principal general definitions: bounded rationality and procedural rationality. It argues that the latter is the one that better synthesizes the author's view about rational behavior and that the former fills mainly a critical function. They are complementarily used by Simon in this sense. In spite of that, it is argued that it is the low degree of specificity of the concept of bounded rationality one of the reasons for its relatively greater success.

Private versus public : how one gay professor negotiates the boundaries between his personal and professional lives /

This study examined how one university professor negotiated the boundaries between his personal life as a gay man and his professional life as a teacher. Using his sexual orientation as a focal point, the study explored the circumstances and underlying assumptions that influenced this professor's decisions to disclose information of a personal nature. Data collection was solicited from a number of sources: (a) In-depth interviews with the participant, his colleagues, students, and friends; (b) Field observation of the participant teaching over a 3 -day period; and (c) A document review of lesson plans, course outlines, student feedback forms, and the participant's teaching portfolio. The researcher maintained both observation journals and reflective journals during this process. Data analysis using the constant comparative method elicited several themes. The participant engaged in a variety of strategies in disclosing his sexual orientation that included: (a) no disclosure at all, (b) assuming people knew, (c) casually mentioning it in conversation, and (d) deliberately planning to tell someone. The participant also engaged in an ongoing assessment of his environment that included evaluating the level of risk in disclosing his sexual orientation and assessing the listener's ability to receive the information. The participant cited numerous reasons for disclosing his sexual orientation. Further inquiry revealed a number of belief systems that underlined these reasons. These belief systems included beliefs around privacy, authenticity, teaching, manners, professionalism, and homosexuality. The conclusions suggested that the participant utilized a consistent process in both his personal and professional lives to determine what information was kept private and what information was made public. While the process used to determine the degree of disclosure was consistent, the actual disclosures themselves varied widely in nature.

The Legal Implications of Internet Marketing : Exploiting the Digital Marketplace Within the Boundaries of the Law

Au cours des dernières années, le domaine de la consommation a grandement évolué. Les agents de marketing ont commencé à utiliser l’Internet pour influencer les consommateurs en employant des tactiques originales et imaginatives qui ont rendus possible l’atteinte d'un niveau de communication interpersonnelle qui avait précédemment été insondable. Leurs interactions avec les consommateurs, en utilisant la technologie moderne, se manifeste sous plusieurs formes différentes qui sont toutes accompagnés de leur propre assortiment de problèmes juridiques. D’abord, il n'est pas rare pour les agents de marketing d’utiliser des outils qui leur permettent de suivre les actions des consommateurs dans le monde virtuel ainsi que dans le monde physique. Les renseignements personnels recueillis d'une telle manière sont souvent utilisés à des fins de publicité comportementale en ligne – une utilisation qui ne respecte pas toujours les limites du droit à la vie privée. Il est également devenu assez commun pour les agents de marketing d’utiliser les médias sociaux afin de converser avec les consommateurs. Ces forums ont aussi servi à la commission d’actes anticoncurrentiels, ainsi qu’à la diffusion de publicités fausses et trompeuses – deux pratiques qui sont interdites tant par la loi sur la concurrence que la loi sur la protection des consommateurs. Enfin, les agents de marketing utilisent diverses tactiques afin de joindre les consommateurs plus efficacement en utilisant diverses tactiques qui les rendent plus visible dans les moteurs de recherche sur Internet, dont certaines sont considérés comme malhonnêtes et pourraient présenter des problèmes dans les domaines du droit de la concurrence et du droit des marques de commerce. Ce mémoire offre une description détaillée des outils utilisés à des fins de marketing sur Internet, ainsi que de la manière dont ils sont utilisés. Il illustre par ailleurs les problèmes juridiques qui peuvent survenir à la suite de leur utilisation et définit le cadre législatif régissant l’utilisation de ces outils par les agents de marketing, pour enfin démontrer que les lois qui entrent en jeu dans de telles circonstances peuvent, en effet, se révéler bénéfiques pour ces derniers d'un point de vue économique.

Institutional Boundaries and Judicial Review - Some Thoughts on How the Court is Going About Its Business: Desperately Seeking Coherence

Cet article a précédemment été publié par la Supreme Court Law Review (Second Series).

Depinning transition of dislocation assemblies: Pileups and low-angle grain boundaries

We investigate the depinning transition occurring in dislocation assemblies. In particular, we consider the cases of regularly spaced pileups and low-angle grain boundaries interacting with a disordered stress landscape provided by solute atoms, or by other immobile dislocations present in nonactive slip systems. Using linear elasticity, we compute the stress originated by small deformations of these assemblies and the corresponding energy cost in two and three dimensions. Contrary to the case of isolated dislocation lines, which are usually approximated as elastic strings with an effective line tension, the deformations of a dislocation assembly cannot be described by local elastic interactions with a constant tension or stiffness. A nonlocal elastic kernel results as a consequence of long-range interactions between dislocations. In light of this result, we revise statistical depinning theories of dislocation assemblies and compare the theoretical results with numerical simulations and experimental data.

Grain boundaries in vortex matter

We explore the statistical properties of grain boundaries in the vortex polycrystalline phase of type-II superconductors. Treating grain boundaries as arrays of dislocations interacting through linear elasticity, we show that self-interaction of a deformed grain boundary is equivalent to a nonlocal long-range surface tension. This affects the pinning properties of grain boundaries, which are found to be less rough than isolated dislocations. The presence of grain boundaries has an important effect on the transport properties of type-II superconductors as we show by numerical simulations: our results indicate that the critical current is higher for a vortex polycrystal than for a regular vortex lattice. Finally, we discuss the possible role of grain boundaries in vortex lattice melting. Through a phenomenological theory we show that melting can be preceded by an intermediate polycrystalline phase.

Finding Texture Boundaries in Images

Texture provides one cue for identifying the physical cause of an intensity edge, such as occlusion, shadow, surface orientation or reflectance change. Marr, Julesz, and others have proposed that texture is represented by small lines or blobs, called 'textons' by Julesz [1981a], together with their attributes, such as orientation, elongation, and intensity. Psychophysical studies suggest that texture boundaries are perceived where distributions of attributes over neighborhoods of textons differ significantly. However, these studies, which deal with synthetic images, neglect to consider two important questions: How can these textons be extracted from images of natural scenes? And how, exactly, are texture boundaries then found? This thesis proposes answers to these questions by presenting an algorithm for computing blobs from natural images and a statistic for measuring the difference between two sample distributions of blob attributes. As part of the blob detection algorithm, methods for estimating image noise are presented, which are applicable to edge detection as well.

Boundaries and Topological Algorithms

This thesis develops a model for the topological structure of situations. In this model, the topological structure of space is altered by the presence or absence of boundaries, such as those at the edges of objects. This allows the intuitive meaning of topological concepts such as region connectivity, function continuity, and preservation of topological structure to be modeled using the standard mathematical definitions. The thesis shows that these concepts are important in a wide range of artificial intelligence problems, including low-level vision, high-level vision, natural language semantics, and high-level reasoning.

Modelling of Mercury’s surface composition and remote detection from the orbit with the BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter

It can be assumed that the composition of Mercury’s thin gas envelope (exosphere) is related to the composition of the planets crustal materials. If this relationship is true, then inferences regarding the bulk chemistry of the planet might be made from a thorough exospheric study. The most vexing of all unsolved problems is the uncertainty in the source of each component. Historically, it has been believed that H and He come primarily from the solar wind, while Na and K originate from volatilized materials partitioned between Mercury’s crust and meteoritic impactors. The processes that eject atoms and molecules into the exosphere of Mercury are generally considered to be thermal vaporization, photonstimulated desorption (PSD), impact vaporization, and ion sputtering. Each of these processes has its own temporal and spatial dependence. The exosphere is strongly influenced by Mercury’s highly elliptical orbit and rapid orbital speed. As a consequence the surface undergoes large fluctuations in temperature and experiences differences of insolation with longitude. We will discuss these processes but focus more on the expected surface composition and solar wind particle sputtering which releases material like Ca and other elements from the surface minerals and discuss the relevance of composition modelling

An overview of Earth's global electric circuit and atmospheric conductivity

The Earth’s global atmospheric electric circuit depends on the upper and lower atmospheric boundaries formed by the ionosphere and the planetary surface. Thunderstorms and electrified rain clouds drive a DC current (∼1 kA) around the circuit, with the current carried by molecular cluster ions; lightning phenomena drive the AC global circuit. The Earth’s near-surface conductivity ranges from 10−7 S m−1 (for poorly conducting rocks) to 10−2 S m−1 (for clay or wet limestone), with a mean value of 3.2 S m−1 for the ocean. Air conductivity inside a thundercloud, and in fair weather regions, depends on location (especially geomagnetic latitude), aerosol pollution and height, and varies from ∼10−14 S m−1 just above the surface to 10−7 S m−1 in the ionosphere at ∼80 km altitude. Ionospheric conductivity is a tensor quantity due to the geomagnetic field, and is determined by parameters such as electron density and electron–neutral particle collision frequency. In the current source regions, point discharge (coronal) currents play an important role below electrified clouds; the solar wind-magnetosphere dynamo and the unipolar dynamo due to the terrestrial rotating dipole moment also apply atmospheric potential differences. Detailed measurements made near the Earth’s surface show that Ohm’s law relates the vertical electric field and current density to air conductivity. Stratospheric balloon measurements launched from Antarctica confirm that the downward current density is ∼1 pA m−2 under fair weather conditions. Fortuitously, a Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) event arrived at Earth during one such balloon flight, changing the observed atmospheric conductivity and electric fields markedly. Recent modelling considers lightning discharge effects on the ionosphere’s electric potential (∼+250 kV with respect to the Earth’s surface) and hence on the fair weather potential gradient (typically ∼130 V m−1 close to the Earth’s surface. We conclude that cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning discharges make only a small contribution to the ionospheric potential, and that sprites (namely, upward lightning above energetic thunderstorms) only affect the global circuit in a miniscule way. We also investigate the effects of mesoscale convective systems on the global circuit.