Modeling the span of control of leaders with different skill sets

In leading a team doing routine engineering design, two orthogonal skill sets can be distinguished: domain-specific or technical skills, and interpersonal “managerial” skills which are more general. This paper presents a computational model of team performance that relates these two types of skills to the amount of managerial and communication work generated given a certain team size (i.e. span of control). This model can be used to derive the optimal managerial profile for any team size, or the optimal team size for the skill set of a specific manager, provided the nature of the work remains fixed. The analysis of the model reveals several interesting insights. First, managerial skills are found to increase team performance up to a point after which it starts to decrease again. Second, a manager needs to compensate for low domain knowledge with high people skills, so optimal managerial skill level increases with lower domain knowledge. Third, both abilities have a significant impact on the manager’s allocated time for his/her group; however, more influence is noticed for managerial skills. Finally, the manager was found to be more essential to large teams.     

Products of Toeplitz Operators on the Bergman Space

In 1962 Brown and Halmos gave simple conditions for the product of two Toeplitz operators on Hardy space to be equal to a Toeplitz operator. Recently, Ahern and Cucković showed that a similar result holds for Toeplitz operators with bounded harmonic symbols on Bergman space. For general symbols, the situation is much more complicated. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for the product to be a Toeplitz operator (Theorem 6.1), an explicit formula for the symbol of the product in certain cases (Theorem 6.4), and then show that almost anything can happen (Theorem 6.7).     

Activity Coefficients of Individual Ions from Titration Data

It is shown that the activity coefficients of the anions resulting from the dissociation of a weak polyprotic acid can be obtained from titration data. Activity coefficients are determined in terms of the activity coefficient of the undissociated acid. The extracted activity coefficients are also dependent on the pH scale adopted in the titration process and are considered as operational coefficients. The computational procedure uses an exact equation representing the titration curve and a nonlinear least-squares fitting procedure. As an illustration, the activity coefficients of the anions of succinic acid are determined. The method also allows study of the variation of the activity coefficients with the ionic strength in a straightforward manner.     

Love waves in functionally graded piezoelectric materials by stiffness matrix method

A numerical matrix method relative to the propagation of ultrasonic guided waves in functionally graded piezoelectric heterostructure is given in order to make a comparative study with the respective performances of analytical methods proposed in literature. The preliminary obtained results show a good agreement, however numerical approach has the advantage of conceptual simplicity and flexibility brought about by the stiffness matrix method. The propagation behaviour of Love waves in a functionally graded piezoelectric material (FGPM) is investigated in this article. It involves a thin FGPM layer bonded perfectly to an elastic substrate. The inhomogeneous FGPM heterostructure has been stratified along the depth direction, hence each state can be considered as homogeneous and the ordinary differential equation method is applied. The obtained solutions are used to study the effect of an exponential gradient applied to physical properties. Such numerical approach allows applying different gradient variation for mechanical and electrical properties. For this case, the obtained results reveal opposite effects. The dispersive curves and phase velocities of the Love wave propagation in the layered piezoelectric film are obtained for electrical open and short cases on the free surface, respectively. The effect of gradient coefficients on coupled electromechanical factor, on the stress fields, the electrical potential and the mechanical displacement are discussed, respectively. Illustration is achieved on the well known heterostructure PZT-5H/SiO₂, the obtained results are especially useful in the design of high-performance acoustic surface devices and accurately prediction of the Love wave propagation behaviour.     

A Molecular Imprinted Polymer Sensor for Biomonitoring of Fenamiphos Pesticide Metabolite Fenamiphos Sulfoxide

A new electrochemical method for the identification and quantification of Fenamiphos pesticide's major metabolite in biological samples – Fenamiphos Sulphoxide ( FNX ) was developed. Computational calculations, Density Functional Theory (DFT) and semi-empirical models (PM3) were performed to determine the best monomer, pyrrole, and a ratio of 1 : 5 (template: monomer) was chosen for the fabrication of the FNX− MIP sensor obtained by electropolymerization. The FNX− MIP sensor responded well to increasing FNX concentrations (range of 1–30 μM). Limit of detection and quantification (LOD=0.183 μM, LOQ=0.601 μM), respectively, selectivity, and repeatability were also investigated for the developed method. The obtained percentage of recovery showed good agreement compared to reference values obtained from GC-MS, which was used as a reference method. The FXN− MIP sensor proved selective in the presence of potential interferents. The developed sensor was successfully applied for the determination of FNX in spiked plasma and urine matrixes with acceptable recovery rates. The proposed method also proved successful in detecting FNX prepared from the in vitro metabolism of FNP using liver microsomes to metabolize it.     

Application of radiochromic gel detector (FXG) for UVA dose measurements

Tissue equivalent radiochromic gel material containing ferrous ions, xylenol-orange ion indicator and gelatin as gelling agent (FXG) is known to be sensitive to γ- and X-rays; hence it has been used for ionizing radiation dosimetry. Changes in optical absorbance properties of FXG material over a wide region in the visible spectrum were found to be proportional to the radiation absorbed dose. An earlier study demonstrated the sensitivity of FXG gel detector to ultraviolet radiation and therefore that could give quantitative measure for UV exposure. This study focuses on the detection of UVA radiation (315–400 nm), which forms an important part (～97%) of the natural solar UV radiation reaching the earth surface. A solar UV simulator device was used to deliver UVA radiation to FXG samples. The beam was optically modified to irradiate gel samples at an exposure level about 58 W/m², which is comparable to the summer natural UVA radiation measured outside the laboratory building at midday (～60 W/m²). Experimental results were used to generate mathematical second order formulas that give the relationship between UVA dose and optical absorbance changes observed at two wavelengths in the visible region of the spectrum—430 and 560 nm.     

Elastic and thermodynamic properties of alkali hydrides XH (X = K,Rb and Cs)

The calculation of the structural, mechanical and thermodynamic properties of the alkali hydrides XH (X?=?K, Rb and Cs) in rock-salt (RS), cesium chloride (CsCl), zinc-blende (ZB) and wurtzite (WZ) phases are done by using the full-potential linearized augmented plane wave (FP-LAPW) method within the frame work of the density functional theory (DFT) as implemented in the WIEN2K code. The Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof generalized gradient approximation (PBE-GGA) was used for the exchange-correlation potential.The elastic constants and their related properties, as well as the thermodynamic properties, were obtained by using the IRelast package. The calculated elastic constants for the alkali hydrides, with the four structures RS, CsCl, ZB and WZ, at ambient pressure are mechanically stable. The elastic constants and their related properties in the RS structure are changeable with increasing pressure. Elastic constants, bulk modulus, shear modulus (stiffness) and Debye temperatures of these compounds are decreased as going from K to Cs in the periodic table. These compounds in the RS structure are mechanically stronger at ambient conditions.     

General equation for determining the dissociation constants of polyprotic acids and bases from additive properties. Part I. Theory

Measured additive properties of polyprotic acids and bases as functions of the pH of the solution can be used for the determination of the dissociation constants. A rigorous general equation is derived in this paper for this purpose. The equation relates the additive property of the acid or base to the dissociation constants, the limiting values and activity coefficients of the solute species, and to the pH of the solution. The equation is used to obtain the dissociation constants by fitting it to the experimental data in a nonlinear least-square fitting procedure. Overlapping dissociation constants pose no problem in this method. Applications to spectrophotometry and reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography are presented in a following paper (Part II of this series).     

Calix[4]azacrowns as novel molecular scaffolds for the generation of visible and near-infrared lanthanide luminescence

Two calix[4]azacrowns, capped with two aminopolyamide bridges, were used as ligands for the complexation of lanthanide ions [Eu(III), Tb(III), Nd(III), Er(III), La(III)]. The formation of 1:2 and 1:1 complexes was observed, and stability constants, determined by UV absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy, were found to be generally on the order of log beta(11) approximately 5-6 and log beta(12) approximately 10. The structural changes of the ligands upon La(III) complexation were probed by 1H NMR spectroscopy. The two ligands were observed to have opposite fluorescence behaviors, namely, fluorescence enhancement (via blocking of photoinduced electron transfer from amine groups) or quenching (via lanthanide-chromophore interactions) upon metal ion complexation. Long-lived lanthanide luminescence was sensitized by excitation in the pi,pi band of the aromatic moieties of the ligands. The direct involvement of the antenna triplet state was demonstrated via quenching of the ligand phosphorescence by Tb(III). Generally, Eu(III) luminescence was weak (Phi(lum) 相似文献