Assessment of thermal expansion coefficient of methylsilsesquioxane thin film

For the methylsilsesquioxane film whose optical birefringence is almost zero, it was recently reported that its vertical thermal expansion coefficient (CTE) was approximately one order of magnitude larger than the lateral CTE. Though the birefringence is not an absolute predictor of anisotropic behavior, the discrepancy in both the CTEs was so remarkable that it was essential to investigate whether the anisotropy was intrinsic property or not. If the effect of Poisson's ratio is considered in the calculation of the vertical CTE and when elastic modulus measured by surface acoustic wave spectroscopy is used in the assessment of the lateral CTE, both the CTEs are coincident with each other. Therefore, it can be concluded that the discrepancy in the CTEs can be attributed to a higher in‐plane polymer chain orientation but it can also arise from the misleadingly assumed modulus and Poisson's ratio. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 44: 3109–3120, 2006     

The effect of linguistic entropy on speech perception in noise in young and elderly listeners.

The rationale for a method to quantify the information content of linguistic stimuli, i.e., the linguistic entropy, is developed. The method is an adapted version of the letter-guessing procedure originally devised by Shannon [Bell Syst. Tech. J. 30, 50-64 (1951)]. It is applied to sentences included in a widely used test to measure speech-reception thresholds and originally selected to be approximately equally redundant. Results of a first experiment reveal that this method enables one to detect subtle differences between sentences and sentence lists with respect to linguistic entropy. Results of a second experiment show that (1) in young listeners and with the sentences employed, manipulating linguistic entropy can result in an effect on SRT of approximately 4 dB in terms of signal-to-noise ratio; (2) the range of this effect is approximately the same in elderly listeners.     

Exact solutions inU 4 gravity. I. The ansatz for self double dual curvature

We investigate the energy-momentum and spin field equations of gravity theory on a Riemann-Cartan space-time (including metric and torsion,U ₄-manifold). The structure of the rather complicated nonlinear differential equations of second order is made considerably easier to survey by decomposing curvature into its self and anti-self double dual parts. This leads to an obvious ansatz for the self double dual curvature, whereby the field equations are reduced to Einstein's equations with cosmological term. To solve the double dual ansatz, we choose proper variables adopted to its double duality, and perform a (3+1)-decomposition of exterior calculus. We examine these equations further on a Kerr background with cosmological constant for the Riemannian geometry.     

Effect of viscosity on the conditions for the formation of centrifugal solitons in the translational-rotational flow of a liquid

The viscosity of the medium is taken into consideration in deriving an evolution equation describing the propagation of non-linear centrifugal waves along the free surface of a translational-rotational liquid flow. The result is the Burgers-Korteweg-de Vries (BKdV) equation, for which a steady solution is described in the form of a shock wave with soliton oscillators near the front. Estimates are presented for the effect of viscosity on the wave-front structure and the conditions of formation previously predicted by the author /1/ for centrifugal solitons, which play an important role in various atmosphere processes^**.     

The dual of a finitely generated multiplication module

This paper is based on the M. Sc. thesis written by the third author under the supervision of the first two authors. It was submitted to the University of Baghdad in 1986.     

Game of two cars: Case of variable speed

A stochastic version of Isaacs's (Ref. 1) game of two cars is dealt with here. In this version, the pursuer, owing to thrust and drag forces, has a variable speed, whereas the evader's speed is constant. Also, the pursuer can maneuver as long as his speed is bounded by some lower and upper limits. The probability of interception, corresponding to optimal (saddle-point) feedback strategies, is computed and serves as a reference for evaluating the performance of four different versions of the proportional navigation pursuit law as well as two other strategies.