An experimental study has been conducted on the penetration of silicone rubbers and human skin in vivo by sharp-tipped and flat-bottomed cylindrical punches. A penetrometer was developed to measure the penetration of human skin in vivo, while a conventional screw-driven testing machine was used to penetrate the silicone rubbers. The experiments reveal that the penetration mechanism of a soft so...

The potential health risk from exposure to chemically contaminated soil can be assessed from bioavailability studies. The aims of this research were: (a) to determine the dermal bioavailability of contaminants in soil for representatives of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon class of chemicals, namely, benzo(a)pyrene and naphthalene, and (b) to examine the relative contribution of soil matrix ...

Cooperative ITS is enabling vehicles to communicate with the infrastructure to provide improvements in traffic control. A promising approach consists in anticipating the road profile and the upcoming dynamic events like traffic lights. This topic has been addressed in the French public project Co-Drive through functions developed by Valeo named Green Light Optimal Speed Advisor (GLOSA). The sys...

We estimate the effect of Internet on volume of trade in a major distributed marketplace. From 1997 to 2007, a period during which residential Internet use tripled, Internet increased the volume of used cars traded in California by 7.2 percent. This implies a substantial welfare gain due to reductions in market frictions of approximately $43 million per year relative to 1997 Internet penetratio...

According to literature, penetration pricing is the dominant pricing strategy for network effect markets. In this paper we show that diffusion of products in a network effect market does not only vary with the set of pricing strategies chosen by competing vendors but also strongly depends on the topological structure of the customers' network. This stresses the inappropriateness of classical "i...

Much of recent Trade theory focuses on heterogeneity of firms and the differential impact trade policy might have on firms with different levels of productivity. A common problem is that most firm level dataset do not contain information on output prices of firms which makes it difficult to distinguish between productivity differences and differences in market power between firms. This paper de...

Data on macroscopic superconducting anisotropy of MgB 2 are reviewed. The data are described within a weak coupling two-gaps anisotropic s-wave model of super-conductivity. The calculated ratio of the upper critical fields γ H = H c2,ab /H c2,c increases with decreasing temperature in agreement with available data, whereas the calculated ratio of London penetration depths γ λ = λ c /λ ab decrea...