Worcester Polytechnic Institute

About: Worcester Polytechnic Institute is a education organization based out in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Data envelopment analysis. The organization has 6270 authors who have published 12704 publications receiving 332081 citations. The organization is also known as: WPI.

Hydrogen gas-extraction module and method of fabrication

Abstract: A hydrogen gas-extraction module includes an intermediate layer bonded between a porous metal substrate and a membrane layer that is selectively permeable to hydrogen. The metal substrate includes a substantial concentration of a first metal at a surface of the metal substrate, and the intermediate layer includes an oxide of this first metal. In one embodiment, where the module is designed to selectively extract hydrogen at high temperatures, the porous metal substrate comprises stainless steel, and the membrane layer includes palladium or a palladium/silver alloy. A method for fabricating a hydrogen gas-extraction membrane includes reacting the porous metal substrate with an oxidizing agent to form a ceramic intermediate layer on a surface of the porous metal substrate and covering the ceramic coating with the membrane layer that is selectively permeable to hydrogen.

Finding Form: Looking at the Field of Organizational Aesthetics

Abstract: Organizational research has long focused on the instrumental sphere with its questions of efficiency and effectiveness and in recent decades there has been interest in the moral sphere with its questions of ethics. Within the last decade there has also emerged a field that draws on the aesthetic sphere of our existence in organizations. In this review we look at the field of organizational aesthetics in terms of content and method, suggesting four broad categories of organizational aesthetics research: intellectual analysis of instrumental issues, artistic form used to look at instrumental issues, intellectual analysis of aesthetic issues, and artistic form used to look at aesthetic issues. We then suggest how organizational scholars might pursue artistic aesthetic organizational research.

The effects of loss and latency on user performance in unreal tournament 2003

Abstract: The growth in the popularity of interactive network games has increased the importance of a better understanding of the effects of packet loss and latency on user performance. While previous work on network games has studied user tolerance for high latencies and has studied the effects of latency on user performance in real-time strategy games, to the best of our knowledge, there has been no systematic study of the effects of loss and latency on user performance. In this paper we study user performance for Unreal Tournament 2003 (UT2003), a popular first person shooter game, under varying amounts of packet loss and latency. First, we deduced typical real world values of packet loss and latency experienced on the Internet by monitoring numerous operational UT2003 game servers. We then used these deduced values of loss and latency in a controlled networked environment that emulated various conditions of loss and latency, allowing us to monitor UT2003 at the network, application and user levels. We designed maps that isolated the fundamental first person shooter interaction components of movement and shooting, and conducted numerous user studies under controlled network conditions. We find that typical ranges of packet loss have no impact on user performance or on the quality of game play. The levels of latency typical for most UT2003 Internet servers, while sometimes unpleasant, do not significantly affect the outcome of the game. Since most first person shooter games typically consist of generic player actions similar to those that we tested, we believe that these results have broader implications.