This Issue Brief examines the 1999 contribution behavior of 1.7 million 401(k) plan participants drawn from the EBRI/ICI Participant-Directed Retirement Plan Data Collection Project. The findings in this paper build on previous academic research examining the contribution activity of 401(k) participants, by using a large sample of participants in a wide range of plan sizes and by examining in d...

We report an original method that provides a new insight into the reaction mechanism by direct observation of bond breaking and formation. Variations of the diagonal elements of the Hessian along the IRC are shown to reflect the anharmonic properties of the system that are induced by electron density modifications upon the reaction. This information is presented in the form of the reaction spec...

We report multi-responsive and double-folding bilayer hydrogel sheet actuators, whose directional bending response is tuned by modulating the solvent quality and temperature and where locally crosslinked regions, induced by ionoprinting, enable the actuators to invert their bending axis. The sheets are made multi-responsive by combining two stimuli responsive gels that incur opposing and comple...

We study the propagation of quantum fields through an electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) medium with initially two squeezed and one coherent states. Conditions to preserve and to establish nonseparation criteria for perturbed quantized fluctuation fields are demonstrated. The results in this work provide a guideline for using EIT media as quantum light devices.

Adaptive RED (ARED) is an active queue management (AQM) designed for congestion responsive traffics such as TCP. ARED aims to keep average queue length around a predefined queue length. If so, average delay will be offered to Internet users and simultaneously high link utilization will be achieved. However, ARED algorithm merely makes the average queue length loosely converge to the target leng...

pH-responsive hydrogels are capable of converting chemical energy to mechanical work. To optimize their use as actuators, their response when operating against an external load must be fully characterized. Here, the actuation strain of a model pH-sensitive hydrogel as a function of different constant loads is studied. The experimental actuation strain, produced by switching the pH from 2 to 12,...

Microgrids (MGs) usually consist of several types of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) like renewable and conventional generation units, energy storages and responsive loads. In order to operate the MG with minimum cost and maximum reliably, an integrated scheduling model of DERs should be implemented. In this paper, an operational planning model of a MG which considers Demand Response (DR) a...

In this paper we consider the sensitivity of the ‘service capacity’ of peer to peer (P2P) file sharing applications to demands, user cooperation, and providing incentives for cooperation through fairness guarantees. To do so we propose models for both the steady state performance and the transient characteristics of the system. Both are of interest since, from the perspective of a given file, d...

We develop a general framework for pricing electricity in order to optimally manage the electricity load of societal infrastructures that interact with power systems through their price-responsive electricity load. In such infrastructure systems, electricity is not the sole resource needed to serve users’ needs. Examples include cloud computing infrastructure or electric transportation networks...