Monthly Archives: April 2020

Chemical vapour deposition with sound waves

Creating a standing sound wave in the chamber in which CVD occurs may generate interesting patterns in the deposited film like on Chladni plates. A strong enough compression and strain induced by the wave may even change the crystal structure of the deposit. Maybe even form freestanding filaments through the volume of the chamber, not just a flat deposit on a surface.

Firms could short the stock of competitors

If a firm designs a great new product, a more efficient production process or gains some other privately known competitive advantage, then the firm could financially profit by short selling its competitors’ stock before revealing its advantage. The revelation reduces the expected discounted profits of competitors, thus their stock price. Symmetrically, if a firm loses cheap suppliers, suffers a manufacturing breakdown or otherwise becomes less able to serve its customers, then its competitors will probably benefit and their stock will rise. The firm could mitigate its losses by buying rivals’ stocks, with leverage.

Shorting competitors does not seem to be illegal insider trading, as defined by the US courts: the purchasing or selling a security while in possession of material, non-public information concerning that security, where the information is obtained from a breach of fiduciary duty, or a duty arising from a relationship of trust or confidence. I am not a lawyer, so this is just a guess, but a firm usually does not possess inside information about its competitors and does not owe fiduciary duty or trust to its rivals. Maybe there is some other reason not to trade in competitors’ stock, but a casual web search did not reveal why.

More efficient use of rooms and equipment during the shutdown

Instead of the labs, gyms and other rooms standing empty during the shutdown, the same isolation of people could be achieved by allocating each building or other resource to one person. Equipment from gyms or labs could be lent out for the duration of the shutdown, of course keeping a database of who borrowed what and making the borrower liable for its safe return. If only one person uses each object or building the whole time, then there is no cross-contamination or infection-spreading.

Excess demand could be rationed by lottery. Only the winner of the lottery for a resource would be allowed to use the resource, with large penalties for sharing. This would improve efficiency slightly, because one person instead of zero would be using each resource.

If the heat, water and electricity were turned off during the shutdown, then it might be more efficient to let the buildings stand empty, instead of having the utilities on and one person in each building or room. However, the lights in MIT buildings are still on at night, just like before the shutdown (and it seemed wasteful back then already).