This is a timely review of the gold standard covering the 110 years of its operation until 1931, when Britain abandoned it in the midst of the Depression. Current dissatisfaction with floating rates of exchange has spurred interest in a return to a commodity standard. The studies in this volume were designed to gain a better understanding of the historical gold standard, but they also throw light on the question of whether restoring it today could help cure inflation, high interest rates, and low productivity growth. The volume includes a review of the literature on the classical gold standard; studies the experience with gold in England, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Canada; and perspectives on international linkages and the stability of price-level trends under the gold standard. The articles and commentaries reflect strong, conflicting views among hte participants on issues of central bank behavior, purchasing-power an interest-rate parity, independent monetary policies, economic growth, the "Atlantic economy," and trends in commodity prices and long-term interest rates. This is a thoughtful and provocative book.


We present an algorithm to estimate depth in dynamic video scenes. We propose to learn and infer depth in videos from appearance, motion, occlusion boundaries, and geometric context of the scene. Using our method, depth can be estimated from unconstrained videos with no requirement of camera pose estimation, and with significant background/foreground motions. We start by decomposing a video into spatio-temporal regions. For each spatio-temporal region, we learn the relationship of depth to visual appearance, motion, and geometric classes. Then we infer the depth information of new scenes using piecewise planar parametrization estimated within a Markov random field (MRF) framework by combining appearance to depth learned mappings and occlusion boundary guided smoothness constraints. Subsequently, we perform temporal smoothing to obtain temporally consistent depth maps. To evaluate our depth estimation algorithm, we provide a novel dataset with ground truth depth for outdoor video scenes. We present a thorough evaluation of our algorithm on our new dataset and the publicly available Make3d static image dataset.


A thorough study of the structural, electronic, and hydrogen-desorption properties of β- and γ-MgH2 phases substituted by selected transition metals (TMs) is performed through first-principles calculations based on density functional theory (DFT). The TMs considered herein include Sc, V, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Y, Zr, and Nb, which substitute for Mg at a doping concentration of 3.125 % in both the hydrides. This insertion of TMs causes a variation in the cell volumes of β- and γ-MgH2 . The majority of the TM dopants decrease the lattice constants, with Ni resulting in the largest reduction. From the formation-energy calculations, it is predicted that except for Cu and Ni, the mixing of all the selected TM dopants with the MgH2 phases is exothermic. The selected TMs also influence the stability of both β- and γ-MgH2 and cause destabilization by weakening the MgH bonds. Our results show that doping with certain TMs can facilitate desorption of hydrogen from β- and γ-MgH2 at much lower temperatures than from their pure forms. The hydrogen adsorption strengths are also studied by density-of-states analysis.


This paper examines issues of support for women with Information Technology (IT) careers. Interviews of 38 women with careers in information technology sectors of different industries lasted about 90 minutes and consisted of open-ended questions regarding aspects of their careers and career paths. Research on the lack of women in STEM disciplines focuses mainly on undergraduate education and attracting women to STEM disciplines, focusing on 'filling the pipeline.' This research seeks to understand what it takes to have a successful, satisfying career, especially areas of support for women that may influence their success in IT careers. Knowing this may give women help in planning their careers and navigating a male dominated industry.


Combining data sets from multiple satellite sensors is a powerful method for studying Earth-atmosphere problems. By fusing data, we can utilize the strengths of the individual sensors that may not be otherwise possible. In this paper, we provide the framework for combining level 2 data products, using data from three sensors aboard the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Terra satellite. These data include top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) radiative energy fluxes obtained from the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES), aerosol optical thickness from the multispectral Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and aerosol properties from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR). The CERES Single Scanner Footprint (SSF) contains the pixel level CERES TOA fluxes and the level 2 MODIS aerosol data. We specifically focus upon fusing the CERES SSF with the MISR aerosol products. Although this project was undertaken specifically to address aerosol research, the methods employed for fusing data products can be used for other problems requiring synergistic data sets. We present selected case studies over different aerosol regimes and indicate that multisensor information provides value-added information for aerosol research that is not available from a single sensor.


So just how does the investment industry really work?Now more than ever, people are being affected by the fluctuations in the global economy and by financial uncertainty - with major impacts on their savings, portfolios and pensions. It takes not just savvy but real information to maintain financial security and safeguard one's future. Consequently, it is now more important than ever to understand how the markets work and what choices are available. Fully updated for this sixth edition, How the Stock Market Works tells investors what is being traded and how, who does what with whom, and how to evaluate a particular share or bond in light of rival claims from critics and admirers. From the practical consequences of being a shareholder to a basic coverage of the taxation regime, this book provides a wealth of information on individual product types as well as the key players themselves.It may not take a genius to make a fortune, but anyone considering investing in the stock market will need care, common sense, lots of luck - and the expert advice of How the Stock Market Works.


Extracted from text ... 26 Printed on Sappi Dukuza Plus Gloss 90g/m2. Journal of Marketing Vol 11 No 4 2005 (c)
BrightDarryl Accone checks out the future of SA youth media and finds it alive and kicking, and brighter perhaps than the prospects of its readers. youngthingsBy Darryl AcconeG"Gloomy future for SA youth" declared a newspaper poster on Youth Day, 16 June, this year. On a day acknowledging the role played by past youth in South Africa's liberation, it was a sombre reminder to the classes of 2005 that employment and opportunities were in scarce supply.To put it starkly, 60 percent of South ..


ABSTRACT The jury is an institution that has evoked praise and criticism throughout its history. Recently, it has also triggered debate in many countries as they reform their judicial processes. Gathering data on 111 countries from various sources to analyse the jury as part of the judicial system, we find that public trust in the judiciary is higher in countries with jury trials than in countries without them. Countries that conduct jury trials also tend to have stronger judicial constraints on other sources of governmental power and better-performing criminal adjudication systems. These analyses reveal correlation rather than causation, but they are helpful for challenging conventional wisdom and for better understanding the function of the jury system. The seemingly paradoxical patterns that are identified — namely, that the jury, designed to constrain the judiciary, ends up correlated with stronger judicial power, and that laypeople, supposedly less proficient than professionals in deciding cases, are in fact positively associated with judicial performance — suggest an internal connection between the jury as a judicial body and as a political institution.


Experiments were performed on SD rats anaesthetized with urethane and chloralose. The left ventricular function and the parameters of hemorrheology during acute hypoxia were investigated. It was found that during acute hypoxia of 15 min, arterial blood gas value PaO2 decreased markedly. The parameters of the left ventricular function such as +/- dP/dtmax, Peak, HR, Vce40, Vmp, Vmax, L0 (CFU), decreased markedly either. At the same time, hyperviscosity was induced and red blood cell filtration (IF) increased. All these parameters recovered to normal control level after reoxygenation of 15 min. By intravenous injection of propranolol (0.5 mg/kg) and then hypoxia, the left ventricular function were suppressed markedly; and so were to the elevation of blood viscosity and IF. Preinjection of regitine (3 mg/kg) prior hypoxia has the same effect on the blood viscosity and IF. Acute hypoxia induced hyperviscosity and elevation of IF could be suppressed by destruction of carotid sinus region with phenol, but the left ventricular function decreased markedly. These results suggest that acute hypoxia induces hyperviscosity and decreases of red blood cell deformability and left ventricular function, which is probably mediated via the sympathetic nervous system and carotid sinus region.


Diabetic ulcers are the most common foot injuries leading to lower extremity amputation. Family physicians have a pivotal role in the prevention or early diagnosis of diabetic foot complications. Management of the diabetic foot requires a thorough knowledge of the major risk factors for amputation, frequent routine evaluation and meticulous preventive maintenance. The most common risk factors for ulcer formation include diabetic neuropathy, structural foot deformity and peripheral arterial occlusive disease. A careful physical examination, buttressed by monofilament testing for neuropathy and noninvasive testing for arterial insufficiency, can identify patients at risk for foot ulcers and appropriately classify patients who already have ulcers or other diabetic foot complications. Patient education regarding foot hygiene, nail care and proper footwear is crucial to reducing the risk of an injury that can lead to ulcer formation. Adherence to a systematic regimen of diagnosis and classification can improve communication between family physicians and diabetes subspecialists and facilitate appropriate treatment of complications. This team approach may ultimately lead to a reduction in lower extremity amputations related to diabetes.


We report on extensive off-axis bathymetry, gravity, and magnetic data that provide a 26-m.y.-long record of axial tectonic and magmatic processes over a 660-km-long and melt-poor portion of the ultraslow Southwest Indian Ridge. We describe a new type of seafloor (the smooth seafloor) that forms at minimal ridge melt supply, with little or no axial volcanism. We propose possible mechanisms leading to this avolcanic or nearly avolcanic mode of spreading, in contradiction with the traditional view of mid-ocean ridges as primarily volcanic systems. We also show evidence for large-offset asymmetric normal faults and detachments at the ridge axis, with asymmetry persisting in some cases for tens of millions of years.


Clay minerals, although ubiquitous on the ancient terrains of Mars, have not been observed in Martian meteorite Allan Hills (ALH) 84001, which is an orthopyroxenite sample of the early Martian crust with a secondary carbonate assemblage. We used a low‐temperature (20 °C) one‐dimensional (1‐D) transport thermochemical model to investigate the possible aqueous alteration processes that produced the carbonate assemblage of ALH 84001 while avoiding the coprecipitation of clay minerals. We found that the carbonate in ALH 84001 could have been produced in a process, whereby a low‐temperature (~20 °C) fluid, initially equilibrated with the early Martian atmosphere, moved through surficial clay mineral and silica‐rich layers, percolated through the parent rock of the meteorite, and precipitated carbonates (thereby decreasing the partial pressure of CO2) as it evaporated. This finding requires that before encountering the unweathered orthopyroxenite host of ALH 84001, the fluid permeated rock that became weathered during the process. We were able to predict the composition of the clay minerals formed during weathering, which included the dioctahedral smectite nontronite, kaolinite, and chlorite, all of which have been previously detected on Mars. We also calculated host rock replacement in local equilibrium conditions by the hydrated silicate talc, which is typically considered to be a higher temperature hydrothermal phase on Earth, but may have been a common constituent in the formation of Martian soils through pervasive aqueous alteration. Finally, goethite and magnetite were also found to precipitate in the secondary alteration assemblage, the latter associated with the generation of H2. Apparently, despite the limited water–rock interaction that must have led to the formation of the carbonates ~ 3.9 Ga ago, in the vicinity of the ALH 84001 source rocks, clay formation would have been widespread.


The study examined the extent and nature of market oriented production in irrigated compared to rainfed systems in Ethiopia. By doing so the paper identifies the role of irrigation in market-oriented production, while at the same time highlighting the main constraints to market oriented development. Our results indicate that irrigation contributes significantly to increases in market participation, volume of marketed produce and, hence, income, by inducing shifts in farmers\u2019 cropping mix. The impact of commercialization of production on household food security is not direct and immediate mainly because of failures in the food market. While irrigation enhances market production, there are series of factors that pose serious constraints to market production. Land size, oxen holding, access to market and means of transport were found to be important determinants of market oriented production calling for policy interventions in land markets, access to productive assets and infrastructure development and policy measures to improve the performance of agricultural markets. The study also found education has market promoting effect in terms of increasing the probability of participation and volume of sale. Increased support to education can, thus, help in the long-term to transform traditional subsistence agriculture into more market-oriented agriculture. Finally there are unobserved site specific effects, related to location and other covariates, which influence market participation and volume decisions.


This paper presents the control of a quad-rotor VTOL (vertical take off and landing) flying robot as an experimental flying platform. The flying robot is to be controlled by a pilot using radio frequency. A wireless CCTV camera is installed on the robot to perform aerial surveillance and inspection operation. Due to the naturally unstable behavior of the flying robot, PID control system is implemented with the aid of accelerometer, compass sensor and gyro sensors to stabilize the flying robot and make it easier to be controlled by the operator. The fusion between the accelerometer, compass sensor and also the gyro sensors is done by the complementary filter.


CONTEXT
Latino and black adolescents are disproportionately affected by STDs, including HIV, and unintended pregnancies. Few parent-based interventions have targeted these youth, focused on early adolescence and had high participation rates.

METHODS
Between 2003 and 2009, a randomized clinical trial was conducted with 2,016 Latino and black mother-adolescent dyads in New York City. Adolescents were eligible if they were in grade 6 or 7. Dyads were assigned to one of three conditions: a parent-based intervention, Families Talking Together (FTT); an adolescent-only intervention, Making a Difference! (MAD); or a combined FTT+MAD intervention. Respondents completed questionnaires at baseline and 12 months later. Single-degree-of-freedom contrasts and logistic regression analysis were used to evaluate differences in outcomes by intervention.

RESULTS
The proportion of youth who reported ever having engaged in vaginal intercourse increased over the study period by eight percentage points among those in the MAD group, five points in the FTT group and three points in the combined group; the differences among these increases were not statistically significant. Adolescents in the two FTT groups were significantly more likely than those in the MAD group to indicate that their mother had talked to them about not having intercourse (79% vs. 68%). They also scored higher than youth in the MAD group on measures of communication and perceived maternal attributes, and lower on activities that might lead to risky behaviors.

CONCLUSIONS
The proportions of adolescents who initiated intercourse during the study period were not significantly different across groups, implying that the interventions were comparable. Findings suggest that FTT may have led to improved parenting behaviors.


Contact languages are born out of the non-trivial interaction of two (or more) parent languages. Nowadays, the enhanced possibility of mobility and communication allows for a strong mixing of languages and cultures, thus raising the issue of whether there are any pure languages or cultures that are unaffected by contact with others. As with bacteria or viruses in biological evolution, the evolution of languages is marked by horizontal transmission; but to date no reliable quantitative tools to investigate these phenomena have been available. An interesting and well documented example of contact language is the emergence of creole languages, which originated in the contacts of European colonists and slaves during the 17th and 18th centuries in exogenous plantation colonies of especially the Atlantic and Indian Ocean. Here, we focus on the emergence of creole languages to demonstrate a dynamical process that mimics the process of creole formation in American and Caribbean plantation ecologies. Inspired by the Naming Game (NG), our modeling scheme incorporates demographic information about the colonial population in the framework of a non-trivial interaction network including three populations: Europeans, Mulattos/Creoles, and Bozal slaves. We show how this sole information makes it possible to discriminate territories that produced modern creoles from those that did not, with a surprising accuracy. The generality of our approach provides valuable insights for further studies on the emergence of languages in contact ecologies as well as to test specific hypotheses about the peopling and the population structures of the relevant territories. We submit that these tools could be relevant to addressing problems related to contact phenomena in many cultural domains: e.g., emergence of dialects, language competition and hybridization, globalization phenomena.


The flow around three-dimensional aircraft wings, including delta-wings is very complicated. Much experimental and numerical work has been performed to discover its complexity. To date, all numerical calculations on delta wings have been carried out for either fully laminar or fully turbulent boundary layers. The transition status of the boundary layer is considered unknown despite several efforts to identify transition from laminar to turbulent flow. One such study, called the International Vortex Flow Experiment – 2 (VFE-2), has been carried out by an international group and mainly focuses on the boundary layers on delta wings. The data from the VFE-2 experimentals potentially provide the location of transition on the upper and lower surfaces of the wing to guide associated numerical studies. The effects of Reynolds number, Mach number, angle of attack and the leading edge bluntness are also investigated.
Almost all delta wing studies to date have involved tests on wings with sharp leading edges and these have led to the conclusion that the flows are relatively independent of Reynolds number. In fact, most real wings have finite leading edge radii. Hence, the flow separation is no longer fixed at the leading edge, thus making the flow dependent on Reynolds number. This particular aspect has been studied extensively by the VFE-2 team.
As part of the VFE-2 project, Glasgow University constructed a delta wing with four different sets of leading edges. Small-, medium- and large-radius edges and a pair of sharp leading edges were constructed in order to compare results from four delta wing configurations. In the current study experiments were carried out on these wings in the 2.65 metre by 2.04 metre, closed circuit, Argyll Wind tunnel of Glasgow University. The models were mounted on a specially designed sting support structure that allowed them to be pitched around a constant centre of rotation throughout the experiments. Tests were conducted at speeds of 20.63 m/s and 41.23 m/s representing Reynolds numbers of 1 x 106 & 2 x 106 respectively, based on the mean aerodynamic chords of the wings. The tests were conducted in three phases. In the first phase, steady and unsteady forces and moments on all wings were measured at an angle of attack that varied from α =100 to 250. The forces and moments were captured at two sampling rates; i.e., 100 Hz and 8000 Hz. The second test series captured flow visualization data on the four wings. In these experiments, a mixture of Ondina oil and paraffin was combined with Dayglo powder and applied to the surfaces of the delta wings. The images of the flow topology on the wings were recorded. The final series of experiments involved Particle Image Velocimetry measurements. A stereo-PIV arrangement was applied in this experiment and two CCD-Cameras were positioned outside the test section for image capture.
The current study has identified interesting features of the interrelationship between the conventional leading edge primary vortex and the occurrence and development of the inner vortex on the round-edged delta wings. The inner vortex was first identified and verified by the VFE-2 team. The effects of Reynolds number, angle of attack and leading-edge radii on both vortices are discussed in detail. The steady balance data have shown that the normal force coefficients are sensitive to leading edge bluntness at moderate angles of attack but are less so at high angles of attack. In relation to this, the flow visualization images have also shown that the primary vortex origin is located further aft on the wing at higher leading edge bluntness. This impacts on the strength of the inner vortex which remains a significant flow feature until the primary vortex approaches the apex. The lateral extent of the inner vortex is very dependent on the primary vortex at the leading edge; i.e. the weakening of the primary vortex has positive effects on the inner vortex. Particle Image Velocimetry shows that the increase in leading edge bluntness significantly decreases the swirl magnitude of the primary vortex.
The results obtained from the current investigation provide considerable insight into the effects of Reynolds number, angle of attack and bluntness on the flow structures experienced by delta wings, with rounded leading edges. This work will, therefore, inform and guide future investigations of delta wing flows and has the potential to impact on future wing design.


Net neutrality is the principle in which Internet service providers (ISPs) treat all data traffic equally, and none of them slows down or accelerates data transfer speeds depending on who the current user is, what kind of content is being transferred, from which web site it comes, or from which platform, application or communication model. So far this kind of ISPs behavior has been a standard, but by changing certain rules, new moments which can significantly change the way the Internet is use are coming. Also, the way that we do business over Internet might change as well. The elimination of net neutrality can be seen from several perspectives, and we will pay attention to net neutrality from legislative, technical and marketing one.


In recent decades Britain's economic landscape has shifted from a Fordist manufacturing economy, to a labour market based on intangible forms of service work. Despite initial optimism regarding this shift, many of the replacement service jobs which workers now rely upon reflect instable, intensive and low-paying work realities. This thesis explores how low-end service work is actually experienced, as seen through the eyes of call centre workers based in Glasgow. Glasgow represents a particularly interesting case in this respect, as service work is arguably ill-suited to the traditional skill sets and worker cultures within this old industrial labour market. Despite this apparent mismatch, the thesis contends that workers possess and perform a range of coping strategies and practices that help limit the negative experience of telephone call centre work. Via interviews with workers, and non-participant observation of the call centre labour process across three different call centre settings, the thesis argues that workers can and do foster 'lives worth living' through a seemingly mundane, coercive, and low paying form of work.

The opening of the thesis positions the research in the expanding sub-discipline of labour geography. While traditional understandings of labour and capital have tended to ignore labour's ability to think and act, labour geography has emphasised the potential for workers to negotiate with capital through collective forms of (often union-based) 'resistance'. In addition to resisting capital, the research argues that workers also (and more commonly) demonstrate agency whilst complying with existing structural constraints. This argument is advanced with recourse to studies from the labour process theory (LPT) tradition, in addition to the work of James C. Scott and Cindi Katz.

Three main arguments are advanced throughout the thesis. Firstly, and despite the call centre typecast as that of an authoritarian and deskilled setting, it is argued that call centre capital remains responsive to the social and unpredictable nature of workers. In order to realise production, each centre is shown to draw upon the social division of labour in different ways, as well as relying upon 'soft' measures of control over and above forms of coercion. This is necessary in order to attain the consent of a productive call centre workforce. Secondly, and inside the labour process itself, call centre workers are shown to exhibit a range of passive and informal coping mechanisms – i.e. forms of agency – which help to improve the experience of call centre work. Crucially, these forms of coping do little to challenge managerial control in a direct sense: and this, in part, explains their effectiveness as a means of getting by. The final point relates to worker rationales behind call centre employment. Here it is argued that the subjective socio-spatial backgrounds of workers impact motivation behind call centre employment. Furthermore, worker backgrounds are shown to 'carry over' inside the workplace, further impacting the experience of call centre work. Ultimately pre-existing non-work subjectivities (in particular class, gender, and nationality) are shown to influence the identities that workers forge through call centre employment. By way of conclusion, the thesis attempts to feed these theoretical findings – with particular reference to findings on worker agency – back into the labour geography project.


This dissertation presents pricing models for stop-loss reinsurance contracts for catastrophic events and for catastrophe insurance derivatives. We use doubly stochastic Poisson process or the Cox process for the claim arrival process for catastrophic events. The shot noise process is able to measure the frequency, magnitude and time period needed to determine the effect of the catastrophe. This process is used for the claim intensity function within the Cox process. The Cox process with shot noise intensity is examined by piecewise deterministic Markov process theory. We apply the Cox process incorporating the shot noise process as its intensity to price stop-loss catastrophe reinsurance contracts and catastrophe insurance derivatives. In order to calculate fair prices for reinsurance contracts and catastrophe insurance derivatives we need to assume that there is an absence of arbitrage opportunities in the market. This can be achieved by using an equivalent martingale probability measure in our pricing models. The Esscher transform is used to change probability measure. The dissertation also shows how to estimate the parameters of claim intensity using the likelihood function. In order to estimate the distribution of claim intensity, state estimation is employed as well. Since the claim intensity is not observable we filter it out on the basis of the number of claims, i.e. we employ the Kalman-Bucy filter. We also derive pricing formulae for stop-loss reinsurance contracts for catastrophic events using the distribution of claim intensity that is obtained by the Kalman-Bucy filter. Both estimations are essential in pricing stop-loss reinsurance contracts and catastrophe insurance derivatives.


ABSTRACT Stochastic epidemic models describe the dynamics of an epidemic as a disease spreads through a population. Typically, only a fraction of cases are observed at a set of discrete times. The absence of complete information about the time evolution of an epidemic gives rise to a complicated latent variable problem in which the state space size of the epidemic grows large as the population size increases. This makes analytically integrating over the missing data infeasible for populations of even moderate size. We present a data augmentation Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) framework for Bayesian estimation of stochastic epidemic model parameters, in which measurements are augmented with subject-level disease histories. In our MCMC algorithm, we propose each new subject-level path, conditional on the data, using a time-inhomogenous continuous-time Markov process with rates determined by the infection histories of other individuals. The method is general, and may be applied to a broad class of epidemic models with only minimal modifications to the model dynamics and/or emission distribution. We present our algorithm in the context of multiple stochastic epidemic models in which the data are binomially sampled prevalence counts, and apply our method to data from an outbreak of influenza in a British boarding school. Supplementary material for this article is available online.


This study investigated the climate change vulnerability of 6,214 households in the drought-prone districts of Telangana state in India. Principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis were used to group farm households based on their level of vulnerability to climate change and to suggest a portfolio of adaptation strategies. The PCA revealed the presence of five components from 14 key variables: (1) access to irrigation; (2) credit access, landholding, and income from agriculture; (3) household size and income sources; (4) access to information and climate-smart adaptation practices; and (5) social capital. The first five components (eigenvalue ≥ 1) collectively accounted for 60.42 percent of the total variance. Three clusters emerged after the component scores were analyzed using K-means clustering: extremely vulnerable, moderately vulnerable, and resilient households. The results of the cluster analysis revealed that 79 percent of the households were extremely vulnerable, 11.20 percent were moderately vulnerable, and 9.65 percent were resilient. Moreover, 96 percent of marginal farmers and 94 percent of smallholder farmers were extremely vulnerable, while 19 percent of large farmers and 16 percent of medium farmers were moderately vulnerable. Interestingly, nearly 26 percent in the extremely vulnerable category and 19 percent in the moderately vulnerable category were large farmers, which contradicts previous assumptions. The findings of this study can guide development practitioners, policymakers, and donors in designing evidence-based programs focusing on households vulnerable to climate change.


We offer a decentralized solution to the asymmetric information and hidden action problems in the nonpoint source (NPS) pollution case. Farmers in the same watershed generate homogeneous NPS pollution. The regulator, R, pays for (or represents a group of point-source, PS, polluters who pay for) pollution reduction credits earned by the group of the farmers. To resolve the asymmetric information problem, R is concerned with only the total level of the abatement achieved, while the group of farmers (called the Association, A), undertakes responsibility to distribute the payment so as to induce farmers to deliver abatement. We show that A can devise an optimal contract to deal with the farmers' hidden action problem. We identify the restrictions under which such a policy can be implemented, evaluate its effects on the product market, and show that in the NPS case information rents are higher than in the PS case.


3D reconstruction technology is used in a wide variety of applications. Currently, automatically creating accurate pointclouds for large parts requires expensive hardware. We are interested in using low-cost depth cameras mounted on commonly available industrial robots to create accurate pointclouds for large parts automatically. Manufacturing applications require fast cycle times. Therefore, we are interested in speeding up the 3D reconstruction process. We present algorithmic advances in 3D reconstruction that achieve a sub-millimeter accuracy using a low-cost depth camera. Our system can be used to determine a pointcloud model of large and complex parts. Advances in camera calibration, cycle time reduction for pointcloud capturing, and uncertainty estimation are made in this work. We continuously capture pointclouds at an optimal camera location with respect to part distance during robot motion execution. The redundancy in pointclouds achieved by the moving camera significantly reduces errors in measurements without increasing cycle time. Our system produces sub-millimeter accuracy.


We select satellite galaxies from the galaxy group catalogue constructed with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectroscopic galaxies and measure the tangential shear around these galaxies with the source catalogue extracted from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Stripe-82 Survey. Using the tangential shear, we constrain the mass of subhaloes associated with these satellites. The lensing signal is measured around satellites in groups with masses in the range 10(13)-5 x 10(14) h (1) M-circle dot, and is found to agree well with theoretical expectations. Fitting the data with a truncated NFW profile, we obtain an average subhalo mass of log (M-sub/h (-1) M-circle dot) = 11.68 +/- 0.67 for satellites whose projected distances to central galaxies are in the range 0.1-0.3 h (1) Mpc and log (M-sub/h (1) M-circle dot) = 11.68 +/- 0.76 for satellites with projected halo-centric distance in [0.3, 0.5]h (1) Mpc. The best-fitting subhalo masses are comparable to the truncated subhalomasses assigned to satellite galaxies using abundance matching and are about 5-10 times higher than the average stellar mass of the lensing satellite galaxies.


Using a panel of Colombian banks and quarterly data between 1996:1 and 2010:3, we study the relationship between short-run adjustments in bank capital buffers and the business cycle. We follow a partial adjustment framework and control for several variables that have been identified as important determinants of bank capital buffers in previous studies, and find that bank capital buffers vary overthe business cycle. We are able to identify a negative co-movement of capital buffers and and the business cycle. However, we also find that capital buffers of small and large banks behave asymmetrically during the business cycle. While the former appear to be constant over time, once the appropriate set of control variables is used, the latter present a countercyclical behavior. Our results suggest the possible need of the implementation of regulatory policy measures in developing countries.


The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Abstract The microtubule-associated protein tau forms pathological neuronal filaments in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative disorders, known collectively as tauopathies. Previous studies in transgenic mouse models of AD suggest that reducing tau expression may be safe and beneficial for the prevention or treatment of AD and possibly other tauopathies. As a first step toward identifying novel therapeutic strategies to reduce tau levels, the studies presented in this dissertation aim to investigate the role of the human tau 3'-untranslated region (3'-UTR) in regulating tau expression. Tau expresses two 3'-UTR isoforms, long and short, as a result of alternative polyadenylation. The exact sequence of these two 3'-UTR isoforms was determined by rapid amplification of cDNA 3'-ends (3'-RACE), and the two 3'-UTR isoforms were cloned into a luciferase reporter vector. Using these reporter constructs, the expression of these isoforms was found to be differentially controlled in human neuroblastoma cell lines M17D and SH-SY5Y by luciferase assays and quantitative PCR (qPCR). Through an unbiased screen of tau 3'-UTR deletions and fragments using luciferase reporter constructs, several regions in the long tau 3'-UTR isoform that contain regulatory cis-elements were identified. Additionally, several microRNAs were computationally identified as candidates that might bind the long tau 3'-UTR and thereby differentially control the expression of long versus short tau 3'-UTR isoforms. Screening these candidate microRNAs via luciferase reporter assay identified miR-34a, which was subsequently shown to repress the expression of endogenous tau protein and mRNA in M17D cells using Western blot and qPCR, respectively. Conversely, inhibition of endogenously expressed miR-34 family members leads to increased iv endogenous tau expression. Taken together, these studies suggest that the expression of the two tau 3'-UTR isoforms is differentially regulated and that this differential regulation is due to the presence of regulatory cis-elements found only in the long tau 3'-UTR isoform, including a binding site for miR-34 family members. Improved understanding of the regulation of tau expression by its 3'-UTR may ultimately lead to the development of novel therapeutic strategies for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and other tauopathies.


Small and medium entrepreneurship (SME) is one of the most important sectors of the national economy. It determines the economic growth rate of the country/region and the structure of the gross national product. The article aims at evaluating the contribution of SME to the regional economic development on example Adjara A.R. (Republic of Georgia), investigating and analyzing importance of SME development at regional level and discussing the factors influence on its development. In the research section of the given article econometric analyses of SME key indicators is conducted by linear log-regression model based on statistical data of 2006-2019 years. The results of the research study show positive impacts of the number of employees and their productivity on gross value added. The study aims at underlining the government policy supporting an advantageous SME environment and conditions, which is a precondition for regional economic development.


The South Caucasus is a mosaic created of different cultures, political situations and an incredible variety of nature. Due to a very high number of plant and animal species, the Caucasus region is one of the biodiversity hotspots and allotted a markedly high priority for additional conservation measures. Implementing, extending and asserting nature reserves postulate significant costs in form of usage restrictions from local population living close to these areas, while the economic profiteers of biodiversity mostly are in countries of higher national income. As the South Caucasus is in a status, where the rural population is dramatically impoverished after the collapse of the Soviet System, any stringent restrictions on land use required by the establishment of protected areas is likely to meet substantial resistance. Subsistence farming became important for the rural population, therefore already existing protected areas opponents concerning the natural resource land and new established once have to handle situations of competitions of nature protection and human land use. In the present dissertation three empirical studies were made, which consider the issue of willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-accept for additional or less access to pastureland from different points of view.
The first study showed a large household survey conducted in Lake Arpi (Armenia), Samtkhe-Javakheti and Lagodekhi (both Georgia) in 2012. Average household data about employment work, farming, socio-economic information, living conditions and relationships towards the national parks were shown. The study introduced a choice experiment concerning a willingness-to-pay/willingness-to accept (WTP/WTA) for access to summer pasture, additional income sources and other natural resources. Additional income sources are bee-keeping/honey production training, cheese-production training and tour-guiding training. It is found that households of all regions are poor and have bad farming, infrastructure and utility grid supply. Land is the most competitive resource of protected areas and humans living in the buffer zones of these reserves. Summer pasture in all regions has high economic value, especially for subsistence income. In Lake Arpi WTP for 25% more access to summer pasture is 205 €, in Samtskhe-Javakheti 495 € and in Lagodekhi 99€ a year. WTP for additional income sources vary over the regions: In Lake between 35 – 61 € in Samtskhe-Javakheti between 92 – 106 € and in Lagodekhi it is 42 € a year. Tour-guiding training
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is just significant in Lake Arpi. In Lake Arpi a WTA to accept a ban to collect wild plants exists with 302 € a year. People are dependent from natural resources for home consumption. In Samtskhe-Javakheti respondents would be willing to pay 1178€ a year to leave their StatusQuo. The CE is widely not influenced by gender. Age increases the WTP in Lake Arpi for a bee-keeping training and decreases the WTP for summer pasture and increases the WTP in Lagodekhi for cheese-production training about 2%. Higher education decreases the WTP for summer pasture in Lake Arpi and Samtskhe-Javakheti and increases it in Lagodekhi. Higher income increases WTP for additional income sources and reduces the WTA for a ban. Households know about see national parks close by as threat for their economic future.
The second study had focus on the regions Lake Arpi and Samtskhe-Javakheti. The national parks are twinning zones and were established together. It was analysed how attitudes of locals towards the specific national park influences the WTP/WTA of the choice experiment of the first study and where the attitudes come from. Female respondents seem to have more positive attitudes towards national parks, as well as older respondents. Higher education results in Lake Arpi in a better and in Samtskhe-Javakheti in a worse attitude. Mostly history of establishment is important for the attitude. Lake Arpi was created integrative and therefore results in a positive attitude; Samtskhe-Javakheti was established excluding locals from planning and results in a negative attitude. The WTP for additional trainings related to the national parks and biodiversity are increasing with having a more positive attitude. In contrast, WTA for access to summer pastures decreases. Integrating locals in national park management results in better attitudes and therefore lower compensation payments.
The last study examines the choice experiment referring other factors that have not been considered in previous studies: After the breakdown of the Soviet System little private land was assigned to the rural population of Armenia and Georgia. Inadequate land markets are existing in the countries and locals are dependent from communal pastureland. The influence of owning more private land and being less dependent from a communal good, which is competitive in the term of usage and protecting was analysed. Owning more private land decreases the WTP for additional summer pasture in all three project regions, while owning larger herds increases it. Most respondents wish to enlarge herds, but due to a lack of land and money, it is not possible.
VIII
The results showed, owning more private land decreases the WTA for a ban of collecting wild plants. Communal land is not only important as pasture, also for other natural resources for subsistence. Having larger herds reduces the WTA as these households have higher incomes and can afford goods. It also reduces the WTP for additional income sources; these are more likely interesting for people less dependent from livestock keeping but increases the WTP for livestock related trainings.


Superior insights into molecular mechanisms of liver failure, which are not fully understood, will help strategies for inducing liver regeneration. We examined hepatotoxic mechanisms in mice homozygous for the severe combined immune deficiency mutation in the protein kinase, DNA-activated, catalytic polypeptide. Mice were treated with rifampicin, phenytoin, and monocrotaline. The ensuing acute liver failure was characterized by serological, histological, and mRNA studies. Subsequently, we studied whether transplantation of hepatocytes could rescue animals with liver failure. We found extensive liver damage in these animals, with mortality over several days. The expression of multiple hepatic genes was rapidly altered, including those representing pathways in oxidative/metabolic stress, inflammation, DNA damage-repair, and ataxia telangiectasia mutant (Atm) signaling pathways. This led to liver cell growth arrest involving cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 1A. Transplantation of hepatocytes with microcarriers in the peritoneal cavity efficiently rescued animals with liver failure. Molecular abnormalities rapidly reversed, including in hepatic Atm and downstream signaling pathways; and residual hepatocytes overcame cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 1A–induced cell growth arrest. Reseeding of the liver with transplanted hepatocytes was not required for rescue because native hepatocytes overcame cell growth-arrest to regenerate the liver. This likely resulted from paracrine signaling from hepatocytes in the peritoneal cavity. We concluded that Atm signaling played critical roles in the pathological features of liver failure. These studies should help redirect examination of pathophysiologic and therapeutic mechanisms in liver failure. (Am J Pathol 2011, 178:161–174; DOI: 10.1016/j.ajpath.2010.11.001)


Trace elements such as zinc, copper, and selenium are essential for reproductive health, but there is limited work examining how circulating trace elements may associate with fertility in humans. The aim of this study was to determine the association between maternal plasma concentrations of zinc, copper, and selenium, and time to pregnancy and subfertility. Australian women (n = 1060) who participated in the multi-centre prospective Screening for Pregnancy Endpoints study were included. Maternal plasma concentrations of copper, zinc and selenium were assessed at 15 ± 1 weeks' gestation. Estimates of retrospectively reported time to pregnancy were documented as number of months to conceive; subfertility was defined as taking more than 12 months to conceive. A range of maternal and paternal adjustments were included. Women who had lower zinc (time ratio, 1.20 (0.99–1.44)) or who had lower selenium concentrations (1.19 (1.01–1.40)) had a longer time to pregnancy, equivalent to a median difference in time to pregnancy of around 0.6 months. Women with low selenium concentrations were also at a 1.46 (1.06–2.03) greater relative risk for subfertility compared to women with higher selenium concentrations. There were no associations between copper and time to pregnancy or subfertility. Lower selenium and zinc trace element concentrations, which likely reflect lower dietary intakes, associate with a longer time to pregnancy. Further research supporting our work is required, which may inform recommendations to increase maternal trace element intake in women planning a pregnancy.


Life cycle-based studies endorse public transport to cause lower environmental pressures compared to a private car. However, a private car can cause lower environmental pressure when a public vehicle (bus or train) runs on a lower occupancy during an off-peak hour. This fact should be the basis for a more profound debate regarding public versus private transport. Many transport interventions are striving to reduce the number of car transports. To reach this goal, passengers need attractive alternatives to their reduced number of car travels (i.e., attractive public transport). This study aimed to develop a model allowing us to estimate potential environmental gains by changing travel behavior. A passenger travel model was developed based on life cycle inventories (LCI) of different travel modes to calculate environmental footprints. The model was applied in an intervention of public transport through temporary free public transport. The intervention was successful in significantly reducing the number of car transports (12%). However, total passenger kilometer travelled (PKT) increased substantially more, mainly by bus, but also train, bicycle and walking. The total energy, carbon and nitrogen oxide footprints were slightly increased after the intervention. If the commuters were assumed to travel during peak hours or the number of public transports were not affected by the increased number of commuters, the overall environmental footprints decreased. Our conclusions are that transport interventions are very complex. They may result in desired changes, but also in altered travel behavior, increasing overall impact. Thus, a very broad evaluation of all transport modes as well as potential positive social influences of the transport intervention will be necessary.


Jacques Cartier's voyages of 1534, 1535, and 1541constitute the first record of European impressions of the St Lawrence region of northeastern North American and its peoples. The Voyages are rich in details about almost every aspect of the region's environment and the people who inhabited it. As Ramsay Cook points out in his introduction, Cartier was more than an explorer; he was also Canada's first ethnographer. His accounts provide a wealth of information about the native people of the region and their relations with each other. Indirectly, he also reveals much about himself and about sixteenth-century European attitudes and beliefs. These memoirs recount not only the French experience with the Iroquois, but alo the Iroquois' discovery of the French. In addition to Cartier's Voyages, a slightly amended version of H.P. Biggar's 1924 text, the volume includes a series of letters relating to Cartier and the Sieur de Roberval, who was in command of cartier on the last voyage. Many of these letters appear for the first time in English. Ramsay Cook's introduction, 'Donnacona Discovers Europe,' rereads the documents in the light of recent scholarship as well as from contemporary perspectives in order to understand better the viewpoints of Cartier and the native people with whom he came into contact.


Log-facies classification at the well location allows determination of the number of facies, the facies definition, and the correlation between facies and rock properties along the well profile. In unconventional reservoirs, because of the necessity for hydraulic fracturing in shale gas and shale oil reservoirs, facies classification should account for petroelastic and geomechanical properties. We developed a facies classification methodology based on the expectation-maximization algorithm, a statistical method that allows finding the most likely facies classification and the associated probability distribution, given the set of geophysical measurements in the borehole. We applied the proposed workflow to a complete set of well logs from the Marcellus shale and developed the corresponding facies classification from log properties measured and computed in three different domains: petrophysics, rock physics, and geomechanics. In thne preliminary well-log and rock-physics analysis, we identify three main lithofacies: limestone, shale, and sandstone. The application of the classification method provided the vertical sequence of the three lithofacies and their pointwise probability of occurrence. A sensitivity analysis was finally evaluated to investigate the impact of the number of input variables on the classification and the effects of cementation and kerogen.


The signaling pathways by which beta-adrenergic agonists modulate voltage-dependent cardiac sodium currents are unknown, although it is likely that adenosine 3'5'-monophosphate (cAMP) is involved. Single-channel and whole-cell sodium currents were measured in cardiac myocytes and the signal transducing G protein Gs was found to couple beta-adrenergic receptors to sodium channels by both cytoplasmic (indirect) and membrane-delimited (direct) pathways. Hence, Gs can act on at least three effectors in the heart: sodium channels, calcium channels, and adenylyl cyclase. The effect on sodium currents was inhibitory and was enhanced by membrane depolarization. During myocardial ischemia the sodium currents of depolarized cells may be further inhibited by the accompanying increase in catecholamine levels.


Title of Dissertation: DESIGN FOR PRODUCTION: USING MANUFACTURING CYCLE TIME INFORMATION TO IMPROVE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT Mandar M. Chincholkar, Doctor of Philosophy, 2002 Dissertation directed by: Associate Professor Jeffrey W. Herrmann Department of Mechanical Engineering and Institute for Systems Research Product development teams employ many methods and tools as they design, test, and manufacture a new (or improved) product. It is important that the product development team understand how their design decisions affect manufacturing system performance. Having this feedback early in the design process avoids rework loops needed to solve problems of manufacturing capacity or cycle time. The team can incorporate this information and associated costs into a design decision problem aimed at choosing the best possible product design. It is clear that the product design, which requires a specific set of manufacturing operations, has a huge impact on the manufacturing cycle time. Reducing manufacturing cycle time has many benefits, including but not limited to lower inventory, reduced costs, improved product quality, faster response to customer orders, increased flexibility and a reduced time-to-market. Design For Production (DFP) refers to methods that evaluate a product design by comparing its manufacturing requirements to available capacity and estimating manufacturing cycle time. DFP can be used to design the product in a way that decreases required capacity, reduces the manufacturing cycle time, or otherwise simplifies production. To understand how a product design impacts manufacturing system performance, this research develops analytical (not simulation) models to quantify how introducing a new product increases congestion in the manufacturing system. It presents approaches that use this information intelligently and make suggestions on product redesign and manufacturing system improvements. Similar models are also developed for manufacturing systems with process drift, a condition causing a process to deviate from expected processing parameters resulting in a reduced yield at that station. This work presents models for evaluating how embedding passives into a printed circuit board affects not only the processing times at each step in the manufacturing process but also the overall manufacturing system behavior. Finally, this dissertation demonstrates the importance of the DFP approach by presenting a comprehensive perspective on the economic impacts of reducing manufacturing cycle time. Through these models and relationships, this research aims to understand the issues and impacts associated with the design for production approach and provide better tools that improve product development.


Web applications suffer from software and configuration faults that lower their availability. Recovering from failure is dominated by the time interval between when these faults appear and when they are detected by site operators. We introduce a set of tools that augment the ability of operators to perceive the presence of failure: an automatic anomaly detector scours HTTP access logs to find changes in user behavior that are indicative of site failures, and a visualizer helps operators rapidly detect and diagnose problems. Visualization addresses a key question of autonomic computing of how to win operators' confidence so that new tools will be embraced. Evaluation performed using HTTP logs from Ebates.com demonstrates that these tools can enhance the detection of failure as well as shorten detection time. Our approach is application-generic and can be applied to any Web application without the need for instrumentation


A model was developed for network design of a shipping service for large-scale intermodal liners that captured essential practical issues, including consistency with current services, slot purchasing, inland and maritime transportation, multiple-type containers, and origin-to-destination transit time. The model used a liner shipping hub-and-spoke network to facilitate laden container routing from one port to another. Laden container routing in the inland transportation network was combined with the maritime network by defining a set of candidate export and import ports. Empty container flow is described on the basis of path flow and leg flow in the inland and maritime networks, respectively. The problem of network design for shipping service of an intermodal liner was formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming model. The proposed model was used to design the shipping services for a global liner shipping company.


In an attempt to determine the key challenges and opportunities of creating a dialogue about sustainability in regards to the Alberta oil sands, 13 professionals from four key stakeholder groups (industry, government, media and NGO) were asked the same set of seven questions about their conceptualization of sustainability. Key findings included the following: (1) Vague language pervaded many of the discussions including references to 'responsible development,' 'corporate social responsibility,' or 'triple bottom line.' (2) The sample illustrated a continuum of positions regarding both the notion of sustainability writ large and within the context of the oil sands specifically. (3) The largest concentration of discussion about sustainability surrounded practices and values, with goals and indicators figuring much less prominently. This paper provides useful insight to both the areas where stakeholders are still struggling to agree upon and those places where there is in fact some overlap. Areas for future research include exploration into one more key stakeholder: the indigenous voice.


In this paper, we make use of calcium carbonate-bearing sediment sequences in the Arctic-Atlantic gateway to produce a standard reference climate record for the Arctic Ocean. We present a continuous and exceptionally well-dated marine sediment record documenting the strong imprint of Arctic freshwater pulses on Earth's climate system throughout the past 0.8 m.y. Planktic foraminiferal oxygen and carbon isotope data reveal that freshwater plumes released from collapsing circum-Arctic ice sheets and ice-dammed lakes were advected to the Arctic Ocean gateway on sub-Milankovitch time scales. Given the close correspondence of Arctic freshwater pulses and strength of North Atlantic Deep Water formation as inferred from carbon isotope data, we conclude that freshening of the Arctic Ocean influenced thermohaline circulation more frequently than previously recognized. Our data show that it is critical for coupled atmosphere-ice-ocean general circulation models aimed at unraveling climate forcing factors during the Pleistocene to consider Arctic freshwater as a crucial forcing factor.


The Minnesota Heart Health Program (MHHP) aims to reduce cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality by reducing risk factors among the mass of residents in three midwestern communities. A major aspect of the program is the involvement of community physicians because they have high credibility as citizen leaders, especially on health issues. In the MHHP, physicians contributed in a number of ways. The initial contacts with physicians resulted in their providing support and introductions to other community leaders, whose active support was also gained. Physicians sit as members of the central Community Advisory Borads of MHHP and serve on the executive committees of these boards. All MHHP issues related to medical practice are brought before Physicians' Advisory Groups in each community for resolution. Primary care physicians attend MHHP continuing education programs. In a survey of 109 physicians in one of the MHHP communities, 95 percent of respondents believed cigarette smoking to be an important risk factor for CVD, but only 15 percent judged themselves to be effective in dealing with patients who smoked. Forty-one percent of respondents said that elevated blood cholesterol is an important risk factor, but only 20 percent felt effective in treating the condition. Only 18 percent of the physicians in the sample believed that a poor eating pattern plays a substantial role in CVD, and 9 percent felt effective in counseling patients about eating habits. This pattern of results indicates the need not only for continuing education about risk factors for CVD, but also for training to improve patient counseling skills.


This essay focuses on the ways in which schools in interwar French West Africa contributed to separating African students from their societies. It analyzes school texts and shows how they prepared students to accept an identity as "blacks" distinct from their uneducated peers who stood outside the boundaries of French society. Students were uncomfortable with these views. They were aware of the differences between themselves and unschooled Africans as well as the French. They envisioned their future on the margins of both societies, living as Europeans by day and Africans by night.


Saccades are fast eye movements that reorient gaze. They can be performed voluntarily-for example, when viewing a scene-but they can also be triggered in reaction to suddenly appearing targets. The generation of these voluntary and reactive saccades have been shown to involve partially different cortical pathways. However, saccades of either type confront the visual system with a major challenge from massive image motion on the retina. Despite the fact that the whole scene is swept across the retina, a saccade usually does not elicit a percept of motion. This saccadic omission has been linked to a transient decrease of visual sensitivity during the eye movement, a phenomenon called saccadic suppression. A passive origin of saccadic suppression based on temporal masking has been proposed as well as an active central process that inhibits visual processing during the saccade. The latter one would need to include an extraretinal signal, which is generated already during saccade preparation. Since saccade generation differs for voluntary and reactive saccades, timing and nature of this extraretinal signal as well as its impact on visual sensitivity might also differ. We measured detection thresholds for luminance stimuli that were flashed during voluntary and reactive saccades and during fixation. Detection thresholds were higher during voluntary than during reactive saccades such that suppression appeared stronger during voluntary saccades. Stronger suppression in voluntary saccades could arise from a stronger extraretinal signal that activates suppression or could indicate that a suppression underlying process itself partially differs between voluntary and reactive saccades.


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to add information on which voices contributed to the scientific management narrative from Frederick Taylor's 1915 death to the early 1930s with a focus on the role of labor union representatives. The strategy is to analyze the role of labor representatives as participants in Taylor Society meetings and publications. The research contributes to the management history literature by bolstering the picture of the Taylor Society as a liberal, pro-labor organization. The research also shows that the Taylor Society was an early proponent of the idea that assembling diverse groups for dialogue improves organizational problem-solving.

Design/methodology/approach

The research analyzes historical sources including all issues of the Society's bulletin from 1914 to 1933 and unpublished material from the Morris Cooke papers and the papers in the Frederick Taylor archive at Stevens Institute of Technology.

Findings

Taylor Society leaders took a proactive view of encouraging labor voices to join managers and academics in society meetings. At the beginning, few labor leaders spoke at the society, and often, at least some of their comments were critical of scientific management. By 1925, labor participation increased with William Green, American Federation of Labor (AFL) president appearing several times. In addition, labor leaders became positively inclined toward having scientific management experts working in industrial settings. The labor leaders who participated at Taylor Society meetings in the late 1920s and early 1930s considered scientific management insights as useful for labor and wanted to cooperate with the researchers.

Originality/value

The paper augments a revisionist view of interwar scientific management as progressive and pro-labor, a contested point in the management history literature. The research also shows how the Taylor Society was an early proponent of the importance of diversity, at least in the areas of gender and socioeconomic status, for effective problem-solving.


"If within an organisation people are falling into the stream up-river and the Counselling Service finds they are pulling them out down-river, then there is a duty to go up-river, find out what is happening and stop them falling in the first place" Egan and Cowan.
Mental health research is multi-disciplinary by definition; it is predicated on an understanding of the societal, psychological and physical backgrounds. Mental health, as an indivisible component of general health, is a broad concept including psychological well-being (positive mental health) as well as mental disorders and problems. It is principally a feature of the individual, and it is influenced by individual biological and psychological factors, social interactions, societal structures and cultural values. Societal development, for instance, has continued at an accelerating pace, especially in recent decades. We are now experiencing the new era of the postmodern society, characterised by mass media, the internet, information overload and globalisation. Characteristics of the information society, such as virtual realities, can also significantly influence our perception of time and space. As a consequence, there has had to be a change to our ways of expressing identity and of working and studying (Bostock and Wood, 2014).
Of particular importance are the transitions encountered in tertiary and higher education: leaving school/college, entering university and transiting through years 1-3 or 4 now bring more challenges than ever before in terms of mental health. Therefore, it is important to explore how transitional phases and educational factors affect mental health. This workshop and discussion opportunity will focus on the sharing of your expertise, knowledge and experiences so that together the challenges and possibilities in supporting students to build up positive mental health and resilience around the following points can be discussed:
• Identifying the key transition and risk points especially unrealistic student expectations
• Exploring practical ways to work preventively around them especially in the first term.


An evaluation of the environmental flow needs of the NW Bay River was required by Kingborough Council. This evaluation is focussed on the amount, likely environmental benefits and practicalities of delivery of enhanced flows downstream of the Hobart Water takes in upper NW Bay River.
An initial environmental flow assessment for NW Bay River was conducted by the Department of Primary Industry Water and Environment's Water Assessment and Planning Branch (Krasnicki and Graham 2001). This assessment focussed on minimum environmental flow requirements (i.e. excluding flood/high flows which are not significantly altered in the upper-middle reaches of the NW Bay River) for instream life - fish, macroinvertebrates and platypus.


Structural policies, networked information technologies, and flexible and skilled human resources transform old social and economic activities into new ones, which together increase economic growth in today's "new economy." In this study Catherine L. Mann and Daniel H. Rosen examine how this new phenomenon is affecting the economies of the member nations of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and whether APEC policymakers should have an action agenda toward it. The authors use macroeconomic models and distill case studies from selected APEC countries to illustrate both the potential rewards and the challenges faced by policymakers and businesses in enabling and embracing the dynamism of the new economy. The study also highlights the impact of new economy forces on trade competitiveness as well as the relationship between government and civil society. * The authors conclude with a set of policy recommendations for APEC members, and for APEC itself to ensure that the benefits of the New Economy are widely shared in the region. The study was initially prepared for the Economic Committee of APEC for presentation to its annual ministerial and summit meetings in Shanghai in October 2001.


Measurements of the centrality and rapidity dependence of inclusive jet production in √ s NN = 5 . 02 TeV proton–lead ( p + Pb) collisions and the jet cross-section in √ s = 2 . 76 TeV proton–proton collisions are presented. These quantities are measured in datasets corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 27.8 nb − 1 and 4.0 pb − 1 , respectively, recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider in 2013. The p + Pb collision centrality was characterised using the total transverse energy measured in the pseudorapidity interval − 4 . 9 < η < − 3 . 2 in the direction of the lead beam. Results are presented for the double-differential per-collision yields as a function of jet rapidity and transverse momentum ( p T ) for minimum-bias and centrality-selected p + Pb collisions, and are compared to the jet rate from the geometric expectation. The total jet yield in minimum-bias events is slightly enhanced above the expectation in a p T -dependent manner but is consistent with the expectation within uncertainties. The ratios of jet spectra from different centrality selections show a strong modification of jet production at all p T at forward rapidities and for large p T at mid-rapidity, which manifests as a suppression of the jet yield in central events and an enhancement in peripheral events. These effects imply that the factorisation between hard and soft processes is violated at an unexpected level in proton–nucleus collisions. Furthermore, the modifications at forward rapidities are found to be a function of the total jet energy only, implying that the violations may have a simple dependence on the hard parton–parton kinematics.


Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) subsystems monitor and control energy distribution through exchange of information between smart meters and utility networks. A key challenge is how to select a cost-effective communication system without compromising the performance of the applications. Current communication technologies were developed for conventional data networks with different requirements. It is therefore necessary to investigate how much of existing communication technologies can be retrofitted into the new energy infrastructure to cost-effectively deliver acceptable level of service. This paper investigates broadband power line communications (BPLC) as a backhaul solution in AMI. By applying the disparate traffic characteristics of selected AMI applications, the network performance is evaluated. This study also examines the communication network response to changes in application configurations in terms of packet sizes. In each case, the network is stress-tested and performance is assessed against acceptable thresholds documented in the literature. Results show that, like every other communication technology, BPLC has certain limitations; however, with some modifications in the network topology, it indeed can fulfill most AMI traffic requirements for flexible and time-bounded applications. These opportunities, if tapped, can significantly improve fiscal and operational efficiencies in AMI services. Simulation results also reveal that BPLC as a backhaul can support flat and clustered AMI structures with cluster size ranging from 1 to 150 smart meters.


The purpose of this study was to assess the most commonly used learning strategies of undergraduate students and how these strategies were related to their academic performance. Toward this purpose, a 60 item Likert scale was administered to a sample of 278 undergraduate students. The students were selected based on their cumulative grand-point-average as the most successful and the least successful five senior-year students from each majoring area in the faculties of arts, engineering, science, communication, and sports. The Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was 0,93. Results showed that successful students used more, varied, and better learning strategies than unsuccessful students. Female students were more effective in selecting and using appropriate strategies than male students. There were a variety of differences among fields of study; students of fine arts used the strategies least, while students of sports used them the most. The most preferred group of strategies was metacognitive strategies, whereas the least preferred group was organization strategies. The same pattern was found for the level of success, gender, and field of study. The results overall imply that certain strategies contribute to student performance more than other strategies, and majority of university students are aware of this situation.


Superstorm Sandy devastated thousands of homes in some of the most densely populated areas of the country. It created extensive and diverse property losses in the Northeast, resulting in an unprecedented need for disaster recovery assistance in affected communities. As we pass the storm's two-and-a-half year anniversary, complex challenges remain for many of these households. This article documents how one law school has responded. It reflects on how we have approached our educational and public interest missions throughout the recovery process, and how these experiences have shaped our views of the future. Disasters know no boundaries, and coastal floods are not isolated events that simply inconvenience millionaires with beach houses. Major urban areas and population centers are facing increasing, and in some cases existential, flood risks.Part II of this article documents how Touro Law Center formed its Disaster Law Program, starting with a Sandy hotline that addressed a diverse set of legal and non-legal inquiries in the weeks and months following the storm, and its expansion into a broader educational and public interest initiative. Part III discusses the role of legal-non-legal coordination in the recovery process and their benefits to students, the groups involved, and affected communities. This builds the foundation for Part IV, which discusses our experiences in the recovery process and its multidimensional frameworks, while expanding on the long-range need for nonprofit assistance. This article concludes by recommending a comprehensive and in-depth policy-informing examination of our national approach to disasters, recovery, and resiliency, and its implications for the public interest. Lessons from Hurricane Katrina, and those emerging from Sandy, demonstrate why it is important to analyze these recoveries in a way that informs the policymaking process. For example, the report commissioned after Katrina's sweeping devastation was completed within approximately six months of when the storm made landfall. It was not designed to study long-range systemic challenges to recovery and resiliency. Rather, it provided an essential public lens for the dramatic breakdowns that occurred before Katrina struck and in the days and weeks that followed. The challenges faced by communities and households in the years afterward were still to unravel. Sandy, Katrina, and other disasters offer windows into the future as much as their study may benefit efforts to promote recovery and resiliency now. It is crucial to deepen our understanding of what terms like resilience and a fair and sustainable recovery mean in practice. These concepts lack meaning without grounding in the communities and lives that they touch.


Piezo-resistive actuation of a microcantilever induced by biomolecular binding such as DNA hybridization and antibody-antigen binding is an important principle useful in biosensing applications. As the magnitude of the forces exerted is small, increasing the sensitivity of the microcantilever becomes critical. In this paper, we are considering to achieve this by geometric variation of the cantilever. The sensitivity of the cantilever was improved so that the device can sense the presence of antigen even if the magnitude of surface-stresses over the microcantilever was very small. We consider a `T-shaped' cantilver that eliminates the disadvantages while improving the sensitivity simultaneously. Simulations for validation have been performed using Intellisuite software (a MEMS design and simulation package). The simulations reveal that the T-shaped microcantilver is almost as sensitive as a thin cantilever and has relatively very low buckling effect. Simulations also reveal that with an increase in thickness of the cantilever, there is a proportional decrease in the sensitivity. This paper presents an analytical modeling and simulation studies of a piezoresistive cantilever used as MEMS based biosensor for the detection of cardiac markers. Diagnosis of Myocardial Infarction was achieved by the nanomechanical deflection of the microcantilever due to adsorption of the Troponin I complex. The deflection of the microcantilever was measured in terms of the piezoresistive changes by implanting boron at the anchor point where there is maximum strain due to the adsorption of the analyte molecules. The biochemical interactions between the Cardiac Troponin I (cTnl) complex and the immobilized antibodies would cause change in resistance of the piezoresistor integrated at the anchor point. A 'T' shaped microcantilever design was proposed for the study. The distal end of the device was coated with gold. The sensitivity of the cantilever was improved so that the device can sense the presence of antigen even if the magnitude of surface-stresses over the microcantilever was very small. To obtain an application specific optimum design parameter and predict the cantilever performance. The miniaturization of the cantilever-based biosensor leads to significant advantages in the absolute device sensitivity.


Neural Machine Translation (NMT) has become a popular technology in recent years, and beam search is its de facto decoding method due to the shrunk search space and reduced computational complexity. However, since it only searches for local optima at each time step through one-step forward looking, it usually cannot output the best target sentence. Inspired by the success and methodology of AlphaGo, in this paper we propose using a prediction network to improve beam search, which takes the source sentence $x$, the currently available decoding output $y_1,\cdots, y_{t-1}$ and a candidate word $w$ at step $t$ as inputs and predicts the long-term value (e.g., BLEU score) of the partial target sentence if it is completed by the NMT model. Following the practice in reinforcement learning, we call this prediction network \emph{value network}. Specifically, we propose a recurrent structure for the value network, and train its parameters from bilingual data. During the test time, when choosing a word $w$ for decoding, we consider both its conditional probability given by the NMT model and its long-term value predicted by the value network. Experiments show that such an approach can significantly improve the translation accuracy on several translation tasks.


The present study contributes to individual level information systems research by addressing an important and yet unanswered research question. The present study is a part of a large study conducted to explore and understand impact of technology allocation among Indian IT professionals. In the first part of the study we conducted a qualitative study based on grounded theory methodology. Our findings suggest that technology allocation might contribute in understanding the behaviour of IT professionals. We found that IT professionals evaluate the technology allocated to them on dimensions such as career consequences; however their evaluation is affected by individual level preferences. This evaluation, either positive or negative, influences their job outcomes. Further, we explored the factors that make a technology preferable to others and explicated relevant technology characteristics for IT professionals. Considering the relationship between individual preferences and technology characteristics, we have employed PE fit theory as an overarching theory to explore the phenomenon. Based on the findings of first part of the study and synthesis of literature we proposes a new construct, "Person technology fit" which is hypothesized to affect career satisfaction and turnover intention. Polynomial regression analysis and response surface method is used for data analysis as they are suggested to be an appropriate tool for fit studies in extant literature. Based on data collected from 386 IT professionals working in Indian IT organizations, person technology fit was related to career satisfaction and turnover intent.


Modeling a structured, dynamic environment like a video game requires keeping track of the objects and their states (\emph{declarative} knowledge) as well as predicting how objects behave (\emph{procedural} knowledge). Black-box models with a monolithic hidden state often lack \emph{systematicity}: they fail to apply procedural knowledge consistently and uniformly. For example, in a video game, correct prediction of one enemy's trajectory does not ensure correct prediction of another's. We address this issue via an architecture that factorizes declarative and procedural knowledge and that imposes modularity within each form of knowledge. The architecture consists of active modules called \emph{object files} that maintain the state of a single object and invoke passive external knowledge sources called \emph{schemata} that prescribe state updates. To use a video game as an illustration, two enemies of the same type will share schemata but will each have their own object file to encode their distinct state (e.g., health, position). We propose to use attention to control the determination of which object files to update, the selection of schemata, and the propagation of information between object files. The resulting architecture is a drop-in replacement conforming to the same input-output interface as normal recurrent networks (e.g., LSTM, GRU) yet achieves substantially better generalization on environments that have factorized declarative and procedural knowledge, including a challenging intuitive physics benchmark.


This paper examines the impact of Lima Rural Development Foundation's (hereafter Lima) agricultural extension services to disadvantaged communities in rural South Africa. Lima's farmer support programme aims to improve smallholders' food production practices, connect them to appropriate markets, and stimulate rural agriculture's potential for creating sustainable livelihoods in some of South Africa's poorest regions. Lima believes that successful non-governmental organisation-driven agricultural extension for resource-scarce farmers is largely dependent upon a community-based model that integrates technical advice, market linkages, and access to appropriate technology, and the ongoing provision of services over time. Lima's farmer support model is briefly outlined, then an external appraisal of Lima's extension activities draws from an econometric analysis of 182 farm households surveyed in Umzimkhulu by a University of KwaZulu-Natal researcher in November to December 2013. Farmers surveyed included those who had received Lima's extension services (clients) and those who had not. Descriptive statistics computed for five outcome variables were compared across clients and a subset of non-clients that had observed characteristics similar to those of clients. The impact of extension services on each of these variables was estimated using two-stage least squares regression with an instrumental variable to account for selection bias. The survey results show that Lima's extension services had significant positive impacts on the outcomes. Discussion of results serves to guide programme design and practice for successful extension activities, and recommendations aim to inform policies for rural agricultural development.


In his translation of Edmund Husserl's Cartesian Meditations, Dorion Cairns points out that Husserl's use of the words Gegenstand and Objekt have different meanings, whereas David Carr questions this opposition. However, in this paper, I propose to discuss precisely this distinction and its relevance to our thinking about the world. Nevertheless, to limit my discussion, I will leave aside a discussion of the meanings of Gegenstand and Objekt and concentrate only on the meaning of the word 'objective' in connection to the meanings of the terms 'subject/ subjectivity/ subjective'. My concern is with the meaning of 'objectivity' that is largely understood as scientific objectivity based on facts, and 'subjectivity' when reduced to crude versions of solipsism. Husserl's concern with science turned into technology, forgetting its own ground, is relevant even more today than it was in his time. Science became not one domain among many others but is now supposedly the only arbiter of objectivity. Even worse, psychology is now so powerful that to question its methodology amounts to heresy. The point is to remember that theories, rules and methodologies are constituted by us humans, that science is a human endeavor. The scientific world of objective facts is not the objective world through which we understand the Lebenswelt, but sciences have their starting point in the Lebenswelt and, as Patocka would say, the human lived experience cannot be converted into an object that we can observe and describe as rocks or the lava on the moon.


This study explores a 'culture industry', that of the artisanal food industry in Tasmanian agriculture. Food production and consumption is a highly controversial, socio-political process, whereby diverse values and beliefs, levels of resources and interests struggle for survival. The resultant manifestation of this struggle – in the form of products, production methods and actions – stand testament to the diversity. This thesis demonstrates the politicised nature of food production by examining the paradox of enterprise expansion while retaining a number of identities/tags associated with small scale food businesses and their products (i.e. cottage industry, artisanality and quality food). The implications of these findings for the development of the artisanal food industry are also explored. Two phases of data collection were involved in exploring these issues. A first phase was a scoping study involving document analysis, semi-structured interviews with local knowledgeables and a range of cottage industries, and initial fieldwork. The second phase involved a case study analysis with three small-scale agricultural cottage enterprises (SACEs) and three that had expanded (ESACEs). The case studies primarily involved in-depth, semi-structured interviews.

The research found that the cottage industry identity was meaningful as applied to the SACEs, but also that many of the defining characteristics of a cottage industry were also applicable to the ESACEs. Artisanality was found to be an appropriately assigned label in both the small-scale and expanded enterprises, with a set of specific characteristics, approaches and the principals' role as 'artisanal entrepreneur' authenticating the ESACEs and their products as artisanal. It was found that the enterprises under study aligned with Ray's (2003) notion of the cultural approach to Endogenous Regional Development (ERD) and particular place and space characteristics; whilst 'the short food supply chain', a 'collective form of social action', assisted in facilitating the preservation of these associated identities/tags. In examining the retention of food quality meanings upon expansion, the same set of characteristics and qualities that are potentially used and applicable to the SACEs in defining quality were also found to be relevant in the ESACEs. In examining the cottage industry, artisanal and quality identities, this research demonstrated that there are more similarities than differences between the SACEs and ESACEs, and that growth can occur without necessarily compromising values and actions; all of which enable identity preservation and value-adding potentialities. Moreover, the current use of the 'short food supply chain' holds significant promise for this industry as it assists in building relationships and trust between processors and consumers who share similar values and beliefs surrounding food production and consumption. In so doing, food products are heavily laden with eco-social information, which can assist in challenging unsustainable agrifood production and related practice.


Since 2000, stratospheric aerosol levels have been relatively stable and at the lowest levels observed in the historical record. Given the challenges of making satellite measurements of aerosol properties at these levels, we have performed a study of the sensitivity of the product to the major components of the processing algorithm used in the production of SAGE II aerosol extinction measurements and the retrieval process that produces the operational surface area density (SAD) product. We find that the aerosol extinction measurements, particularly at 1020 nm, remain robust and reliable at the observed aerosol levels. On the other hand, during background periods, the SAD operational product has an uncertainty of at least a factor of 2 due to the lack of sensitivity to particles with radii less than 100 nm.


High concentrations of fluoride in groundwater have become a global environmental challenge. Out of the various methods developed for effective removal of fluoride adsorption using activated alumina (AA) is popular as it has a low initial cost. AA offers excellent chemical and mechanical stability, selectivity for fluoride, favorable hydraulic properties, regenerability but offers lower adsorption capacity as there is reduction in material and capacity with an increased presence of aluminum. Hydroxyapatite nanoparticles have been found to possess high adsorption capacity for fluoride but they lack mechanical stability and favorable hydraulic properties. In this study, we synthesized a hybrid adsorbent, modified activated alumina, prepared by dispersing nanoparticles of hydroxyapatite inside AA granules. The hybrid adsorbent possesses a maximum adsorption capacity of 14.4 mg F/g which is at least five times higher than that of the virgin AA which has been used extensively for fluoride removal. A column run carried out on the hybrid adsorbent with a synthetic solution containing 3 mg/L fluoride lasted for 450 bed volumes before a breakthrough of 1.5 mg/L was observed. The exhausted adsorbent could be fully regenerated in a column within six bed volumes using commonly available innocuous chemicals. The study will contribute to the field of effective removal of fluoride from contaminated drinking water.


This study shows a chemical and morphological characterization of snow samples collected near crossroads of urban area of Ferrara and near the Technological College of University of Ferrara (Italy) during three important snowfalls. The field campaigns were carried out in the eastern part of Po Valley (Italy) in winter 2009-2010. The chemical composition of melted snow was compared with analyses of the same filtered samples of melted snow so as to give the composition of particles smaller than a few nm. The metal concentrations in the aerosol particles were analyzed with ICP-MS and IC methodologies, while the morphological features were described by SEM-EDS analyses. The results showed that snow samples were characterized by important amounts of allumo silicates with dimensions larger than 0.45 μm, from resuspension of the local soil, and IC analysis confirmed the anthropogenic pollution of the snow. Six main particles were classed and recognized: silica, carbonate, allumo silicate, sodium chloride and organic compounds, including biogenic materials and pollen (agricultural aerosols which are composed for 92% of single particles and for the remaining 8% of agglomerations of particles). We present here initial data on heavy metals in snow collected in Ferrara. They were obtained by analyzing fresh snow deposited during three snowfall events in December 2010, February and March 2011. The analyses were performed by the inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), ion chromatography (IC) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM-EDS).


Lead glass that shows a high refractive index is the best known and most popular for radiation shielding glass. Due to the toxic of lead compounds on the human organisms as well as the environmental issues, lead free glass was fabricated by using some heavy elements such as barium and bismuth to replace lead. In this study, colorless lead free glass samples were prepared from 40 wt% local quartz sand and various concentration of BaCO3 (20-40 wt%) as the main compositions in order to study radiation shielding property. The glass mixtures were melted conventionally using electric furnace at the maximum temperature of 1250°C with 4 hr dwelling time. The gamma attenuation characteristics were studied for the photon energy of 662 keV from Cs-137. Density and refractive index were also determined. It was found that a variation of prepared glass samples can be produced both in terms of clarity and radiation shielding properties. The attenuation coefficients were linearly increased as the increase of BaCO3 content. The density and refractive index were also increased. The linear and mass attenuation coefficients of the glass sample containing 40 wt% BaCO3 were 0.234 cm-1 and 0.0726 cm2g-1. In conclusion, a low density glass samples will give rise less attenuation than a high density ones. It can be concluded that the lead-free high refractive index glass that is one of the environmental materials can be used as the gamma radiation shielding glass.


Many experts believe that gasoline taxes should be increased for a variety of reasons. Their arguments are unpersuasive. Oil is not disappearing, and when it becomes more expensive, market agents will substitute away from gasoline to save money. The link between oil price shocks and recessions, although real in the 1970s, has been much more benign since 1985 because of the termination of price controls. Market actors properly account for energy costs in their purchasing decisions absent government intervention. Pollution taxes, congestion fees, and automobile insurance premiums more closely related to vehicle miles traveled are better remedies for the externalities associated with automobile travel than a simple fuel tax. Gasoline consumption does not necessarily distort American foreign policy, impose military commitments, or empower Islamic terrorist organizations. State and federal gasoline taxes should be abolished. Local governments should tax gasoline only to the extent necessary to pay for roads when user charges are not feasible. If government feels compelled to more aggressively regulate vehicle tailpipe emissions or access to public roadways, pollution taxes and road user fees are better means of doing so than fuel taxes. Regardless, perfectly internalizing motor vehicle externalities would likely make the economy less efficient - not more - by inducing motorists into even more (economically) inefficient mass transit use. The arguments advanced against increasing gasoline taxes are applicable to the broader discussion about America's reliance on oil generally. The case for policies designed to discourage oil consumption is nearly as threadbare as the case for increasing the gasoline tax - and for largely the same reasons.