2,709 research outputs found
Employment-Based Health Insurance and Job Mobility: Is There Evidence ofJob-Lock?
No full textThis paper assesses the impact of employer-provided health insurance on job mobility by exploring the extent to which workers are 'locked' into their jobs because preexisting conditions exclusions make it expensive for individuals with medical problems to relinquish their current health insurance. I estimate the degree of job-lock by comparing the difference in the turnover rates of those with high and low medical expenses for those with and without employer-provided health insurance. Using data from the 1987 National Medical Expenditure Survey, I estimate that job-lock reduces the voluntary turnover rate of those with employer-provided health insurance by 25 percent, from 16 percent to 12 percent per year.
Navigation Conditions at Mitchell Lock and Dam, Coosa River, Alabama: Hydraulic Model Investigation
No full textSource: https://erdc-library.erdc.dren.mil/jspui/Mitchell Lock is the second navigation structure proposed for the development of navigation in the Coosa River waterway. The 84- by 600-ft lock will be located at Mitchell Dam and powerhouse about 37.3 miles upstream of the mouth of the Coosa River near Verbena, Alabama. A fixed-bed model reproducing about 4 miles of the Coosa River and adjacent overbank areas to an undistorted scale of 1:120 was used to provide some general information on navigation conditions with the proposed designs and to develop such modifications as might be required to eliminate conditions that would adversely affect navigation. Results of the investigation revealed: (A.) With medium to high flows, navigation conditions at the Highway 22 Bridge were hazardous for both upbound and downbound tows due to the high velocities and limited width provided through the navigation span with the existing piers and low superstructure. Navigation conditions were acceptable at the bridge for low flows. (B.) With the first lock alignment (Plans A and A-1), navigation conditions were acceptable with the 35,000-cfs flow only. With flows greater than 35,000 cfs, navigation conditions were hazardous in the upper pool due to the upstream guard wall perpendicularly intersecting the currents. (C.) With the second lock alignment (Plans B, B- 1, B-2, and B- 3) , navigation conditions were acceptable for the 35,000- cfs flow. With flows higher than 35,000 cfs, navigation conditions were hazardous in the lower pool due to the current alignment, high velocities, and the short maneuvering distance between the lock approach and the Highway 22 Bridge. (D.) With the third lock alignment (Plans C and C-1), navigation conditions were acceptable for all flows evenly distributed through the gated dam up to and including the 90,000-cfs flow. With the modifications in Plan C-1, the navigation conditions were improved in the lower lock approach with the low flows and the 65,000- cfs unevenly distributed flow. Navigation conditions were hazardous with flows greater than 90,000 cfs due to the current alignment, high velocities, and the limited clearance at the Highway 22 Bridge. (E.) Flows unevenly distributed through the gated dam could cause navigation problems in the lower pool. (F.) Navigation conditions would be hazardous for tows in the upper lock approach canal during lock filling. (G.) Navigation conditions would be hazardous for tows at the end of the lower guard wall when emptying the lock into the lower approach with no riverflow. The problem was eliminated by a riverflow of 35,000 cfs or by emptying the lock into the river
Lock Nut.
No full textPatent for a new and improved lock nut design, including illustrations, that efficiently and reliably "locks the nut against rotation upon the bolt" (lines 14-15)
GPS loss of lock statistics over Brazil during the 24th solar cycle
No full textA statistical analysis of Loss of Lock (LoL) over Brazil throughout the 24th solar cycle is performed. Four geodetic GPS dual-frequency (L1, L2) receivers, deployed at different geographic latitudes ranging from about 25° to 2° South in the eastern part of the country, are used to investigate the LoL dependence on time of the day, season, solar and geomagnetic activity. The results of the analysis show that LoL is most likely in the post-sunset hours during summer and equinox, especially within the southern crest of the Equatorial Ionospheric Anomaly (EIA), in a region between about 10°S and 25°S of geographic latitude, matching the typical behaviour of scintillation over Brazil. This is confirmed by the correlation found between the relative occurrence of LoL (LoL (%)) and the Rate Of TEC Index (ROTI), used as a proxy of scintillation index and calculated for each receivers along the entire period of investigation. The LoL (%) for given solar and geomagnetic indices show some correlation with increasing the severity of the index. This correlation is strongest in the area of the southern crest of the EIA, while there is little to no apparent impact closer to the equator, depending on the index. LoL (%) increases with increasing geomagnetic disturbances, varying between ~1% and ~10% for AE ranged between 400 and 1200 nT, and exceeding 3% when Dst is around −100 nT, both related to moderate-severely disturbed conditions
The Thursday Murder Club: Launching a megabrand author - a publishing case study
No full textIn 2020, the Christmas book charts in the UK made headlines: Barack Obama’s eagerly awaited autobiography, The Promised Land, was beaten to the top spot by The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, a debut cosy crime novel set in a retirement village. Not only did Osman’s book beat the former US president’s expected bestseller, it also broke records, becoming the fastest-selling debut crime novel of all time. Although Osman has a certain level of fame in the UK from his TV appearances on shows such as Pointless, his celebrity status does not entirely explain the novel’s huge sales. This article tracks the acquisition, publication, and promotion journey of The Thursday Murder Club in order to understand the industry and cultural context of its success and to interrogate the role of celebrity in the creation of author brands. The findings suggest that the unexpected scale of the success of the book owed to a number of factors, including in-depth editing by the novel’s agent, editor, and author to tighten up the plot, an extensive and strategic promotional campaign, the pandemic (which drove interest in the book’s genre and themes), and the quality of the writing. We find that the book’s success was accentuated by Osman’s celebrity status rather than being entirely reliant on it. This research adds to the growing scholarship on celebrity authorship by means of an in-depth case study and provides insight into the processes behind publishing a ‘celebrity’ book and launching a megabrand author
Scalar soliton quantization with generic moduli
No full textThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in
any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credArticle funded by SCOAP3. CP is
a Royal Society Research Fellow and partly supported by the U.S. Department of Energy
under grants DOE-SC0010008, DOE-ARRA-SC0003883 and DOE-DE-SC0007897. ABR
is supported by the Mitchell Family Foundation. We would like to thank the Mitchell
Institute at Texas A&M and the NHETC at Rutgers University respectively for hospitality
during the course of this work. We would also like to acknowledge the Aspen Center
for Physics and NSF grant 1066293 for a stimulating research environment which led to
questions addressed in this paper
Publicpension governance and performance : lessons for developing countries
No full textThe author examines the relationship between public sector pension plan performance and management practices to improve the design and governance of public pensions in developing countries. Understanding this relationship is important because better yields on public pension plan investment reduce the need for additional taxes to support retirees - and well-funded plans stand a better chance of paying promised benefits. The author's model relates investment returns on public pension assets, as well as plan funding status, to features characterizing the pension systems'governance structure and authority, using new data set on U.S. state and local public sector plans. The following findings stand out. The higher the fraction of retirees elected to the pension board, the stronger the negative effect on investment return in 1990, and the more variable the returns. Systems fared about the same whether they had in-house or external money managers, or independent performance analysis (even if the external managers were drawn from the top 10). But public pensions performed better when fund and actuarial computations were done by professional actuarial and investment counselors rather than relying on former or current employees to choose investment strategies. Social investment rules hurt public pension yields. Public pension plans which mandated that a certain portion of investments be director to instate projects generated much lower returns. The data show that many public pension systems funded their plans satisfactorily but others did not. The results show the following. Fiscal stress reduced stock funding ratios. Stock funding rates were lower, the higher the fraction of elected retirees and elected active workers represented on the pension system board. Stock funding ratios were higher when a system had in-house actuaries, when the board authorized benefit levels, and when board members had liability insurance. Stock funding rates were unaltered by state statutes guaranteering that benefits be guaranteed by law, or by legally set funding requirements, or by the state's ability to carry budget deficits from one year to the next. Nor did they vary when dedicated or special taxes were earmarked for pension revenue. Policymakers in developing countries can profit from the mistakes made and lessons learned by U.S. pension analysis. Although no single package of pension plan practices can optimize investment performance for all systems across all time periods, care must be taken when designing the regulatory and investment environment in which these plans operate. Developing countries should study the work of the U.S. Government Accounting Standards Board. The author discusses some of the complex issues that must be confronted when establishing funding norms for defined benefit pension plans in the public sector.ICT Policy and Strategies,Financial Intermediation,Economic Theory&Research,Pensions&Retirement Systems,Economic Stabilization
Katarina Hansard (Ngāpuhi, c.1860-1906) and Irene Koppel (1911-2004)
No full textLissa Mitchell, Curator of Historical Photography, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington New Zealand
Katarina Hansard (Ngāpuhi, c.1860-1906) and Irene Koppel (1911-2004)
My talk will focus on the lives and photographic careers of two women photographers who worked in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and who both experienced a double “othering” of their cultural and gender identities. Katarina Hansard (Ngāpuhi, c.1860-1906) was an indigenous Māori woman who worked as a professional photographer from 1892 until shortly before her death from tuberculosis. Hansard, with the assistance of her daughter Aneta (Ngāpuhi, c.1877-1966), operated commercial portrait studios on the land of her people in the small Northland town of Kaikohe and later in the South Island cities of Christchurch and Dunedin. Irene Koppel (1911-2004) was a German Jewish refugee who arrived in Aotearoa in 1936 and who resumed her career as a professional photographer working in studio portraiture and photojournalism during the Second World War in Wellington, N.Z.. My research into the contribution of women photographers in Aotearoa from 1860 to 1960 focuses on the impact of the lives and systemic structures of society that enabled and hindered the photographic contributions of women. This research is concerned with the ways that notions of identity, family, and place are intertwined with the ways women are able and unable to conduct their lives, and resulted in the publication of the book Through Shaded Glass – Women and Photography in Aotearoa, New Zealand, 1860 to 1960 (Wellington, New Zealand: Te Papa Press, 2023).
Lissa Mitchell is Curator of Historical Photography at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington and is the author of the recently published book, Through Shaded Glass – Women and Photography in Aotearoa, New Zealand, 1860 to 1960
An Assessment of Bureaucratic Efficiency in the Service Agency
No full textThis thesis concerns itself with a changing bureaucratic system, .i.e., the service agency. The author studies the evolution of the service agency and how the bureaucratic model is applied, adapted, and is working in the service agency and to what extent this model does or does not provide for the efficiency of the organization. Included is research into the concept of personal interaction as it is seen as a problem in Weber's model (need for impersonality) and as it is seen as a need in the evolving form of bureaucracy that rely on group tasks and/or colleague interaction (professionalization). Methodology includes examining the effect of the bureaucratic job selection process, namely civil service and how it promotes or impedes efficiency in the service agency
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