100,942 research outputs found
Outsourcing and Skill Imports: Foreign High-Skilled Workers on H-1B and L-1 Visas in the United States
This working paper looks in detail at the H-1B and L-1 visa programs for temporary employment in the United States. Based on official data from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services and the US Department of State, H-1B and L-1 visa issuance rapidly increased in the late 1990s, followed by a marked slowdown after 2001. This points to the highly cyclical nature of both visa programs. Indian nationals and immigrants working in computer-related occupations dominate the H1-B and L-1 population in the United States, but these two groups are also found to be the most cyclical segment, with very large declines in inflows after 2001. The total population of H-1B visaholders in 2003 is estimated to range between 387,000 and 746,000, of which 160,000 to 306,000 were Indian nationals. As all data on H-1B/L-1 visaholders are gross numbers and gross jobs data for comparable categories are absent, the extent of the impact of these visa programs on the US labor market cannot be gauged precisely. A broad range of US industries and educational institutions are found to be employing H-1B recipients, with the IT industry being the dominant sector. Evidence of aggressive wage-cost cutting, including paying H-1B recipients only the legally mandated 95 percent of the prevailing US wage, is found among some H-1B employers, although no systematic abuse of the system is present.Outsourcing, offshoring, high-skilled labor, immigration, H1B/L-1 visas
H∞ and L2–L∞ filtering for two-dimensional linear parameter-varying systems
This is the post print version of the article. The official published version can be obtained from the link below - Copyright 2007 Wiley-BlackwellIn this paper, the H∞ and l2–l∞ filtering problem is investigated for two-dimensional (2-D) discrete-time linear parameter-varying (LPV) systems. Based on the well-known Fornasini–Marchesini local state-space (FMLSS) model, the mathematical model of 2-D systems under consideration is established by incorporating the parameter-varying phenomenon. The purpose of the problem addressed is to design full-order H∞ and l2–l∞ filters such that the filtering error dynamics is asymptotic stable and the prescribed noise attenuation levels in H∞ and l2–l∞ senses can be achieved, respectively. Sufficient conditions are derived for existence of such filters in terms of parameterized linear matrix inequalities (PLMIs), and the corresponding filter synthesis problem is then transformed into a convex optimization problem that can be efficiently solved by using standard software packages. A simulation example is exploited to demonstrate the usefulness and effectiveness of the proposed design method
Letter from H. L. Russell to Carl Hayden
Letter from H. L. Russell to Carl Hayden regarding fines in the park
Letter from Carl Hayden to L. H. Mcellherren
Letter from Carl Hayden to L. H. McEllherren detailing the funeral of Hon. M. P. Kinkaid, Chairman of the Committee on Irrigation of Arid Lands as well as Hayden's travel plans for the summer
Forecast of July 2015—New Jersey: prospects for the long term
The July 2015 R/ECON forecast shows more rapid growth for the state in 2015 than in 2014. Nonagricultural employment rose by 0.7 percent—or 27,700 jobs in 2014—after growth of 1.2 percent or 45,100 jobs in 2013. Growth will improve to 1.1 percent in 2015 and 2016 and then average 0.8 percent over the rest of the forecast period, which goes through 2045. At these rates the job base will return to the peak level reached in the first quarter of 2008 in mid-2017. By the end of the forecast period in 2045 the employment base will be nearly a million jobs, and 23 percent, greater than its level at the peak.1 These projections assume no specific recession/recovery cycle disrupts the state’s or nation’s growth. Although this seems rather far-fetched given that the average business cycle (peak to peak) in the U.S. since World War II has lasted about 24 quarters and the current cycle is now in its seventh year, a caveat to keep in mind is that this is a long term TREND forecast; it does not purport to indicate at what point(s) CYCLES may occur.Rutgers Economic Advisory Service (R/ECON) quarterly repor
Domain decomposition based H-LU preconditioning
Hierarchical matrices provide a data-sparse way to approximate fully populated matrices. The two basic steps in the construction of an H-matrix are (a) the hierarchical construction of a matrix block partition, and (b) the blockwise approximation of matrix data by low rank matrices. In this paper, we develop a new approach to construct the necessary partition based on domain decomposition. Compared to standard geometric bisection based H-matrices, this new approach yields H-LU factorizations of finite element stiffness matrices with significantly improved storage and computational complexity requirements. These rigorously proven and numerically verified improvements result from an H-matrix block structure which is naturally suited for parallelization and in which large subblocks of the stiffness matrix remain zero in an LU factorization. We provide numerical results in which a domain decomposition based H-LU factorization is used as a preconditioner in the iterative solution of the discrete (three-dimensional) convection-diffusion equation
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