The Government’s Forward Regulatory Programme

Gives an overview of the Forward Programme, which identifies 308 regulatory changes that may be implemented between April 2010 up to and including April 2011 (comprising 265 new measures and 43 simplifications of existing measures). The Forward Programme is intended to provide greater transparency to the Government’s regulatory intentions as they impact on business

Making water policy and water laws democratic: lessons from South Indian states

The present attempt is to propose local people’s involvement in Water Policy and Water Law formulation in Indian sub continent on the growing realization that policies and laws the state governments have so far either visualized or implemented seems remain paper tigers. It examines the existing water laws and its implementation from 3 south Indian states viz., Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for this purpose. Analysis shows that water laws mainly are centered on participatory irrigation management and water user associations. Groundwater laws are given lowest emphasis by the state governments where as majority of the Indian population depends upon it especially for domestic use. Indiscriminate sand mining is seen an emerging threat for river hydrological system that has accentuated by income tax rebates and gaps of housing policies. It indicates that the entire process of evolving water policy and laws is devoid of its stakeholders’ participation particularly from the grassroots level. Institutional framework to facilitate local people’s participation like Gram Sabha and Panchayati Raj Institutions are grossly underutilised for this purpose. On this background it examines the recent attempt of Kerala government in facilitating stakeholders’ participation in law formulation in water related Bill, called The Kerala Conservation of Paddy Fields and Wetlands Bill 2007.Length: pp.708-719Water policyWater lawLegislationStakeholders

The First Hundred Years of the Bureau of Labor Statistics

[Excerpt] This volume reports on the first century of a government agency whose founders hoped that, by publishing facts about economic conditions, the agency would help end strife between capital and labor. The Bureau\u27s early work included studies of depressions, tariffs, immigrants, and alcoholism and many assignments to investigate and mediate disputes between labor and management. Most of these functions- especially those involving formulation of policy- passed on to other agencies. The Bureau today remains one of the Nation\u27s principal economic factfinders. In writing the book, Drs. Goldberg and Moye had full freedom to interpret events in accordance with their judgments as historians, without conformance to an official view of institutional history. Given the perspective made possible by passing years, the authors offer broader evaluations of the Bureau\u27s early history than of contemporary events

Foreign-Affiliate Activity and U.S. Skill Upgrading

There has been little analysis of the impact of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) on U.S. wage inequality, even though the presence of foreign-owned affiliates in the United States has arguably grown more rapidly in significance for the U.S. economy than trade flows. Using data across U.S. manufacturing from 1977 to 1994, this paper tests whether inward flows of FDI contributed to within-industry shifts in U.S. relative labor demand toward more-skilled labor. We generally find that inward FDI has not contributed to U.S. within-industry skill upgrading; in fact, the wave of Japanese greenfield investments in the 1980s was significantly correlated with lower, not higher, relative demand for skilled labor. This finding is consistent with recent models of multinational enterprises in which foreign affiliates focus on activities less skilled-labor intensive than the activities of their parent firms. It also suggests that if inward FDI brought new technologies into the United States, the induced technological change was not biased towards skilled labor.

Child Labor in America: History, Policy, and Legislative Issues

[Excerpt] This report examines the historical issue of child labor in America and carries it through the 108th Congress

California Methanol Assessment; Volume II, Technical Report

A joint effort by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering has brought together sponsors from both the public and private sectors for an analysis of the prospects for methanol use as a fuel in California, primarily for the transportation and stationary application sectors. Increasing optimism in 1982 for a slower rise in oil prices and a more realistic understanding of the costs of methanol production have had a negative effect on methanol viability in the near term (before the year 2000). Methanol was determined to have some promise in the transportation sector, but is not forecasted for large-scale use until beyond the year 2000. Similarly, while alternative use of methanol can have a positive effect on air quality (reducing NOx, SOx, and other emissions), a best case estimate is for less than 4% reduction in peak ozone by 2000 at realistic neat methanol vehicle adoption rates. Methanol is not likely to be a viable fuel in the stationary application sector because it cannot compete economically with conventional fuels except in very limited cases. On the production end, it was determined that methanol produced from natural gas will continue to dominate supply options through the year 2000, and the present and planned industry capacity is somewhat in excess of all projected needs. Nonsubsidized coal-based methanol cannot compete with conventional feedstocks using current technology, but coal-based methanol has promise in the long term (after the year 2000), providing that industry is willing to take the technical and market risks and that government agencies will help facilitate the environment for methanol. Given that the prospects for viable major markets (stationary applications and neat fuel in passenger cars) are unlikely in the 1980s and early 1990s, the next steps for methanol are in further experimentation and research of production and utilization technologies, expanded use as an octane enhancer, and selected fleet implementation. In the view of the study, it is not advantageous at this time to establish policies within California that attempt to expand methanol use rapidly as a neat fuel for passenger cars or to induce electric utility use of methanol on a widespread basis

Special Libraries, December 1928

Volume 19, Issue 10https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1928/1009/thumbnail.jp

Legislative History of the Fair Labor Standards Act

With recent advances in power electronic technology, High-Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission system has become an alternative for transmitting power especially over long distances. Multi-Terminal HVDC (MTDC) systems are proposed as HVDC systems with more than two terminals. These systems can be geographically wide. While in AC grids, frequency is a global variable, in MTDC systems, DC voltage can be considered as its dual. However, unlike frequency, DC voltage can not be equal across the MTDC system. Control of DC voltage in MTDC systems is one of the important challenges in MTDC systems. Since the dynamic of MTDC system is very fast, DC voltage control methods cannot rely only on remote information. Therefore, they can work based on either local information or a combination of local and remote information. In this thesis, first, the MTDC system is modeled. One of the models presented in this thesis considers only the DC grid, and effects of the AC grids are modeled with DC current sources, while in the other one, the connections of the DC grid to the AC grids are also considered. Next, the proposed methods in the literature for controlling the DC voltage are described and in addition to these methods, some control methods are proposed to control the DC voltage in MTDC system. These control methods include two groups. The first group (such as Multi-Agent Control methods) uses remote and local information, while the second group (such as Sliding Mode Control and H¥ control) uses local information.The proposed multi-agent control uses local information for immediate response, while uses remote information for a better fast response. Application of Multi-Agent Control systems leads to equal deviation of DC voltages from their reference values. Using remote information leads to better results comparing to the case only local information is used. Moreover, the proposed methods can also work in the absence of remote information. When AC grid is considered in the modeling, the MTDC system has anon-linear dynamic. Sliding Mode Control, a non-linear control method with high disturbance rejection capability, which is non-sensitive to the parameter variations, is applied to the MTDC system. It controls the DC voltage very fast and with small or without overshoot. Afterward, a static state feedback H¥ control is applied to the system which minimizes the voltage deviation after a disturbance and keeps the injected power of the terminals within the limits. Finally, some case studies are presented and the effectiveness of the proposed methods are shown. All simulations have been done in MATLAB and SIMULINK.QC 20140911</p