Mandating Environmental Liability Insurance

Plant cuticles are extracellular membranes covering aerial organs of plants, whose main functions rely on the protection against water loss, mechanical injury from the environment, attack of microorganism, and also regulation of gas exchange. Among the several constituents of plant cuticles, waxes are those that play an important role in their barrier properties. In order to enhance the mechanical properties of wax, NFC was applied in. In the project, mainly two kinds of methods were used to prepare wax-NFC composites. One way was wax and NFC were dissolved in toluene and casted to be a film, another way was to prepare NFC aerogel firstly, and then, impregnated the aerogel into wax liquid. After pressing it the structure was more compact. In order to characterize the properties of samples, SEM, XRD, TGA, DSC, Contact angle testing, tensile test and oxygen permeability methods were applied in

Can Active Labour Market Policy Work? Some Theoretical Considerations

Persistent high unemployment in Europe has led to renewed interest in Active Labour Market Policy. However, most existing theory suggests that its effects are ambiguous at best. We argue that job search assistance and wage subsidies are more appropriately modelled as a transition rather than the state-based approach of existing theory. This eliminates the ambiguity. We present two main models, one in which negative duration dependence in unemployment arises from state dependence, the other where it is due to heterogeneity. In both cases policy is unambiguously effective provided it is targeted on those who are, or are most likely to become, long-term unemployed. Some crude estimates suggest that Active Labour Market Policies could have a significant, though not spectacular, effect in reducing unemployment.

Ocular screening tests of elementary school children

This report presents an analysis of 507 abnormal retinal reflex images taken of Huntsville kindergarten and first grade students. The retinal reflex images were obtained by using an MSFC-developed Generated Retinal Reflex Image System (GRRIS) photorefractor. The system uses a 35 mm camera with a telephoto lens with an electronic flash attachment. Slide images of the eyes were examined for abnormalities. Of a total of 1835 students screened for ocular abnormalities, 507 were found to have abnormal retinal reflexes. The types of ocular abnormalities detected were hyperopia, myopia, astigmatism, esotropia, exotropia, strabismus, and lens obstuctions. The report shows that the use of the photorefractor screening system is an effective low-cost means of screening school children for abnormalities

Trade Adjustment Assistance under the U.S. Trade Act of 1974: An Analytical Examination and Worker Survey

The goals of trade adjustment assistance (TAA) are to ease transition, compensate injury, and bleed political pressure for protectionism. Section I of the paper outlines the economic principles underlying these goals, and their shifting historical importance in the U.S. Sections II and III of the paper discuss the personal characteristics of a representative sample of worker recipients of TAA in 1976, and their labor market success in several subsequent years. Their experience is compared to that of a matched sample of workers receiving standard unemployment insurance (UI) . Comparisons in Section II focus on differences in mean characteristics and experience between the TAA and UT samples, controlling only for whether workers returned eventually to the firm from which they were initially separated. Comparisons in Section III focus on differences between the TAA and UI samples in their ability to recover lost employment and income, using a regression approach that in principle controls for all relevant variables, and not for just one. The most important conclusions of the research are the following. (1) The majority of TAA recipients in 1976 were not permanently displaced, but returned eventually to their former employers. A far greater proportion of UI recipients suffered permanent displacement. (2) Workers receiving TAA had higher incomes on average than their counterparts who received only UI. Their incomes furthermore fell less frequently below the poverty line. (3) TAA recipients nevertheless experienced more frequent and enduring transitional unemployment than did UI recipients, and did not return to their former income level as rapidly. (4) The reasons for conclusion (3) were unclear. It could not readily be explained by differences between the TAA and UI samples in permanence of layoff, generosity of program benefits, age, experience, industry, affluence, economic environment, socioeconomic status, or behavioral responses to any of these variables. Conclusions (1) and (2) are at variance with most previous work on TAA. Conclusion (3) is not, but the traditional explanations for it are those that conclusion (4) rules out.

Test and evaluation of the 2.4-micron photorefractor ocular screening system

An improved 2.4-m photorefractor ocular screening system was tested and evaluated. The photorefractor system works on the principal of obtaining a colored photograph of both human eyes; and, by analysis of the retinal reflex images, certain ocular defects can be detected such a refractive error, strabismus, and lens obstructions. The 2.4-m photorefractory system uses a 35-mm camera with a telephoto lens and an electronic flash attachment. Retinal reflex images obtained from the new 2.4-m system are significantly improved over earlier systems in image quality. Other features were also improved, notably portability and reduction in mass. A total of 706 school age children were photorefracted, 211 learning disabled and 495 middle school students. The total students having abnormal retinal reflexes were 156 or 22 percent, and 133 or 85 percent of the abnormal had refractive error indicated. Ophthalmological examination was performed on 60 of these students and refractive error was verified in 57 or 95 percent of those examined. The new 2.4-m system has a NASA patent pending and is authorized by the FDA. It provides a reliable means of rapidly screening the eyes of children and young adults for vision problems. It is especially useful for infants and other non-communicative children who cannot be screened by the more conventional methods such as the familiar E chart

Hierarchical models of very large problems, dilemmas, prospects, and an agenda for the future

Interdisciplinary approaches to the modeling of global problems are discussed in terms of multilevel cooperation. A multilevel regionalized model of the Lake Erie Basin is analyzed along with a multilevel regionalized world modeling project. Other topics discussed include: a stratified model of interacting region in a world system, and the application of the model to the world food crisis in south Asia. Recommended research for future development of integrated models is included

Synaptic shot noise and conductance fluctuations affect the membrane voltage with equal significance

The subthresholdmembranevoltage of a neuron in active cortical tissue is a fluctuating quantity with a distribution that reflects the firing statistics of the presynaptic population. It was recently found that conductancebased synaptic drive can lead to distributions with a significant skew. Here it is demonstrated that the underlying shot noise caused by Poissonian spike arrival also skews the membrane distribution, but in the opposite sense. Using a perturbative method, we analyze the effects of shot noise on the distribution of synaptic conductances and calculate the consequent voltage distribution. To first order in the perturbation theory, the voltage distribution is a gaussian modulated by a prefactor that captures the skew. The gaussian component is identical to distributions derived using current-based models with an effective membrane time constant. The well-known effective-time-constant approximation can therefore be identified as the leading-order solution to the full conductance-based model. The higher-order modulatory prefactor containing the skew comprises terms due to both shot noise and conductance fluctuations. The diffusion approximation misses these shot-noise effects implying that analytical approaches such as the Fokker-Planck equation or simulation with filtered white noise cannot be used to improve on the gaussian approximation. It is further demonstrated that quantities used for fitting theory to experiment, such as the voltage mean and variance, are robust against these non-Gaussian effects. The effective-time-constant approximation is therefore relevant to experiment and provides a simple analytic base on which other pertinent biological details may be added

FEMA’s Public Assistance Grant Program: Background and Considerations for Congress

[Excerpt] The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5121 et seq., henceforth the Stafford Act) confers upon the President a broad set of authorities “to alleviate the suffering and damage” of affected tribal, state, and local governments, as well as individual citizens, from disasters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been given the responsibility of administering almost all of the President’s Stafford Act authorities through other law, a series of Executive Orders, and a DHS delegation. FEMA has established the Public Assistance (PA) Grant Program by combining the authority of multiple sections of the Stafford Act. The PA Program provides financial grant assistance to states, tribes, and local communities both in the response to and recovery from significant disasters. Between FY2000-FY2013, the PA Program has provided $52.6 billion in grant assistance to help communities pay for an array of eligible response and recovery activities, including debris removal, emergency protective measures, and the repair, replacement, or restoration of disaster-damaged, publicly owned facilities and the facilities of certain private nonprofit (PNP) organizations. The authorities of the PA Program were most recently significantly amended by the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act (Division B of P.L. 113- 2, the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013; henceforth SRIA). For a brief legislative history of PA Program authorities, see Appendix A. This report provides background on key elements of the PA Program, such as the eligibility of applicants, the types of assistance available, and the methods FEMA uses for awarding grant assistance. Summary analysis of federal obligations for PA Program assistance is also provided along important variables, such as the distribution of federal obligations across the PA Program eligible categories of work assistance. The report concludes with discussion of several policy issues that Congress may wish to consider when evaluating the PA Program in the future, including considerations of significant prospective changes to the PA Program and the role of the PA Program in the context of other federal agency disaster assistance authorities