The informal urban industrial sector and growth: some thoughts on a modern mythology

This paper attempts to examine the current view of the informal sector, particularly as stated in the I.L.O. report, It suggests that the I.L.O. view is optimistic in thinking that the informal sector can be made more productive simply through organisational changes in its relationship to both government and industry. It tries to examine the constraints that act on the informal sector and concludes that it is limited in its ability to transcend barriers to entry into the formal sector through lack of access to capital resources, and is unable to gererate this capital from its own production surplus. Two case studies are given, one of an informal motor repair workshop and the other of a successful manufacturer of beds. The paper concludes that these constraints disqualify the informal sector from serious consideration as a dynamic growth point in the economy of Kenya

The Role of Placemaking as a Tool for Resilience: Case Studies from Post-Earthquake Christchurch, New Zealand

In the aftermath of the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, community-led temporary and adaptive urbanism filled a gap between the emergency response and recovery. In the space between response and recovery, the citizens of Christchurch showed their commitment to rethinking how they wanted to rebuild and then regenerate their city, leading to the embrace of collaborative processes, temporary and adaptive urbanism principles and a range of placemaking responses. In this chapter, the role of placemaking as a tool for post-disaster regeneration and resilience is considered by assessing three case study placemaking projects: the Re:START Mall, the Festival of Transitional Architecture (FESTA) and the placemaking programme at the Commons. Their development along with their success is considered within the context of the recovery of Christchurch and, in particular, how they align to the The Resilient Greater Christchurch Framework as it is set out in the Resilient Greater Christchurch Plan, in order to determine their role in building the resilience of Christchurch

A System of Computer Programs to Calculate Aerodynamic Characteristics for Missiles, Reentry Vehicles, and Spacecraft at Angles of Attack

At the Fifth Space Congress, a method was [ presented for predicting the inviscid gas properties surrounding blunt nosed aerospace j vehicles in supersonic or hypersonic flight, at zero angle of attack {Reference l)o Two computer programs used in combination were utilized.) :At that time it was indicated (References 1 and 2) that this capability was to be extended, using j a new unique system of eleven different computer j programs, in order to provide for the calculation; of gaseous properties and aerodynamic characteristics for vehicles flying at angles of attack. At angles of attack, the problem of predicting the gas properties and aerodynamic characteristics is an order of magnitude more difficult due to the fact that the flow field is threedimensional. That is, the flow properties vary in all three directions: as a function of body axial station, location around the body (at a given station), and distance away from the body. ;The newer set of programs also provides the capability of handling vehicles with sharp as well as blunt noses, and includes the capability of predicting the viscous flow boundary layer properties on the vehicle surface. Most of the programs were originally developed under U.S. Air Force and Army Contracts by General Applied Science Laboratories. The programs were converted to operate on the Control Data Model CDC 6^-00 digital computer used at Martin Marietta I Corporation\u27s Orlando Division. Over the past year, many modifications have been made to the system of computer programs to increase the efficiency of utilization (by simplifying the j inputs required, etc.), reduce the computer run I time (cost of operation), and to increase its : capability (calculate aerodynamic characteristics etc.)

Religious Homogamy and Marital Happiness

Data from a representative sample of 1,070 married Protestants and Catholics were used to examine the relationship between religious homogamy and marital happiness. Although couples may vary in the extent to which they share religious views (e.g., beliefs, values), previous research has treated religious homogamy as a dichotomy; a couple is either homogamous or it is not. A partial explanation for this is that few studies have gone beyond the broad divisions of Protestant, Catholic, and Jew. In the present study religious bodies were classified on the basis of doctrine and ritual, yielding six categories: Baptist, Calvinist, Catholic, fundamentalist, Lutheran, and Methodist. These categories were then used to develop a measure of estimated “religious distance” or degrees of heterogamy. This measure was used to test the hypothesis that the larger the religious distance or disparity, the greater the likelihood of unhappiness with the marriage. The hypothesis was supported by the data

The Economic Loss Rule: Is a Building a “Product?” — Another View

This Article addresses how the Florida Supreme Court in Tiara Condominium Association v. Marsh & McLennan Cos. receded from its definition of “other property” in Casa Clara Condominium Association, Inc. v. Charley Toppino & Sons, Inc. In Casa Clara the Florida Supreme Court held that a building is to be treated as a “product” for purposes of applying the Economic Loss Rule’s bar to tort claims for defective building materials incorporated into the building. Although Casa Clara adopted the economic loss rule established by Seely v. White Motor Co. and East River Steamship Corp. v. Transamerica Delaval, Inc., it departed from those seminal cases by adopting the “object of the bargain” rationale and, in doing so, determining that real property is the “product itself.” In addition, Casa Clara departed from prior Florida precedent which held that real property is not a product in the context of products liability actions. Moreover, in Saratoga Fishing Co. v. J.M. Martinac & Co. the United States Supreme Court rejected the “object of the bargain” analysis that served as the sole basis for the Florida Supreme Court’s characterization of real property as the “the product itself.” The Saratoga Court recognized that the focus should be on the product that was “placed in the stream of commerce” instead. Thus, when the Florida Supreme Court returned the economic loss rule to its original interpretation under Seely and East River in Tiara, it receded from Casa Clara’s holding that a building must be treated as a “product” for the purposes of applying the economic loss rule

Stability of β-lactam antibiotics in bacterial growth media

Laboratory assays such as MIC tests assume that antibiotic molecules are stable in the chosen growth medium-but rapid degradation has been observed for antibiotics including β-lactams under some conditions in aqueous solution. Degradation rates in bacterial growth medium are less well known. Here, we develop a 'delay time bioassay' that provides a simple way to estimate antibiotic stability in bacterial growth media, using only a plate reader and without the need to measure the antibiotic concentration directly. We use the bioassay to measure degradation half-lives of the β-lactam antibiotics mecillinam, aztreonam and cefotaxime in widely-used bacterial growth media based on MOPS and Luria-Bertani (LB) broth. We find that mecillinam degradation can occur rapidly, with a half-life as short as 2 hours in MOPS medium at 37°C and pH 7.4, and 4-5 hours in LB, but that adjusting the pH and temperature can increase its stability to a half-life around 6 hours without excessively perturbing growth. Aztreonam and cefotaxime were found to have half-lives longer than 6 hours in MOPS medium at 37°C and pH 7.4, but still shorter than the timescale of a typical minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) assay. Taken together, our results suggest that care is needed in interpreting MIC tests and other laboratory growth assays for β-lactam antibiotics, since there may be significant degradation of the antibiotic during the assay