How American core values influence public policy: Problem definitions in federal aid to small business, 1953--1993

The dissertation contends that traditional interest group and institutional approaches do not fully explain federal aid to small business and that core values, those often referred to as the American Creed, must be taken into account. Rather than treat core values as a contextual factor or infer values influence from the contours of policy, as has been the custom, it pinpoints a mechanism through which core values have influenced small business aid and likely influence other policies.^ Core values are criteria that may be used in making the judgements involved in the processes of policy problem definition. The emphasis is on the evaluation and translation of conditions into problems, the evaluations that generate images of populations affected by policy, and the theories of causation undergirding problem definitions that are influenced by target population images. Studies of the policy process have previously noted a role for core values, however, the various avenues through which values may influence problem definitions and the linkages between these avenues has received little attention.^ Small business aid is investigated by asking how members of Congress and presidents defined the problems for these programs, 1953-1993. Legislative histories of 39 systematically selected small business aid enactments provide the data on problem definitions.^ The roots of small business aid are traced to the antitrust tradition, the Great Depression, World War II and the Korean conflict. Analysis of the problems defined during the project focal period shows that policymakers employed values-based criteria to evaluate and translate conditions into problems and to evaluate small business. Positive values-based evaluations of the target population contributed to causal ideas tying small business with desirable conditions and relieving it from blame for negative conditions. Small business aid is a compensatory equal opportunity policy for a population associated with desirable socioeconomic conditions and deemed to deserve government assistance because it is perceived to be disadvantaged relative to big business and by big government. Small business is a victim of circumstances beyond its control.

Development of process control system for potential use of direct injection spraying technology

peer reviewedSmall-scale farmers face to actual difficulties of applying pesticides accurately and safely on vegetables crops. They mainly use hand operated sprayers. As an issue, a small direct injection system based on a five meter’s parallel boom layout was designed to improve chemical application. The boom layout was optimized to obtain the same minimal time lag response for the ten nozzles. The dynamic of the system was modeled using Simulink TM as first order model with delay. Two control strategies were implemented using PID (Proportional Integral Derivative) feedback control loops to monitor tracer injection (fluorescing) proportionally to simulated forward speed (from 0.6 to 1.2 m/s) and to control the constant operating pressure (constant carrier flow strategy) or the variable operating pressure proportionally to the injected chemical amount (variable total flow strategy). Different forward speed changes were induced using steps up and down, ramps, sine waves and sweeps excitations to evaluate the control feedback. The system stability was tested for its ability to maintain the expected concentration and application rate. The results show that the time lag remains less than 3 s (dead time < 2 s, time constant < 1 s) and the system keeps stable for the maximal speed variation (ΔV) and acceleration (ā) tested (ΔV = 200%, ā = 0.48 m/s2) which induce less than 10% variation of application rate