Design Feasibility Study of a Space Station Freedom Truss

Here, the focus is on the design and configuration feasibility of the short spacer for the Space Station Program in its launch configuration. The product of this study is being used by Rockwell International (Rocketdyne Division) as they continue their design concept of the current short spacer configuration. It is anticipated that the launch loads will dominate the on-orbit loads and dictate the design configuration of the short spacer. At the present time, the on-orbit loads have not been generated. The structural analysis discussed herein is based on the transient events derived from the Space Transportation System (STS) Interface Control Document (ICD). The transient loading events consist of liftoff loads, landing loads, and emergency landing loads. The quasi-static loading events have been neglected, since the magnitude of the acceleration factors are lower than the transient acceleration factors. The normal mode analyses presented herein are based on the most feasible configurations with acceptable stress ranges

On the bounded cohomology of semi-simple groups, S-arithmetic groups and products

We prove vanishing results for Lie groups and algebraic groups (over any local field) in bounded cohomology. The main result is a vanishing below twice the rank for semi-simple groups. Related rigidity results are established for S-arithmetic groups and groups over global fields. We also establish vanishing and cohomological rigidity results for products of general locally compact groups and their lattices

Penalties and Optimality in Financial Contracts: Taking Stock

A popular view of limited liability in financial contracting is that it is the result of societal preferences against excessive penalties. The view of most financial economists is instead that limited liability emerged as an optimal institution when, in the absence of a clear limit on economic agents liability, the development of some economic activities might have been thwarted. Viewing the institution from the perspective of optimal legal system design allows us to better understand the current debate on it. We present a broad history of penalties in financial contracts to highlight the interactions between technology, legal environments, purpose of the financial relationship, and contractual provisions. We show that harsh monetary and non-pecuniary penalties are not mere relics from a bygone era and, at the same time, that limited liability is far from a recent institution. We then discuss trade-offs associated with legal mandates of either unlimited or limited liability, both for the contracting parties and for the rest of Society. We identify two broad patterns. First, the toughness of liability rules and bankruptcy laws decreases as exogenous sources of uncertainty become relatively more important, and increases with the opportunity for moral hazard (related to diligence, risk taking, or deception). Second, bankruptcy laws become more lenient as the scope for labor specialization and the returns to human capital or entrepreneurship increase.Limited Liability, Bankruptcy, Debt Bondage, Debtors' Prison, History

Understanding the role of organizational legitimacy within the realm of the community-based conservation approach

Many organizations throughout the world utilize community based conservation (CBC) strategies to incorporate rural communities into conservation efforts. One key component to the success of these strategies is to gain trust within the communities which reside in the vicinity of the targeted areas for conservation. The research reported here introduces the concept of organizational legitimacy into the realm of CBC strategy by proposing how dimensions of legitimacy (pragmatic, moral, and cognitive) are related to community trust and attitudes. Employing institutional theory, this paper proposes that (i) pragmatic and moral legitimacy produce trust, (ii) trust positively influences cognitive legitimacy, and (iii) cognitive legitimacy influences attitudes. The Missouri Botanical Garden’s (MBG) CBC efforts in Madagascar’s Ambalabe and Mahabo communities served to empirically examine these propositions. The survey yielded 1 01 usable responses from community members in Mahabo and Ambalabe. A structural model was estimated to test the propositions and the results provided support for the premise that organizational legitimacy is needed to gain trust and influence favorable attitudes toward the organization. Since CBC strategies rely on trust between organizations and communities, the findings of this research provide implications for organizations seeking to implement CBC strategies. The findings do so by implying that in order to build trust with communities, organizations should first establish legitimacy, which not only helps build trust, but also indirectly affects attitudes toward the organization and its activities

The Consequences of Child Market Work on the Growth of Human Capital

Child labor is a phenomenon that has attracted a great amount of attention and research. theoretical propositions suggest that child labor is inefficient if it adversely affects future potential earning ability. this paper contributes to the literature on the effects of child market work on human capital by focusing on the long-term growth in human capital, which is widely known to significantly affect earning ability. the paper also uses better measures of human capital by focusing on the output of the human capital production function: numeracy skills, cognitive skills, and pulmonary function. using a rich longitudinal dataset on Indonesia, we find strong negative effects of child labor on the growth of both numeracy and cognitive skills in the next seven years. in addition, we find a strong and negative effect on pulmonary function as measured through lung capacity. comparing the effects by gender and type of work, we find that female child workers suffer from more adverse effects on their mathematical skills growth, while male child workers experience a much smaller growth in their pulmonary function. we also find that child workers who work for a wage outside the family bear worse effects compared to child workers who work in the family business. keywords: child labor, human capital, skills, health, Indonesia jel classifications: i12, i21, j13, j22, o1

Social proximity and misinformation: Experimental evidence from a mobile phone-based campaign in India

We study how social proximity between the sender and the receiver of information shapes the effectiveness of preventive health behaviour campaigns and the persistence of misinformation. We implement a field experiment among a representative sample of slum residents in two major Indian cities characterized by Hindu-Muslim tensions. We show that informative messages are effective at improving evidence-based behavior, but not non-evidence-based behavior. These findings do not differ by social proximity, signalled by religion. However, when sender and receiver share the same religion, the intervention significantly reduces misinformation carrying in-group salience, highlighting the role of social proximity in fighting misinformation. (JEL codes: C93; D91; I12; I15; O12