Death Row Conditions Through an Environmental Justice Lens

Glenn Ford lived on death row at Louisiana State Penitentiary for twenty-nine years, three months and five days. Typically, he was confined in his cell for at least twenty-three hours of a given day, seven days a week. Glenn was convicted of the armed robbery and murder of Isadore Rozeman. After prosecutors Martin Stroud and Carey Schimpf used six of their eight peremptory challenges to exclude African-Americans from the jury venire, Glenn was sentenced to death in 1984 by an allwhite jury. He was a devoted friend to many and, to the extent possible given his incarceration, a committed father and grandfather. Glenn Ford was released in March 2014 after the state conceded that he was wrongly convicted of armed robbery and murder. During his decades on death row, he was involuntarily exposed to hazardous chemicals, sewage, toxic mold, excessive heat, rust, and lead

Competitor-oriented Objectives: The Myth of Market Share

Competitor-oriented objectives, such as market-share targets, are promoted by academics and are commonly used by firms. A 1996 review of the evidence, summarized in this paper, indicated that competitor-oriented objectives reduce profitability. However, we found that this evidence has been ignored by managers. We then describe evidence from 12 new studies, one of which is introduced in this paper. This evidence supports the conclusion that competitor-oriented objectives are harmful, especially when managers receive information about market shares of competitors. Unfortunately, we expect that many firms will continue to use competitor-oriented objectives to the detriment of their profitability

With comfort and dignity and support: An evaluation of the Hospice at Home service delivered by Milford Care Centre

Copyright @ 2011 University of LimerickMilford Care Centre is the lead organisation that provides a comprehensive range of services for the elderly and palliative care patients in the Mid West Region. In tandem with the growing requirement for specialist palliative care in the community, it expanded its existing and limited community-based services in 2006 to include a specialist ‘Hospice at Home’ service for patients who require palliative care in their own homes. With inputs from a multi-disciplinary clinical team, the Hospice at Home Service delivered by Milford Care Centre represents the first service of its kind within the Republic of Ireland. The Hospice at Home Service is supported by funding from the HSE and donations from the public, as well as a significant donation from The Atlantic Philanthropies. A condition of the funding from The Atlantic Philanthropies was that the Service would be evaluated, thus providing Milford Care Centre with research information regarding various of aspects of the service, including the viewpoints of carers and patients. In 2009, Milford Care Centre commissioned the University of Limerick to undertake an independent evaluation of the Hospice at Home Service, with the aim of examining whether it offered a viable and effective model for delivering a range of palliative care services to patients and their families in the community. The evaluation was conducted between February 2009 and June 2011. It should be noted that an evaluation of the cost effectiveness of the Service was also commissioned and will be undertaken by another group

A Comparative Study of Methods for Long-Range Market Forecasting

The following hypotheses about long-range market forecasting were examined: Hl Objective methods provide more accuracy than do subjective methods. H2 The relative advantage of objective over subjective methods increases as the amount of change in the environment increases. H3 Causal methods provide more accuracy than do naive methods. H4 The relative advantage of causal over naive methods increases as the amount of change in the environment increases. Support for these hypotheses was then obtained from the literature and from a study of a single market. The study used three different models to make ex ante forecasts of the U.S. air travel market from 1963 through 1968. These hypotheses imply that econometric methods are more accurate for long range market forecasting than are the major alternatives, expert judgment and extrapolation, and that the relative superiority of econometric methods increases as the time span of the forecast increases.long-range market forecasting, forecasting methods, forecasting

Exomoon Habitability and Tidal Evolution in Low-Mass Star Systems

Discoveries of extrasolar planets in the habitable zone (HZ) of their parent star lead to questions about the habitability of massive moons orbiting planets in the HZ. Around low-mass stars, the HZ is much closer to the star than for Sun-like stars. For a planet-moon binary in such a HZ, the proximity of the star forces a close orbit for the moon to remain gravitationally bound to the planet. Under these conditions the effects of tidal heating, distortion torques, and stellar perturbations become important considerations for exomoon habitability. Utilizing a model that considers both dynamical and tidal interactions simultaneously, we performed a computational investigation into exomoon evolution for systems in the HZ of low-mass stars ($\lesssim 0.6\ M_{\odot}$). We show that dwarf stars with masses $\lesssim 0.2\ M_{\odot}$ cannot host habitable exomoons within the stellar HZ due to extreme tidal heating in the moon. Perturbations from a central star may continue to have deleterious effects in the HZ up to $\approx 0.5\ M_{\odot}$, depending on the host planet's mass and its location in the HZ, amongst others. In addition to heating concerns, torques due to tidal and spin distortion can lead to the relatively rapid inward spiraling of a moon. Therefore, moons of giant planets in HZs around the most abundant type of star are unlikely to have habitable surfaces. In cases with lower intensity tidal heating the stellar perturbations may have a positive influence on exomoon habitability by promoting long-term heating and possibly extending the HZ for exomoons.Comment: accepted by MNRAS, 20 pages, 8 figures in main text (7 col, 1 b/w

Structured analogies for forecasting

When people forecast, they often use analogies but in an unstructured manner. We propose a structured judgmental procedure that involves asking experts to list as many analogies as they can, rate how similar the analogies are to the target situation, and match the outcomes of the analogies with possible outcomes of the target. An administrator would then derive a forecast from the experts' information. We compared structured analogies with unaided judgments for predicting the decisions made in eight conflict situations. These were difficult forecasting problems; the 32% accuracy of the unaided experts was only slightly better than chance. In contrast, 46% of structured analogies forecasts were accurate. Among experts who were independently able to think of two or more analogies and who had direct experience with their closest analogy, 60% of forecasts were accurate. Collaboration did not improve accuracy.accuracy, analogies, collaboration, conflict, expert, forecasting, judgment.

Role thinking: Standing in other people’s shoes to forecast decisions in conflicts

Better forecasts of decisions in conflict situations, such as occur in business, politics, and war, can help protagonists achieve better outcomes. It is common advice to “stand in the other person’s shoes” when involved in a conflict, a procedure we refer to as “role thinking.” We tested this advice in order to assess the extent to which it can improve accuracy. Improvement in accuracy is important because prior research found that unaided judgment produced forecasts that were little better than guessing. We obtained 101 role-thinking forecasts from 27 Naval postgraduate students (experts) and 107 role-thinking forecasts from 103 second-year organizational behavior students (novices) of the decisions that would be made in nine diverse conflicts. The accuracy of the forecasts from the novices was 33% and of those from the experts 31%. The accuracy of the role-thinking forecasts was little different from chance, which was 28%. In contrast, when we asked groups of participants to each act as if they were in the shoes one of the protagonists, accuracy was 60%.combining; group decision-making; simulated interaction; unaided judgment

Value of Expertise For Forecasting Decisions in Conflicts

In important conflicts, people typically rely on experts' judgments to predict the decisions that adversaries will make. We compared the accuracy of 106 expert and 169 novice forecasts for eight real conflicts. The forecasts of experts using unaided judgment were little better than those of novices, and neither were much better than simply guessing. The forecasts of experts with more experience were no more accurate than those with less. Speculating that consideration of the relative frequency of decisions might improve accuracy, we obtained 89 forecasts from novices instructed to assume there were 100 similar situations and to ascribe frequencies to decisions. Their forecasts were no more accurate than 96 forecasts from novices asked to pick the most likely decision. We conclude that expert judgment should not be used for predicting decisions that people will make in conflicts. Their use might lead decision makers to overlook other, more useful, approaches.Bad faith, Framing, Hindsight bias, Methods, Politics.

Flow properties of suspensions rich in solids

Mathematical evaluation of flow properties of fluids carrying high concentrations of solids in suspension relates suspension viscosity to physical properties of the solids and liquids, and provides a means for predicting flow behavior. A technique for calculating a suspensions flow rates is applicable to the design of pipelines