Congestion offsets: Transforming cities by letting buses compete

Cities around the world have been unable to keep up with demand for road space, and as a result suffer from congestion. This paper argues that the consequence of this congestion has been not just poorly performing roads, but a structurally inefficient urban transport solution, due to the impact of congestion on bus services. As a way of controlling congestion, road pricing has been rejected by most cities because it is difficult to sell to the public and difficult to deploy. An examination of both the strengths and weaknesses of road pricing is used as a basis from which to develop an alternative method of congestion control, namely congestion offsets. This approach treats roads as a commons, and does not argue for the creation of a market for road space, as road pricing does. It is argued that congestion offsets would allow congestion to be controlled in a simple and fair manner, thereby enabling buses to emerge as a real competitor to cars in urban areas. The historical absence of congestion control in cities has allowed massive distortions to build up; cities have become awash with both cars and bitumen. Congestion offsets would allow these distortions to be slowly unwound, thus helping to transform cities more into how, it is argued, they should have always been

MATHEMATICAL FORMULAS FOR CALCULATING NET RETURNS FROM PARTICIPATION IN GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS, CRP, AND CROP INSURANCE ALTERNATIVES

The purpose of this report is to provide a revised version of the publication, "Mathematical Formulas for Calculating Net Returns from Participation in Government Commodity Programs including Marketing Loans" (Williams and Barnaby, 1994). The change in design of the government commodity programs and development of several crop insurance alternatives has been significant since the previous paper was published. The formulas for calculating net returns incorporate provisions from the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 and several crop insurance designs developed in the 1990s. Individuals conducting research or education programs will be able to use this revision for reference when estimating net returns for producers under current commodity program and crop insurance plan provisions.Agricultural Finance,

Transverse Instability of Solitons Propagating on Current-Carrying Metal Thin Films

Small amplitude, long waves travelling over the surface of a current-carrying metal thin film are studied. The equation of motion for the metal surface is determined in the limit of high applied currents, when surface electromigration is the predominant cause of adatom motion. If the surface height h is independent of the transverse coordinate y, the equation of motion reduces to the Korteweg-de Vries equation. One-dimensional solitons (i.e., those with h independent of y) are shown to be unstable against perturbations to their shape with small transverse wavevector.Comment: 25 pages with 2 figures. To appear in Physica

Industry Effects and Strategic Convergence: A Study of the Strategies of Independent Pharmacists

The pharmacy industry is experiencing significant change. With the increasing presence of regional discounters, the appearance of mail service and internet pharmacies, the continuing ascendancy of managed care (including HMOs and PPOs), third party reimbursement plans, and pharmacy benefit managers  (PBMs), the strategic  options for  independent pharmacies are dwindling. This exploratory study examines  the relationships  among generic  business level strategies of independent pharmacies, industry effects -- in terms  of consequences  of third party reimbursement plans -- and performance outcomes. It seems that the impact of managed care reimbursements more than off sets the various strategic efforts by pharmacies. The evidence indicates that different generic strategy  approaches  are  not  producing significant differences in performance. The findings suggest that industry effects may  he creating a situation of strategic convergence. The practical implications for the independent pharmacists   and future   research  are  addressed

Observed Changes in Risk during Naturopathic Treatment of Hypertension

Few outcome assessments are published from complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practices. We aimed to describe patient and practice characteristics of ND care for hypertension (HTN), quantify changes in blood pressure (BP), and evaluate the proportion achieving control of HTN during care. A retrospective, observational study of ND practice in HTN was performed in an outpatient clinic in WA State. Eighty-five charts were abstracted for the final analysis. At initiation of care, the mean patient age was 61 years, with 51% having stage 2 HTN, despite common use of anti-hypertensive medications (47%). Patients with both stage 1 and stage 2 HTN appeared to improve during care, with stage 2 patients achieving mean reductions of −26 mmHg (P < .0001) and −11 mmHg (P < .0001) in systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP), respectively. The proportion of patients achieving control (<140/90 mmHg) in both SBP and DBP was increased significantly from 14 to 44% (P < .033), although the statistical significance was not maintained upon correction for multiple comparisons. BP appears to improve during ND care for HTN, in a high-risk population. Randomized trials are warranted

Direct measurement of molecular stiffness and damping in confined water layers

We present {\em direct} and {\em linear} measurements of the normal stiffness and damping of a confined, few molecule thick water layer. The measurements were obtained by use of a small amplitude (0.36 $\textrm{\AA}$), off-resonance Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) technique. We measured stiffness and damping oscillations revealing up to 7 layers separated by 2.56 $\pm$ 0.20 $\textrm{\AA}$. Relaxation times could also be calculated and were found to indicate a significant slow-down of the dynamics of the system as the confining separation was reduced. We found that the dynamics of the system is determined not only by the interfacial pressure, but more significantly by solvation effects which depend on the exact separation of tip and surface. Thus ` solidification\rq seems to not be merely a result of pressure and confinement, but depends strongly on how commensurate the confining cavity is with the molecule size. We were able to model the results by starting from the simple assumption that the relaxation time depends linearly on the film stiffness.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, will be submitted to PR

The Influence of Operational Resources and Activities on Indirect Personnel Costs: A Multilevel Modeling Approach

Indirect activities often represent an underemphasized, yet significant, contributing source of costs for organizations. In order to manage indirect costs, organizations must understand how these costs behave relative to changes in operational resources and activities. This is of particular interest to the Air Force and its sister services, because recent and projected reductions in defense spending are forcing reductions in their operational variables, and insufficient research exists to help them understand how this may influence indirect costs. Furthermore, although academic research on indirect costs has advanced the knowledge behind the modeling and behavior of indirect costs, significant gaps in the literature remain. Our research provides important and timely advances to the indirect cost literature. First, our research disaggregates the indirect cost pool and focuses on indirect personnel costs, which represent 33% of all Air Force indirect costs and are a leading source of indirect costs in many organizations. Second, we employ a multilevel modeling approach to capture the hierarchical nature of an enterprise, allowing us to assess the influence that each level of an organization has on indirect cost behavior and relationships. Third, we identify the operational variables that influence indirect personnel costs in the Air Force enterprise, providing Air Force decision-makers with evidence-based knowledge to inform decisions regarding budget reduction strategies

A new photon recoil experiment: towards a determination of the fine structure constant

We report on progress towards a measurement of the fine structure constant to an accuracy of $5\times 10^{-10}$ or better by measuring the ratio of the Planck constant to the mass of the cesium atom. Compared to similar experiments, ours is improved in three significant ways: (i) simultaneous conjugate interferometers, (ii) multi-photon Bragg diffraction between same internal states, and (iii) an about 1000 fold reduction of laser phase noise to -138 dBc/Hz. Combining that with a new method to simultaneously stabilize the phases of four frequencies, we achieve 0.2 mrad effective phase noise at the location of the atoms. In addition, we use active stabilization to suppress systematic effects due to beam misalignment.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure

Hydrologic and isotopic modeling of Alpine Lake Waiau, Mauna Kea, Hawai'i

Analysis of hydrologic, meteorologic, and isotopic data collected over 3 yr quantifies and explains the enormous variability and isotopic enrichment (δ18O = +16.9, δD = +50.0) of alpine Lake Waiau, a culturally and ecologically significant perched lake near the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawai'i. Further, a simple one-dimensional hydrologic model was developed that couples standard water budget modeling with modeling of δD and δ18O isotopic composition to provide daily predictions of lake volume and chemistry. Data analysis and modeling show that winter storms are the primary source of water for the lake, adding a distinctively light isotopic signature appropriate for high-altitude precipitation. Evaporation at the windy, dry summit is the primary loss mechanism for most of the year, greatly enriching the lake in heavy isotopes

Geometrically Flexible and Efficient Flow Analysis of High Speed Vehicles Via Domain Decomposition, Part 1: Unstructured-Grid Solver for High Speed Flows

The ability to solve the equations governing the hypersonic turbulent flow of a real gas on unstructured grids using a spatially-elliptic, 2nd-order accurate, cell-centered, finite-volume method has been recently implemented in the VULCAN-CFD code. This paper describes the key numerical methods and techniques that were found to be required to robustly obtain accurate solutions to hypersonic flows on non-hex-dominant unstructured grids. The methods and techniques described include: an augmented stencil, weighted linear least squares, cell-average gradient method, a robust multidimensional cell-average gradient-limiter process that is consistent with the augmented stencil of the cell-average gradient method and a cell-face gradient method that contains a cell skewness sensitive damping term derived using hyperbolic diffusion based concepts. A data-parallel matrix-based symmetric Gauss-Seidel point-implicit scheme, used to solve the governing equations, is described and shown to be more robust and efficient than a matrix-free alternative. In addition, a y+ adaptive turbulent wall boundary condition methodology is presented. This boundary condition methodology is deigned to automatically switch between a solve-to-the-wall and a wall-matching-function boundary condition based on the local y+ of the 1st cell center off the wall. The aforementioned methods and techniques are then applied to a series of hypersonic and supersonic turbulent flat plate unit tests to examine the efficiency, robustness and convergence behavior of the implicit scheme and to determine the ability of the solve-to-the-wall and y+ adaptive turbulent wall boundary conditions to reproduce the turbulent law-of-the-wall. Finally, the thermally perfect, chemically frozen, Mach 7.8 turbulent flow of air through a scramjet flow-path is computed and compared with experimental data to demonstrate the robustness, accuracy and convergence behavior of the unstructured-grid solver for a realistic 3-D geometry on a non-hex-dominant grid