An overview of New England's economic performance in 2010

In the first calendar year following the Great Recession, signs of an economic recovery began to take shape across New England. An improving labor market picture, growth in income, indications of a stabilizing housing market, and booming exports spurred economic growth in the region in 2010. As a result, New England’s overall performance surpassed that of the nation as a whole.Economic conditions - New England

National Party Politics and Supranational Politics in the European Union: New Evidence from the European Parliament

Political parties play an important role in structuring political competition at different levels of governance in the European Union (EU). The political parties that contest national elections also participate in the EU legislative institutions, with the governing parties at the national level participating in the Council of Ministers and a broad range of national parties represented in the European Parliament (EP). Recent research indicates that national parties in the EP have formed ideological coalitions -- party groups -- that represent transnational political interests. These party groups appear to manage legislative behavior such that national interests -- which dominate the Council of Ministers -- are subjugated to ideological conflict. In this paper, we demonstrate that the roll-call vote evidence for the impact of party groups in the EP is misleading. Because party groups have incentives to select votes for roll call so as to hide or feature particular voting patterns, the true character of political conflict is never revealed in roll calls.

Index-Coupled Distributed-Feedback Semiconductor Quantum Cascade Lasers Fabricated Without Epitaxial Regrowth

Quantum cascade (QC) lasers and methods of fabricating such QC lasers are provided. The QC lasers incorporate a DFB grating without requiring the use of relying on epitaxial regrowth processes. The DFB gratings are formed as sidewall gratings along the lateral length of the QC active region, or the DFB gratings are formed atop the lateral length of the QC active region, and wherein the top DFB grating is planarized with a polymeric material

Classical density functional theory & simulations on a coarse-grained model of aromatic ionic liquids.

A new classical density functional approach is developed to accurately treat a coarse-grained model of room temperature aromatic ionic liquids. Our major innovation is the introduction of charge-charge correlations, which are treated in a simple phenomenological way. We test this theory on a generic coarse-grained model for aromatic RTILs with oligomeric forms for both cations and anions, approximating 1-alkyl-3-methyl imidazoliums and BF4(-), respectively. We find that predictions by the new density functional theory for fluid structures at charged surfaces are very accurate, as compared with molecular dynamics simulations, across a range of surface charge densities and lengths of the alkyl chain. Predictions of interactions between charged surfaces are also presented

A second look at legislative behavior in the European Parliament: roll-call votes and the party system

'Jüngste Forschungen zum Wahlverhalten im Europäischen Parlament (EP) kommen zum Schluss, dass die Fraktionen der unterschiedlichen politischen Parteien das legislative Verhalten beeinflussen. Dadurch wird politischer Wettbewerb im EP entlang ideologischer und nicht nationaler Linien organisiert. Daraus folgt, dass das EP eine geeignete Arena für transnationale politische Auseinandersetzungen darstellt. Die Autoren überprüfen nochmals verschiedene empirische Resultate, die diese Schlussfolgerungen unterstützen. Basierend auf der Analyse eines neuen Datensatzes behaupten die, dass die empirische Basis für diese Schlussfolgerungen bedenklich ist. Denn die namentlichen Abstimmungen, welche bisher als Basis zu Studien zum legislativen Abstimmungsverhalten gedient haben, stellen ein verzerrtes Sample für eben solche dar. Es stellt sich somit die allgemeine Frage, inwiefern die bisherige Beschreibung von Parteikohäsion oder die Charakterisierung von Parteienwettbewerb in der Legislative noch Gültigkeit besitzen. Die Resultate weisen außerdem darauf hin, dass die Fraktionen den Großteil ihrer legislativen Abstimmungen vor den Wählern verbergen und somit ihr legislatives Verhalten verschleiern. Obwohl das EP häufig als Quelle für demokratische Legitimation in der EU-Politikgestaltung genannt wird, zeigen die Resultate, dass in der Praxis die verschiedenen Fraktionen die Kontrollmöglichkeiten der Bürger signifikant behindern.' (Autorenreferat)'A great deal of recent research on voting behavior in the European Parliament (EP) concludes that party groups dominate legislative behavior, effectively organizing political competition along ideological rather than national lines. As a result, some argue that the EP is a suitable arena for transnational political contestation. We re-examine several empirical findings used to support these conclusions. Based on an analysis of a novel set of data regarding EP votes that are unrecorded, we argue that the empirical basis for these conclusions is dubious. The fundamental finding is that roll call votes, which form the basis of studies of legislative voting behavior, are a biased sample of legislative votes. This calls into question the accuracy of any description of party unity or the character of party competition on legislation that is gleaned from roll call votes in the EP. In addition, our findings indicate that party groups hide the vast majority of legislative votes from the eyes of voters, therefore obfuscating legislative behavior. Thus, while the EP is often identified as a source of democratic accountability for EU policy-making because its members are directly elected, our findings suggest that in practice party groups significantly obstruct this channel of popular control over policy-making.' (author's abstract)

A System And Method For Task Management

A system and method for task management are disclosed. The system may include an electronic device that allows users to enter a list of tasks as input. The system may further use a scheduling algorithm to schedule the entered tasks. The primary output of the system is a schedule assigning tasks for a predetermined interval - days or even hours. The scheduling algorithm may compute an objective function defined by the user and take into account costs for each task. The method then involves minimizing total task costs subject to constraints, while efficiently scheduling the tasks across the time interval. The system is configured to improve via user inputs. The system and method disclosed may help users to schedule work they need to complete each day and in the future. As a result, users may be less overwhelmed by their list of tasks