The impact of the US/Mexico border region and concentrations of Mexican-Americans on Mexican-American earnings

The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the determinants of geographic wage differentials as they apply particularly to Mexican-Americans. Two questions are asked. (1) Is there a U.S./Mexico border/nonborder wage differential? (2) Are compensating wage differentials important in the wage structure of Mexican-Americans?;The first question has already been addressed in the literature, but the analysis suggested in this study overcomes some of the potential problems found in earlier studies. The second question analyzes the possibility of compensating wage differentials (in the context of the Hedonic Model) that could be due to either the distance that Mexican-Americans are located from the Mexican border or the concentration of Mexican-Americans in the SMSAs they live in. The major data source used is the 1970 Census of Population data;The findings in this study suggest no evidence of a real or nominal border/nonborder earnings differential when socioeconomic characteristics are controlled for. However, when subdivisions are made on the aggregate data, a nominal earnings differential is found for Mexican-Americans, in particular for Mexican-Americans from the east (this area excludes California SMSAs). This differential, however, disappears when real earnings are studied;This is no clear evidence that compensating wage differentials are important in the wage structure of Mexican-Americans. Distance from the border shows no effect as a compensating differential. The concentration of Mexican-Americans in an SMSA is negative as expected, but there are conflicting interpretations of this result. Specifically, this variable may pick up other noncompensating effects such as discrimination and illegal alien effects;The policy implications of this research would suggest that any program designed to increase earnings along the border may be counterproductive since it would be raising wages which otherwise appear to be in approximate balance. On the other hand, if SMSAs with high concentrations of Mexican-Americans (MA) are used, then future research should be geared to determining the sources of the negative MA effect on earnings

Ground Systems Development Environment (GSDE) software configuration management

This report presents a review of the software configuration management (CM) plans developed for the Space Station Training Facility (SSTF) and the Space Station Control Center. The scope of the CM assessed in this report is the Systems Integration and Testing Phase of the Ground Systems development life cycle. This is the period following coding and unit test and preceding delivery to operational use. This report is one of a series from a study of the interfaces among the Ground Systems Development Environment (GSDE), the development systems for the SSTF and the SSCC, and the target systems for SSCC and SSTF. This is the last report in the series. The focus of this report is on the CM plans developed by the contractors for the Mission Systems Contract (MSC) and the Training Systems Contract (TSC). CM requirements are summarized and described in terms of operational software development. The software workflows proposed in the TSC and MSC plans are reviewed in this context, and evaluated against the CM requirements defined in earlier study reports. Recommendations are made to improve the effectiveness of CM while minimizing its impact on the developers

Machine Learning Based Surrogate Model for Hurricane Storm Surge Forecasting in the Laguna Madre

Texas coastal communities are at constant risk of hurricane impacts every storm season. It is especially important to model and predict storm surge variations during hurricane and storm events. Traditionally, hurricane storm surge predictions have been the result of numerical hydrodynamics based simulations. This type of simulations often requires high amounts of computational resources and complex ocean modelling efforts. Recently, machine learning techniques are being explored and are gaining popularity in hydrologic and ocean engineering modelling fields based on their performance to model nonlinear relationships and low computational requirements for prediction. Advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence (A.I.) demand the application of these methods for the modelling of complex problems such as storm surge. This study gathers historical water level data from coastal buoy stations, uses gridded forecasted weather datasets, and builds a database of ADCIRC hydrodynamic simulations to create a machine learning based surrogate model to provide timely, non-computationally intensive and accurate storm surge predictions for the Lower Laguna Madre in Texas

Configuration management and software measurement in the Ground Systems Development Environment (GSDE)

A set of functional requirements for software configuration management (CM) and metrics reporting for Space Station Freedom ground systems software are described. This report is one of a series from a study of the interfaces among the Ground Systems Development Environment (GSDE), the development systems for the Space Station Training Facility (SSTF) and the Space Station Control Center (SSCC), and the target systems for SSCC and SSTF. The focus is on the CM of the software following delivery to NASA and on the software metrics that relate to the quality and maintainability of the delivered software. The CM and metrics requirements address specific problems that occur in large-scale software development. Mechanisms to assist in the continuing improvement of mission operations software development are described

Ground Systems Development Environment (GSDE) interface requirements analysis

A set of procedural and functional requirements are presented for the interface between software development environments and software integration and test systems used for space station ground systems software. The requirements focus on the need for centralized configuration management of software as it is transitioned from development to formal, target based testing. This concludes the GSDE Interface Requirements study. A summary is presented of findings concerning the interface itself, possible interface and prototyping directions for further study, and results of the investigation of the Cronus distributed applications environment

Development of Hurricane Storm Surge Model to Predict Coastal Highway Inundation for South Texas

Forecasting areas prone to flooding will allow us to send off our information gathered to departments such as TxDOT and the United States Department of Transportation. This would then enable these departments to create appropriate evacuation routes, depicting which roads are clear and which cannot be used in the event of a storm. Simulating hurricanes that have passed through this area such as Dolly in 2008, Beulah in 1967, and Bret in 1999 will display the roads and federal highways that frequently tend to get flooded. Identifying the “danger roads” and which federal highways will ultimately be useful for various engineering purposes, such as show the information produced. Since roads act as not only a means for transportation, but a very important drainage system as well. In the Willacy County and Cameron County, there is about 14 major highways (four of them which are US highways). A research study is being proposed over the course of the year that would project the overflow of storm surge onto USDOT and TXDOT major highways. The project entailment is to simulate about 3 historical hurricanes that have passed through the Laguna Madre and focusing on about five of the nearest highways along the coast. This would give the project outcome of receiving the adequate information to identify how much of each highway would get flooded from each Hurricane, as well as the duration of the surge submerging the areas of each specific highway

Auditoria Administrativa Funcional en el área de ventas de las Casas Comerciales de Línea Blanca: “La Curacao S.A” y “El Gallo Más Gallo S.A”, en la ciudad de Matagalpa durante el primer semestre del año 2006

El presente trabajo tiene como propósito analizar la importancia de la Auditoria Administrativa Funcional en el área de ventas de las casas comerciales de Línea Blanca: La Curacao S.A. y El Gallo Más Gallo S.A., en la ciudad de Matagalpa, durante el primer semestre del año 2006. En el contenido de ésta investigación se abordaron temáticas sobre Auditoria Administrativa, Casas Comerciales de Línea Blanca, Ventas, Fuerza de Ventas, Trabajo en Equipo y Atención al Cliente. Según las Casas Comerciales de Línea Blanca la Auditoria Administrativa Funcional en el área de Ventas es de gran importancia, ya que es un factor relevante para el buen funcionamiento de ésta. El trabajo en equipo y la atención al cliente ayudan a lograr el éxito empresarial y a obtener un continuo aumento en las ventas. Al proporcionar un análisis sobre la importancia de la Auditoria Administrativa Funcional en el área de Ventas de las Casas Comerciales de Línea Blanca se plantea claramente que la función de ventas es decisiva en las empresas comerciales y todas las mejoras en la eficiencia de ésta, inciden directamente en la obtención de mejores resultados para la empresa; determinando la importancia de ésta auditoria, valorando el papel del trabajo en equipo y la atención al cliente en el área de Ventas de las Casas Comerciales de Línea Blanca es el primer paso para que las empresas se motiven y logren una mayor eficiencia día a día. Para la realización de ésta investigación se hizo uso del método empírico, a través de la aplicación de instrumentos como encuestas, entrevistas y cédulas para la obtención de la información primaria, también se hizo uso del método teórico mediante el análisis de la información bibliográfica de lo cual se obtuvo información secundaria. De acuerdo a los resultados obtenidos se encontró que ambas empresas realizan Auditoria Administrativa Funcional en el área de ventas, cada semestre, otorgándole un grado de importancia a ésta técnica del 99%, ya que el funcionamiento de esta área es el motor que da vida a estas empresas para mantenerse como lideres en el mercado y en el pensamiento de sus cliente