IMPROVING INTERNSHIP PROGRAM AND INTERN RETENTION AT NAVAL SURFACE WARFARE CENTER PORT HUENEME DIVISION CONTRACTING OFFICE

Entry-level employees (ELEs) play a vital role in the Naval Surface Warfare Center Port Hueneme Division (NSWC PHD) Contracting Office, as they enable the office to complete contract requirements for current and future missions. More specifically, ELEs are responsible for procurement planning, preparing documents, conducting negotiations, and ensuring compliance with regulations and policies. NSWC PHD spends between $100,000 and$250,000 annually to recruit, onboard, and train each ELE with the expectation that ELEs will transition into full-time employees after graduation. With one to three ELEs hired annually, the total annual cost of recruiting, onboarding, and training ELEs ranges from $300,000 to$750,000. Despite recent improvement in the retention rate of ELEs, only 58.3% of ELEs over the past five years chose to maintain full-time employment with NSWC PHD upon completion of their internships, meaning over 40% of funds spent on the internships fail to produce the desired results. This shortfall translates into reduced numbers of staff devoted to managing contracts. In turn, this shortfall causes delays in contract completion, overworks existing employees, and lowers office morale. This study will gather data on ELEs’ perceptions of the program and how these perceptions inform their decisions whether to seek full-time employment with NSWC PHD. The intention is to provide information and insight to managers charged with overseeing the internship experience.Civilian, Department of the NavyCivilian, Department of the NavyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Property rights, right to efficiency?

The assignment of property rights to incentivise risk-sharing in a principal-agent relationship is a recurrent theme of contract theory. This paper examines the incentive effects of property rights in a principal-agent relationship involving government as the principal, that is, the ownership concession model of publicprivate- partnership (PPP) procurement contracts for tollroads. Specifically, the paper investigates the effects of property rights on the agent’s preference for contract structure to manage risks and to exert performance effort; and the effects on both parties’ risk preferences when ownership transfer is being perceived as transferring accountability. Analysis of data collected through an online experiment surveying stakeholders who have been engaging in road contracts procured under the PPP model in 32 countries concludes that: (1) property rights offer the agent a protective shield against poor planning by the principal in the meantime gives rise to ex ante opportunism; (2) the agent’s reservation on ex post decision rights distorts allocative efficiency; and (3) revenue-sharing is a powerful incentive for non-revenueenhancing performance effort. Further investigation attests that incentive effects of property rights can be enhanced through equitable allocation of risks; nevertheless, ex post efficiency is debilitated by considerations of political sensitivity concerning toll pricing

Pemetaan Jalur Evakuasi Bencana Letusan Gunung Raung Dengan Metode Network Analisis

Raung Mountain (highest peak: 3.344 m above sea level) is a conical volcano that located on the eastern tip of Java Island, Indonesia. Administratively, the area of the mountain was included in three districts in Besuki, East Java, there was Banyuwangi and Jember, Bondowoso,. Caldera Raung is also the largest dry Caldera in Java and Indonesia\u27s second-largest after mount Tambora in West Nusa Tenggara. Report on the increase of activity is given from the date June 21, 2015. The NASA satellite Landsat 8 detected two holes so that the magma is estimated not to be a big eruption began on June 26, 2015 and a series of eruptions since July 4, 2015. The disastrous evacuation path mapping mountain through disaster risk modelling raung minimizing loss due to disasters through the map.Disaster evacuation map is needed mapping risk Raung with stages of representation, threat representation map of vulnerability, modelling capacity, as well as the maping of risk. Threat representaion is composed of the threat of the burst of rock vulcanic and the threat of lava flows of Raung Mountain.. Representation of capacity are contain the elements of population and area of the region in the case of the risk of Raung Mountain disaster. Representation Vulnerability includes physical susceptibility , social vulnerability, and the vulnerability of the economy. While in modeling risk map is processed by using a formulation of natural disaster regulation relief Agency Heads (PERKA BNPB) No. 2 in 2012. After mapping the risk, this model is combined with other parameters to build a disaster evacuation map using network analysis method

Contractual approach to optimising risk sharing: A quantitative study of the multidimensional nature of risk in private provision of road infrastructure

In 2009 and 2010, we conducted an international survey to identify the extent to which risk-sharing in tollroad projects procured under the public-private-partnership (PPP) method and the structures of PPP concession contracts lead to the value for money outcome. The survey was conducted using an advanced computer-aided personal instrument technique within which the stated choice methodology was deployed to capture the risk perceptions of contracting parties. Information drawn from the project experience of 101 respondents over 32 countries was used to test the impact of contractual conditions and external institutional variables on their risk preferences, and hence, their choice behaviour in relation to the PPP procurement. The empirical findings affirmed a number of significant relationships that involve the risk preferences of contracting parties: choice of procurement method, contractual conditions, institutional environment, clarity of government’s strategic objectives, property rights, and the way in which risks are shared among contracting parties. We conclude that risk-sharing can be optimised through more equitable risk allocation, better handling of public misperception about the scheme and misperceived social risks associated with ownership transfer, undertaking reforms at the institutional level to make the environment more conducive to PPP investments, and selecting a reputable private partner for a sustainable partnership

KOINTEGRASI DAN ANALISIS VOLATILITAS CO-MOVEMENT PASAR MODAL DI 5 NEGARA ASEAN TAHUN 1988-2011

Pertumbuhan ekonomi yang fenomenal dari pasar modal di ASEAN-5 menarik perhatian para investor di pasar global. Pasar modal menjadi indikator kemajuan ekonomi sebuah negara sekaligus menjadi penunjang perekonomian (Robert Ang, 1997). Ketika ekonomi bergerak menuju liberalisasi, pergeseran dari kemandirian pasar menuju pasar yang ter kointegrasi. Penekanan yang kuat telah menempatkan pasar modal ASEAN-5 untuk ter kointegrasi dan memiliki interaksi antara pasar saham internasional dan regional sehingga dalam satu kawasan regional cenderung memiliki pergerakan volatilitas yang sama (volatility co-movement). Selama periode pengamatan, tahun 1988-2011, terjadi fenomena dimana pergerakan volatilitas pasar modal ASEAN dalam kawasan satu regional tidak selalu sama. Hal ini juga didukung oleh perbedaan yang ditemukan pada hasil beberapa penelitian terdahulu. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui hubungan kointegrasi jangka panjang pasar modal ASEAN, perbedaaan hubungan kointegrasi jangka panjang pasar modal ASEAN sebelum dan sesudah krisis tahun 1997, dan pergerakan volatilitas IHSG diantara pasar modal ASEAN yang lainnya seperti SET, PHSC, KLCI, dan STI. Metode analisis yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah VAR dengan menggunakan uji Johansen Cointegration Test, Granger Causality Test, dan GARCH(1,1); TARCH; EGARCH. Penelitian ini menggunakan data mingguan dari harga pasar saham 5 negara ASEAN, yaitu IHSG, KLCI, STI, PHSC, SET dari tahun 1988 sampai tahun 2011, dengan sumber data diambil dari Bloomberg Hasil dari penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa ada kointegrasi jangka panjang di pasar modal ASEAN dalam satu wilayah regional, kointegrasi jangka panjang pasar modal ASEAN-5 pasca krisis tahun 1997 semakin menguat dibandingkan sebelum krisis, pergerakan volatilitas IHSG diantara pasar modal ASEAN yang lain memiliki pergerakan yang cenderung bergerak kearah yang sama

Ultrasound transducer positioning aid for fetal heart rate monitoring

Fetal heart rate (fHR) monitoring is usually performed by Doppler ultrasound (US) techniques. For reliable fHR measurements it is required that the fetal heart is located within the US beam. In clinical practice, clinicians palpate the maternal abdomen to identify the fetal presentation and then the US transducer is fixated on the maternal abdomen where the best fHR signal can be obtained. Finding the optimal transducer position is done by listening to the strength of the Doppler audio output and relying on a signal quality indicator of the cardiotocographic (CTG) measurement system. Due to displacement of the US transducer or displacement of the fetal heart out of the US beam, the fHR signal may be lost. Therefore, it is often necessary that the obstetrician repeats the tedious procedure of US transducer positioning to avoid long periods of fHR signal loss. An intuitive US transducer positioning aid would be highly desirable to increase the work flow for the clinical staff. In this paper, the possibility to determine the fetal heart location with respect to the transducer by exploiting the received signal power in the transducer elements is shown. A commercially available US transducer used for fHR monitoring is connected to an US open platform, which allows individual driving of the elements and raw US data acquisition. Based on the power of the received Doppler signals in the transducer elements, the fetal heart location can be estimated. A beating fetal heart setup was designed and realized for validation. The experimental results show the feasibility of estimating the fetal heart location with the proposed method. This can be used to support clinicians in finding the optimal transducer position for fHR monitoring more easily

Electrostatic flocking of salt-treated microfibers and nanofiber yarns for regenerative engineering

Electrostatic flocking is a textile technology that employs a Coulombic driving force to launch short fibers from a charging source towards an adhesive-covered substrate, resulting in a dense array of aligned fibers perpendicular to the substrate. However, electrostatic flocking of insulative polymeric fibers remains a challenge due to their insufficient charge accumulation. We report a facile method to flock electrostatically insulative poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) microfibers (MFs) and electrospun PCL nanofiber yarns (NFYs) by incorporating NaCl during preflock processing. Both MF and NFY were evaluated for flock functionality, mechanical properties, and biological responses. To demonstrate this platform\u27s diverse applications, standalone flocked NFY and MF scaffolds were synthesized and evaluated as scaffold for cell growth. Employing the same methodology, scaffolds made from poly(glycolide-co-L-lactide) (PGLA) (90:10) MFs were evaluated for their wound healing capacity in a diabetic mouse model. Further, a flock-reinforced polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) disc was fabricated to create an anisotropic artificial vertebral disc (AVD) replacement potentially used as a treatment for lumbar degenerative disc disease. Overall, a salt-based flocking method is described with MFs and NFYs, with wound healing and AVD repair applications presented