States Face Fiscal Crunch after 1990s Spending Surge

Across the nation, large budget gaps are forcing state governments to make tough policy choices. While some states are trying to control spending, others are turning to tax increases to balance their budgets. Some state officials are trying to pass the buck for their poor fiscal management by pleading for a bailout from Washington. But a bailout would encourage states to continue overspending, which is the source of the current fiscal mess. The states' mistake was to allow rapid tax revenue growth during the 1990s to fuel an unsustainable expansion in spending. Between fiscal years 1990 and 2001, state tax revenue grew 86 percent--more than the 55 percent of inflation plus population growth. If states had limited spending growth to that benchmark, budgets would have been $93 billion smaller by FY01--representing savings roughly twice the size of today's state budget gaps. If revenue growth higher than the benchmark had been given back to taxpayers in permanent tax cuts and annual rebates, rebates could have been temporarily suspended during FY02 and FY03 to provide a cushion with which to balance state budgets. Current budget gaps provide policymakers an opportunity to weed out the budget excesses built up during the past decade. Yet overall state spending continues to grow. After soaring 8.0 percent in FY01, state general fund spending has not been cut in FY02 or FY03 even as large budget gaps have appeared. States should impose tax and spending growth caps to prevent budgets from growing too quickly during the next boom. Revenue growth above a benchmark would be given back in tax cuts and tax rebates. That would prevent spending from increasing too quickly and provide the option of suspending rebates during slowdowns to close budget gaps without the damage caused by tax rate increases

The Financial and Environmental Viability of Municipally Operated Hybrid Ambulance Fleets in Ontario: Calculating the Return-on-Investment of Hybrid Ambulance Assets in Oxford County from 2017-2021

On October 26, 2017 Oxford County became the first municipality in Canada to deploy gasoline-electric hybrid ambulances as part of their Community Sustainability Plan aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting low-carbon transportation. The Oxford solution utilizes aftermarket hybrid electric-gasoline propulsion systems that leverage two primary technologies: regenerative braking, which uses the inertia of the vehicle to store energy in a battery cell during deceleration; and acceleration assist, which uses this stored energy to assist propulsion of the vehicle during acceleration events and thereby reduces gasoline consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. Due to high demand for aftermarket hybrid propulsion systems, Oxford received three of their ambulances prior to the hybrid system installations. This created an opportunity for a before-and-after study of the impact of the hybrid systems on the performance of the three vehicles. The vehicles were run in three different operating theatres: urban (low km/trip); rural (high km/trip); and mixed urban-rural (medium km/trip) both pre and post hybrid installation to: calculate if a full return-on-investment is achievable over the useful life of the asset; determine the hybrid’s impact on fuel consumption and CO2 emissions; assess which operating scenarios produce the most environmentally impactful outcomes; calculate the optimal price point for the hybrid systems; and generate a decision tool that would allow other municipalities to assess which of their own operating environments would benefit most from the implementation of hybrid technology. It was found that the hybrid propulsion systems produced the greatest environmental and financial returns in urban (low km/trip) operating theatres, and that depending upon the price of fuel, and repair and maintenance costs a 100% return-on-investment may be achievable during the vehicle’s six-year service life

Experiences Teaching an FPGA-based Embedded Systems Class

I describe a two-year-old embedded systems design course I teach at Columbia University. In it, the students learn low-level C programming and VHDL coding to design and implement a project of their own choosing. The students implement their projects using Xilinx FPGAs and tools running on Linux workstations. The main challenges the students face are understanding and complying with complex and often poorly-documented interfaces and protocols, personal time management, and teamwork. While all real-world challenges, this class is often the first time the students encounter them, which makes the class quite challenging, but very practical. In this paper, I describe the structure of the class, the configuration of our teaching laboratory, some of the more successful projects, and give suggestions to instructors wishing to implement the class elsewhere

Active narrowband disturbance rejection on an ultra quiet platform

Vibration isolation on spacecraft is needed for imaging sensors, microgravity experiments, and other sensitive payloads. The preferred method thus far has been passive isolation because of its simplicity and low cost. Active vibration isolation and disturbance rejection will soon be more common as space qualified sensors, actuators and processors become more capable and affordable, and performance requirements increase. Spacecraft disturbances are typically periodic vibrations which are most effectively controlled through feedforward techniques. A popular choice of feedforward control methods for disturbance rejection is the Multiple Error Least Mean Squares (LMS) algorithm which requires a separately measured disturbance correlated signal in its implementation. A new technique called Clear Box makes extensive use of identification to bring out information that is normally hidden or not used by traditional control methods. It allows operation in an information rich environment with built in fault tolerance, the ability to control unanticipated disturbances, and the ability to select which modes to control (if saturation of the actuators is a possibility or concern), all without the need for a separately measured disturbance correlated signal. Experiments using both Multiple Error LMS and Clear Box on an Ultra Quiet Platform provide an effective demonstration of the advantages of the Clear Box Algorithm, including a new Adaptive Basis Method which allows control of rapidly varying frequencies.http://archive.org/details/activenarrowband1094513673U.S. Air Force (U.S.A.F.) author.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Proceedings of the Resolve Workshop 2006

The aim of the RESOLVE Workshop 2006 was to bring together researchers and educators interested in: Refining formal approaches to software engineering, especially component-based systems, and introducing them into the classroom. The workshop served as a forum for participants to present and discuss recent advances, trends, and concerns in these areas, as well as formulate a common understanding of emerging research issues and possible solution paths