The economic impact of ocean acidification on Pacific oysters

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2015Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, our atmosphere has continued to experience increased levels of CO₂ concentrations and with it, changes in seawater carbonate chemistry. These changes in the carbonate chemistry of seawater, a process known as ocean acidification (OA), threaten some species upon which some economies are largely dependent for economic activity. This thesis uses the best available data to summarize the Washington State shellfish economy and estimate potential impacts of OA on Pacific oyster demand. The analysis evaluates the economic impact of OA on demand using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model approach to estimate short-run and long-run impacts. Although initial research attempted to assess the impacts of OA on Pacific oyster supply, findings from this study suggest that long-run decreases in carbonate chemistry may negatively impact the demand for Pacific oysters. As the waters used to grow Pacific oysters in Washington State continue to degrade as a result of OA, substantial losses in economic activity from Pacific oysters may be lost. On the west coast, oysters appear to be a luxury good with demand highly responsive to changes in income. Pacific oysters are moderately sensitive to price, indicating demand for oysters is elastic

Spurious Eccentricities of Distorted Binary Components

I discuss the effect of physical distortion on the velocities of close binary components and how we may use the resulting distortion of velocity curves to constrain some properties of binary systems, such as inclination and mass ratio. Precise new velocities for 5 Cet convincingly detect these distortions with their theoretically predicted phase dependence. We can even use such distortions of velocity curves to test Lucy's theory of convective gravity darkening. The observed distortions for TT Hya and 5 Cet require the contact components of those systems to be gravity darkened, probably somewhat more than predicted by Lucy's theory but clearly not as much as expected for a radiative star. These results imply there is no credible evidence for eccentric orbits in binaries with contact components. I also present some speculative analyses of the observed properties of a binary encased in a non-rotating common envelope, if such an object could actually exist, and discuss how the limb darkening of some recently calculated model atmospheres for giant stars may bias my resuts for velocity-curve distortions, as well as other results from a wide range of analyses of binary stars.Comment: 14 pp, 2 tables, 12 fig; under review by Ap

Reverberation time estimation on the ACE corpus using the SDD method

Reverberation Time (T60) is an important measure for characterizing the properties of a room. The author's T60 estimation algorithm was previously tested on simulated data where the noise is artificially added to the speech after convolution with a impulse responses simulated using the image method. We test the algorithm on speech convolved with real recorded impulse responses and noise from the same rooms from the Acoustic Characterization of Environments (ACE) corpus and achieve results comparable results to those using simulated data.Comment: In Proceedings of the ACE Challenge Workshop - a satellite event of IEEE-WASPAA 2015 (arXiv:1510.00383

Report of the Georgia Governor’s Wokers’ Compensation Review Commission

The Commission appointed by Governor Barnes consists of fourteen members, three ex officio members, and seven advisory members. This group includes academics, members of the legislature, claimants attorneys, defense attorneys, representatives from the insurance industry, organized labor, the textile industry, and government agencies. It was charged by the Governor to review and evaluate Georgia’s laws and procedures affecting workers’ compensation. The Commission’s primary goal was to prepare an accurate description of the current workers’ compensation system in Georgia. More specifically, this Report provides detailed information regarding the number of claims, benefits paid to employees, employer costs, and insurance profitability. It also compares workers’ compensation costs and benefits in Georgia with those in other states, particularly our Southeastern neighbors. Our purpose is to determine whether workers’ compensation costs place Georgia employers at a competitive disadvantage in regional and national markets. In preparing this Report, the Commission relied on the most recent available reports and data collected by organizations such as the National Academy of Social Insurance, the National Council on Compensation Insurance, the Workers Compensation Research Institute, the United States Department of Labor, and the Georgia State Board of Workers’ Compensation.Workers' Compemsation, wages, unemployment, disability, indemnity

An adaptive, hanging-node, discontinuous isogeometric analysis method for the first-order form of the neutron transport equation with discrete ordinate (SN) angular discretisation

In this paper a discontinuous, hanging-node, isogeometric analysis (IGA) method is developed and applied to the first-order form of the neutron transport equation with a discrete ordinate (SN) angular discretisation in two-dimensional space. The complexities involved in upwinding across curved element boundaries that contain hanging-nodes have been addressed to ensure that the scheme remains conservative. A robust algorithm for cycle-breaking has also been introduced in order to develop a unique sweep ordering of the elements for each discrete ordinates direction. The convergence rate of the scheme has been verified using the method of manufactured solutions (MMS) with a smooth solution. Heuristic error indicators have been used to drive an adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) algorithm to take advantage of the hanging-node discretisation. The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated for three test cases. The first is a homogeneous square in a vacuum with varying mean free path and a prescribed extraneous unit source. The second test case is a radiation shielding problem and the third is a 3×3 “supercell” featuring a burnable absorber. In the final test case, comparisons are made to the discontinuous Galerkin finite element method (DGFEM) using both straight-sided and curved quadratic finite elements

A three channel telemetry system

A three channel telemetry system intended for biomedical applications is described. The transmitter is implemented in a single chip using a 2 micron BiCMOS processes. The operation of the system and the test results from the latest chip are discussed. One channel is always dedicated to temperature measurement while the other two channels are generic. The generic channels carry information from transducers that are interfaced to the system through on-chip general purpose operational amplifiers. The generic channels have different bandwidths: one from dc to 250 Hz and the other from dc to 1300 Hz. Each generic channel modulates a current controlled oscillator to produce a frequency modulated signal. The two frequency modulated signals are summed and used to amplitude modulate the temperature signal which acts as a carrier. A near-field inductive link telemeters the combined signals over a short distance. The chip operates on a supply voltage anywhere from 2.5 to 3.6 Volts and draws less than 1 mA when transmitting a signal. The chip can be incorporated into ingestible, implantable and other configurations. The device can free the patient from tethered data collection systems and reduces the possibility of infection from subcutaneous leads. Data telemetry can increase patient comfort leading to a greater acceptance of monitoring

Existence Advertising, Price Competition, and Asymmetric Market Structure

We examine a two stage duopoly game in which firms advertise their existence to consumers in stage 1 and compete in prices in stage 2. Whenever the advertising technology generates positive overlap in customer bases the equilib- rium for the stage 1 game is asymmetric in that one firm chooses to remain small in comparison to its competitor. For a specific random advertising technology we show that one firm will always be half as large as the other. No equilibrium in pure price strategies exists in the stage 2 game and as long as there is some overlap in customer bases the mixed strategy equilibrium is far from the Bertrand equilibrium.Existence advertising; price dispersion; Bertrand paradox; information; duopoly