Standards of Arbitrator Impartiality: How Impartial Must They Be - Lifecare International, Inc. v. CD Medical, Inc.

One of the most crucial aspects of the arbitrator\u27s role is neutrality. For arbitration proceedings to achieve a fair resolution of disputes, the arbitrator must make his decision without bias. All jurisdictions allow vacation of arbitration awards where there is evident partiality on the part of an arbitrator appointed as neutral. The application of this evident partiality test, however, has yielded widely varying results. Moreover, most state and federal courts apply a lower standard of impartiality to arbitrators than they apply to judges. The reason for this lower standard is that the parties consented to a less than perfect tribunal when they consented to an arbitration

Do Economic Restrictions Improve Forecasts?

A previous study showed that imposing economic restrictions improves the forecasting ability of food demand systems, thus warranting their use even when rejected in-sample. This study attempts to determine whether this is due solely to the fact that restrictions improve degrees of freedom. Results indicate that restrictions improve forecasting ability even when not derived from economic theory, but theoretical restrictions forecast best.Demand and Price Analysis,

Do Economic Restrictions Improve Forecasts?

A previous study showed that imposing economic restrictions improves the forecasting ability of food demand systems, thus warranting their use even when rejected in-sample. This study attempts to determine whether this is due solely to the fact that restrictions improve degrees of freedom. Results indicate that restrictions improve forecasting ability even when not derived from economic theory, but theoretical restrictions forecast best.Demand and Price Analysis,

Exotic Forest Insects and Residential Property Values

This paper presents a case study of the economic damages to homeowners in a northern New Jersey community due to an exotic forest insect--the hemlock woolly adelgid. Hedonic property value methods are used to estimate the effect of hemlock health on property values. A statistically significant relationship between hemlock health and residential property values is established. Moreover, there are some signs of spillover impacts from hemlock decline, as negative effects are realized on the parcels where the declining hemlock stands are located as well as on neighboring properties. These results give some indication of the benefits of potential control programs and strategies and also show support for community- or neighborhood-based programs in residential settings.invasive species, economic impacts, hedonic property values, general spatial model, Land Economics/Use,

Blended Learning: Beyond Initial Uses To Helping To Solve Real-World Academic Problems

Blended learning strategies can be employed in innovative ways to solve real-world academic problems across all academic disciplines.  This article can provide administrators and faculty with specific examples to guide them when making decisions about academic planning or institutional strategies for any discipline at all levels of higher education

Teaching Consolidations Accounting: An Approach To Easing The Challenge

Teaching and learning accounting for consolidations is a challenging endeavor. Students not only need to understand the conceptual underpinnings of the accounting requirements for consolidations, but also must master the complex accounting needed to prepare consolidated financial statements. To add to the challenge, the consolidation process is dependent on how the parent company accounts for the investment on its parent company ledgers. Parent company ledgers either use the cost method or some variation of the equity method to account for investments to be consolidated. The variety in those accounting approaches used by parent companies is comparable to the variety of approaches to teach consolidations that are presented in advanced accounting textbooks, as documented by Luehlfing (1995). Luehlfing outlines the parent company accounting methods that are presumed to be used to teach consolidation accounting in each of the existing U.S. advanced accounting texts, noting that authors promote one method over others.  Luehlfing suggests that students should be provided with a comparison of the parent company entries under the cost method and each adaptation of the equity method so that they can obtain a better understanding of the differences in the consolidation worksheet elimination/reclassification entries.  Rather than having students learn different consolidation worksheet entries as a result of different recording methods used by the parent for an investment requiring consolidation, an approach can be adopted so that students only need to learn one set of consolidation worksheet entries to develop consolidated financial statements. In addition, a method of analyzing the parent’s investment account can be used to not only help understand the conceptual issues associated with consolidation accounting, but also greatly facilitate the mechanics of preparing the consolidation worksheet entries. &nbsp

Rapport in distance education

Rapport has been recognized as important in learning in general but little is known about its importance in distance education (DE). The study we report on in this paper provides insights into the importance of rapport in DE as well as challenges to and indicators of rapport-building in DE. The study relied on interviews with 42 Canadian high-school DE teachers. Findings revealed that rapport is necessary in DE because of the absence of face-to-face communication. Challenges to building rapport relate to the geographic dispersion of students, the asynchronous nature of DE, teacher workload, limits of the software, teachers and students not seeing the need for rapport, and DE traditions. We identified six categories of rapport-building in DE as follows: Recognizing the person/individual; Supporting and monitoring; Availability, accessibility, and responsiveness; Non text-based interactions; Tone of interactions; Non-academic conversation/interactions. We break the categories into subcategories and provide indicators for each one. The indicators might also be used in contexts of DE teacher professional development as a springboard for discussion, or, more prescriptively, as guides to DE teacher behaviour. A follow-up study using a more fine-grained focus on specific indicators might provide insights into specific rapport-related behaviours

Early-Holocene greening of the Afro-Asian dust belt changed sources of mineral dust in West Asia

Production, transport and deposition of mineral dust have significant impacts on different components of the Earth systems through time and space. In modern times, dust plumes are associated with their source region(s) using satellite and land -based measurements and trajectory analysis of air masses through time. Reconstruction of past changes in the sources of mineral dust as related to changes in climate, however, must rely on the knowledge of the geochemical and mineralogical composition of modern and paleodust, and that of their potential source origins. In this contribution, we present a 13,000-yr record of variations in radiogenic Sr-Nd-Hf isotopes and Rare Earth Element (REE) anomalies as well as dust grain size from an ombrotrophic (rain fed) peat core in NW Iran as proxies of past changes in the sources of dust over the interior of West Asia. Our data shows that although the grain size of dust varies in a narrow range through the entire record, the geochemical fingerprint of dust particles deposited during the low flux, early Holocene period (11,700-6,000 yr BP) is distinctly different from aerosols deposited during high dust flux periods of the Younger Dryas and the mid-late Holocene (6,000-present). Our findings indicate that the composition of mineral dust deposited at the study site changed as a function of prevailing atmospheric circulation regimes and land exposure throughout the last deglacial period and the Holocene. Simulations of atmospheric circulation over the region show the Northern Hemisphere Summer Westerly Jet was displaced poleward across the study area during the early Holocene when Northern Hemisphere insolation was higher due to the Earth\u27s orbital configuration. This shift, coupled with lower dust emissions simulated based on greening of the Afro-Asian Dust Belt during the early Holocene likely led to potential sources in Central Asia dominating dust export to West Asia during this period. In contrast, the dominant western and southwest Asian and Eastern African sources have prevailed during the mid-Holocene to modern times. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Asynchronous and Synchronous Teaching and Learning in High-School Distance Education

This paper presents the results of an inductive, interpretive analysis of the perspectives of 42 Canadian high school distance education (DE) teachers on asynchronous and synchronous online teaching. The paper includes a conceptual overview of the affordances and constraints of each form of teaching. Findings provided insight into the following aspects of asynchronous and synchronous online teaching: degree of use; the tools used; the contexts in which each occur; students’ preferences; and limitations. Pedagogy emerged as more important than media for both asynchronous and synchronous online teaching. Synchronous online teaching relied on teacher- rather than student-centred approaches. Asynchronous online teaching provided support for selfpaced, highly independent forms of secondary DE supplemented by synchronous online teaching for answering questions and troubleshooting

Trade-offs Between Three Forest Ecosystem Services Across the State of New Hampshire, USA: Timber, Carbon, and Albedo

Forests are more frequently being managed to store and sequester carbon for the purposes of climate change mitigation. Generally, this practice involves long-term conservation of intact mature forests and/or reductions in the frequency and intensity of timber harvests. However, incorporating the influence of forest surface albedo often suggests that long rotation lengths may not always be optimal in mitigating climate change in forests characterized by frequent snowfall. To address this, we investigated trade-offs between three ecosystem services: carbon storage, albedo-related radiative forcing, and timber provisioning. We calculated optimal rotation length at 498 diverse Forest Inventory and Analysis forest sites in the state of New Hampshire, USA. We found that the mean optimal rotation lengths across all sites was 94 yr (standard deviation of sample means = 44 yr), with a large cluster of short optimal rotation lengths that were calculated at high elevations in the White Mountain National Forest. Using a regression tree approach, we found that timber growth, annual storage of carbon, and the difference between annual albedo in mature forest vs. a post-harvest landscape were the most important variables that influenced optimal rotation. Additionally, we found that the choice of a baseline albedo value for each site significantly altered the optimal rotation lengths across all sites, lowering the mean rotation to 59 yr with a high albedo baseline, and increasing the mean rotation to 112 yr given a low albedo baseline. Given these results, we suggest that utilizing temperate forests in New Hampshire for climate mitigation purposes through carbon storage and the cessation of harvest is appropriate at a site-dependent level that varies significantly across the state