State Higher Education Spending and the Tax Revolt

Public effort in support of higher education – measured as state funding per thousand dollars of personal income – has declined by thirty percent since the late 1970s. During this time period many states implemented Tax and Expenditure Limits and/or supermajority requirements for tax increases. We use a forty-eight state panel from 1961 to 2001 to evaluate the effect of these tax revolt institutions for state effort on behalf of higher education. These provisions have a statistically significant and economically large impact on the timing and magnitude of this decline in state effort. An understanding of the fiscal environment caused by these provisions is critical for the future of state-supported higher education.State higher education spending, tax revolt, Tax and Expenditure Limits

Lunar Resource Assessment: an Industry Perspective

The goals of the U.S. space program are to return to the Moon, establish a base, and continue onward to Mars. To accomplish this in a relatively short time frame and to avoid the high costs of transporting materials from the Earth, resources on the Moon will need to be mined. Oxygen will be one of the most important resources, to be used as a rocket propellant and for life support. Ilmenite and lunar regolith have both been considered as ores for the production of oxygen. Resource production on the Moon will be a very important part of the U.S. space program. To produce resources we must explore to identify the location of ore or feedback and calculate the surface and underground reserves. Preliminary resource production tests will provide the information that can be used in final plant design. Bechtel Corporation's experience in terrestrial engineering and construction has led to an interest in lunar resource assessment leading to the construction of production facilities on the Moon. There is an intimate link between adequate resource assessment to define feedstock quantity and quality, material processing requirements, and the successful production of lunar oxygen. Although lunar resource assessment is often viewed as a research process, the engineering and production aspects are very important to consider. Resource production often requires the acquisition of different types, scales, or resolutions of data than that needed for research, and it is needed early in the exploration process. An adequate assessment of the grade, areal extent, and depth distribution of the resources is a prerequisite to mining. The need for a satisfactory resource exploration program using remote sensing techniques, field sampling, and chemical and physical analysis is emphasized. These data can be used to define the ore for oxygen production and the mining, processing facilities, and equipment required

Federal Financial Aid Policy and College Behavior

This monograph by Robert B. Archibald and David H. Feldman finds little evidence that increases in federal financial aid drive up college tuition, and that institutions rarely rely on federal aid as a rationale to give out less of their own institutional aid. The authors use the so-called Bennett Hypothesis as the launching pad for their analysis. First advanced by William Bennett, secretary of education in the Reagan administration, the theory suggests that the availability of federal student loans, particularly subsidized loans, provides “cover” for institutions to raise tuition because students can offset any price increase with these loans. However, they find no evidence for this link for most institutions

The Landscape of the College Cost Debate

This chapter introduces the subject matter and the mode of analysis in the book. This chapter explains why costs and prices are quite different at colleges and universities. The way one thinks about changes in college costs and college prices depends on where one sits. In particular, a close-up view focused exclusively on colleges and universities will lead to quite different conclusions than an aerial view that places colleges and universities in a broader economy-wide perspective. This chapter explains why the book adopts the aerial view rather than a close-up view. The chapter ends with a preview of the results in the remainder of the book, emphasizing the critical role of technological progress. The pace of technological progress and the type of technological progress have significant influences on college costs and prices.https://scholarworks.wm.edu/librariesbookchapters/1006/thumbnail.jp

The Anatomy of College Tuition

A report by Robert B. Archibald and David H. Feldman based on their book, Why Does College Cost So Much? explores an economic framework for the forces driving college tuition

Does Federal Aid Drive College Tuition?

The “greedy colleges” thesis conflicts with how nonprofit universities decide on admissions and pricing

RESIK observations of He-like Ar X-ray line emission in solar flares

The Ar XVII X-ray line group principally due to transitions 1s2 - 1s2l (l=s, p) near 4 Anstroms was observed in numerous flares by the RESIK bent crystal spectrometer aboard CORONAS-F between 2001 and 2003. The three line features include the Ar XVII w (resonance line), a blend of x and y (intercombination lines), and z (forbidden line), all of which are blended with Ar XVI dielectronic satellites. The ratio G, equal to [I(x+y) + I(z)]/I(w), varies with electron temperature Te mostly because of unresolved dielectronic satellites. With temperatures estimated from GOES X-ray emission, the observed G ratios agree fairly well with those calculated from CHIANTI and other data. With a two-component emission measure, better agreement is achieved. Some S XV and S XVI lines blend with the Ar lines, the effect of which occurs at temperatures greater than 8MK, allowing the S/Ar abundance ratio to be determined. This is found to agree with coronal values. A nonthermal contribution is indicated for some spectra in the repeating-pulse flare of 2003 February 6.Comment: Latex file and 3 ps files. Astrophysical Journal Letters (accepted, June 2008

A solar spectroscopic absolute abundance of argon from RESIK

Observations of He-like and H-like Ar (Ar XVII and Ar XVIII) lines at 3.949 Angstroms and 3.733 Angstroms respectively with the RESIK X-ray spectrometer on the CORONAS-F spacecraft, together with temperatures and emission measures from the two channels of GOES, have been analyzed to obtain the abundance of Ar in flare plasmas in the solar corona. The line fluxes per unit emission measure show a temperature dependence like that predicted from theory, and lead to spectroscopically determined values for the absolute Ar abundance, A(Ar) = 6.44 pm 0.07 (Ar XVII) and 6.49 pm 0.16 (Ar XVIII) which are in agreement to within uncertainties. The weighted mean is 6.45 pm 0.06, which is between two recent compilations of the solar Ar abundance and suggest that the photospheric and coronal abundances of Ar are very similar.Comment: 4 figure

The Solar Flare Iron Abundance

The abundance of iron is measured from emission line complexes at 6.65 keV (Fe line) and 8 keV (Fe/Ni line) in {\em RHESSI} X-ray spectra during solar flares. Spectra during long-duration flares with steady declines were selected, with an isothermal assumption and improved data analysis methods over previous work. Two spectral fitting models give comparable results, viz. an iron abundance that is lower than previous coronal values but higher than photospheric values. In the preferred method, the estimated Fe abundance is $A({\rm Fe}) = 7.91 \pm 0.10$ (on a logarithmic scale, with $A({\rm H}) = 12$), or $2.6 \pm 0.6$ times the photospheric Fe abundance. Our estimate is based on a detailed analysis of 1,898 spectra taken during 20 flares. No variation from flare to flare is indicated. This argues for a fractionation mechanism similar to quiet-Sun plasma. The new value of $A({\rm Fe})$ has important implications for radiation loss curves, which are estimated.Comment: Accepted by Astrophysical Journa