The Crisis of Higher Education : An Economic Approach to Strategic Issues

In this paper, I will examine the current crisis in higher education in the United States by studying the history of the American economy’s effect on colleges and universities, evaluating different existing financial models, and assessing the current and future supply and demand of the industry. Examining trends in population and career/vocational paths across generations will help to better understand the challenges that lie ahead for colleges and university. I will be creating a Cournot model to evaluate how colleges and universities can stay competitive within highly saturated markets and meet prospective students’ financial needs. Many factors are involved in a college’s enrollment strategy that extend beyond pure economics. However, this research intends to provide a base equation for colleges and universities sharing the challenge of decreased enrollment. The goal is that the formula created will prove to be a starting point for colleges to set an enrollment minimum based on only the economic principals of Cournot. This approach requires the college or university to truly examine themselves and their competitors to adjust their offerings with fluctuating class sizes. This research will focus on Elizabethtown College as a case study, using its competitors to create the equation

Longitudinal and Transverse Wakefields Simulations and Studies in Dielectric-Coated Circular Waveguides

In recent years, there has been a growing interest and rapid experimental progress on the use of e.m. fields produced by electron beams passing through dielectric-lined structures and on the effects they might have on the drive and witness bunches. Short ultra-relativistic electron bunches can excite very intense wakefields, which provide an efficient acceleration through the dielectric wakefield accelerators (DWA) scheme with higher gradient than that in the conventional RF LINAC. These beams can also generate high power narrow band THz coherent Cherenkov radiation. These high gradient fields may create strong instabilities on the beam itself causing issues in plasma acceleration experiments (PWFA), plasma lensing experiments and in recent beam diagnostic applications. In this work we report the results of the simulations and studies of the wakefields generated by electron beams at different lengths and charges passing on and off axis in dielectric-coated circular waveguides. We also propose a semi-analytical method to calculate these high gradient fields without resorting to time consuming simulations

Mining cooperatives in Brazil: an overview

In the current literature, cooperatives are commonly linked to a network of contracts or coalition. This is particularly the case of producer owned cooperatives that operate in small business scale such as farmers or diggers which are members of the cooperative. Mining cooperatives wield significant influence over the mining sector. These organizations have been getting increasing importance as powerful actors to support diggers through initiatives and policies to improve small-scale mining activities. In spite of the importance of cooperatives to the local communities and small companies, scientific literature concerning their organization, benefits and barriers are still scarce. The objective of this research was to examine the actual scenario of mining cooperatives in Brazil analyzing how mining cooperatives could be used as a sustainable strategic network into the mining sector in Brazil.The authors would like to thank to CAPES and Science Without Borders scholarship, BEX Process 10.190-13-9 for providing financial support to this research.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Geographical Indications and Risks of Unsustainability Linked to “Disaffection Effects” in the Dairy Sector

This paper deals with the role of geographical indications (GI) in the dairy sector of Italy, with the purpose of highlighting eventual negative dynamics in the adhesion to the GI by the potential operators of Italy. A negative adhesion to the GI circuit shows a “disaffection effect,” and has relevant implications on sustainability on account of the role of a GI in boosting various dimensions of sustainability (economic, social, environmental). In order to verify the presence of a disaffection effect, an empirical analysis of the actors adhering to the GI dairy sector is carried out. Through the collection of secondary sources from official databases, the paper emphasises a negative trend in the adhesion to the GI dairy sector, which also reveals diversified territorial impacts. More precisely, unlike other sectors, the dairy sector reveals negative dynamics in the operators choosing to adhere to the GI circuits. The results of the analysis address some policy issues and solicit policy action to limit the disaffection effect on GI in the dairy sector

Evaluation of liquefaction potential in an intermountain Quaternary lacustrine basin (Fucino basin, central Italy)

In this study, we analyse the susceptibility to liquefaction of the Pozzone site, which is located on the northern side of the Fucino lacustrine basin in central Italy. In 1915, this region was struck by a M 7.0 earthquake, which produced widespread coseismic surface effects that were interpreted to be liquefaction-related. However, the interpretation of these phenomena at the Pozzone site is not straightforward. Furthermore, the site is characterized by an abundance of fine-grained sediments, which are not typically found in liquefiable soils. Therefore, in this study, we perform a number of detailed stratigraphic and geotechnical investigations (including continuous-coring borehole, CPTu, SDMT, SPT, and geotechnical laboratory tests) to better interpret these 1915 phenomena and to evaluate the liquefaction potential of a lacustrine environment dominated by fine-grained sedimentation. The upper 18.5 m of the stratigraphic succession comprises fine-grained sediments, including four strata of coarser sediments formed by interbedded layers of sand, silty sand and sandy silt. These strata, which are interpreted to represent the frontal lobes of an alluvial fan system within a lacustrine succession, are highly susceptible to liquefaction. We also find evidence of paleo-liquefaction, dated between 12.1–10.8 and 9.43–9.13 kyrs ago, occurring at depths of 2.1–2.3 m. These data, along with the aforementioned geotechnical analyses, indicate that this site would indeed be liquefiable in a 1915-like earthquake. Although we found a broad agreement among CPTu, DMT and shear wave velocity ‘‘simplified procedures’’ in detecting the liquefaction potential of the Pozzone soil, our results suggest that the use and comparison of different in situ techniques are highly recommended for reliable estimates of the cyclic liquefaction resistance in lacustrine sites characterized by high content of fine-grained soils. In geologic environments similar to the one analysed in this work, where it is difficult to detect liquefiable layers, one can identify sites that are susceptible to liquefaction only by using detailed stratigraphic reconstructions, in situ characterization, and laboratory analyses. This has implications for basic (Level 1) seismic microzonation mapping, which typically relies on the use of empirical evaluations based on geologic maps and pre-existing sub-surface data (i.e., age and type of deposits, prevailing grain size, with particular attention paid to clean sands, and depth of the water table).Published91-1115T. Sismologia, geofisica e geologia per l'ingegneria sismicaJCR Journa