48,846 research outputs found
Rights, Not Interests: Resolving Value Clashes under the National Labor Relations Act
[Excerpt] This provocative book by the leading historian of the National Labor Relations Board offers a reexamination of the NLRB and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) by applying internationally accepted human rights principles as standards for judgment. These new standards challenge every orthodoxy in U.S. labor law and labor relations. James A. Gross argues that the NLRA was and remains at its core a workers’ rights statute.
Gross shows how value clashes and choices between those who interpret the NLRA as a workers’ rights statute and those who contend that the NLRA seeks only a balance between the economic interests of labor and management have been major influences in the evolution of the board and the law. Gross contends, contrary to many who would write its obituary, that the NLRA is not dead. Instead he concludes with a call for visionary thinking, which would include, for example, considering the U.S. Constitution as a source of workers’ rights. Rights, Not Interests will appeal to labor activists and those who are trying to reform our labor laws as well as scholars and students of management, human resources, and industrial relation
Virus Reduction by the Stanford Onsite Wastewater Treatment System
A field study to examine the Stanford Onsite Wastewater Treatment System\u27s ability to remove bacteriophage from wastewater was conducted. MS2 Coliphage was Injected Into the low pressure pipe (LPP) distribution system to achieve an Influent concentration of 1.6 x 106 plague forming units per milliliter (PFU/ml). The bacteriophage was Injected Into the system three times during the day, and samples were taken from drainage tiles of the treatment system. Tile drainage was assayed on conform bacteria host cultures for MS2 phage. The treatment system removed two to three logs (99% to 99.9%) of the phage. During the past two years, the treatment system has also reduced total organic carbon from 55 mg/1 to 5 mg/1. The system also reduced the ammonium-nitrogen concentration from 41 mg/1 to 1 mg/1. The nitrate-nitrogen concentration rose from less than 1 mg/1 1n the Influent to 4 mg/1 1n the effluent. Over the past two years, the geometric mean fecal coliform concentration was 18 colony-forming units per ml (CFU/ml). The effluent water quality meets the Arkansas Department of Health, Standards for Outdoor Bathing Places
High-precision covariant one-boson-exchange potentials for np scattering below 350 MeV
All realistic potential models for the two-nucleon interaction are to some
extent based on boson exchange. However, in order to achieve an essentially
perfect fit to the scattering data, characterized by a chi2/Ndata ~ 1, previous
potentials have abandoned a pure one boson-exchange mechanism (OBE). Using a
covariant theory, we have found a OBE potential that fits the 2006 world np
data below 350 MeV with a chi2/Ndata = 1.06 for 3788 data. Our potential has
fewer adjustable parameters than previous high-precision potentials, and also
reproduces the experimental triton binding energy without introducing
additional irreducible three-nucleon forces.Comment: 4 pages; revised version with augmented data sets; agrees with
published versio
Poisoning of Hydrogen Dissociation at Pd (100) by Adsorbed Sulfur Studied by ab initio Quantum Dynamics and ab initio Molecular Dynamics
We report calculations of the dissociative adsorption of H_2 at Pd (100)
covered with 1/4 monolayer of sulfur using quantum dynamics as well as
molecular dynamics and taking all six degrees of freedom of the two H atoms
fully into account. The ab initio potential-energy surface (PES) is found to be
very strongly corrugated. In particular we discuss the influence of tunneling,
zero-point vibrations, localization of the nuclei's wave function when narrow
valleys of the PES are passed, steering of the approaching H_2 molecules
towards low energy barrier configurations, and the time scales of the center of
mass motion and the other degrees of freedom. Several ``established'' concepts,
which were derived from low-dimensional dynamical studies, are shown to be not
valid.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Surf. Sci. Lett. Other related
publications can be found at http://www.rz-berlin.mpg.de/th/paper.htm
Two-pion exchange potential and the amplitude
We discuss the two-pion exchange potential which emerges from a box diagram
with one nucleon (the spectator) restricted to its mass shell, and the other
nucleon line replaced by a subtracted, covariant scattering amplitude
which includes , Roper, and isobars, as well as contact terms
and off-shell (non-pole) dressed nucleon terms. The amplitude satisfies
chiral symmetry constraints and fits data below 700 MeV pion
energy. We find that this TPE potential can be well approximated by the
exchange of an effective sigma and delta meson, with parameters close to the
ones used in one-boson-exchange models that fit data below the pion
production threshold.Comment: 9 pages (RevTex) and 7 postscript figures, in one uuencoded gzipped
tar fil
Persistence of complex food webs in metacommunities
Metacommunity theory is considered a promising approach for explaining
species diversity and food web complexity. Recently Pillai et al. proposed a
simple modeling framework for the dynamics of food webs at the metacommunity
level. Here, we employ this framework to compute general conditions for the
persistence of complex food webs in metacommunities. The persistence conditions
found depend on the connectivity of the resource patches and the structure of
the assembled food web, thus linking the underlying spatial patch-network and
the species interaction network. We find that the persistence of omnivores is
more likely when it is feeding on (a) prey on low trophic levels, and (b) prey
on similar trophic levels
Prioritising the best use of biomass resources: conceptualising trade-offs
02.09.13 KB. Ok to add report to Spiral. Authors hold copyrightUsing biomass to provide energy services is one of the most versatile options for increasing the proportion of renewable energy in the existing system. This report reviews metrics used to compare alternative bio-energy pathways and identifies limitations inherent in the way that they are calculated and interpreted. It also looks at how companies and investors approach strategic decisions in the bio-energy area. Bio-energy pathways have has physical and economic attributes that can be measured or modelled. These include: the capital cost, operating cost, emissions to air, land and water. Conceptually, comparing alternative pathways is as simple as selecting the attributes and metrics you consider to be most important and ranking the alternative pathways accordingly. At an abstract level there is good agreement about which features of bio-energy pathways are desirable, but there is little agreement about which performance metrics best capture all the relevant information about a bio-energy pathway. Between studies there is also a great deal of variation and this impedes comparison. Common metrics describe energetic performance, economic performance, environmental performance (emissions, land and water use), and social and ecological performance. Compound metrics may be used to integrate multiple attributes but their highly aggregate nature may make them difficult to interpret. Insights that may be drawn from the analysis include:
Gauging the three-nucleon spectator equation
We derive relativistic three-dimensional integral equations describing the
interaction of the three-nucleon system with an external electromagnetic field.
Our equations are unitary, gauge invariant, and they conserve charge. This has
been achieved by applying the recently introduced gauging of equations method
to the three-nucleon spectator equations where spectator nucleons are always on
mass shell. As a result, the external photon is attached to all possible places
in the strong interaction model, so that current and charge conservation are
implemented in the theoretically correct fashion. Explicit expressions are
given for the three-nucleon bound state electromagnetic current, as well as the
transition currents for the scattering processes
\gamma He3 -> NNN, Nd -> \gamma Nd, and \gamma He3 -> Nd. As a result, a
unified covariant three-dimensional description of the NNN-\gamma NNN system is
achieved.Comment: 23 pages, REVTeX, epsf, 4 Postscript figure
Image Processing Instrumentation for Giardia lamblia Detection
Currently, the identification and enumeration of Giardia Iamblia cysts are based upon microscopic methods requiring individuals proficient in this area. It is a tedious process which consumes time that could be constructively used elsewhere. This project attempts to alleviate that burden by employing a computer to automatically process Indirect Fluorescent Antibody (IFA) prepared slides using digital image processing techniques. A computer controlled frame grabber, in conjunction with a CCD TV camera mounted on the epi-fluorescence microscope phototube, captures the light intensities of the objects in view under the microscope objective. The captured image is stored as pixels, with each pixel having a numerical value that can be altered using linear contrast enhancement and bit-slicing to emphasize the cysts and eliminate the majority of unwanted objects from the image. The altered image is then analyzed by a vector trace routine for typical area and perimeters characteristic to Giardia lamblia cysts. Objects in the image matching these characteristics are most likely cysts and are added to a running tally of the number of cysts present on the slide
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