Inverting the regulatory rules? Optimizing airport regulation to account for commercial revenues

This paper analyzes the role of commercial revenues in today's airport regulatory system. We find that the current regulatory regime only partially achieves core aims such as welfare maximization. After highlighting instances in which airport price regulation is not economically justified, we explore the potential for airports to exercise market power in the commercial sector. In certain circumstances, we advocate the introduction of an 'inverted' dual till system under which commercial as opposed to aviation revenues are the focus of price regulation. The suitability of such a system varies from airport to airport, however, depending on various factors, such as the airport's competitive environment and the presence of capacity constraints. --Airport regulation,non-aviation revenues,price differentiation,single till,dual till

Family farm and financial asset

In Sweden, the potential deregulation of the land market has been discussed in recent years, motivated by the increasing demand for external capital in agriculture. Corporate entities’ are currently restricted from purchasing farmland by the Swedish Land Acquisition Act. In this thesis, I have wanted to look at a case of this type of landowner, to investigate what consequences its land ownership has on agrarian structures. This study is as such centered around the case of the Uppsala University Endowment Management (UUEM), an institution which owns around 15.000 hectares of farmland in mid-Sweden as part of its larger financial portfolio. The institution manages this agricultural land with the explicit aim of achieving the highest possible returns on investment. The results of this qualitative study, which is based on semi-structured interviews with twelve informants, indicate that the economic benefits of keeping land for this type of long-term, production-oriented land investor derives from the extraction of land rents, and the capital gains made when land or real estate is decoupled from agricultural production as a consequence of urbanization or the consolidation of farmland. While the profits made from owning agricultural land are relatively modest, owning farmland as an asset is still attractive for the UUEM as it is a way to lower the institution’s total portfolio risk, seeing as the relatively high risks associated with agricultural production are externalized to the farmers leasing its land. Even as the land is leased out, the UUEM was found to be exerting management control over farms, notably through the top-down consolidation of land and (re)configuration of units, the layout and infrastructure of which comes to be designed in a way which favors capital-intensive, large-scale production. The institutional landowner can as such be said to steer agricultural production into a certain matrix, and limit the farm development paths which can reasonably be pursued by farmers on its land. Many interviewed lessees viewed the corporate entity’s land ownership in a positive light, seeing it to be providing tenants with the possibility of keeping up with the increased capital requirements of agriculture in a region where farming is increasingly intensive and large-scale. Rapid land appreciation, land concentration, and the subsequent growing separation between labour and ownership over the means of production was not politicized by these informants, who seemed to view this as more or less a natural process. By contrast, a few lessees questioned the increasing concentration of land, in some cases expressing a preference for a land use and ownership pattern characterized by less large-scale, autonomous family farms. As the capital intensity of agricultural production increase, agrarian structures are impacted, with the family farms in the investigated case seemingly having ceded some power over farm development and reproduction to the landowner. At the same time, farmers maintained considerable freedom when choosing what to produce and how, and there were indications that the increasing financialization of land also opened up new possible avenues of action for large-scale agricultural producers. The proposal to deregulate corporate entities’ land ownership in Sweden has been motivated by the advantages of scale in agriculture. This type of agrarian development however also contributes to a loss of livelihoods and an increased concentration of land, among other things, which is a reason why this deregulation and its effect on land use and ownership patterns deserves to be debated

Shared Habitats: the MoverWitness Paradigm

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/642 on 14.02.2017 by CS (TIS)This practice-led research thesis analyses and visualises central components of Authentic Movement, with particular reference to the work of Dr Janet Adler. By contextualising and comparing this improvisation method with modern, post-modern and contemporary movement practices the author describes the emergence of Authentic Movement and distinguishes it from other practices. A new and original viewpoint is adopted and the practice's aesthetic, visual and empathetic characteristics are explored in relationship to and through visual art. The author, a learned Authentic Movement practitioner, critiques, deconstructs and reframes the practice from a visual arts- and performance-based, phenomenological perspective renaming it 'the MoverWitness exchange'. Embedded aspects and skills of the MoverWitness exchange, usually only accessible to firsthand practitioners of the method, are made explicit through research processes of analysis, application and visualisation. Hereby the practice's unique capacity to contain and express binary embodied experiences and concepts is exposed. Resulting insights are crystallised in a distinctive understanding of the MoverWitness exchange that emphasises its suitability as a new learning and/or research methodology for inter- and cross-disciplinary application.Dartington College of Art

InN dielectric function from the midinfrared to the visible range

The dispersion of the dielectric function for wurtzite InN is analytically evaluated in the region near the fundamental energy gap. The real part of the dielectric function has a logarithmic singularity at the absorption edge. This results in the large contribution into the optical dielectric constant. For samples with degenerate carriers, the real part of the dielectric function is divergent at the absorption edge. The divergence is smeared with temperatures or relaxation rate. The imaginary part of the dielectric function has a plateau far away from the absorption onset.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Real Parenting in a Virtual World: Roles of Parents in Online Mathematics Courses

Enrollment in K-12 online courses continues to rise substantially each year (Evergreen Education Group, 2015). As the number of students taking courses online increases, the number of parents parenting in online courses also increases. This qualitative exploratory case study, bounded by the online program that was studied, was performed to better understand parents’ perceptions of their roles in online high school mathematics courses. Eighty-seven parents participated in an online questionnaire which elicited both quantitative and qualitative responses. Guided by the major tenets of symbolic interactionism theoretical framework, these responses were combined with data from six interviews to investigate why parents chose to enroll their children in online mathematics courses, their expectations pertaining to the online mathematics course, and their perceived roles and responsibilities in the online mathematics course. Through a detailed process of analyzing the questionnaire and interview data, nine themes emerged: (a) participant parents enrolled their children in online mathematics courses to remove their child from a negative social environment and to avoid distractions in the traditional setting; (b) participant parents want their children to have the flexibility to work ahead of their peers; (c) the school should provide quality curriculum and resources for teachers, students, and parents; (d) teachers should identify and address when students need help; (e) teachers should be available and approachable; (f) students should put forth their best effort; (g) students should ask for help when they experience difficulty understanding a new concept; (h) participant parents monitor to make sure their children are completing assignments and asking for help; and (i) participant parents help their children by re-teaching mathematics concepts or encouraging the child to seek help from others. This study has theoretical and practical significance by adding to literature investigating parental roles in mathematics education and providing insight on the nature of parental involvement in an online high school mathematics program. Consistent with relevant literature (Currie-Rubin & Smith, 2014; Curtis, 2013; Thurber, 2013), results of this study call upon educators to invest in efforts that enhance understanding of parents’ perspectives in an effort to strengthen parental involvement in online mathematics courses. INDEX WORDS: Mathematics, Online learning, Online mathematics, K-12 online learning, Virtual learning, Parental involvement, Parental engagement, Parental roles, Interactions, Teacher responsibilities, Student responsibilities, Success, Perceptions of success, Flexibilit

Development of a concept for user interaction in a VR ‚smart environment‘ scenario while using a tablet PC

Durch ‚smart Environments‘, also intelligente Umgebungen, welche durch eine Vernetzung von Alltagsgegenständen den Menschen bei ihrer täglichen Arbeit helfen sollen, wurden Konzepte wie die des ‚smart Home‘ und ‚smart Office‘ entwickelt. Diese stellen Neuentwicklungen dar, die das alltägliche Leben des Menschen stark beeinflussen werden. Um diese Szenarien greifbar zu machen und sie auf Nutzerfreundlichkeit und Akzeptanz zu testen, werden sie in einer virtuellen Umgebung simuliert. Um die spätere Nutzerinteraktion realitätsnah abbilden zu können, muss dazu ein Interaktionskonzept entwickelt werden. Dieses wird im Rahmen dieser Bachelorarbeit realisiert. Das dafür zum Einsatz kommende Interaktionsgerät stellt hierbei ein handelsüblicher Tablet-PC mit Touchscreen dar. Dieser dient der Kommunikation des Menschen mit dem ihm umgebenden intelligenten System. Es werden Möglichkeiten aufgezeigt, welche die Interaktion intelligenter Geräte untereinander sowie zwischen System und Nutzer darstellen. Anwendungsbeispiele zur Umsetzung der virtuellen Umgebung sind aus den Bereichen ‚smart Home‘ und ‚smart Office‘ zu entwickeln. Dafür werden geeignete Interaktionen herausgefiltert, welche sinnvoll in der virtuellen Umgebung umzusetzen sind. Mit dieser Bachelorarbeit wird eine Grundlage geschaffen, welche die Umsetzung einer nutzerfreundlichen Benutzerschnittstelle ermöglicht, um zukünftige Neuentwicklungen im Bereich des ‚smart Environment‘ dem Menschen nahzubringen, so dass dieser es als selbstverständlich erfährt

Weiterentwicklung der Hintergrundschlierenmethode zu einem quantitativen Verfahren der Vermessung von Dichtefeldern

[no abstract

“Asking for help is a strength”—how to promote undergraduate medical students’ teamwork through simulation training and interprofessional faculty

The ability to team up and safely work in any kind of healthcare team is a critical asset and should be taught early on in medical education. Medical students should be given the chance to “walk the talk” of teamwork by training and reflecting in teams. Our goal was to design, implement and evaluate the feasibility of a simulation-based teamwork training (TeamSIM) for undergraduate medical students that puts generic teamwork skills centerstage. We designed TeamSIM to include 12 learning objectives. For this pre-post, mixed-methods feasibility study, third-year medical students, organized in teams of 11–12 students, participated and observed each other in eight simulations of different clinical situation with varying degrees of complexity (e.g., deteriorating patient in ward; trauma; resuscitation). Guided by an interprofessional clinical faculty with simulation-based instructor training, student teams reflected on their shared experience in structured team debriefings. Using published instruments, we measured (a) students’ reactions to TeamSIM and their perceptions of psychological safety via self-report, (b) their ongoing reflections via experience sampling, and (c) their teamwork skills via behavior observation. Ninety four students participated. They reported positive reactions to TeamSIM (M = 5.23, SD = 0.5). Their mean initial reported level of psychological safety was M = 3.8 (SD = 0.4) which rose to M = 4.3 (SD = 0.5) toward the end of the course [T(21) = −2.8, 95% CI −0.78 to-0.12, p = 0.011 (two-tailed)]. We obtained n = 314 headline reflections from the students and n = 95 from the faculty. For the students, the most frequent theme assigned to their headlines involved the concepts taught in the course such as “10 s for 10 min.” For the faculty, the most frequent theme assigned to their headlines were reflections on how their simulation session worked for the students. The faculty rated students’ teamwork skills higher after the last compared to the first debriefing. Undergraduate medical students can learn crucial teamwork skills in simulations supported by an experienced faculty and with a high degree of psychological safety. Both students and faculty appreciate the learning possibilities of simulation. At the same time, this learning can be challenging, intense and overwhelming. It takes a team to teach teamwork