Seafloor character and sedimentary processes in eastern Long Island Sound and western Block Island Sound

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2006. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geo-Marine Letters 26 (2006): 59-68, doi: 10.1007/s00367-006-0016-4.Multibeam bathymetric data and seismic-reflection profiles collected in eastern Long Island and western Block Island Sounds reveal previously unrecognized glacial features and modern bedforms. Glacial features include an ice-sculptured bedrock surface, a newly identified recessional moraine, exposed glaciolacustrine sediments, and remnants of stagnant-ice-contact deposits. Modern bedforms include fields of transverse sand waves, barchanoid waves, giant scour depressions, and pockmarks. Bedform asymmetry and scour around obstructions indicate that net sediment transport is westward across the northern par of the study area near Fishers Island and eastward across the southern par near Great Gull Island.This work was supported by the Coastal and Marine Geology Program of the U.S. Geological Survey, the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, and the Atlantic Hydrographic Branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Rational speculative bubbles: an empirical investigation of the London Stock Exchange

In recent years, a sharp divergence of London Stock Exchange equity prices from dividends has been noted. In this paper, we examine whether this divergence can be explained by reference to the existence of a speculative bubble. Three different empirical methodologies are used: variance bounds tests, bubble specification tests, and cointegration tests based on both ex post and ex ante data. We find that, stock prices diverged significantly from their fundamental values during the late 1990's, and that this divergence has all the characteristics of a bubble

Positive mental health in schizophrenia and healthy comparison groups: relationships with overall health and biomarkers

ObjectivePositive psychological factors (PPFs) have been reported to have a significant impact on health in the general population. However, little is known about the relationship of these factors with mental and physical health in schizophrenia.MethodOne hundred and thirty-five outpatients with schizophrenia and 127 healthy comparison subjects (HCs), aged 26-65 years, were evaluated with scales of resilience, optimism, happiness, and perceived stress. Measures of mental and physical health were also obtained. Regression analyses examined associations of a PPF composite with health variables.ResultsRelative to the HCs, the schizophrenia group had lower levels of PPFs. However, there was considerable heterogeneity, with over one-third of schizophrenia participants having values within the 'normative' range. The PPF composite was positively related to mental and physical health variables and with biomarkers of inflammation and insulin resistance. The relationship between PPFs and mental health was particularly strong for individuals with schizophrenia.ConclusionA sizable minority of adults with chronic schizophrenia have levels of resilience, optimism, happiness, and perceived stress similar to HCs. Psychosocial interventions to enhance PPFs should be tested in patients with serious mental illnesses, with the goal of improving their mental health (beyond controlling symptoms of psychosis) and their physical health

Enhancing Perceived Safety in Human–Robot Collaborative Construction Using Immersive Virtual Environments

Advances in robotics now permit humans to work collaboratively with robots. However, humans often feel unsafe working alongside robots. Our knowledge of how to help humans overcome this issue is limited by two challenges. One, it is difficult, expensive and time-consuming to prototype robots and set up various work situations needed to conduct studies in this area. Two, we lack strong theoretical models to predict and explain perceived safety and its influence on human–robot work collaboration (HRWC). To address these issues, we introduce the Robot Acceptance Safety Model (RASM) and employ immersive virtual environments (IVEs) to examine perceived safety of working on tasks alongside a robot. Results from a between-subjects experiment done in an IVE show that separation of work areas between robots and humans increases perceived safety by promoting team identification and trust in the robot. In addition, the more participants felt it was safe to work with the robot, the more willing they were to work alongside the robot in the future.University of Michigan Mcubed Grant: Virtual Prototyping of Human-Robot Collaboration in Unstructured Construction EnvironmentsPeer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145620/1/You et al. forthcoming in AutCon.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145620/4/You et al. 2018.pdfDescription of You et al. 2018.pdf : Published Versio

Ownership and location in the small domestic appliances industry: The de'longhi case

Ownership and location decisions are at the core of the development of multinational enterprises (MNEs) as they deeply impact the creation and appropriation of value in global value chains. Such decisions have been treated by extant literature mostly as oppositions characterized by trade-off alternatives, such as internalization versus externalization and domestic versus offshoring. In this chapter, we discuss the development of a multinational company, that is, De\u2019Longhi, as it has adjusted both ownership and location choices several times over the last 15 years. The case shows that in growing firms, such as De\u2019Longhi, ownership and location decisions are interrelated among each other and with several factors including: interdependences between value chain activities, corporate strategy, organizational culture and the time horizon of the above choices