Wages, productivity, and work intensity in the Great Depression

We show that U.S. manufacturing wages during the Great Depression were importantlydetermined by forces on firms' intensive margins. Short-run changes in work intensity and the longer-term goal of restoring full potential productivity combined to influence real wage growth. By contrast, the external effects of unemployment and replacement rates had much less impact. Empirical work is undertaken against the background of an efficient bargaining model that embraces employment, hours of work and work intensity

The Emerging Nature of Participation in Multispecies Interaction Design

Interactive technology has become integral part of daily life for both humans and animals, with animals often interacting with technologized environments on behalf of humans. For some, animals' participation in the design process is essential to design technology that can adequately support their activities. For others, animals' inability to understand and control design activities inevitably stands in the way of multispecies participatory practices. Here, we consider the essential elements of participation within interspecies interactions and illustrate its emergence, in spite of contextual constraints and asymmetries. To move beyond anthropomorphic notions of participation, and consequent anthropocentric practices, we propose a broader participatory model based on indexical semiosis, volition and choice; and we highlight dimensions that could define inclusive participatory practices more resilient to the diversity of understandings and goals among part-taking agents, and better able to account for the contribution of diverse, multispecies agents in interaction design and beyond

Some aspects of drainage in the territory of Hawaii

Typescript copy. At head of title: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. Bureau of Public Roads, Division of Agricultural Engineering

Effects of crop species on indigenous microflora and of silage additives on the microbial succession during the ensiling process

This study considered the effects of crop species (alfalfa vs. corn) and silage additives on six categories of indigenous microorganisms (those naturally occurring on the crop) important to silage fermentation, and on the microbial succession during the ensiling process. The numbers of streptococci, Enterobacteriaceae, yeasts and molds, lactate-using yeasts, and carbohydrate- fermenting clostridial spores were higher on corn than on alfalfa. The lactic acid bacteria (LAB) comprised less than 2% of the total microbial populations on both crops. Alfalfa treated with Biomate® inoculant and the combination of dextrose and Biomate showed higher LAB counts than the control and dextrose treatments at 1 day post-ensiling. Adding dextrose accelerated multiplication of LAB in the ensiled alfalfa. Adding 1174® inoculant to corn silages did not affect the microbial succession during the ensiling process. Development of Enterobacteriaceae, yeasts and molds, lactate-using yeasts, and clostridia on either crop during ensiling was not influenced by the additives

Lexical-processing efficiency leverages novel word learning in infants and toddlers

Children who rapidly recognize and interpret familiar words typically have accelerated lexical growth, providing indirect evidence that lexical processing efficiency (LPE) is related to word‐learning ability. Here we directly tested whether children with better LPE are better able to learn novel words. In Experiment 1, 17‐ and 30‐month‐olds were tested on an LPE task and on a simple word‐learning task. The 17‐month‐olds’ LPE scores predicted word learning in a regression model, and only those with relatively good LPE showed evidence of learning. The 30‐month‐olds learned novel words quite well regardless of LPE, but in a more difficult word‐learning task (Experiment 2), their LPE predicted word‐learning ability. These findings suggest that LPE supports word‐learning processes, especially when learning is difficult

Global gene expression analysis provides insight into local adaptation to geothermal streams in tadpoles of the Andean toad Rhinella spinulosa

Indexación: Web of Science; Scopus.The anuran Rhinella spinulosa is distributed along the Andes Range at altitudes that undergo wide daily and seasonal variation in temperature. One of the populations inhabits geothermal streams, a stable environment that influences life history traits such as the timing of metamorphosis. To investigate whether this population has undergone local adaptation to this unique habitat, we carried out transcriptome analyses in animals from two localities in two developmental stages (prometamorphic and metamorphic) and exposed them to two temperatures (20 and 25 degrees C). RNA-Seq, de novo assembly and annotation defined a transcriptome revealing 194,469 high quality SNPs, with 1,507 genes under positive selection. Comparisons among the experimental conditions yielded 1,593 differentially expressed genes. A bioinformatics search for candidates revealed a total of 70 genes that are highly likely to be implicated in the adaptive response of the population living in a stable environment, compared to those living in an environment with variable temperatures. Most importantly, the population inhabiting the geothermal environment showed decreased transcriptional plasticity and reduced genetic variation compared to its counterpart from the non-stable environment. This analysis will help to advance the understanding of the molecular mechanisms that account for the local adaptation to geothermal streams in anurans.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01982-

Investigating a Hybrid Metaheuristic For Job Shop Rescheduling

Previous research has shown that artificial immune systems can be used to produce robust schedules in a manufacturing environment. The main goal is to develop building blocks (antibodies) of partial schedules that can be used to construct backup solutions (antigens) when disturbances occur during production. The building blocks are created based upon underpinning ideas from artificial immune systems and evolved using a genetic algorithm (Phase I). Each partial schedule (antibody) is assigned a fitness value and the best partial schedules are selected to be converted into complete schedules (antigens). We further investigate whether simulated annealing and the great deluge algorithm can improve the results when hybridised with our artificial immune system (Phase II). We use ten fixed solutions as our target and measure how well we cover these specific scenarios

Thermodynamic gauge-theory cascade

It is proposed that the cooling of a thermalized SU($N$) gauge theory can be formulated in terms of a cascade involving three effective theories with successively reduced (and spontaneously broken) gauge symmetries, SU($N$) $\to$ U(1)$^{N-1}$ $\to$ Z$_N$. The approach is based on the assumption that away from a phase transition the bulk of the quantum interaction inherent to the system is implicitly encoded in the (incomplete) classical dynamics of a collective part made of low-energy condensed degrees of freedom. The properties of (some of the) statistically fluctuating fields are determined by these condensate(s). This leads to a quasi-particle description at tree-level. It appears that radiative corrections, which are sizable at large gauge coupling, do not change the tree-level picture qualitatively. The thermodynamic self-consistency of the quasi-particle approach implies nonperturbative evolution equations for the associated masses. The temperature dependence of these masses, in turn, determine the evolution of the gauge coupling(s). The hot gauge system approaches the behavior of an ideal gas of massless gluons at asymptotically large temperature. A negative equation of state is possible at a stage where the system is about to settle into the phase of the (spontaneously broken) Z$_N$ symmetry.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figures, 1 reference added, minor corrections in text, errors in Sec. 3.2 corrected, PRD versio