Estimating the Knowledge-Capital Model of the Multinational Enterprise

What we term the firm includes three principal assumptions. First, services of knowledge-based and knowledge-generating activities, such as R&D, can be geographically separated from production and supplied to production facilities at low cost. Second, these knowledge-intensive activities are skilled-labor intensive relative to production. These characteristics give rise to vertical multinationals, which fragment production and locate activities according to factor prices and market size. Third, knowledge-based services have a (partial) joint-input characteristic that they can be supplied to additional production facilities at low cost. This characteristic gives rise to horizontal multinationals, which produce the same goods or services in multiple locations. In this paper, we note how this model predicts relationships between affiliate sales and country characteristics. We then subject these predictions to empirical tests.

Proceedings of the MECA Workshop on The Evoluation of the Martian Atmosphere

Topics addressed include: Mars' volatile budget; climatic implications of martian channels; bulk composition of Mars; accreted water inventory; evolution of CO2; dust storms; nonlinear frost albedo feedback on Mars; martian atmospheric evolution; effects of asteroidal and cometary impacts; and water exchange between the regolith and the atmosphere/cap system over obliquity timescales

Measuring Image Navigation and Registration Performance at the 3-Sigma Level Using Platinum Quality Landmarks

Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) Image Navigation and Registration (INR) performance is specified at the 3- level, meaning that 99.7% of a collection of individual measurements must comply with specification thresholds. Landmarks are measured by the Replacement Product Monitor (RPM), part of the operational GOES ground system, to assess INR performance and to close the INR loop. The RPM automatically discriminates between valid and invalid measurements enabling it to run without human supervision. In general, this screening is reliable, but a small population of invalid measurements will be falsely identified as valid. Even a small population of invalid measurements can create problems when assessing performance at the 3-sigma level. This paper describes an additional layer of quality control whereby landmarks of the highest quality ("platinum") are identified by their self-consistency. The platinum screening criteria are not simple statistical outlier tests against sigma values in populations of INR errors. In-orbit INR performance metrics for GOES-12 and GOES-13 are presented using the platinum landmark methodology

Compact Midwave Infrared System (CMIS) for Feature Tracking

The Compact Midwave Infrared System (CMIS) is a multi-angle, multi-spectral radiometer designed for high-spatial resolution stereo imaging in the shortwave infrared (SWIR)/midwave infrared (MWIR). The unique design of CMIS enables the capability to track diverse targets ranging from hot wildfires to cold clouds. CMIS is a low-size, -weight and -power (SWaP) instrument that can be accommodated on a small-satellite constellation to enable a rapid revisit rate needed for characterizing dynamic scenes. CMIS employs mature stereographic techniques to retrieve object heights and motion vectors that are free of the ambiguities between height assignment and along-track motions that are apparent in some earth-observing missions. This capability can be applied to cloud motions to derive accurate 3D winds related to the development and maintenance of atmospheric rivers, for example. An airborne test campaign of four NASA Gulfstream III flights successfully demonstrated CMIS capabilities. This presentation will describe the results of those flights, including a limited comparison against the ADM Aeolus lidar, and define a concept of operations for quantifying both horizontal and vertical motions

Exact Dynamics of Multicomponent Bose-Einstein Condensates in Optical Lattices in One, Two and Three Dimensions

Numerous exact solutions to the nonlinear mean-field equations of motion are constructed for multicomponent Bose-Einstein condensates on one, two, and three dimensional optical lattices. We find both stationary and nonstationary solutions, which are given in closed form. Among these solutions are a vortex-anti-vortex array on the square optical lattice and modes in which two or more components slosh back and forth between neighboring potential wells. We obtain a variety of solutions for multicomponent condensates on the simple cubic lattice, including a solution in which one condensate is at rest and the other flows in a complex three-dimensional array of intersecting vortex lines. A number of physically important solutions are stable for a range of parameter values, as we show by direct numerical integration of the equations of motion.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figure

MISR-GOES 3D Winds: Implications for Future LEO-GEO and LEO-LEO Winds

Global wind observations are fundamental for studying weather and climate dynamics and for operational forecasting. Most wind measurements come from atmospheric motion vectors (AMVs) by tracking the displacement of cloud or water vapor features. These AMVs generally rely on thermal infrared (IR) techniques for their height assignments, which are subject to large uncertainties in the presence of weak or reversed vertical temperature gradients near the planetary boundary layer (PBL)and tropopause folds. Stereo imaging can overcome the height assignment problem using geometric parallax for feature height determination. In this study we develop a stereo 3D-Wind algorithm to simultaneously retrieve AMV and height from geostationary (GEO) and low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite imagery and apply it to collocated Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)and Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) imagery. The new algorithm improves AMV and height relative to products from GOES or MISR alone, with an estimated accuracy of <0.5 m/s in AMV and <200 m in height with 2.2 km sampling. The algorithm can be generalized to other LEO-GEO or LEO-LEO combinations for greater spatiotemporal coverage. The technique demonstrated with MISR and GOES has important implications for future high-quality AMV observations, for which a low-cost constellation of CubeSats can play a vital role

Metallurgical and Corrosion Assessment of Submerged Tanker S.S. \u3ci\u3eMontebello\u3c/i\u3e

The Union Oil Tanker S.S. Montebello was torpedoed and sunk six miles (9.7 km) off the coast of Cambria, California by a Japanese submarine on December 23, 1941, two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. With close proximity to the National Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary, concern about possible crude oil contamination led to the most recent expedition to the site in October 2011. Assessment of the shell plate found that the average corrosion rate was very low and the structure will remain stable for many decades

Corrosion of Civil War Era \u3ci\u3eSub Marine Explorer\u3c/i\u3e—Part 2

The Sub Marine Explorer was designed and built by Julius H. Kroehl, who was born in Prussia in 1820. After migrating to the United States in 1838 and becoming a citizen, he served in the Union Navy (United States Navy during the Civil War) as an underwater demolitions expert. He left the Navy in 1863 and began designing a “sub-marine” that would facilitate Union forces’ mine removal and obstruction clearance. At the end of the Civil War, he became an engineer for the Pacific Pearl Co., an organization interested in using the craft to recover pearls from deep sea oyster beds in the Bay of Panama. Decompression sickness (the bends), unknown at the time, began to affect the crew in 1869, which led to the abandonment of Explorer in the tidal zone of St. Elmo’s Island (Isla San Telmo) in the Archipielago de las Perlas, Panama

Corrosion of Civil War Era Sub Marine Explorer—Part 1

The Sub Marine Explorer is one of five submersibles (submarines) constructed prior to 1870 that have survived either in museums or as in situ archaeological sites around the world. Since 1869, the wreck of Explorer has emerged at low tide on the beach of Isla San Telmo, Archipiélago de las Perlas, Panama, located ~75 km southwest of Panama City in the Bay of Panama. In 2001, James Delgado visited the site. Locals described the wreck as a World War II-era Japanese midget submarine. Delgado consulted with Richard Wills, an expert on American Civil War submarines, and confirmed that the well-preserved wreck was the Sub Marine Explorer from the Civil War period