Why Labor Unions Have Grown Reluctant To Use the “S” Word. Global, High-Tech Economy Makes Striking Riskier As Membership Declines. A Sense of Shared Purpose, 1999

Newspaper article about strikes and the role of unions in strikes, The Wall Street Journal. Vol. 104, No. 118, December 16, 1999

Evaluation of lens distortion errors in video-based motion analysis

In an effort to study lens distortion errors, a grid of points of known dimensions was constructed and videotaped using a standard and a wide-angle lens. Recorded images were played back on a VCR and stored on a personal computer. Using these stored images, two experiments were conducted. Errors were calculated as the difference in distance from the known coordinates of the points to the calculated coordinates. The purposes of this project were as follows: (1) to develop the methodology to evaluate errors introduced by lens distortion; (2) to quantify and compare errors introduced by use of both a 'standard' and a wide-angle lens; (3) to investigate techniques to minimize lens-induced errors; and (4) to determine the most effective use of calibration points when using a wide-angle lens with a significant amount of distortion. It was seen that when using a wide-angle lens, errors from lens distortion could be as high as 10 percent of the size of the entire field of view. Even with a standard lens, there was a small amount of lens distortion. It was also found that the choice of calibration points influenced the lens distortion error. By properly selecting the calibration points and avoidance of the outermost regions of a wide-angle lens, the error from lens distortion can be kept below approximately 0.5 percent with a standard lens and 1.5 percent with a wide-angle lens

More Enduring Questions in Cognitive IS Research

In the April 2012 issue of the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Michael Davern, Teresa Shaft, and Dov Te’eni published an article titled “Cognition Matters: Enduring Questions in IS Research”. Their paper reviewed much of the history of cognitive research in the IS discipline, especially that related to human-computer interaction and decision support systems. While we believe their article is excellent in many respects, we also believe that it omitted a great deal of the most basic cognitive research performed in the IS domain over the past 10-15 years, especially work in the area of systems analysis and design. Our purpose in this paper is to supplement the work of Davern et al. by discussing much of this recent work. We use two theoretical lenses to organize our review: basic cognition and behavioral decision-making research. Our review provides many illustrations of IS research in these areas, including memory and categorization (basic cognition) and heuristics and biases (behavioral decision making). The result, we believe, is a fuller picture of the breadth of cognition-based work in the IS discipline in general and systems analysis and design in particular. The paper provides further evidence of the importance of cognitive research in IS and suggests additional enduring questions for future investigations

Elliptical Polarizers, Tags and Identification Systems Using Frequency Selective Surfaces

An identification system and associated method for identifying objects includes at least on tag having encoded information attached to the surface of an object to be identified, wherein the tag includes a first FSS-based elliptical polarization filter which provides the encoding. A remotely located receiver including a second FSS-based elliptical polarization filter and a linear polarizer optically coupled to the second filter is operable for differentially attenuating the first and second orthogonal polarization states allowing a determination whether the intensity pattern corresponds to the encoded information

Scanning Electron Microscopy of Chondritic Meteorites: Evidence for Condensation and Aggregation Processes During the Birth of the Solar System

Carbonaceous chondrite meteorites preserve evidence of how the solar system formed and evolved through its earliest stages. Extracting these clues from small and very fine grained (a few tens of μm and smaller in many cases) meteorite components has required extensive use of micro beam techniques-scanning electron microscopy (SEM), electron and ion microprobe. Correlated studies have allowed textural, major and trace element and isotopic data to be gathered on the same precious microsamples. The best method for examining textures in these meteorites is scanning electron microscopy of flat polished sections using compositional back-scattered electron imaging

Stoner Nation: The Impact of Cannabis Use on Gambling Behavior

Abstract: Nearly 40 U.S. states have legalized marijuana use in some form and there are current efforts at the Federal level to reclassify cannabis from its status as a Schedule I drug, the classification meant for the most dangerous substances, to a less restrictive substance. Reclassification would be a first step toward wider legalization, a move backed by most Americans. Because Oregon was an early adopter of legalized recreational cannabis use and has widespread access to more forms of legalized gambling than most states, Oregon could be considered a proving ground for studying the interaction between gambling behaviors and widespread cannabis use among the general U.S. population. This presentation will explore potential impacts legalized cannabis has on gambling behavior by describing findings from a probability-based panel survey of 1,040 participants, aged 18 years or over, and living in Oregon. The survey found that cannabis users, compared to non-users, were 176% more likely to have gambled in the past 12-months and cannabis users were 133% more likely to report gambling two or more times per week than non-users. Problem gambling risk, as measured by the Brief Biosocial Gambling Screen (BBGS), was reported by 13% of those who gambled without cannabis use, 21% among those reporting gambling and cannabis use, and among those that screened positive on the Cannabis Disorder Screening Test, 39% scored positive on the BBGS. Further, gamblers who used cannabis, compared to those who did not, were 78% more likely to increase online gambling ‘Fairly or Very Often’ during the COVID pandemic when many brick-and-mortar gambling venues were shut down. The implications of these findings and others will be discussed. Implications Statement: Oregon could be considered a proving ground for studying the interaction between gambling behaviors and widespread cannabis use. Findings from this study have important policy implications for states moving toward legalizing cannabis use and important population health implications for those states that newly legalized cannabis use

Teaching in a Larger Social Context: Using Simulations to Demonstrate Socioeconomic Principles and Their Relevance to Law

In this Article, the authors describe socioeconomic theory application to law simulations that require student competition or cooperation and which demonstrate problems that their areas of law are designed to address. Stake uses two socioeconomic concepts to introduce students to property. First, he has an exercise that uses the allocation of property rights in whales to illustrate the concept of rent seeking or the possibility that a competitive market may induce investors to spend more collectively than they can hope to recover. Second, he uses cognitive psychology to analyze adverse possession. Dau-Schmidt, in the second half of his paper with Stake, describes innovative exercises he used in courses in labor and employment to illustrate employer-employee relationships