Bargaining for Power: Resolving Open Questions From NRG Power Marketing, LLC v. Maine Public Utilities Commission

Many industries are subject toregulation, whether by the federal government,the state, or both. Electric utilitycompanies’ retail rates are subject to regulationby the states, and their wholesale ratesharged among enterprises involved in providing the electric power to retail sellers are regulated by the federal government. Under the Federal Power Act of 1935 (“FPA”), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) is responsible for ensuring that rates for wholesale electric power sales and electric transmission are “just and reasonable.” The “classic scheme” of administrative rate setting called for rates to be established unilaterally by the regulated companies and set forth in rate schedules of general applicability (i.e.,“tariffs”), subject to oversight by the relevant administrative agency. However, the federal government has regulated rates for goods and services transferred between businesses differently from the way rates between businesses and the public are regulated.The Supreme Court has noted that “[i]n wholesale markets, the party charging the rate and the party charged were often sophisticated businesses enjoying presumptively equal bargaining power, who could be expected to negotiate a ‘just and reasonable’ rate as between the two of them.” With the FPA, Congress departed from a strict scheme of tariff-only rate regulation, permitting wholesale arrangements between the parties to be established through individually-negotiated contracts, subject to FERC oversight. Over the years, the number of FERC-regulated transactions has grown, and FERC and electric utilities have developed new contractual vehicles under which to transact. Among other innovations, FERC has established organized markets, instituted a market-based rate program,and ordered electric industry restructuring (i.e., unbundling of power and transmission transactions). In addition, FERC has required electric utilities offering transmission service to do so pursuant to standardized tariff of general applicability, with rates established under the “classic scheme” of administrative rate setting mentioned above

Monte Carlo methods

Call number: LD2668 .R4 1963 K2

The association between industry-level discretion and strategic variety: long-term strategic positions and current behaviours

Executive discretion, the latitude for executives strategic decisions, is a powerful moderator of strategic decision making. In spite of its potential contribution to strategic management studies, Hambrick and Finkelstein's (1987) socio-political model of executive discretion has received little empirical research effort. Some of the basic propositions of the model, which incorporates industry, firm and individual characteristics as determinants of discretion have not been empirically tested. The restricted research effort is partly attributable to the lack of quantitative measures for industry-level discretion. This thesis initially uses the correlation between industry-level attentional homogeneity, the similarity in foci of attention of executives in an industry, and industry-level discretion to produce 116 new values for industry-level discretion for 23 U.S. 4-digit SIC coded industries for the years 1990 to1997. Predictive validity for the new values is demonstrated using long-term debt data and annual accounts adjustment data. Theil's (1992b) industry variety measure based on information theory is modified to produce strategic variety measures that permit pan-industry comparisons. Strong support is demonstrated for a positive association between variety in long-term strategic positions and industry-level discretion. Some weak evidence suggesting large firms in low discretion industries may compete using behaviours that impact on current accounts is also identified

High resolution simulations of the long-term evolution of jets from young stellar objects using parallel algorithms

Outflows and jets are an integral part of the formation of young stars and are found to be commonplace in all regions where star formation is known to occur. There has been much work done in the development of computational fluid dynamic methods for the simulation of these outflows in an attempt to gam a greater insight into the processes taking place in their formation. Observational data presents key characteristics of such outflows that can be used to determine the validity of any computational model. Here, we have developed a sophisticated parallehsation method for the splittingup of a jet simulation across a Beowulf type computer cluster using a message-passing method. The parallelised code allows us to run simulations for much longer and on larger domains than was possible with the original serial code. This allows us to investigate the development of some important characteristics of the computational model over large time-scales with a suitably high resolution. In particular we investigate the behaviour of the mass-velocity and mtensity-velocity relationships for molecular outflows driven by a prompt-entramment type jet model. Up to now simulations have indicated good agreement between these characteristics for this model and the observed behaviour of these relationships. However, the short time-scales used did not allow for an evolutionary study of the relationships and as a result long-term simulations are deemed necessary

Master of Science

thesisRecent paleontological discoveries reveal a dramatic range of tooth morphologies in extinct reptiles, with some dentitions rivaling the complexity of extant mammals. Many of these dental morphologies have no modern analogs, inhibiting detailed dietary and ecological reconstructions for ancient ecosystems. Living saurian reptiles exhibit a wide range of diets, from carnivores to strict herbivores. Previous research suggests that the tooth shape in some lizard clades correlates with diet, but this has not been tested using quantitative methods. In order to elucidate the diet of extinct heterodont reptiles, I investigated the correlation between phenotypic tooth complexity and diet in living reptiles by examining the entire dentary tooth row in over 80 specimens comprising all major dentigerous saurian clades. I quantified dental complexity using orientation patch count rotated (OPCR), which does not require the identification of homologous landmarks on each tooth and discriminates diet in living and extinct mammals, where OPCR values increase with the proportion of dietary plant matter. OPCR was calculated from high-resolution CT scans, and I standardized OPCR values by the total number of teeth to account for differences in tooth count across taxa. In living saurians, OPCR values for omnivores and herbivores are higher than those of carnivores. In contrast with extant mammals, there appears to be greater overlap in tooth complexity values across dietary groups because multicusped teeth characterize herbivores, omnivores, and insectivores, and because the herbivorous skinks have particularly simple teeth. Additionally, insectivorous lizards have dental complexities that overlap with omnivores. These results suggest reptilian tooth complexity is related to diet, similar to extinct and extant mammals. These data were used to reconstruct the diet of 14 extinct crocodyliforms. OPCR data indicate that extinct crocodyliforms occupied a larger ecological range than their living relatives. In particular, herbivory independently developed at least three times, with each occasion utilizing a different tooth morphology to break down plant material. These data, when combined with key morphological characters, allow for the dietary ecology of extinct organisms to be reconstructed

Idiopathic Colonic Varices: A Case Report and Review of the Literature

Colonic varices appreciated on colonoscopy are extremely rare and typically indicative of portal hypertension or chronic hepatopathology. Even more rare are those cases with no underlying pathology, idiopathic colonic varices. Here we report a case of these unexplained varices

Digital libraries and minority languages

Digital libraries have a pivotal role to play in the preservation and maintenance of international cultures in general and minority languages in particular. This paper outlines a software tool for building digital libraries that is well adapted for creating and distributing local information collections in minority languages, and describes some contexts in which it is used. The system can make multilingual documents available in structured collections and allows them to be accessed via multilingual interfaces. It is issued under a free open-source licence, which encourages participatory design of the software, and an end-user interface allows community-based localization of the various language interfaces - of which there are many

High level of treatment failure with commonly used anthelmintics on Irish sheep farms

peer-reviewedBackground: In 2013 a Technology Adoption Program for sheep farmers was established to encourage the implementation of best management practices on sheep farms in Ireland. There were 4,500 participants in this programme in 2013. As part of this programme, farmers had the option to carry out a drench test to establish the efficacy of their anthelmintic treatment. Results: Flock faecal samples were collected before and after treatment administration and gastrointestinal nematode eggs enumerated. In total there were 1,893 participants in the task, however only 1,585 included both a pre- and post-treatment faecal sample. Of those, 1,308 provided information on the anthelmintic product that they used with 46%, 23% and 28% using a benzimidazole (BZ), levamisole (LEV) and macrocyclic lactone (ML) product respectively. The remaining farmers used a product inapplicable for inclusion in the task such as a flukicide or BZ/LEV combination product. Samples were included for analysis of drench efficacy if the pre-treatment flock egg count was ≥200 eggs per gram and the interval post-sampling was 10–14 days for BZ products, 4–7 days for LEV products and 14–18 days for ML products. These criteria reduced the number of valid tests to 369, 19.5% of all tests conducted. If the reduction post-treatment was ≥95% the treatment was considered effective. Only 51% of treatments were considered effective using this criterion. There was a significant difference in efficacy between the anthelmintic drug classes with BZ effective in only 30% of treatments, LEV effective in 52% of cases and ML effective in 76% of cases. Conclusions: Gastrointestinal nematode anthelmintic treatments, as practiced on Irish farms, have a high failure rate. There was a significant difference between the efficacies of the anthelmintic classes with BZ the least effective and ML the most effective