Modeling Urbanization and Economic Growth

The past quarter century has witnessed unprecedented economic progress in the Third World. Yet major problems have arisen, some of which are the consequences of the progress itself and may become serious constraints on future development. City growth is one such problem. Pessimists stress the developing countries' inability to cope with the resource and social systems requirements of rapid urban growth, thus prompting the term "over-urbanization". Optimists minimize the negative externalities and view urban growth as the key to raising average labor productivity and living standards. All of this experience has taken place under conditions of "population explosions". This paper presents a general equilibrium economic-demographic model which highlights various aspects of urbanization. Attention is focused on the determinants and consequences of rural-urban migration, on the resource demands of housing associated with rapid urbanization, on optimal land use between urban and rural activities, and on the allocation of investments to education and labor force training. The economic model is designed to be "representative" of a large group of developing countries, and it will eventually contain a fully elaborated demographic component. The model will be tested with Third World growth experience since the 1950s. It will then be used to analyze the sources of migration and urbanization, and to explore their interaction with distribution, accumulation and growth

Modeling Growing Economies in Equilibrium and Disequilibrium

The papers in this volume were presented and discussed at a meeting held at IIASA. The meeting's goals were to stimulate interaction and collaboration, and to encourage setting research priorities for the future. Indeed, it is in this latter area where the meeting appeared to yield some of its greatest benefits. It became clear from the deliberations that much needs to be done to better specify the microfoundations of general equilibrium models. More realistic specifications of "conflict resolution" in resource allocation, in both market and nonmarket economies, need to be developed. Equally importantly, much work is required to explore the role of economic disequilibrium in economic growth and development. "Equilibrium" and "disequilibrium" are positive, not normative concepts; neither view is right or wrong; neither will necessarily yield desired social outcomes at all stages of development, or across all regions. Rather, they yield quite different outcomes, which themselves should be subjects for scientific inquiry. The meeting pointed out the potential for expanding the conceptions of general equilibrium modeling to incorporate elements of disequilibrium analysis, so that this framework may not only be increasingly relevant to Eastern countries, but so that the possibilities of East-West interaction on critical aspects of resource allocation and economic growth can be enhanced

The effect of dietary supplementation with n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids on the synthesis of interleukin-1 and tumor necrosis factor by mononuclear cells

Contains fulltext : 4487.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

Identity and integration of Russian speakers in the Baltic states: a framework for analysis

Following a review of current scholarship on identity and integration patterns of Russian speakers in the Baltic states, this article proposes an analytical framework to help understand current trends. Rogers Brubaker's widely employed triadic nexus is expanded to demonstrate why a form of Russian-speaking identity has been emerging, but has failed to become fully consolidated, and why significant integration has occurred structurally but not identificationally. By enumerating the subfields of political, economic, and cultural ‘stances’ and ‘representations’ the model helps to understand the complicated integration processes of minority groups that possess complex relationships with ‘external homelands’, ‘nationalizing states’ and ‘international organizations’. Ultimately, it is argued that socio-economic factors largely reduce the capacity for a consolidated identity; political factors have a moderate tendency to reduce this capacity, whereas cultural factors generally increase the potential for a consolidated group identity

Professionalism, Golf Coaching and a Master of Science Degree: A commentary

As a point of reference I congratulate Simon Jenkins on tackling the issue of professionalism in coaching. As he points out coaching is not a profession, but this does not mean that coaching would not benefit from going through a professionalization process. As things stand I find that the stimulus article unpacks some critically important issues of professionalism, broadly within the context of golf coaching. However, I am not sure enough is made of understanding what professional (golf) coaching actually is nor how the development of a professional golf coach can be facilitated by a Master of Science Degree (M.Sc.). I will focus my commentary on these two issues

The Intentional Use of Service Recovery Strategies to Influence Consumer Emotion, Cognition and Behaviour

Service recovery strategies have been identified as a critical factor in the success of. service organizations. This study develops a conceptual frame work to investigate how specific service recovery strategies influence the emotional, cognitive and negative behavioural responses of . consumers., as well as how emotion and cognition influence negative behavior. Understanding the impact of specific service recovery strategies will allow service providers' to more deliberately and intentionally engage in strategies that result in positive organizational outcomes. This study was conducted using a 2 x 2 between-subjects quasi-experimental design. The results suggest that service recovery has a significant impact on emotion, cognition and negative behavior. Similarly, satisfaction, negative emotion and positive emotion all influence negative behavior but distributive justice has no effect

The PHENIX Experiment at RHIC

The physics emphases of the PHENIX collaboration and the design and current status of the PHENIX detector are discussed. The plan of the collaboration for making the most effective use of the available luminosity in the first years of RHIC operation is also presented.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. Further details of the PHENIX physics program available at http://www.rhic.bnl.gov/phenix

The exposure of the hybrid detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Pierre Auger Observatory is a detector for ultra-high energy cosmic rays. It consists of a surface array to measure secondary particles at ground level and a fluorescence detector to measure the development of air showers in the atmosphere above the array. The "hybrid" detection mode combines the information from the two subsystems. We describe the determination of the hybrid exposure for events observed by the fluorescence telescopes in coincidence with at least one water-Cherenkov detector of the surface array. A detailed knowledge of the time dependence of the detection operations is crucial for an accurate evaluation of the exposure. We discuss the relevance of monitoring data collected during operations, such as the status of the fluorescence detector, background light and atmospheric conditions, that are used in both simulation and reconstruction.Comment: Paper accepted by Astroparticle Physic

Search for a W' boson decaying to a bottom quark and a top quark in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

Results are presented from a search for a W' boson using a dataset corresponding to 5.0 inverse femtobarns of integrated luminosity collected during 2011 by the CMS experiment at the LHC in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV. The W' boson is modeled as a heavy W boson, but different scenarios for the couplings to fermions are considered, involving both left-handed and right-handed chiral projections of the fermions, as well as an arbitrary mixture of the two. The search is performed in the decay channel W' to t b, leading to a final state signature with a single lepton (e, mu), missing transverse energy, and jets, at least one of which is tagged as a b-jet. A W' boson that couples to fermions with the same coupling constant as the W, but to the right-handed rather than left-handed chiral projections, is excluded for masses below 1.85 TeV at the 95% confidence level. For the first time using LHC data, constraints on the W' gauge coupling for a set of left- and right-handed coupling combinations have been placed. These results represent a significant improvement over previously published limits.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters B. Replaced with version publishe