1,160 research outputs found
What happened to the gains from strong productivity growth?
Over the past decade, the United States economy has experienced strong economic growth due in large part to a resurgence in productivity growth. Little attention has been paid, however, to examining how the gains from this growth have been distributed. In the past few years, observers have noted that the share of income paid to labor has been falling while corporate profits have surged. Also, observers have pointed out that income inequality appears to have widened, with little increase in real wages for low-income workers while executive pay has skyrocketed. Consequently, there has been a growing sentiment among the public that the average household is not sharing in the recent economic prosperity. ; Willis and Wroblewski examine how the gains from increased productivity growth have been distributed. Their analysis focuses on two questions: Has the increase in productivity growth led to a change in the income shares for capital and labor? And, has the strong productivity growth over the past decade led to a change in the distribution of income across households? ; The authors find that the shares of income allocated to labor and capital have been constant on average over the past 35 years. However, during the last decade of high productivity growth, low-income households have seen no increase in real income, and at most only the top 10 percent of the household income distribution experienced real income growth equal to or greater than average labor productivity growth.Productivity
The Solar Neighborhood XII: Discovery of New High Proper Motion Stars with 1.0"/yr > mu >= 0.4"/yr between Declinations -90 degrees and -47 degrees
We report the discovery of 141 new high proper motion systems (1.0"/yr > mu
>= 0.4"/yr) in the southern sky (Declination = -90 degrees to -47 degrees)
brighter than UKST plate R_{59F} = 16.5 via our SuperCOSMOS-RECONS (SCR)
search. When combined with the nine systems having mu >= 1.0"/yr and/or late
spectral type from the initial phases of this effort (Hambly et al. 2004, Henry
et al. 2004), we find that 73 of the 150 total systems are moving faster than
0.5"/yr, and are therefore new members of the classic "LHS" (Luyten Half
Second) sample. These constitute a 21% increase in the sample of stars with mu
>= 0.5"/yr in the declination region searched, thereby comprising an important
addition to this long-neglected region of the sky.
Distance estimates are provided for the entire sample, based upon a
combination of photographic plate magnitudes and 2MASS photometry, using the
relations presented in Hambly et al. (2004) for the presumed main sequence
stars. Three systems are anticipated to be within 10 pc, and an additional 15
are within 25 pc. Eight of these 18 nearby systems have proper motions falling
between 0.4"/yr and 0.6"/yr, hinting at a large population of nearby stars with
fast, but not extremely high, proper motions that have not been thoroughly
investigated.Comment: 45 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomical Journal
(January 2005
Factors Associated with the Diversification of the Gut Microbial Communities within Chimpanzees from Gombe National Park.
The gastrointestinal tract harbors large and diverse populations of bacteria that vary among individuals and within individuals over time. Numerous internal and external factors can influence the contents of these microbial communities, including diet, geography, physiology, and the extent of contact among hosts. To investigate the contributions of such factors to the variation and changes in gut microbial communities, we analyzed the distal gut microbiota of individual chimpanzees from two communities in Gombe National Park, Tanzania. These samples, which were derived from 35 chimpanzees, many of whom have been monitored for multiple years, provide an unusually comprehensive longitudinal depth for individuals of known genetic relationships. Although the composition of the great-ape microbiota has been shown to codiversify with host species, indicating that host genetics and phylogeny have played a major role in its differentiation over evolutionary timescales, the geneaological relationships of individual chimpanzees did not coincide with the similarity in their gut microbial communities. However, the inhabitants from adjacent chimpanzee communities could be distinguished based on the contents of their gut microbiota. Despite the broad similarity of community members, as would be expected from shared diet or interactions, long-term immigrants to a community often harbored the most distinctive gut microbiota, suggesting that individuals retain hallmarks of their previous gut microbial communities for extended periods. This pattern was reinforced in several chimpanzees sampled over long temporal scales, in which the major constituents of the gut microbiota were maintained for nearly a decade
Impact of a brief faculty training to improve patient-centered communication while using electronic health records
Objective
Despite rapid EHR adoption, few faculty receive training in how to implement patient-centered communication skills while using computers in exam rooms. We piloted a patient-centered EHR use training to address this issue.
Methods
Faculty received four hours of training at Cleveland Clinic and a condensed 90-minute version at the University of Chicago. Both included a lecture and a Group-Objective Structured Clinical Exam (GOSCE) experience. Direct observations of 10 faculty in their clinical practices were performed pre- and post-workshop.
Results
Thirty participants (94%) completed a post-workshop evaluation assessing knowledge, attitude, and skills. Faculty reported that training was important, relevant, and should be required for all providers; no differences were found between longer versus shorter training. Participants in the longer training reported higher GOSCE efficacy, however shorter workshop participants agreed more with the statement that they had gained new knowledge. Faculty improved their patient-centered EHR use skills in clinical practice on post- versus pre-workshop ratings using a validated direct-observation rating tool.
Conclusion
A brief lecture and GOSCE can be effective in training busy faculty on patient-centered EHR use skills.
Practice Implications
Faculty training on patient-centered EHR skills can enhance patient-doctor communication and promotes positive role modeling of these skills to learners
Demonstration Advanced Avionics System (DAAS) function description
The Demonstration Advanced Avionics System, DAAS, is an integrated avionics system utilizing microprocessor technologies, data busing, and shared displays for demonstrating the potential of these technologies in improving the safety and utility of general aviation operations in the late 1980's and beyond. Major hardware elements of the DAAS include a functionally distributed microcomputer complex, an integrated data control center, an electronic horizontal situation indicator, and a radio adaptor unit. All processing and display resources are interconnected by an IEEE-488 bus in order to enhance the overall system effectiveness, reliability, modularity and maintainability. A detail description of the DAAS architecture, the DAAS hardware, and the DAAS functions is presented. The system is designed for installation and flight test in a NASA Cessna 402-B aircraft
Strange Particle Production from SIS to LHC
>1A review of meson emission in heavy ion collisions at incident energies
from SIS up to collider energies is presented. A statistical model assuming
chemical equilibrium and local strangeness conservation (i.e. strangeness
conservation per collision) explains most of the observed features.
Emphasis is put onto the study of and emission at low incident
energies. In the framework of this statistical model it is shown that the
experimentally observed equality of and rates at
``threshold-corrected'' energies is due to a
crossing of two excitation functions. Furthermore, the independence of the
to ratio on the number of participating nucleons observed between
SIS and RHIC is consistent with this model.
It is demonstrated that the production at SIS energies occurs
predominantly via strangeness exchange and this channel is approaching chemical
equilibrium. The observed maximum in the excitation function is
also seen in the ratio of strange to non-strange particle production. The
appearance of this maximum around 30 GeV is due to the energy
dependence of the chemical freeze-out parameters and .Comment: Presented at the International Workshop "On the Physics of the
Quark-Gluon Plasma", Palaiseau, France, September 2001. 10 pages, 8 figure
Meeting the Cool Neighbors X: Ultracool dwarfs from the 2MASS All-Sky Data Release
Using data from the 2MASS All-Sky Point Source Catalogue, we have extended
our census of nearby ultracool dwarfs to cover the full celestial sphere above
Galactic latitute 15 degrees. Starting with an initial catalogue of 2,139,484
sources, we have winnowed the sample to 467 candidate late-type M or L dwarfs
within 20 parsecs of the Sun. Fifty-four of those sources already have
spectroscopic observations confirming them as late-type dwarfs. We present
optical spectroscopy of 376 of the remaining 413 sources, and identify 44 as
ultracool dwarfs with spectroscopic distances less than 20 parsecs. Twenty-five
of the 37 sources that lack optical data have near-infrared spectroscopy.
Combining the present sample with our previous results and data from the
literature, we catalogue 94 L dwarf systems within 20 parsecs. We discuss the
distribution of activity, as measured by H-alpha emission, in this
volume-limited sample. We have coupled the present ultracool catalogue with
data for stars in the northern 8-parsec sample and recent (incomplete)
statistics for T dwarfs to provide a snapshot of the current 20-parsec census
as a function of spectral type.Comment: Accepted for publication by the Astronomical Journa
Olfactory Thresholds of the U.S. Population of Home-Dwelling Older Adults: Development and Validation of a Short, Reliable Measure
Current methods of olfactory sensitivity testing are logistically challenging and therefore infeasible for use in in-home surveys and other field settings. We developed a fast, easy and reliable method of assessing olfactory thresholds, and used it in the first study of olfactory sensitivity in a nationally representative sample of U.S. home-dwelling older adults. We validated our method via computer simulation together with a model estimated from 590 normosmics. Simulated subjects were assigned n-butanol thresholds drawn from the estimated normosmic distribution and based on these and the model, we simulated administration of both the staircase and constant stimuli methods. Our results replicate both the correlation between the two methods and their reliability as previously reported by studies using human subjects. Further simulations evaluated the reliability of different constant stimuli protocols, varying both the range of dilutions and number of stimuli (6–16). Six appropriately chosen dilutions were sufficient for good reliability (0.67) in normosmic subjects. Finally, we applied our method to design a 5-minute, in-home assessment of older adults (National Social Life, Health and Aging Project, or NSHAP), which had comparable reliability (0.56), despite many subjects having estimated thresholds above the strongest dilution. Thus, testing with a fast, 6-item constant stimuli protocol is informative, and permits olfactory testing in previously inaccessible research settings
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