The Quality of Jobs Created by Entrepreneurs

Few dare to challenge the conventional wisdom that small business is the engine of job creation. Indeed, in the United States, the image of the small business owner left largely unfettered to create novel products and services sits on the same cultural plane as baseball and apple pie, and one would be hard-pressed to find a policymaker who would openly question the wisdom that most new jobs arise either directly or indirectly from these small businesses. This near religious belief in the small business owner as job creator yields a steady stream of policies offering tax relief to small businesses, often specifically tied to their behavior as job creators, as well as broader proposals that aim to cut the red tape that could hinder a business’s ability to raise capital or to safeguard its intellectual property. Not surprisingly, these policies and their potential to improve macroeconomic outcomes become particularly salient during times of high unemployment. Luckily, there are still those who refuse to accept this conventional wisdom. They usually point to meticulous research on job creation that shows that the large share of employment growth typically ascribed to small businesses more rightly belongs to new businesses—entrepreneurs. And, of course, while most new businesses start out small, most small businesses are not all that young. However, even astute observers are likely to miss the second flaw in the notion that policy that props up small business will necessarily improve our nation’s economic health. That is, after one sorts out the issue of the quantity of jobs created by new businesses, one should consider the quality of these jobs. Are these really the sorts of jobs that will materially improve the lives of their incumbents, thereby setting off a chain reaction that ultimately ends in higher aggregate demand and greater economic activity

A Note on The Influence of Soil Parent Material on Northern Red OAK Specific Gravity

Soil parent material was found to affect the specific gravity of northern red oak wood (Quercus rubra L.). The unextracted specific gravity of wood grown on limestone soils was 0.597 and that of wood grown on sandstone soils was 0.581. Site quality within a soil type had no significant effect. The relationship was independent of both rate of growth and latewood percentage

Utilizing Strategic Project Management Processes and the NATO Code of Best Practice to Improve Management of Experimentation Events

Systems engineering and project management are two core engineering management processes supported by core quantitative disciplines within engineering management problems. Traditional approaches to systems engineering focus on a single system being engineered and managed (i.e., project managed), while challenges addressing composition of systems of systems and the reuse of systems for new solutions require a strategic management approach that promote a process flow in which the outputs of one project (e.g., deliverables, knowledge, work documents) are captured for the benefit of other projects within and outside the project-based organization. Two other core processes of engineering management are therefore critical to be incorporated into this process flow: knowledge management and strategic management. Consequently, when applying complex simulation system or federations of simulation systems for experimentation, knowledge management and strategic management are needed. The NATO Code of Best Practice (COBP) for Command and Control Assessment is dealing with similar challenges. Within a project in support of PEO Soldier, Old Dominion University and the United States Military Academy developed new system engineering processes in support of system selection and orchestration that allow merging the knowledge and strategic management ideas with NATO\u27s recommended best practices

Three Methods of Determining Hardness of Increment Core Segments

Three methods were devised to measure the hardness of small wood samples: a sanding test, a diamond point indentation test, and a saw blade tooth deformity test. Based on step-wise multiple regression analysis with 19 and with five important independent variables, the sanding test was best, followed by the indentation test. The saw blade test gave poor results and was discarded. The order of important independent variables among the four plots analyzed individually showed a nearly perfect relationship with the sanding test, but no consistent order of the variables among plots for the indentation test. Again this indicated that the sanding test was best

The new paradigm of hepatitis C therapy: integration of oral therapies into best practices.

Emerging data indicate that all-oral antiviral treatments for chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) will become a reality in the near future. In replacing interferon-based therapies, all-oral regimens are expected to be more tolerable, more effective, shorter in duration and simpler to administer. Coinciding with new treatment options are novel methodologies for disease screening and staging, which create the possibility of more timely care and treatment. Assessments of histologic damage typically are performed using liver biopsy, yet noninvasive assessments of histologic damage have become the norm in some European countries and are becoming more widespread in the United States. Also in place are new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initiatives to simplify testing, improve provider and patient awareness and expand recommendations for HCV screening beyond risk-based strategies. Issued in 2012, the CDC recommendations aim to increase HCV testing among those with the greatest HCV burden in the United States by recommending one-time testing for all persons born during 1945-1965. In 2013, the United States Preventive Services Task Force adopted similar recommendations for risk-based and birth-cohort-based testing. Taken together, the developments in screening, diagnosis and treatment will likely increase demand for therapy and stimulate a shift in delivery of care related to chronic HCV, with increased involvement of primary care and infectious disease specialists. Yet even in this new era of therapy, barriers to curing patients of HCV will exist. Overcoming such barriers will require novel, integrative strategies and investment of resources at local, regional and national levels