The Allocation of Resources by Interest Groups: Lobbying, Litigation and Administrative Regulation

One of the central concerns about American policy making institutions is the degree to which political outcomes can be influenced by interested parties. While the literature on interest group strategies in particular institutions - legislative, administrative, and legal - is extensive, there is very little scholarship which examines how the interdependencies between institutions affects the strategies of groups. In this paper we examine in a formal theoretical model how the opportunity to litigate administrative rulemaking in the courts affects the lobbying strategies of competing interest groups at the rulemaking stage. Using a resource-based view of group activity, we develop a number of important insights about each stage that cannot be observed by examining each one in isolation. We demonstrate that lobbying effort responds to the ideology of the court, and the responsiveness of the court to resources. In particular, (1) as courts become more biased toward the status quo, interest group lobbying investments become smaller, and may be eliminated all together, (2) as interest groups become wealthier, they spend more on lobbying, and (3) as the responsiveness of courts to resources decreases, the effect it has on lobbying investments depends on the underlying ideology of the court

The Allocation of Resources by Interest Groups: Lobbying, Litigation and Administrative Regulation

One of the central concerns about American policy-making institutions is the degree to which political outcomes can be influenced by interested parties. While the literature on interest group strategies in particular institutions - legislative, administrative, and legal is extensive, there is very little scholarship which examines how the interdependencies between institutions affects the strategies of groups. In this paper we examine in a formal theoretical model, how the opportunity to litigate administrative rulemaking in the courts affects the lobbying strategies of competing interest groups at the rulemaking stage. Using a resource-based view of group activity, we develop a number of important insights about each stage - which cannot be observed by examining each one in isolation. We demonstrate that lobbying effort responds to the ideology of the court, and the responsiveness of the court to resources. In particular, 1) as courts become more biased toward the status quo, interest group lobbying investments become smaller, and may be eliminated all together, 2) as interest groups become wealthier, they spend more on lobbying, and 3) as the responsiveness of courts to resources decreases, the effect it has on lobbying investments depends on the underlying ideology of the court.

Distributed production planning and control agent based system

A model of an Agent based Production Planning and Control (PPC) system able to be dynamically adaptable to local and distributed utilization of production resources and materials is presented. The PPC system is based on the selection of resources to deal with one order of different quantities of one product each time. In this way it is build one scheduling solution for that particular order. The production resources are selected and scheduled using a multiagent system supported by an implementation of the Smith Contract Net, using Java Spaces technology. The multiagent system is based on three main agents: Client, Resource and Manager. These agents negotiate the final product, and the correspondent components, requested by the client. An order for each product (component) triggers a process of dynamic design of a production system to fulfill that particular order. This system exists till the end of the order

Projects with the industry for the development of professional competences in industrial engineering and management

Training engineering students has been evolving towards the development of professional competences, both technical and transversal. These competences will enable new engineers to apply learning resources in professional contexts with greater efficacy. Thus, these engineers will be closer to the needs of industry. A learning methodology that has been used in these contexts is Project Based Learning (PBL). This paper presents a learning process based on PBL concepts, in which five teams of 5 to 7 students of Industrial Engineering and Management from the University of Minho, Portugal, developed projects in interaction with companies during a semester. This project is supported by 5 courses of the 7th semester: Organization of Production Systems, Information Systems for Production, Integrated Production Management, Ergonomic Study of Workplaces and Simulation. The objective of the students’ project is to make the analysis and present proposals for improvement of a part of the production system of a company. With the support of teachers, students should manage the interaction with an industrial company under the established partnership and present suggestions for improvements to their production system, considering contributions from the 5 courses of the semester. The aim of this paper is to describe the operational model of this PBL process, evaluate the results in terms of students’ learning and in terms of the perception of industry, and finally make proposals for improving the model. The evaluation of learning outcomes is based on the analysis of students’ project results, a questionnaire and a closing workshop of the project with students. The evaluation of the perception of industry partners is achieved using informal interviews with company representatives. The evaluation process shows that, from the participants’ perceptions, students have developed the competences that are expected and, in general, the teams are motivated by the outcome of their projects. They referred that there should exist better mechanisms of differentiation of individual classifications within the team. From the point of view of industry, the results are considered good, but there is a tendency to propose a greater focus on the objectives and results of the project. Considering these results, a change to the model is proposed, in order to increase the direction of the project. The proposal organizes the project into two very distinct phases: (1) analysis and diagnosis phase; (2) improvement phase. This change would explore the contents and competences expected of all courses during the analysis and diagnosis phase, and in second phase, the project would focus on developing specific solutions for the enterprise

On the ordeal of quinolone preparation via cyclisation of aryl-enamines; synthesis and structure of ethyl 6-methyl-7-iodo-4-(3-iodo-4-methylphenoxy)-quinoline-3-carboxylate

Recent studies directed to the design of compounds targeting the bc(1) protein complex of Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite responsible for most lethal cases of malaria, identified quinolones (4-oxo-quinolines) with low nanomolar inhibitory activity against both the enzyme and infected erythrocytes. The 4-oxo-quinoline 3-ester chemotype emerged as a possible source of potent bc(1) inhibitors, prompting us to expand the library of available analogs for SAR studies and subsequent lead optimization. We now report the synthesis and structural characterization of unexpected ethyl 6-methyl-7-iodo-4-(3-iodo-4-methylphenoxy)quinoline-3-carboxylate, a 4-aryloxy-quinoline 3-ester formed during attempted preparation of 6-methyl-7-iodo-4-oxo-quinoline-3-carboxylate (4-oxo-quinoline 3-ester). We propose that the 4-aryloxy-quinoline 3-ester derives from 6-methyl-7-iodo-4-hydroxy-quinoline-3-carboxylate (4-hydroxy-quinoline 3-ester), the enol form of 6-methyl-7-iodo-4-oxo-quinoline-3-carboxylate. Formation of the 4-aryloxy-quinoline 3-ester confirms the impact of quinolone/hydroxyquinoline tautomerism, both on the efficiency of synthetic routes to quinolones and on pharmacologic profiles. Tautomers exhibit different cLogP values and interact differently with the enzyme active site. A structural investigation of 6-methyl-7-iodo-4-oxo-quinoline-3-carboxylate and 6-methyl-7-iodo-4-hydroxy-quinoline-3-carboxylate, using matrix isolation coupled to FTIR spectroscopy and theoretical calculations, revealed that the lowest energy conformers of 6-methyl-7-iodo-4-hydroxy-quinoline-3-carboxylate, lower in energy than their most stable 4-oxo-quinoline tautomer by about 27 kJ mol(-1), are solely present in the matrix, while the most stable 4-oxo-quinoline tautomer is solely present in the crystalline phase.Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT - Portugal) [UID/Multi/04326/2013]; QREN-COMPETE-UE; CCMAR; FCT [SFRH/BD/81821/2011, RECI/BBB-BQB/0230/2012, UI0313/QUI/2013, UID/FIS/04564/2016]; FEDER/COMPETE-UE; [PTDC/QEQ-QFI/3284/2014 - POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016617]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Identification of gene-gene interaction using principal components

After more than 200 genome-wide association studies, there have been some successful identifications of a single novel locus. Thus, the identification of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) with interaction effects is of interest. Using the Genetic Analysis Workshop 16 data from the North American Rheumatoid Arthritis Consortium, we propose an approach to screen for SNP-SNP interaction using a two-stage method and an approach for detecting gene-gene interactions using principal components. We selected a set of 17 rheumatoid arthritis candidate genes to assess both approaches. Our approach using principal components holds promise in detecting gene-gene interactions. However, further study is needed to evaluate the power and the feasibility for a whole genome-wide association analysis using the principal components approach