The State of the U.S. Workforce System: A Time for Incremental Realignment or Serious Reform?

A report from the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development aims to start a dialogue about the U.S. workforce system, and what it would look like if it were built for today's economy and by using today's tools and processes. The report seeks to spark conversations that can lead to a re-imagination and redesign of a system that can adapt to fundamentally changed economic, demographic and political circumstances and environments

Comparing the Nambu-Goto string with LGT results

We discuss a way to evaluate the full prediction for the interquark potential which is expected from the effective Nambu-Goto string model. We check the correctness of the prescription reproducing the results obtained with the zeta function regularization for the first two perturbative orders. We compare the predictions with existing Monte Carlo data for the (2+1) dimensional Z(2), SU(2) and SU(3) gauge theories: in the low temperature regime, we find good agreement for large enough interquark distances, but an increasing mismatch between theoretical predictions and numerical results is observed as shorter and shorter distances are investigated. On the contrary, at high temperatures (approaching the deconfinement transition from below) a remarkable agreement between Monte Carlo data and the expectations from the Nambu-Goto effective string is observed for a wide range of interquark distances.Comment: 25 pages, 4 eps figures; added a reference, included remarks, corrected a typo; version accepted for publication in JHE

Graduating to Success in Employment: How Social Media Can Aid College Students in the Job Search

This issue brief, the second in a series on social media in workforce development, explores how college career service centers can assist college students and recent college graduates in using social media as part of their job search

Structure and Kinematics of Molecular Disks in Fast-Rotator Early-Type Galaxies

We present interferometric observations resolving the CO emission in the four gas-rich lenticular galaxies NGC 3032, NGC 4150, NGC 4459, and NGC 4526, and we compare the CO distribution and kinematics to those of the stars and ionized gas. Counterrotation documents an external origin for the gas in at least one case (NGC 3032), and the comparisons to stellar and ionized gas substructures in all four galaxies offer insights into their formation histories. The molecular gas is found in kpc-scale disks with mostly regular kinematics and average surface densities of 100 to 200 \msunsqpc. The disks are well aligned with the stellar photometric and kinematic axes. In the two more luminous Virgo Cluster members NGC 4459 and NGC 4526 the molecular gas shows excellent agreement with circular velocities derived independently from detailed modeling of stellar kinematic data. There are also two puzzling instances of disagreements between stellar kinematics and gas kinematics on sub-kpc scales. In the inner arcseconds of NGC 3032 the CO velocities are significantly lower than the inferred circular velocities, and the reasons may possibly be related to the external origin of the gas but are not well understood. In addition, the very young population of stars in the core of NGC 4150 appears to have the opposite sense of rotation from the molecular gas.Comment: ApJ, accepte

Trade Liberalization and Private Savings: The Spanish Experience, 1960-1995

This paper provides an interpretation of the evolution of Spanish private and national savings over the period 1960-1995. During these 35 years private and national saving rates oscillated widely from a very high level in the 1960s to historical minima in the early and mid-1980s to a strong recovery in the more recent years. At the same time, Spain transformed itself from an autarkic, underdeveloped and dictatorial country into an advanced, open economy with a fully democratic political life. First, we show that the apparent long-run reduction in Spanish saving rates is mostly due to a change in relative prices and to the choice of what, in our view, is the incorrect deflator. When Spanish real private savings are measured by using the deflator for the price of capital they appear to behave as a stationary, albeit highly volatile, time series relative to private disposable income. We find that a stable "saving function" can be derived from first principles and estimated using annual macroeconomic data. We adopt a traditional model of intertemporal optimization by a representative agent, facing a complete set of borrowing/lending opportunities and an exogenous income process. We use a "habit formation" utility function, to explain the crucial feature of the data, i. e. , the strong and positive impact that innovations in the growth rate of income (either national or private) have on saving (either national or private).