New York's HealthPass Purchasing Alliance: Making Coverage Easier for Small Businesses

Provides an understanding of how a public-private partnership for health insurance functions. Evaluates which program features and strategies have worked and which have not. Measures the impact on participating employers, employees, and insurers

The Decline and Fall of the Dollar: Some Policy Issues

macroeconomics, dollars, decline, account balance, GNP, domestic demand

Conceptual Analysis in Metaethics

A critical survey of various positions on the nature, use, possession, and analysis of normative concepts. We frame our treatment around G.E. Moore’s Open Question Argument, and the ways metaethicists have responded by departing from a Classical Theory of concepts. In addition to the Classical Theory, we discuss synthetic naturalism, noncognitivism (expressivist and inferentialist), prototype theory, network theory, and empirical linguistic approaches. Although written for a general philosophical audience, we attempt to provide a new perspective and highlight some underappreciated problems about normative concepts

Orbital Dynamics of Multi-Planet Systems with Eccentricity Diversity

Since exoplanets were detected using the radial velocity method, they have revealed a diverse distribution of orbital configurations. Amongst these are planets in highly eccentric orbits (e > 0.5). Most of these systems consist of a single planet but several have been found to also contain a longer period planet in a near-circular orbit. Here we use the latest Keplerian orbital solutions to investigate four known systems which exhibit this extreme eccentricity diversity; HD 37605, HD 74156, HD 163607, and HD 168443. We place limits on the presence of additional planets in these systems based on the radial velocity residuals. We show that the two known planets in each system exchange angular momentum through secular oscillations of their eccentricities. We calculate the amplitude and timescale for these eccentricity oscillations and associated periastron precession. We further demonstrate the effect of mutual orbital inclinations on the amplitude of high-frequency eccentricity oscillations. Finally, we discuss the implications of these oscillations in the context of possible origin scenarios for unequal eccentricities.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Input window size and neural network predictors

Neural network approaches to time series prediction are briefly discussed, and the need to specify an appropriately sized input window identified. Relevant theoretical results from dynamic systems theory are briefly introduced, and heuristics for finding the correct embedding dimension, and hence window size, are discussed. The method is applied to two time series and the resulting generalisation performance of the trained feedforward neural network predictors is analysed. It is shown that the heuristics can provide useful information in defining the appropriate network architectur

Nearshore Gulf ecosystem : diagram and documentation

This report has been prepared to accompany and to provide supporting documentation for the ecological system diagram of the Nearshore Gulf. The ecosystem diagram concept and its application to the assessment of activities in the coastal zone has been documented in technical papers of the Texas Coastal Management Program. In particular, Technical Paper #12 describes the theory, methods of construction and examples of diagrams for other coastal ecosystems.Prepared for the General Land Office of Texas, Bob Armstrong, commissionerAugust 31, 1979Marine Scienc