Exports and international logistics

Do better international logistics reduce trade costs, raising a developing country's exports? Yes, but the magnitude of the effect depends on the country's size. The authors apply a gravity model that accounts for firm heterogeneity and multilateral resistance to a comprehensive new international logistics index. A one-standard deviation improvement in logistics is equivalent to a 14 percent reduction in distance. An average-sized developing country would raise exports by about 36 percent. Most countries are much smaller than average however, so the typical effect is 8 percent. This difference is chiefly due to multilateral resistance: it is bilateral trade costs relative to multilateral trade costs that matter for bilateral exports, and multilateral resistance is more important for small countries.Economic Theory&Research,Free Trade,Trade Policy,Common Carriers Industry,Trade Law

Systematic Mischaracterization of Exoplanetary System Dynamical Histories from a Model Degeneracy near Mean-motion Resonance

There is a degeneracy in the radial velocity exoplanet signal between a single planet on an eccentric orbit and a two-planet system with a period ratio of 2:1. This degeneracy could lead to misunderstandings of the dynamical histories of planetary systems as well as measurements of planetary abundances if the correct architecture is not established. We constrain the rate of mischaracterization by analysing a sample of 60 non-transiting, radial velocity systems orbiting main-sequence stars from the NASA Exoplanet Archive (NASA Archive) using a new Bayesian model comparison pipeline. We find that 15 systems (25 per cent of our sample) show compelling evidence for the two-planet case with a confidence level of 95 per cent

Bridewell’s Fall: Summary Justice in London, 1730-1800

Bridewell house of correction had been essential in dealing with vagrancy and all sorts of petty offending since the day it first took in prisoners in 1555. Its purpose was to clear disorder from streets and monitor virtually all aspects of private and public life. Reforming offenders through work was key to its operation. A royal charter granted in 1553 gave Bridewell sweeping powers to police the city and neighbouring built-up Middlesex. It also set up a court inside its walls that would prove to be very controversial. Bridewell was a faint shadow of its former self by 1800. There was not a single committal to this once full prison in 1791-1800. There were three principal reasons for this. (1) Changes in prosecution that saw a large swing towards summary justice – hearing cases before justices without formal trial – in the Guildhall and Lord Mayor’s Mansion House that took cases away from Bridewell. (2) Increasingly negative attitudes that cast doubt on Bridewell’s rationale and effectiveness. And (3) changing conceptions of female sexualities on the one hand and the treatment of juveniles on the other that made it possible to see ‘fallen’ women as objects of sympathy and reform and wayward juveniles as a potential asset working for the good of the country

The specific heat of superheated steam

Thesis (B.S.)--University of Illinois, 1911.Typescript.Includes bibliographical references

Rural-Urban Personality Differences in Utah Adolescents As Measured by the CPI

The CPI (California Psychological Inventory) was administered to 395 high school students to determine if personality differences exist between rural and urban adolescents in Utah. Of those tested, 219 were selected from three rural schools and 176 were selected from three urban schools. Ten of the eighteen individual scales of the CPI showed differences between rural and urban students at the

Algorithmic Settlements

The position of the architect when designing is to arbitrate which information is relevant and which is not, and to do so across a broad spectrum of fields. Considering this, Christopher Alexander claimed as long ago as 1964, that “design problems are reaching insoluble levels of complexity.” This thesis focuses on informal settlement growth and how architects can investigate growth as a part of master-planning new housing. Drawing on case studies of settlements, video game logics, and existing architectural tools, a tool was developed to study the growth of settlements. This tool is based on cellular automata, a spatial and algorithmic method of computer modeling based on specific rules. The rules themselves have been developed to model settlement growth from both single house and neighborhood level as accurately as possible. The final result is a visual representation of hypothetical additions to homes over a period of time. The information produced can be used by architects to more wholistically understand planning effects on settlement growth, and then to plan settlements with that informal growth in mind