Geotechnical Characterization of Success Dam for a Dam Safety Earthquake Engineering Evaluation

Success Dam, primarily a flood control and water conservation structure owned and operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers, lies in Seismic Zone 3. During construction of the dam, the impervious core trench was excavated to either weathered bedrock or older alluvium. However, the pervious outer zones of the embankment were constructed on existing in-situ materials, including recent alluvium, that were only minimally prepared. In 1992, the Corps of Engineers concluded that the state-of-practice allowed for a better understanding of the seismic response of the alluvial soils than was previously available, and a study to update the seismic stability evaluation of Success Dam was initiated. A testing program using cross hole shear wave velocity measurements and Becker Penetration Tests followed. These initial explorations showed unusual and unexpected variations in the foundation. Additional exploration programs resulted in a total of 62 Becker Penetration Tests, 20 Standard Penetration Tests, and 39 cross hole shear wave velocity holes to understand a 1,500-foot-long section of the dam foundation. The final site characterization shows an unsuspected zone of weak material deep in the foundation under the upstream shell of the dam. Only through the use of multiple field exploratory techniques was the character of this complex site adequately revealed

Higher education and unemployment in Europe : an analysis of the academic subject and national effects

This paper examines the impact of an academic degree and field of study on short and long-term unemployment across Europe (EU15). Labour Force Survey (LFS) data on over half a million individuals are utilised for that purpose. The harmonized LFS classification of level of education and field of study overcomes past problems of comparability across Europe. The study analyses (i) the effect of an academic degree at a European level, (ii) the specific effect of 14 academic subjects and (iii) country specific effects. The results indicate that an academic degree is more effective on reducing the likelihood of short-term than long-term unemployment. This general pattern even though it is observed for most of the academic subjects its levels show significant variation across disciplines and countries

Employment Expectations and Gross Flows by Type of Work Contract

There is growing interest in understanding firms’ temporary and permanent employment practices and how institutional changes shape them. Using data on Spanish establishments, we examine: (a) how employers adjust temporary and permanent job and worker flows to prior employment expectations, and (b) how the 1994 and 1997 labour reforms promoting permanent employment affected establishments’ employment practices. Generally, establishments’ prior employment expectations are realized through changes in all job and worker flows. However, establishments uniquely rely on temporary hires as a buffer to confront diminishing long-run employment expectations. None of the reforms significantly affected establishments’ net temporary or permanent employment flows.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40032/3/wp646.pd

Marker-free image registration of electron tomography tilt-series

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Tilt series are commonly used in electron tomography as a means of collecting three-dimensional information from two-dimensional projections. A common problem encountered is the projection alignment prior to 3D reconstruction. Current alignment techniques usually employ gold particles or image derived markers to correctly align the images. When these markers are not present, correlation between adjacent views is used to align them. However, sequential pairwise correlation is prone to bias and the resulting alignment is not always optimal.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this paper we introduce an algorithm to find regions of the tilt series which can be tracked within a subseries of the tilt series. These regions act as landmarks allowing the determination of the alignment parameters. We show our results with synthetic data as well as experimental cryo electron tomography.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our algorithm is able to correctly align a single-tilt tomographic series without the help of fiducial markers thanks to the detection of thousands of small image patches that can be tracked over a short number of images in the series.</p

Unemployment Through Learning from Experience

Digitised version produced by the EUI Library and made available online in 2020

Product market competition with differentiated goods and social welfare in the presence of an industry-wide union

Mainstream locus communis indicates that a more competitive product market leads to higher social welfare levels. Using a Conjectural Variation (CV) model, this research note analyzes the effects on welfare of different degrees of product market competition in a duopoly with differentiated goods. Bargaining between the firms and the industry-wide union occurs under the Efficient Bargaining (EB) model. The work indicates that, with close substitute goods, social welfare is maximized for the inter- mediate levels of market competition, whereas more independent goods lead to the standard result of a high welfare level under competitive markets.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Does the company's economic performance affect access to occupational health services?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In Finland like in many other countries, employers are legally obliged to organize occupational health services (OHS) for their employees. Because employers bear the costs of OHS it could be that in spite of the legal requirement OHS expenditure is more determined by economic performance of the company than by law. Therefore, we explored whether economic performance was associated with the companies' expenditure on occupational health services.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We used a prospective design to predict expenditure on OHS in 2001 by a company's economic performance in 1999. Data were provided by Statistics Finland and expressed by key indicators for profitability, solidity and liquidity and by the Social Insurance Institution as employers' reimbursement applications for OHS costs. The data could be linked at the company level. Regression analysis was used to study associations adjusted for various confounders.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Nineteen percent of the companies (N = 6 155) did not apply for reimbursement of OHS costs in 2001. The profitability of the company represented by operating margin in 1999 and adjusted for type of industry was not significantly related to the company's probability to apply for reimbursement of the costs in 2001 (OR = 1.00, 95%CI: 0.99 to 1.01). Profitability measured as operating profit in 1999 and adjusted for type of industry was not significantly related to costs for curative medical services (Beta -0.001, 95%CI: -0.00 to 0.11) nor to OHS cost of prevention in 2001 (Beta -0.001, 95%CI: -0.00 to 0.00).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We did not find a relation between the company's economic performance and expenditure on OHS in Finland. We suppose that this is due to legislation obliging employers to provide OHS and the reimbursement system both being strong incentives for employers.</p