A statistical analysis of some non-linear optical effects

Statistical analysis of some nonlinear optical effects including scattering light from rotating glass and second harmonic light generated by pseudo-thermal sourc

The cost of systemic corticosteroid-induced morbidity in severe asthma : a health economic analysis

The study data-set was supported by the Respiratory Effectiveness Group through their academic partnership with Optimum Patient Care. Ciaran O'Neill was funded under a HRB Research Leader Award (RL/13/16).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Human Resource Management in New Jersey State Government

In 2005, the State of New Jersey Department of Personnel commissioned the Heldrich Center to study the critical human resource management issues confronting New Jersey state government. This report highlights the study's findings including: the human resource management function must be elevated to a position of primacy in state government, the state must reengineer the Department of Personnel into an effective human resource management agency with a broader mission than overseeing transactions and compliance with statutes and regulations, and the state must support its human resource function with adequate staff resources

Wolbachia: why these bacteria are important to genome research

Intracellular bacteria of the genus Wolbachia were first discovered in mosquitoes in the 1920s. Their superficial similarity to pathogenic rickettsia initially raised interest in them as potential human pathogens. However, injection experiments with mice showed that they were non-pathogenic, and they were subsequently classified as symbionts of insects. Until the 1970s, Wolbachia was considered to infect a limited number of species of mosquitoes. It is now clear that Wolbachia is an extremely common intracellular agent of invertebrates, infecting nearly all the major groups of arthropods and other terrestrial invertebrates. Its wide host range and abundance can be attributed partly to the unusual phenotypes it exerts on the host it infects. These include the induction of parthenogenesis (the production of female offspring from unmated mothers) in certain insects, the feminization of genetic male crustaceans to functional phenotypic females, and the failure of fertilization in hosts when males and females have a different infection status (cytoplasmic incompatibility). All of these phenotypes favor maternal transmission of the intracellular Wolbachia. In the last year, Wolbachia has also been shown to be a widespread symbiont of filarial nematodes. It appears that Wolbachia is needed by the adult worm for normal fertility, indicating that Wolbachia is behaving like a classic mutualist in this case. This discovery exemplifies that the extent of the host range of Wolbachia and its associated phenotypes is still far from fully understood

Impacts of Demographic Events on US Household Change

Understanding the determinants and consequences of changes in household size and structure is important to a wide range of social, economic, and environmental issues. In the U.S., living arrangements have undergone tremendous changes over the past 200+ years, but have been relatively stable since 1980. What drove these changes, and whether the recent stability can be expected to continue, are critical questions. While research has identified demographic events that drive particular types of changes in households, a systematic understanding of past and potential future changes is lacking. We use a household projection model to assess the sensitivity of household size and structure to various demographic events, and show that outcomes are most sensitive to changes in fertility rates and union formation and dissolution rates. They are less sensitive to the timing of marriage and childbearing and to changes in life expectancy. We then construct a set of future scenarios designed to reflect a wide but plausible range of outcomes, including a new set of scenarios for union formation and dissolution rates based on past trends, experience in other countries, and current theory. We find that the percentage of people living in households headed by the elderly may climb from 11% in 2000 to 20-31% in 2050 and 20-39% in 2100, while the average size of households could plausibly be as low as 2.0 or as high as 3.1 by the second half of the century

What does it mean to find the Face of the Franchise? Physical Attractiveness and the Evaluation of Athletic Performance

Previous research has shown how more attractive people reap more rewards in a variety of settings. We show that attractiveness as measured by facial symmetry leads to greater rewards in professional sports. National Football League quarterbacks who are more attractive are paid greater salaries and this premium persists after controlling for player performance.

Projecting U.S. Household Changes with a New Household Model

Anticipating changes in number, size, and composition of households is an important element of many issues of social concern. To facilitate continued progress in these areas, an efficient household projection model with moderate data requirements, manageable complexity, explicit accounting for the effects of demographic events, and output that includes the most important household characteristics is needed. None of the existing modelling approaches meets all these needs. This study proposes a new type of headship rate model that projects changes in age- and size-specific headship rates by accounting for the effect of changes in population age structure, changes in the age structure of household heads, and the effect of demographic events. We compare model results to historical data on the last 100 years of experience in the United United States, and to results from a projection over the next 100 years using the dynamic household model ProFamy. Results show that the new model is a substantial improvement over the commonly used constant headship rate approach. A simplified version of the model that does not require projecting the effect of changes in demographic events on headship rates appears to produce reasonably accurate projections of the composition of the population by household size and age of the household head

Household Projections for Rural and Urban Areas of Major Regions of the World

Demographic dynamics are important drivers of environmental change, including effects on climate through energy and land use that lead to emissions of greenhouse gases. These dynamics include changes to population size, age structure, and urbanization, as well as changes in household living arrangements. Population and household projections are therefore essential for investigating potential future demographic effects, but no long-term, global projections exist that simultaneously describe consistent outcomes for population, urbanization, and households. We therefore develop a new set of population/household projections for nine world regions. The projections are based partly on existing population and urbanization projections, partly on new multi-state projections for China and India, and on a new household projection using age-, size-, and urban/rural-specific headship rates. We discuss principle results that foresee future aging, urbanization, and trends toward smaller household sizes

Ecological Macroeconomic Models: Assessing Current Developments

Our society faces a dilemma. While continued economic growth is ecologically unsustainable, low or negative rates of economic growth are accompanied by adverse social impacts. Hence there is a need for macroeconomic tools that can help identify socially sustainable post-growth pathways. The emerging field of ecological macroeconomics aims to address this need and features a number of new macroeconomic modelling approaches. This article provides (1) a review of modelling developments in ecological macroeconomics, based on the literature and interviews with researchers, and (2) an analysis of how the different models incorporate policy themes from the post-growth literature. Twenty-two ecological macroeconomic models were analysed and compared to eight policy themes. It was found that environmental interactions and the monetary system were treated most comprehensively. Themes of income inequality, work patterns, indicators of well-being, and disaggregated production were addressed with less detail, while alternative business models and cross-scale interactions were hardly addressed. Overall, the combination of input-output analysis with stock-flow consistent modelling was identified as a promising avenue for developing macroeconomic models for a post-growth economy. However, due to the wide interpretation of what “the economy” entails, future research will benefit from employing a range of approaches