Fracture toughness of boron/aluminum laminates with various proportions of 0 deg and plus or minus 45 deg

The fracture toughness of boron/aluminum laminates was measured on sheet specimens containing central slits of various lengths that represent cracks. The specimens were loaded axially and had various widths. The sheets were made with five laminate orientation. Fracture toughness was calculated for each laminate orientation. Specimens began failing at the ends of the slit with what appeared to be tensile failures of fibers in the primary load carrying laminae. A general fracture toughness parameter independent of laminate orientation was derived on the basis of fiber failure in the principal load carrying laminae. The value of this parameter was proportional to the critical value of the stress intensity factor. The constant of proportionality depended only on the elastic constants of the laminates

Tensile stress-strain behavior of boron/aluminum laminates

The tensile stress-strain behavior of five types of boron/aluminum laminates was investigated. Longitudinal and transverse stress-strain curves were obtained for monotonic loading to failure and for three cycles of loading to successively higher load levels. The laminate strengths predicted by assuming that the zero deg plies failed first correlated well with the experimental results. The stress-strain curves for all the boron/aluminum laminates were nonlinear except at very small strains. Within the small linear regions, elastic constants calculated from laminate theory corresponded to those obtained experimentally to within 10 to 20 percent. A limited amount of cyclic loading did not affect the ultimate strength and strain for the boron/aluminum laminates. The laminates, however, exhibited a permanent strain on unloading. The Ramberg-Osgood equation was fitted to the stress-strain curves to obtain average curves for the various laminates

The Legal Philosophy of John Marshall

One of the greatest and most significant constitutional enigmas with which the Supreme Court has grappled during the past two decades has concerned the proper delineation of the first amendment\u27s prohibition against the abridgment of the freedom of speech. The range of problems confronted has extended from congressional investigations to state obscenity laws, from sit-in demonstrations to the provision of legal counsel by labor unions for their members. An all-encompassing and consistent theory of the first and fourteenth amendments has yet to be articulated by the Court, a situation which is hardly unexpected in view of the disparate claims asserted under the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and the closely related freedoms of expression, association, and assembly. The attempt here will not be to chart the course which the Court has pursued through the muddied waters of the first amendment, but rather to detail the approach of one member of the present Court, John Marshall Harlan, to certain basic first and fourteenth amendment problems

Beyond Optimal Linear Tax Mechanisms: An Experimental Examination of Damage-Based Ambient Taxes for Nonpoint Polluters

The regulation of nonpoint source water pollution from agriculture is a complex problem characterized by a multiplicity of polluters, informational asymmetries, complex fate and transport processes, and stochastic environmental factors. Taken together, these characteristics make regulatory policy based on individual firm emissions prohibitively costly. To circumvent this issue, economists, beginning with the seminal work of Segerson (1988), have devised economic incentive instruments that assign liabilities based on deviations between the observed ambient water quality level and a specified pollution threshold (Xepapadeas 1991; Horan, Shortle and Abler 1998, 2002; Hansen 1998, 2002). In the special case of a linear damage function, the regulator can optimally set the parameters of Segerson's (1988) incentive scheme solely with information on the damage function. When the damage function is nonlinear, a depiction that likely represents many watersheds, Segerson's incentive scheme is firm-specific, and the regulator must acquire costly firm-specific data on factors such as input use, land management practice, and soil type. Using a linear damage function setting, recent laboratory experimental economics efforts have investigated the ambient-based mechanisms proposed by Segerson, as well as some simple variants (Spraggon 2002, 2004; Poe et al. 2004; Vossler et al. 2005). A fundamental limitaion of this body of research, however, is that has utilized an "optimal design" in which the threshold pollution level for triggering the abient-based policy is set equal to the social optimum. It is therefore unclear whether subjects are optimally responding to the tax and threshold combination, or simply trying to reacting to the focal point created by the threshold. A second limitation of past experimetnal economics research is that, following Segerson, these investigations have utilized the limited case of a linear tax function. While a tax policy is relatively straightforward to apply when damages are linear, the application to real world situations may be limited. A more believable circumstance is that economic damages increase at an increasing rate as ambient pollution levels rise. This paper advances the experimental literature on ambient based pollution mechanisms in two important ways. First, by employing a range of marginal tax rates and threshold levels, we show that subjects do in fact respond optimally to the tax and cutoff combination. Second, by using the damage based tax proposed Hansen (1998) and Horan et al. (1998), we show that aggregate results when the economic damages from ambient water pollution are nonlinear are not significantly different from corresponding results under the linear tax.Environmental Economics and Policy,

CONNECTING TAXES AND WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR FARMLAND PROTECTION: A COMPARISON OF LOCAL AND STATE FUNDED ALTERNATIVES IN NEW YORK

The costs of tax relief for New York agricultural landowners is compared with the willingness-to-pay for farmland protection as measured in valuation research. Under an income tax rebate, the program cost is positively related with the perceived household benefits, whereas this trend is reversed under a local property tax exemption.Agricultural and Food Policy, Public Economics,

ANALYSIS OF THE PERMANENT CHANGE OF STATION POLICY FOR THE U.S. NAVY SUPPLY CORPS COMMUNITY

MBA Professional ProjectThe Department of Defense is always examining opportunities to use its budget resources more efficiently while generating the right incentives to recruit, train and retain the best service members. Permanent Change of Station (PCS) funding requirements continue to increase at a rate that is significantly faster than the DoD budget allows. This has resulted in the Navy Personnel Command issuing letters of intent (NAVADMIN 159/17, 2017), allowing service members to start their PCS process before funding is granted and their orders are written. This study examines whether there are potential savings from implementing the option of two consecutive tours in the same CONUS geographical location. The study focuses on the Navy Supply Corps community, O1–O4, and uses a financial cost-benefit analysis (FCBA) to identify the relative strengths and weakness of a two-tour requirement in the same geographical location when compared to the status quo. Our findings show that there are positive net benefits for each individual set of PCS orders when facing a two-tour in the same CONUS geographical location. Our recommendation to Supply Corps Community senior leaders is to consider revising the PCS policy for their community with the goal of cost-saving and talent retention.http://archive.org/details/analysisoftheper1094559566Lieutenant Commander, United States NavyLieutenant Commander, United States Nav

Social Preferences and Voting: An Exploration Using a Novel Preference Revealing Mechanism

Public referenda are frequently used to determine the provision of public goods. As public programs have distributional consequences, a compelling question is what role if any social preferences have on voting behavior. This paper explores this issue using laboratory experiments wherein voting outcomes lead to a known distribution of net benefits across participants. Preferences are elicited using a novel Random Price Voting Mechanism (RPVM), which is a more parsimonious mechanism than dichotomous choice referenda, but gives consistent results. Results suggest that social preferences, in particular a social efficiency motive, lead to economically meaningful deviations from self-interested voting choices and increase the likelihood that welfare-enhancing programs are implemented.Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, C91, C92, D64, D72, H41,

Empowering self-care: A handbook for pharmacists

Supporting and empowering individuals to responsibly engage in self-care is an important part of pharmacists’ daily practice around the world. Self-care spans the whole wellness spectrum, from disease prevention to the management of symptoms and common ailments. It also encompasses interventions ranging from advice on non-prescription medicines and medical devices (often described as “over the counter”) to education on healthy diets, hygiene and mindfulness practices.1 The ability to engage in self-care empowers individuals to act on their own health and well-being, and it encourages the inclusion of their input and specific needs when making healthcare decisions. Self-care empowers people and societies to transform health. Moreover, to promote health equity, health literacy is needed, and there is significant room for improvement and for greater research in this field. Self-care has been conceptualised through internationally recognised frameworks.2 The Self-Care Matrix is a widely accessible framework that conveys the concept of the “totality” of self-care by highlighting the inter-relationships between four cardinal dimensions of self-care. These dimensions are: 1. Person-centred self-care activities; 2. Self-care behaviours; 3. Self-care in the context of resource utilisation; and 4. The prevailing environment as a key enabler of self-care practice. Self-care is an important contributor to universal health coverage (UHC) through savings in healthcare expenditure and the reallocation of resources by means of reduced use and pressure on healthcare systems. For example, patient education and assessment conducted by pharmacists in addition to supporting the informed choice of non-prescription medicines could relieve the burden placed on healthcare systems, such as in primary care facilities or emergency departments, from patients seeking consultation for minor ailments, and lessen the reliance on prescription-only medicines

ANOMALIES IN VOTING: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS USING A NEW, DEMAND REVEALING (RANDOM PRICE VOTING) MECHANISM

This study investigates the influence of social preferences on voting decisions using a new Random Price Voting Mechanism (RPVM), which is best thought of as a public goods voting extension of the Becker-DeGroot-Marshack mechanism for private goods. In particular, this mechanism is used to investigate experimentally whether voting decisions are affected by the distribution of net benefits associated with a proposed public program. Recent papers have shown that, in additional to selfishness, factors such as inequality aversion, maximin preferences, and efficiency may influence individual decisions. However, the effect of social preferences on voting, the predominant funding mechanism for public goods by legislatures and public referenda, has not been thoroughly examined. We first establish the presence of anomalous behavior in dichotomous voting, and introduce the RPVM as a more efficient mechanism to examine such anomalies. We show that it is demand revealing in the presence of social preferences and empirically consistent with dichotomous choice voting. Laboratory experiments involving 440 subjects show that when net benefits are homogeneously distributed, the new RPVM is demand-revealing in both willingness-to-pay (WTP) and willingness-to-accept (WTA) settings, for both gains and losses. When the voting outcome potentially results in a heterogeneous distribution of (net) benefits, a systematic wedge appears between individuals' controlled induced values and their revealed WTP or WTA. With induced gains, the best-off subjects under-report their WTP and WTA in comparison to their induced value. Worst-off subjects express WTP and WTA that exceed their induced value. With induced losses a mirror image is evident. Best-off subjects over-report their induced value while the worst-off subjects under-report. Theoretical and econometric results presented in the paper suggest that these differences are caused by a concern for social efficiency.Institutional and Behavioral Economics,