Diesel Buses, Oil Prices and Premature Deaths from Particulate Matter: Understanding the Connections, Exploring Solutions

In 2000 the Environmental and Energy Study Institute hosted a briefing to discuss the complex issues surrounding diesel buses and alternative-fuel buses. In particular, the panelists addressed the environmental, public health, and economic costs associated with diesel bus emissions and discussed both the costs and benefits of alternative-fuel buses

Does a Marriage Really Need Sex?: A Critical Analysis of the Gender Restriction on Marriage

This Note discusses the issues surrounding intersex persons and the right to marry. The Comment first discusses the constitutional protection of the right to marry, intersex conditions, and case law regarding intersex, transsexual, and same-sex marriage. It further addresses the consequences for marriage when it is narrowly defined. Further, the Comment proposes an alternative solution to the one many courts have used. This solution allows an intersex person to self-designate her gender and be able to marry either a man or a woman. Finally, this Comment argues that if an intersex person can marry either a man or a woman, then a male-to-female transsexual and a genetic woman must also be able to marry either a man or a woman because all are similarly situated and must be treated alike under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment

Banks and foreign exchange markets

Foreign exchange ; Bank failures

Mobility in daily life - The car and use of information and communication technology for family logistics

The development of “new” family structures, with an increasing portions of divorced parents choose joint custody of the children, and a differentiation and distribution of daily activities has opened the way for new and more flexible forms for information and communication technology (ICT) to coordinate the interaction between family members. The need for flexible transport to link together activities is also an issue. The point of departure for this paper is to examine the interaction between the uses of ICT, in particular mobile phones, physical mobility and social life in an increasingly differentiated and distributed daily life among families with children. The questions addressed are how different families use ICT to coordinate and maintain relationships in everyday life and how ICT and physical mobility interact within this context. The empirical analysis is based on in-depth interviews of 25 families in the Oslo region. The analysis of the interaction between the car and the mobile phone indicate that the one will not replace the other. It is rather such that they represent technologies that complement each other and can perhaps mutually increase use. While the car is an extension of the body and which increases the physical range of the individual, the mobile telephone increases one’s range of overview. To some degree the mobile telephone directs automobile use, in the sense that it may generate more trips since use of the mobile telephone means that there is not the need to plan daily activities. More of the activities are carried out spontaneously and daily life is more ad hoc, which also indicate more car uses. In the families of this study different time use arrangements are tied to the use of the car and the mobile telephone. At the one extreme we find the structured where all the activities are planned – both in time and space – and all the assignments are divided between the various members of the family. On the other hand we see families where everything is done spontaneously and there is very little planning aside from the fixed portions of life. The structured and ad hoc systems are two extremes on a scale where there are many alternative solutions. The families in this study represent positions between the extremes tending towards the ad hoc end of the spectrum. The car and the mobile telephone are devices that allow this type of organization, which seems to increase daily transport by car.

Driving Under the Influence of Our Fathers

This paper studies intergenerational correlations in drunk driving between fathers and their children using the Stockholm Birth Cohort. We find strong evidence of an intergenerational drunk driving relationship. Cohort members who have fathers with a drunk driving record have 2.59 times higher odds of having a drunk driving conviction themselves than cohort members with non-drunk driving fathers. We then go on to investigate the underlying mechanisms that give rise to these correlations. The results provide compelling evidence that at least some of this relationship represents a behavior-specific transference from fathers to their children. Specifically, much of the raw father-child drunk driving relationship persists over and above controls for a number of potential explanations, including that the relationship is: (i) a by-product of parental alcoholism, (ii) symptomatic of a general pattern of non-law abiding behavior, (iii) attributable to inherited ability and physical characteristics, and (iv) accounted for by common background variables or social factors. We then go on to show how this mechanism may change over time. As cohort members age into adulthood, the father-child drunk driving relationship appears to be driven by a more general behavioral transference mechanism and can be accounted for by parental alcoholism and non-law abiding behavior.alcohol; crime; drunk driving; illegal behavior; intergenerational crime; intergenerational mobility; risky behavior

Properly infinite C(X)-algebras and K_1-injectivity

We investigate if a unital C(X)-algebra is properly infinite when all its fibres are properly infinite. We show that this question can be rephrased in several different ways, including the question if every unital properly infinite C*-algebra is K_1-injective. We provide partial answers to these questions, and we show that the general question on proper infiniteness of C(X)-algebras can be reduced to establishing proper infiniteness of a specific C([0,1])-algebra with properly infinite fibres.Comment: 19 page

Bypassing the energy-time uncertainty in time-resolved photoemission

The energy-time uncertainty is an intrinsic limit for time-resolved experiments imposing a tradeoff between the duration of the light pulses used in experiments and their frequency content. In standard time-resolved photoemission, this limitation maps directly onto a tradeoff between the time resolution of the experiment and the energy resolution that can be achieved on the electronic spectral function. Here we propose a protocol to disentangle the energy and time resolutions in photoemission. We demonstrate that dynamical information on all time scales can be retrieved from time-resolved photoemission experiments using suitably shaped light pulses of quantum or classical nature. As a paradigmatic example, we study the dynamical buildup of the Kondo peak, a narrow feature in the electronic response function arising from the screening of a magnetic impurity by the conduction electrons. After a quench, the electronic screening builds up on timescales shorter than the inverse width of the Kondo peak and we demonstrate that the proposed experimental scheme could be used to measure the intrinsic time scales of such electronic screening. The proposed approach provides an experimental framework to access the nonequilibrium response of collective electronic properties beyond the spectral uncertainty limit and will enable the direct measurement of phenomena such as excited Higgs modes and, possibly, the retarded interactions in superconducting systems.Comment: Extended introduction, added references to section IIB, improved wording in section II

PENGGUNAAN MODEL PEMBELAJARAN KOOPERATIF TIPE TEAMS GAMES TOURNAMENT (TGT) TERHADAP HASIL BELAJAR PPKN PESERTA DIDIK KELAS X IPA 1 SMA NEGERI 3 PONTIANAK

Tujuan penelitian ini untuk menganalisis penerapan model pembelajaran kooperatif tipe Teams Games Tournament (TGT) terhadap hasil belajar peserta didik dengan menggunakan jenis Penelitian Tindakan Kelas (PTK). Penelitian ini terdiri dari dua siklus dengan sampel penelitian seluruh peserta didik kelas X IPA 1 SMA Negeri 3 Pontianak yang terdiri dari 36 peserta didik. Adapun desain penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kuantitatif dengan instrumen penelitian yaitu soal pre test dan post test untuk melihat keberhasilan penggunaan model pembelajaran Teams Games Tournament (TGT). Berdasarkan analisis data hasil belajar peserta didik menunjukkan peningkatan ketuntasan hasil belajar peserta didik dengan rincian yaitu pre test (33%), siklus I (81%), siklus II (92%). %). Penerapan model pembelajaran kooperatif tipe Teams Games Tournament (TGT) dapat meningkatkan hasil belajar PPKn peserta didik kelas X IPA 1 SMA Negeri 3 Pontianak

Ecology on‐exhibit: careers in zoos and aquariums

Published versio

Disorganization or self-organization : the emergence of business associations in a transition economy

The transition from plan to market provides a rare opportunity for insight into the endogenous development of economic institutions. Economic activities under the Soviet regime were coordinated by a central authority. Soviet coordinating mechanisms were disrupted during the transition period, leading to an increase in firms'transactions costs. Blanchard and Kremer (1997), among others, emphasize the negative impact of this"disorganization"on output behavior at the beginning of the transition. Although their argument is correct, the authors believe that their work and similar analyses stop short of fully characterizing the transition by concentrating only on reform's disruptive effects. The authors start where the earlier work ends, examining the business associations that emerged spontaneously in response to the transition's challenges. They provide empirical evidence that institutions that help coordinate production and trade emerge spontaneously in a widely"disorganized"environment. Using a largely unexplored set of firm-level data, they document the emergence of business associations at the beginning of the transition and provide evidence that these new coordinating institutions mitigated the initial decline in output. Building on the growing literature on complexity and transaction costs, they interpret the emergence of these informal institutions as the firms'rational attempt to coordinate activities in a decentralized economy. In other words, the creation of complex organizations such as associations is the spontaneous result of a natural tendency in every system to create order at the edge of chaos. Business associations are more likely to emerge where there is disorder to provide their members with stability, coordination, and the information needed to improve performance.Public Institution Analysis&Assessment,Governance Indicators,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation