Spiritual Well-Being, Self-Esteem and Intimacy Among Couples Using Natural Family Planning

Making decisions about achieving and avoiding pregnancy and the methods used to attain those ends are some of the most central decisions during a couple\u27s reproductive life. Health professionals (especially professional nurses) are often consulted to aid couples in their reproductive decisions and provide couples with choices of reproductive control. Information provided on family planning choices, however, is often limited and usually involves issues of effectiveness to avoid pregnancy, convenience, health risks, and life-style preferences.1,2 Little information is provided on how family planning methods compare on psychological, spiritual, and social well-being variables. One method of family planning that needs further study on these variables is Natural Family Planning (NFP). The purpose of this study was to describe how NFP influenced the intimacy, self-esteem, and the spiritual well-being of couples who used NFP to avoid pregnancy for at least a one year period. A secondary purpose was to describe and compare the intimacy, self-esteem and spiritual well-being of couples who stopped using NFP and who have used contraception for at least a year

Time to plan and aggregate fluctuations

This article investigates the business cycle implications of the planning phase of business investment projects. Time to plan is built into a Kydland-Prescott time-to-build model, which assumes that investment projects take four periods to complete. In the Kydland-Prescott time-to-build model, resources for these projects flow uniformly across the four periods; in the time-to-plan model, few resources are used in the first period. The investigation determines that incorporating time to plan in this way improves the model's ability to account for three key features of U.S. business cycles: their persistence, or the fact that when output growth is above (or below) average, it tends to remain high (or low) for a few quarters; the fact that productivity leads hours worked over the business cycle; and the fact that business investment in structures and business investment in equipment lag output over the cycle.Business cycles

Manufacturing with the Sun

Concentrated solar radiation is now a viable alternative source for many advanced manufacturing processes. Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have demonstrated the feasibility of processes such as solar induced surface transformation of materials (SISTM), solar based manufacturing, and solar pumped lasers. Researchers are also using sunlight to decontaminate water and soils polluted with organic compounds; these techniques could provide manufacturers with innovative alternatives to traditional methods of waste management. The solar technology that is now being integrated into today's manufacturing processes offer greater potential for tomorrow, especially as applied to the radiation abundant environment available in space and on the lunar surface

How Much Do Immigration and Trade Affect Labor Market Outcomes?

macroeconomics, trade, labor markets, immigration

Assessing Dynamic Efficiency: Theory and Evidence

The issue of dynamic efficiency is central to analyses of capital accumulation and economic growth. Yet the question of what operating characteristics of an economy subject to productivity shocks should be examined to determine whether or not it is efficient has not been resolved. This paper develops criterion based on observables for determining whether or not an economy is dynamically efficient. The criterion involves a comparison of the cash flows generated by capital with the volume of investment. Its application to the United States economy and the economies of other major OECD nations suggests that they are dynamically efficient.

Solving Sequential Conditions by Finite State Strategies

Our main purpose is to present an algorithm which decides whether or not a condition C(X,Y) stated in sequential calculus admits a finite automata solution, and produces one if it exists. This solves a problem stated in [4] and contains, as a very special case, the answer to case 4 left open in [6]. In an equally appealing form the result can be restated in the terminology of [7^10,15] » Every oi-game definable in sequential calculus Is determined. Moreover the player who has a winning strategy, in fact, has a winning finite state strategy, that is one which can effectively be played in a strong sense. The main proof, that of the central Theorem 1, will be presented at the end. We begin with a discussion of its consequences