Low-powered incentives

We study low-powered incentives in a model that captures important features of workplaces in which incentive-pay approaches are minimally relevant. Our motivation is that incentive pay, while not rare, is clearly far less common than are agency problems: many firms with agency problems nonetheless pay fixed compensation and offer continued employment to all but those workers judged "unsatisfactory" according to largely subjective criteria. We find that low-powered incentives can achieve efficient outcomes in simple workplaces and function surprisingly well even when the environment is characterized by unobservable performance heterogeneity and a high degree of complementarity among workers.Wages

Economic models of employee motivation

Workers, being human beings, present employers with a range of tricky problems. Humans, unlike filing cabinets, can be crooked, subversive, surly, or indolent, even if they are paid on time. In this article we explore economists' main models of how compensation is used to address employee motivation and how these models help to explain puzzling features of the labor market.Wages ; Management ; Labor market

Valuable jobs and uncertainty

Little attention has been given to the link between variation in a firm's circumstances and the resolution of agency problems that pervade the relationship between a firm and its employees. We construct stochastic versions of standard efficiency-wage and performance-bonding models and find that this connection has important and apparently inescapable consequences. Compensation levels depend on characteristics of the firm. The possibility of the firm's exit drive an important counterfactual prediction in both classes of model: compensation rises in dying firms. This result illustrates the need for careful attention to the circumstances under which valuable jobs are liquidated.Job analysis ; Employment (Economic theory) ; Labor turnover

An annular lithium-drifted germanium detector for studying nuclear reaction gamma-rays

Fabrication and development of annular lithium drifted germanium detector for studying nuclear reaction gamma ray

On equivariant characteristic ideals of real classes

Let $p$ be an odd prime, $F/{\Bbb Q}$ an abelian totally real number field, $F_\infty/F$ its cyclotomic ${\Bbb Z}_p$-extension, $G_\infty = Gal (F_\infty / {\Bbb Q}),$ ${\Bbb A} = {\Bbb Z}_p [[G_\infty]].$ We give an explicit description of the equivariant characteristic ideal of $H^2_{Iw} (F_\infty, {\Bbb Z}_p(m))$ over ${\Bbb A}$ for all odd $m \in {\Bbb Z}$ by applying M. Witte's formulation of an equivariant main conjecture (or "limit theorem") due to Burns and Greither. This could shed some light on Greenberg's conjecture on the vanishing of the $\lambda$-invariant of $F_\infty/F.

Design and experimental evaluation of a turbopump lift-off seal Final report

Hydrostatic life-off seal zero leakage and static sealing and rubbing tests for use in liquid hydrogen turbine pump

Summary of observed results when chilling the M-1 fuel turbopump to liquid hydrogen temperature

Cooling tests of M-1 rocket engine turbopump with liquid hydroge

Reducing the linewidth of a diode laser below 30 Hz by stabilization to a reference cavity with finesse above 10^5

An extended cavity diode laser operating in the Littrow configuration emitting near 657 nm is stabilized via its injection current to a reference cavity with a finesse of more than 10^5 and a corresponding resonance linewidth of 14 kHz. The laser linewidth is reduced from a few MHz to a value below 30 Hz. The compact and robust setup appears ideal for a portable optical frequency standard using the Calcium intercombination line.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures on 3 additional pages, corrected version, submitted to Optics Letter

Observation of long range magnetic ordering in pyrohafnate Nd2Hf2O7: A neutron diffraction study

We have investigated the physical properties of a pyrochlore hafnate Nd2Hf2O7 using ac magnetic susceptibility \chi_ac(T), dc magnetic susceptibility \chi(T), isothermal magnetization M(H) and heat capacity C_p(T) measurements, and determined the magnetic ground state by neutron powder diffraction study. An upturn is observed below 6 K in C_p(T)/T, however both C_p(T) and \chi(T) do not show any clear anomaly down to 2 K. The \chi_ac(T) shows a well pronounced anomaly indicating an antiferromagnetic transition at T_N = 0.55 K. The long range antiferromagnetic ordering is confirmed by neutron diffraction. The refinement of neutron diffraction pattern reveals an all-in/all-out antiferromagnetic structure, where for successive tetrahedra, the four Nd3+ magnetic moments point alternatively all-into or all-out-of the tetrahedron, with an ordering wavevector k = (0, 0, 0) and an ordered state magnetic moment of m = 0.62(1) \mu_B/Nd at 0.1 K. The ordered moment is strongly reduced reflecting strong quantum fluctuations in ordered state.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures and 2 tables; to appear in Phys. Rev.

A controlled experiment for the empirical evaluation of safety analysis techniques for safety-critical software

Context: Today's safety critical systems are increasingly reliant on software. Software becomes responsible for most of the critical functions of systems. Many different safety analysis techniques have been developed to identify hazards of systems. FTA and FMEA are most commonly used by safety analysts. Recently, STPA has been proposed with the goal to better cope with complex systems including software. Objective: This research aimed at comparing quantitatively these three safety analysis techniques with regard to their effectiveness, applicability, understandability, ease of use and efficiency in identifying software safety requirements at the system level. Method: We conducted a controlled experiment with 21 master and bachelor students applying these three techniques to three safety-critical systems: train door control, anti-lock braking and traffic collision and avoidance. Results: The results showed that there is no statistically significant difference between these techniques in terms of applicability, understandability and ease of use, but a significant difference in terms of effectiveness and efficiency is obtained. Conclusion: We conclude that STPA seems to be an effective method to identify software safety requirements at the system level. In particular, STPA addresses more different software safety requirements than the traditional techniques FTA and FMEA, but STPA needs more time to carry out by safety analysts with little or no prior experience.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure in Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE '15). ACM, 201