The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development--A New Departure in International Finance

Early in World War II, financial and economic experts of the Allied Nations concluded that if economic health was to return with the peace, the family of nations would have to forego the bad economic manners which had become commonplace between the wars. The conviction that a new and better economic household for the world had to be planned resulted in the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July, 1944, in which representatives of 44 nations participated. The Conference met to solve two major problems. The first of these grew out of the chaotic foreign\u27 exchange practices which had characterized the 1930\u27s. The Conference\u27s answer to it was the International Monetary Fund, a new international institution designed to stabilize international exchange, to hasten the removal of artificial barriers to international payments, and to provide short-term foreign exchange assistance to members to overcome temporary disequilibrium in their balance of payments. The Conference\u27s second problem was to find a way to revive the international capital investment which would be needed to help reconstruct what the war had destroyed and to accelerate an increase in productivity and in living standards in the undeveloped areas of the world. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (popularly known as the World Bank) was designed as the answer to that problem

Elements of Median Design in Relation to Accident Occurrence

The purpose of this study was to compare the accident histories of different median types and to provide verification of generally recommended median widths and slopes. A major limitation of the analyses was the small number of possible combinations of median width and cross slope available for study. The analyses reported provided evidence from accident histories to support the general requirement that wider medians are safer medians. It was indicated that medians should be a minimum of 30-40 feet wide for high speed facilities and that flat slopes should be provided; 4:1 slopes are inadequate for medians less than 60 feet wide. There was an indication that 6:1 or flatter slopes should be used. Raised medians provided an unsuitable vehicle recovery area on rural highways and were also undesirable from the standpoint of roadway surface drainage. The irregular interstate medians which result from independent roadway alignment should be used only with adequate clear zones in the median. Twelve-foot shoulders should be provided where guardrail is to be used

Energy Deposition in a Graphene Field Effect Transistor Based Radiation Detector

The development of high-performance radiation detectors is essential for commercial, scientific, and security applications [1]. Due to the unique electronic properties of graphene (high-speed, low-noise), recent radiation detectors utilize graphene field effect transistors to sense charge carriers produced by radiation interactions in a gated semiconductor [2]. A study of the energy deposition due to the transport of gamma rays and electrons/positrons through typical elemental and compound semiconductors (Si, Ge, GaAs, and CdTe) will allow for a material optimization of these detectors. Geant4, a Monte Carlo based program that simulates the passage of particles through matter, was used to simulate Compton scattering of gamma rays and multiple scattering of electrons emitted from the decay of Co-60 and Cs-137. The output from Geant4 was a histogram that displayed the percentage of interactions that deposited energy within set energy bins. Further simulations will be performed to determine the energy deposition for multiple gamma ray interactions (photoelectric effect, Compton scattering, and pair production) and multiple electron/positron interactions (multiple scattering, ionization, Bremsstrahlung, and e+ e- annihilation)

Evolving Tropical Cyclone Tracks in the North Atlantic in a Warming Climate

Tropical cyclone (TC) track characteristics in a changing climate remain uncertain. Here, we investigate the genesis, tracks, and termination of \u3e35,000 synthetic TCs traveling within 250 km of New York City (NYC) from the pre‐industrial era (850–1800 CE) to the modern era (1970–2005 CE) to the future (2080–2100 CE). Under a very high‐emissions scenario (RCP8.5), TCs are more likely to form closer to the United States (U.S.) southeast coast (\u3e15% increase), terminate in the northeastern Atlantic (\u3e6% increase), and move most slowly along the U.S. Atlantic coast (\u3e15% increase) from the pre‐industrial to future. Under our modeled scenarios, TCs are more likely to travel within 100 km of Boston, MA, USA (p = 0.01) and Norfolk, VA, USA (p = 0.05) than within 100 km of NYC in the future. We identify reductions in the time between genesis and the time when TCs come within 100 km of NYC, Boston, or Norfolk, as well as increased duration of TC impacts from individual storms at all three cities in the future

Comparison of the emissions of current expendable launch vehicles and future spaceplanes

This paper compares the environmental impact of two types of launch vehicles, an expendable vertical launcher (Delta IV) and a conceptual SSTO spaceplane. A realistic trajectory for the spaceplane is generated using a multiple-shooting trajectory optimisation method, which integrates physical models and generates an optimal control law minimising the fuel consumption and the emissions of the flight. These were compared with the emissions from a standard Delta IV trajectory. The launch was to a 200 km circular LEO at 27.5° inclination. The chemical investigated is H2O, which contributes to the depletion of the ozone layer in the stratosphere. The study shows that for the ascent trajectory the spaceplane produces a total of 5.0143 x 105 kg of H2O, compared with 2.24 x 105 kg for the Delta IV. The spaceplane has a peak production altitude in the sensitive lower stratosphere, compared to the much lower peak production altitude of the Delta IV

Constructing household specific consumer price indexes : an analysis of different techniques and methods

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1997 National Bureau of Economic Research Summer Institute on Price Index MeasurementThe primary purpose of this study is to produce household specific price indexes for consumer units or households living in the United States in the early 1990s. This paper is a report on how these household specific indexes were created. With household specific indexes, households are assumed to have nonhomothetic preferences, so changes in prices involve relative price changes between different sets of commodities and the resulting indexes will differ systematically between different households. We examine several different approaches to construct these indexes. Our indexes are based on internal U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) data for 1990-91 and Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index (CPI) data from winter 1981, 1987, and 1991. Our base period is 1990-91. Using these data we produce Paasche type household specific indexes. In addition we propose an alternative definition of total expenditures, based on the CPI market basket commodity space, to be used for welfare analysis. Our underlying motivation for conducting this study was to compare real welfare inequality in Spain and the U.S. in the 1980s for another study (Garner et al. forthcoming 1997). Because of this comparison, we were somewhat restricted in our approach. CEX data are used to calculate CPI market basket item budget shares for each interviewed household. Price indexes are merged with the household budget data at various levels of geographic and market basket item aggregation, and the variability in these indexes are compared in order to measure the value of using detailed consumption space over aggregated consumption space. In this study we introduce two novel approaches to producing household specific price indexes using BLS data. First, expenditure data from the Consumer Expenditure Diary survey, which is more detailed than the Interview, are used to impute missing consumption items for the Interview households. And second, a method to impute household indexes for the rural population is presented. Two different types of samples, horizontal and vertical (based on assumptions about the Interview households selected to define the base period), are used to provide the weights for the price indexes. Indexes are presented based on Interview only items and all items commodity spaces for the horizontal and vertical samples with additional indexes produced for consumer units living in urban and rural areas. From our study we conclude that indexes based on expenditures for the horizontal and vertical samples do not differ significantly for the time periods of our study. However, differences in the indexes do result for the urban versus rural samples, with consumer units living in urban areas facing greater changes in relative prices than are faced by consumer units living in rural areas. The all-item indexes produced slightly higher index values than did the Interview-only item indexes. Relative prices appear to be pro-poor during the 1980s

P3_3 Around the World in 82Pb

Hot air balloons are often made of lightweight material in order to improve the performance of such a craft. In this paper we discuss whether a hot air balloon made of lead could fly. We considered the lift generated by the heated air inside the balloon and concluded that a lead balloon could fly providing that the lead shell was less than 0.011mm thick

P3_10 Red-shifted Speed Cameras

This paper investigates whether a car could travel fast enough to be red-shifted out of a speed cameras range of vision. It also calculates the observed length contraction of such a car if it could go at this velocity. It was calculated that a car would need to travel at 0.178 times the speed of light to avoid being caught by the speed camera via the Doppler Eect. It was also calculate that a Ferrari 458 would contract by 7.3cm at this velocity

P3_1 The Power of the Mediterranean Sea

This paper investigates the potential hydro-electricenergy that could be generated from draining the entire Mediterranean Sea.We assumed that it is possible to drain the entire sea and calculated that it could supply the Globe with its current electrical power consumption for the next 102 years. However, the subterranean infrastructure required for such a feat is non-existent and as such this project is unfeasible