Canadian City Housing Prices and Urban Market Segmentation

The authors provide a detailed empirical analysis of Canadian city housing prices. They examine the long-run relationship between city house prices in Canada from 1981 to 2005 as well as idiosyncratic relations between city prices and city-specific variables. The results suggest that city house prices are only weakly correlated in the long run, and that there is a disconnect between house prices and interest rates. City-specific variables such as union wage levels, new-housing prices, and the issuance of building permits tend to be positively related to city existing-house prices. Surprisingly, there is mixed evidence with respect to standard measures of economic activity, such as labour force and per capita GDP.Regional economic developments

The Virtues of Nonsimulation Games

The use of games as teaching devices is receiving attention from an increasing number of educators. Data from tests conducted with one such educational game-WFF ’N PROOF strongly indicate that this and similar games are useful, not only in teaching a particular subject (in this case symbolic logic), but also in increasing the general problem-solving ability of the student. WFF ’N PROOF is actually not one game but a series of 21 games of increasing difficulty. The first games in the series are quite simple and can be enjoyed by first graders. The final games are challenging and stimulating even for a university teacher of logic

The Virtues of Nonsimulation Games

The use of games as teaching devices is receiving attention from an increasing number of educators. Data from tests conducted with one such educational game-WFF ’N PROOF strongly indicate that this and similar games are useful, not only in teaching a particular subject (in this case symbolic logic), but also in increasing the general problem-solving ability of the student. WFF ’N PROOF is actually not one game but a series of 21 games of increasing difficulty. The first games in the series are quite simple and can be enjoyed by first graders. The final games are challenging and stimulating even for a university teacher of logic

Water-propellant resistojets for man-tended platforms

The selection of a propulsion system for a man-tended platform has been influenced by the planned use of resistojets for drag make-up on the manned space station. For that application a resistojet has been designed that is capable of operation with a wide variety of propellants, including water. The reasons for the selection of water as the propellant and the performance of water as a propellant are discussed. The man-tended platform and its mission requirements are described

Toward A Definition of Organizational Politics

Viewing organizations as political entities is not a recent phenomenon. March (7) suggested that organizations are political coalitions in which decisions are made and goals are set by bargaining processes. Other writers stressed the utility of taking a political perspective when studying organizations (1, 6, 9, 22). Anyone associated with almost any form of organization eventually becomes aware of activities that are described by employees as political , but what is termed political by one observer may not be viewed as political by another. To understand the nature of political processes in organizations, some agreement as to what constitutes political behavior must be developed. This article attempts to shed light on the organizational political process by constructing a literature-derived definition of organizational politics (OP). Guiding this effort are the following assumptions: 1. Behavior referred to as politics takes place in varying degrees in all organizations. 2. Not all behavior in organizations can be categorized as political. 3. The organizational political process can be described as non-evaluative terms. 4. While many variables involved in describing organizational politics may be familiar to other organizational behavior concepts, a combination of these variables constitutes a unique process that cannot be described adequately by existing paradigms. This unique process if organizational politics

Cosmology and Astrophysics from Relaxed Galaxy Clusters I: Sample Selection

This is the first in a series of papers studying the astrophysics and cosmology of massive, dynamically relaxed galaxy clusters. Here we present a new, automated method for identifying relaxed clusters based on their morphologies in X-ray imaging data. While broadly similar to others in the literature, the morphological quantities that we measure are specifically designed to provide a fair basis for comparison across a range of data quality and cluster redshifts, to be robust against missing data due to point-source masks and gaps between detectors, and to avoid strong assumptions about the cosmological background and cluster masses. Based on three morphological indicators - Symmetry, Peakiness and Alignment - we develop the SPA criterion for relaxation. This analysis was applied to a large sample of cluster observations from the Chandra and ROSAT archives. Of the 361 clusters which received the SPA treatment, 57 (16 per cent) were subsequently found to be relaxed according to our criterion. We compare our measurements to similar estimators in the literature, as well as projected ellipticity and other image measures, and comment on trends in the relaxed cluster fraction with redshift, temperature, and survey selection method. Code implementing our morphological analysis will be made available on the web.Comment: MNRAS, in press. 43 pages in total, of which 17 are tables (please think twice before printing). 18 figures, 4 tables. Machine-readable tables will be available from the journal and at the url below; code will be posted at http://www.slac.stanford.edu/~amantz/work/morph14

Laser Applications to Chemical and Environmental Analysis: Introduction to the Feature Issue

This issue of Applied Optics features 16 papers describing chemical and environmental measurements made possible by lasers. Many of these contributions were presented at the Optical Society of America Topical Meeting on Laser Applications to Chemical and Environmental Analysis, held in Orlando, Florida, 9–11 March 1998.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/86759/1/Sick33.pd