Total Unit Costs, Marginal Costs and the New Keynesian Phillips Curve

This paper considers the role of non-labor unit costs in estimating the new Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC). We show that the theory-based marginal cost of a firm is a function of both labor and non-labor unit costs including, capital costs, net interest payments and production taxes. Using data on labor costs and non-labor payments in nonfarm GDP for the US, that closely match our theory-based model, we construct a total unit cost that we use as a proxy for marginal cost. We show that adding non-labor unit costs to the familiar unit labor costs improves the existing empirical support for the role of real marginal cost as the driving variable in the NKPC and of expectations-based inflation persistence. Total unit costs also imply a duration of fixed nominal contracts that is closer to those suggested by firm-level surveys than that implied by labor unit costs.

Assemblage Theory and the Capacity to Value: An Archaeological Approach from Cache Cave, California, USA

New discoveries from a Californian cave have found a remarkable assemblage of cached perishable and other artefacts. Comprised of baskets, cordage, bone, antler, leather, food residues and other materials, the assemblages are dispersed through four caves in the largest ever cache discovered in the borderland region attributable to the native Californian linguistic group known as the Chumash. This paper develops a methodology based upon DeLanda's philosophy of assemblages and Graeber's anthropological theory of value. Importantly, following Normark, it is argue that assemblage theory needs to be operationalized into a methodological approach in order to apply it archaeologically. This methodology illustrate how a capacity analysis of the Cache Cave assemblage relates to values within the society which cached it by revealing the relational capacities within assemblages and relative capacities between them. Importantly, as a scalable approach, capacity analysis allows the investigation of the heterogeneous dynamics within complex societies

NAFTA and Beyond

International Relations/Trade,

PORTABLE INSTRUMENTATION AND ROCK ART ANALYSES: A SIMPLE METHOD FOR CREATING MICRO-VIEWSHEDS FROM PLEITO CAVE

This Gordian Knot Project utilizes portable X-ray fluorescence, portable Raman spectroscopy, portable Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and various imaging on-site techniques such as photogrammetry, dStretch, reflectance transformation imaging, and laser scanning at the California rock art site known as Pleito. While these techniques have great worth, each technique has its own drawbacks and limitations. Laser scanner has shown to be a highly accurate, but cumbersome data set for geographic information science analyses. In this article, a simple but effective technique is presented showing how using standard portable total station equipment remains effective to create micro-viewsheds of rock art in relation to other archaeological features and its natural setting

An Ontological (re)Thinking: Ubuntu and Buddhism in Higher Education

Institutions of higher education, the nation’s ideological filters, shape our world and our very being-in-the-world. Given the current anthro-cultural state of affairs around the globe, this investigation posits institutions of higher education’s complicity in the proliferation of societal dis-ease and its responsibility in assisting to recalibrate the global moral compass. Following these assertions this inquiry is focused on the other-than-ness of higher education, and re-imagines both humanity and higher education to be what it is not yet, but must become. More specifically, through Buddhism and Ubuntu, this investigation (re)thinks institutions of higher education as transformational educative environments of human becoming rather than factories of knowledge acquisition and workforce deployment. Exploring the shift in the aim of higher education beginning in the latter half of the 20th and intensifying in the 21st century, this study theorizes the necessitation of an ontological revolution—a (re)turn to the equanimous privileging of ontology and epistemology—which opens up to the possibility of being differently in the world. Utilizing two non-Western knowledges/philosophies, the South African philosophy of Ubuntu and Eastern Buddhism, this inquiry de-centers Western ontological and epistemological positionalities. Asserting the inseparability of ontology and epistemology, this inquiry embarks on a re-conceptualization of the Western subject. The newly re-conceptualized Being-West sets the inquiry on a futural line of flight, (re)imagining an absent present-future in higher education bolstered by a new conception of self, and an onto-educational philosophy of higher education, which engenders being-becoming more human and an understanding our shared humanity. Finally, this conceptual inquiry offers no solutions, but provokes, encourages new lines of flight, which generate rhizomatic nodes of becoming, pregnant with the possibility of catalyzing a revolutionary human becoming

Predictive Behavior of a Computational Foot/Ankle Model through Artificial Neural Networks

Computational models are useful tools to study the biomechanics of human joints. Their predictive performance is heavily dependent on bony anatomy and soft tissue properties. Imaging data provides anatomical requirements while approximate tissue properties are implemented from literature data, when available. We sought to improve the predictive capability of a computational foot/ankle model by optimizing its ligament stiffness inputs using feedforward and radial basis function neural networks. While the former demonstrated better performance than the latter per mean square error, both networks provided reasonable stiffness predictions for implementation into the computational model

Data communication network at the ASRM facility

The main objective of the report is to present the overall communication network structure for the Advanced Solid Rocket Motor (ASRM) facility being built at Yellow Creek near Iuka, Mississippi. This report is compiled using information received from NASA/MSFC, LMSC, AAD, and RUST Inc. As per the information gathered, the overall network structure will have one logical FDDI ring acting as a backbone for the whole complex. The buildings will be grouped into two categories viz. manufacturing critical and manufacturing non-critical. The manufacturing critical buildings will be connected via FDDI to the Operational Information System (OIS) in the main computing center in B 1000. The manufacturing non-critical buildings will be connected by 10BASE-FL to the Business Information System (BIS) in the main computing center. The workcells will be connected to the Area Supervisory Computers (ASCs) through the nearest manufacturing critical hub and one of the OIS hubs. The network structure described in this report will be the basis for simulations to be carried out next year. The Comdisco's Block Oriented Network Simulator (BONeS) will be used for the network simulation. The main aim of the simulations will be to evaluate the loading of the OIS, the BIS, the ASCs, and the network links by the traffic generated by the workstations and workcells throughout the site

Emigdiano Blues: The California Indigenous Pigment Palette and an In Situ Analysis of an Exotic Colour

The Native inhabitants of South Central California produced rock art containing red, orange, black, white, green and blue colours using a range of mineral and organic materials. Many of these same colours were used on material culture and body painting. This paper focuses on a sub-group of the Chumash, called the Emigdiano, who produced an enigmatic blue colour used in the creation of rock art. Here, we focus on the blue pigment at the rock shelter site of Three Springs in the Wind Wolves Preserve in South Central California. The composition of blue pigments has previously been the focus of discussion with suggestions that they were produced either using European pigments taken from Spanish missions, or that azurite from a local quarry was the source. Previous experimental work had demonstrated that it was possible for the blue to be produced from locally available azurite. Here we present the in situ analyses of these enigmatic blue pigments using handheld X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF). Results from pXRF analysis of rock art, quarried azurite samples and experimental rock art reconstructions showed that the Emigdiano Blue at Three Springs were not azurite based and was composed of optical blue (a mixture of black and white or grey materials which mimic the appearance of blue). This paper discusses the surprising implications of the use, given the availability of a ‘true’ blue pigment, and the wider ontological importance of combining multiple colours to produce the effect of blue in a rock art panel

Germination rates of old and fresh seeds and their implications on invasiveness of the ornamental Canary Islands date palm (Phoenix canariensis)

In many countries, Canary Islands Date Palms (Phoenix canariensis) have escaped their horticulturally managed settings and have commenced to colonise surrounding natural bushland. While dispersed by various vectors, both birds and canids such as foxes, fluctuating environmental conditions may inhibit germination in the season of deposition. The potential of old, previous season’s seeds to germinate when conditions turn favourable has direct implications on the plant’s ability to establish viable, colonising populations. Nothing is known about the ability of older, previous season’s seeds to successfully germinate. Based in experimental data, this paper shows that that the seeds of Phoenix canariensis exhibit both substantial inter-specimen and inter-seasonal variations in their germination potential. The observed variability is caused by the high genetic diversity inherent in a given palm population, as well as by range of environmental factors. At the present stage it is impossible to separate these two. Directions for further research are outlined