76 research outputs found
Pork Quality Assurance Plusâą Program
Pork producers in the United States have developed a new food safety and animal care certification program that builds on the current Pork Quality Assurance (PQA\u27) program. Working with the pork industry\u27s customers, pork producers have created a workable, credible and affordable solution to assure food safety and animal care and at the same time meet the needs of customers including restaurants, food retailers and, ultimately, consumers. The industry\u27s solution is a continuous improvement system focused on producer education and premises assessment, which is called PQA Plusâą
Essays in Applied Microeconomics
This thesis is made of three chapters. In Chapter 1 I investigate some of the potential effects of the interaction between minimum wages and job frictions on labour market outcomes in the UK. In a random search model with wage-posting and productivity dispersion across firms, under certain conditions, an increase in the minimum wage has stronger effects on separations between firms and workers facing relatively higher frictions than on separations between firms and workers facing relatively lower frictions. In this chapter, I test this prediction within two separate empirical settings, using two sources of UK data. I find some evidence that employment transitions of "high-friction" workers respond more strongly relative to the "low-friction" groupâs. In Chapter 2 I analyse voting behaviour of US House Democrats on two separate bills aimed at permanently repealing or reforming the estate tax. Existing analyses of politiciansâ voting behaviour are consistent with a framework in which voting decisions result from the competing influences of politiciansâ own ideology and interests, special interests, and the interests of their constituents. Recent analyses of roll-call votes in the US Congress suggest that local interests are more likely to influence political decisions when the issues at hand are prominent and when the stakes associated with them are clear. Making use of data on representativesâ wealth and personal characteristics, I am able to assess whether their private interests influence their voting behaviour. Further, I use data on campaign contributions and advertising, characteristics of electoral constituents, and measures of politiciansâ ideology. My results confirm the predictive power of ideology and campaign contributions found elsewhere in the literature. I am not able to find clear evidence that local interests had an influence on voting behaviour. Finally, I find no evidence that politiciansâ own wealth had an influence on their voting behaviour. Chapter 3 is co-authored with Brian Bell and John Van Reenen. In this paper, we investigate whether moving to relative performance contracts has improved the alignment between CEO pay and performance. To address this, we use an original dataset on CEO contracts for almost 500 publicly listed UK companies. We find that pay responds more strongly to increases in firm performance than to decreases, and that this asymmetry is present only in weakly governed firms. Further, we find that CEO pay is still linked to positive random industry shocks. This result is due to the fact that failing awards in weakly governed firms are redesigned in ways that reduce the risks attached to them for the CEOs. These findings suggest that reforms to the formal structure of CEO pay contracts are unlikely to align incentives in the absence of strong shareholder governance.</p
An efficient numerical algorithm on irreducible multiparty correlations
We develop a numerical algorithm to calculate the degrees of irreducible
multiparty correlations for an arbitrary multiparty quantum state, which is
efficient for any quantum state of up to five qubits. We demonstrate the power
of the algorithm by the explicit calculations of the degrees of irreducible
multiparty correlations in the 4-qubit GHZ state, the Smolin state, and the
5-qubit W state. This development takes a crucial step towards practical
applications of irreducible multiparty correlations in real quantum many-body
physics.Comment: 4 pages. Comments are welcom
A new member of a class of rod-like Mn single molecule magnets using 2-(pyridine-2-ly)propan-2-ol
This paper reports on the synthesis, structure and magnetic properties of a new type of rod like Mnââ metal cluster, [MnââOâ(OH)â(OMe)â(dmhmp)â(OâCPh)ââ(HâO)] (6) where the ligand (dmhmpH) is 2-(pyridine-2-yl) propan-2-ol. Compound (6) was obtained by reacting MnClââą4HâO with dmhmpH in the presence of benzoic salt and EtâN. The resulting crystalline material is assigned to the triclinic space group P1Ì. Although compound (6) displays ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic competition behavior, this does not prevent the molecule from functioning as a single-molecule magnet (SMM). The SMM behavior is evidenced by observing frequency dependent out-of-phase ac signals as well as magnetization hysteresis loops at low temperatures in a micro-SQUID study. A brief comparison between all rod-like Mnââ materials is also given in the manuscript
Analysing multiparticle quantum states
The analysis of multiparticle quantum states is a central problem in quantum
information processing. This task poses several challenges for experimenters
and theoreticians. We give an overview over current problems and possible
solutions concerning systematic errors of quantum devices, the reconstruction
of quantum states, and the analysis of correlations and complexity in
multiparticle density matrices.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, prepared for proceedings of the "Quantum
[Un]speakables II" conference (Vienna, 2014
Peak Oil:Die Herausforderung lokaler ErdölabhĂ€ngigkeit am Beispiel MĂŒnster
Das Erdölzeitalter neigt sich dem Ende zu â daran Ă€ndern auch Schieferöle, Agrartreibstoffe oder Verfahren wie das Fracking langfristig nichts.
Einer Gruppe von Studierenden an der Uni MĂŒnster ging die wissenschaftliche, politische und gesellschaftliche BeschĂ€ftigung mit dieser Herausforderung zu langsam. Aus diesem Grund initiierte sie 2012 eigenstĂ€ndig ein interdisziplinĂ€res Peak-Oil-Seminar und begleitete Studierende dabei, in gesellschaftsrelevanten Sektoren der Energieversorgung, des Transports, der lokalen Wirtschaft, der ErnĂ€hrung, der Gesundheit und der privaten Haushalte eigene Fragestellungen zu entwickeln und diesen nachzugehen.
Das Ergebnis ist ein Bericht, der am Beispiel MĂŒnster die Brisanz und AktualitĂ€t knapper werdender Ressourcen herausstreicht, der die Wichtigkeit der lokalen, vorausschauenden und freiwillig-kreativen Verringerung der Ăl-AbhĂ€ngigkeit hervorhebt und der nicht zuletzt eine Lanze bricht fĂŒr Formate transformativen und offenen Forschens und Handelns. <br
Pain Management in the Neonatal Piglet During Routine Management Procedures. Part 1: A Systematic Review of Randomized and Non-Randomized Intervention Studies
Routine procedures carried out on piglets (i.e. castration, tail docking, teeth clipping, and ear notching) are considered painful. Unfortunately the efficacy of current pain mitigation modalities is poorly understood. The aim of this systematic review was to synthesize the existing primary scientific literature regarding the effectiveness of pain management interventions used for routine procedures on piglets. The review question was, \u27In piglets under twenty-eight days old, undergoing castration, tail docking, teeth clipping, and/or methods of identification that involve cutting of the ear tissue, what is the effect of pain mitigation compared with no pain mitigation on behavioral and non-behavioral outcomes that indicate procedural pain and post-procedural pain?\u27 A review protocol was designed a priori. Data sources used were Agricola (EBSCO), CAB Abstracts (Thomson Reuters), PubMed, Web of Science (Thomson Reuters), BIOSIS Previews (Thomson Reuters), and ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text. No restrictions on year of publication or language were placed on the search. Eligible studies assessed an intervention designed to mitigate the pain of the procedures of interest and included a comparison group that did not receive an intervention. Eligible non-English studies were translated using a translation service. Two reviewers independently screened titles and abstracts for relevance using pre-defined questions. Data were extracted from relevant articles onto pre-defined forms. From the 2203 retrieved citations forty publications, containing 52 studies met the eligibility criteria. In 40 studies, piglets underwent castration only. In seven studies, piglets underwent tail docking only. In one study, piglets underwent teeth clipping only, and in one study piglets underwent ear notching only. Three studies used multiple procedures. Thirty-two trial arms assessed general anesthesia protocols, 30 trial arms assessed local anesthetic protocols, and 28 trial arms assessed non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) protocols. Forty-one trial arms were controls where piglets received either placebo or no treatment. Forty-five outcomes were extracted from the studies, however only the results from studies that assessed cortisol (six studies), ÎČ-endorphins (one study), vocalisations (nine studies), and pain-related behaviors (nine studies) are reported. Other outcomes were reported in only one or two studies. Confident decision making will likely be difficult based on this body of work because lack of comprehensive reporting precludes calculation of the magnitude of pain mitigation for most outcomes
Non-diagonal open spin-1/2 XXZ quantum chains by separation of variables: Complete spectrum and matrix elements of some quasi-local operators
The integrable quantum models, associated to the transfer matrices of the
6-vertex reflection algebra for spin 1/2 representations, are studied in this
paper. In the framework of Sklyanin's quantum separation of variables (SOV), we
provide the complete characterization of the eigenvalues and eigenstates of the
transfer matrix and the proof of the simplicity of the transfer matrix
spectrum. Moreover, we use these integrable quantum models as further key
examples for which to develop a method in the SOV framework to compute matrix
elements of local operators. This method has been introduced first in [1] and
then used also in [2], it is based on the resolution of the quantum inverse
problem (i.e. the reconstruction of all local operators in terms of the quantum
separate variables) plus the computation of the action of separate covectors on
separate vectors. In particular, for these integrable quantum models, which in
the homogeneous limit reproduce the open spin-1/2 XXZ quantum chains with
non-diagonal boundary conditions, we have obtained the SOV-reconstructions for
a class of quasi-local operators and determinant formulae for the
covector-vector actions. As consequence of these findings we provide one
determinant formulae for the matrix elements of this class of reconstructed
quasi-local operators on transfer matrix eigenstates.Comment: 40 pages. Minor modifications in the text and some notations and some
more reference adde
Pain management in the neonatal piglet during routine management procedures. Part 2:Grading the quality of evidence and the strength of recommendations
Piglets reared in swine production in the USA undergo painful procedures that include castration, tail docking, teeth clipping, and identification with ear notching or tagging. These procedures are usually performed without pain mitigation. The objective of this project was to develop recommendations for pain mitigation in 1- to 28-day-old piglets undergoing these procedures. The National Pork Board funded project to develop recommendations for pain mitigation in piglets. Recommendation development followed a defined multi-step process that included an evidence summary and estimates of the efficacies of interventions. The results of a systematic review of the interventions were reported in a companion paper. This manuscript describes the recommendation development process and the final recommendations. Recommendations were developed for three interventions (CO2/O2 general anesthesia, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and lidocaine) for use during castration. The ability to make strong recommendations was limited by low-quality evidence and strong certainty about variation in stakeholder values and preferences. The panel strongly recommended against the use of a CO2/O2 general anesthesia mixture, weakly recommended for the use of NSAIDs and weakly recommended against the use of lidocaine for pain mitigation during castration of 1- to 28-day-old piglets
Antiperiodic dynamical 6-vertex model I: Complete spectrum by SOV, matrix elements of the identity on separate states and connections to the periodic 8-vertex model
The spin-1/2 highest weight representations of the dynamical 6-vertex and the
standard 8-vertex Yang-Baxter algebra on a finite chain are considered in this
paper. For the antiperiodic dynamical 6-vertex transfer matrix defined on
chains with an odd number of sites, we adapt the Sklyanin's quantum separation
of variable (SOV) method and explicitly construct SOV representations from the
original space of representations. We provide the complete characterization of
eigenvalues and eigenstates proving also the simplicity of its spectrum.
Moreover, we characterize the matrix elements of the identity on separated
states by determinant formulae. The matrices entering in these determinants
have elements given by sums over the SOV spectrum of the product of the
coefficients of separate states. This SOV analysis is not reduced to the case
of the elliptic roots of unit and the results here derived define the required
setup to extend to the dynamical 6-vertex model the approach recently developed
in [1]-[5] to compute the form factors of the local operators in the SOV
framework, these results will be presented in a future publication. For the
periodic 8-vertex transfer matrix, we prove that its eigenvalues have to
satisfy a fixed system of equations. In the case of a chain with an odd number
of sites, this system of equations is the same entering in the SOV
characterization of the antiperiodic dynamical 6-vertex transfer matrix
spectrum. This implies that the set of the periodic 8-vertex eigenvalues is
contained in the set of the antiperiodic dynamical 6-vertex eigenvalues. A
criterion is introduced to find simultaneous eigenvalues of these two transfer
matrices and associate to any of such eigenvalues one nonzero eigenstate of the
periodic 8-vertex transfer matrix by using the SOV results. Moreover, a
preliminary discussion on the degeneracy of the periodic 8-vertex spectrum is
also presented.Comment: 36 pages, main modifications in section 3 and one appendix added, no
result modified for the dynamical 6-vertex transfer matrix spectrum and the
matrix elements of identity on separate states for chains with an odd number
of site
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