Odd-primary homotopy exponents of compact simple Lie groups

We note that a recent result of the second author yields upper bounds for odd-primary homotopy exponents of compact simple Lie groups which are often quite close to the lower bounds obtained from v_1-periodic homotopy theory.Comment: This is the version published by Geometry & Topology Monographs on 22 February 200

Southern California partyboat sampling study Quarterly Report no. 8

Between April 1 and June 30, 1977, 125 trips were sampled aboard southern California partyboats by Department personnel. A total of 14,842 fishes belonging to 72 species was identified and measured. Otoliths were removed from 134 rockfish carcasses representing 20 species for age deterination studies. The 10 most common species sampled during the quarter accounted for 76.9% of the catch. Individually, the most common were Pacific mackerel, Scomber japonicus (16.9%); kelp bass, Paralabrax clathratus (14.5%); bocaccio, Sebastes paucispinis (11.4%); Pacific bonito, Sarda chiliensis (10.3%); barred sand bass, Paralabrax nebulifer (5.6%); olive rockfish, Sebastes serranoides (5.3%); chilipepper, S. goodei (4.0%); California barracuda, Sphyraena argentea (2.9%); and ocean whitefish, Caulolatilus princeps (2.8%). Fishing effort switched from "rockcod" to surface activity as it did during the second quarter of 1976 (26pp.

Configuration management issues and objectives for a real-time research flight test support facility

Presented are some of the critical issues and objectives pertaining to configuration management for the NASA Western Aeronautical Test Range (WATR) of Ames Research Center. The primary mission of the WATR is to provide a capability for the conduct of aeronautical research flight test through real-time processing and display, tracking, and communications systems. In providing this capability, the WATR must maintain and enforce a configuration management plan which is independent of, but complimentary to, various research flight test project configuration management systems. A primary WATR objective is the continued development of generic research flight test project support capability, wherein the reliability of WATR support provided to all project users is a constant priority. Therefore, the processing of configuration change requests for specific research flight test project requirements must be evaluated within a perspective that maintains this primary objective

The Time and Timing Costs of Market Work

With the American Time Use Survey of 2003 and 2004 we first examine whether additional market work has neutral impacts on the mix of non-market activities. The estimates indicate that fixed time costs of market work alter patterns of non-market activities, reducing leisure time and mostly increasing time devoted to household production. Similar results are found using time-diary data for Australia, Germany and the Netherlands. Direct estimates of the utility derived from goods consumption and two types of non-market time in the presence of these fixed costs indicate that they generate a utility-equivalent of as much as 8 percent of income that must be overcome before market work becomes an optimizing choice. Market work also alters the timing of a fixed amount of non-market activities during the day, away from the schedule chosen when market work imposes no timing constraints. All of these effects are mitigated by higher family income. The results provide a new supply-side explanation for the frequently observed discrete drop from full-time work to complete retirement.

What is Discrimination? Gender in the American Economic Association

Measuring market discrimination is extremely difficult except in the increasingly rare case where physical output measures allow direct measurement of productivity. We illustrate this point with evidence on elections to offices of the American Economic Association. Using a new technique to infer the determinants of the chances of observing a particular outcome when there are K choices out of N possibilities, we find that female candidates have a much better than random chance of victory. This advantage can be interpreted either as reverse discrimination or as reflecting voters' beliefs that women are more productive than observationally identical men in this activity. If the former this finding could be explained by the behavior of an unchanging median voter whose gender preferences were not satisfied by the suppliers of candidates for office; but there was a clear structural change in voting behavior in the mid-1970s. The results suggest that it is not generally possible to claim that differences in rewards for different groups measure the extent of discrimination or even its direction.

Circular 101

This study was made possible by the financial support of the Alaska Science and Technology Foundation

Consistent Nonparametric Tests for Lorenz Dominance

This paper proposes a test for Lorenz dominance. Given independent samples of income or other welfare related variable, we propose a test of the null hypothesis that the Lorenz curve for one population is dominated by the Lorenz curve for a second population. The test statistic is based on the standardized largest difference between the empirical Lorenz curves for the two samples. The test is nonparametric in the sense that no distributional assumptions are made and the test is consistent because it compares the Lorenz curves at all quantiles. We derive the asymptotic distribution of the test statistic under the null hypothesis. Since the limiting distribution of the test statistic is nonstandard, being dependent on the underlying Lorenz curves, we propose the use of two computer based procedures for conducting inference. The first is a simulation method that simulates p-values from an approximation to the underlying limiting distribution of the statistic while the second is based on the nonparametric bootstrap. We examine the performance of the methods in a Monte Carlo study and with a comparison of the income based Lorenz curves for the US and Canada.Lorenz dominance, test consistency, simulation.

Climate change adaptation strategies for Australian birds

Abstract In the first continental analysis of the effects of climate change on a faunal group, we identified that the climate space of 101 Australian terrestrial and inland water bird taxa is likely to be entirely gone by 2085, 16 marine taxa have breeding sites that are predicted to be at least 10% less productive than today, and 55 terrestrial taxa are likely to be exposed to more frequent or intense fires.  Birds confined to Cape York Peninsula, the Wet Tropics, the Top End of the Northern Territory (particularly the Tiwi Islands), the arid zone, King Island and southern South Australia (particularly Kangaroo Island) are most likely to lose climate space. There was some variation in the predictions of the 18 climate models deployed, but all predicted that the rainforest avifauna of Cape York Peninsula is likely to face the strongest challenge from climate change, particularly taxa currently confined to the Iron and McIlwraith Ranges. For marine birds, those nesting on Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands, the Great Barrier Reef and the Houtman Abrolhos are likely to face the greatest declines in local marine productivity. Changes in local marine productivity may also affect the endemic terrestrial birds of these islands, for which no climate modelling was possible. A small group of beach-nesting and saltmarsh birds may be affected by sea level rise.  Many taxa, and particularly seabirds, are potentially highly sensitive to climate change based on a set of ecological and morphological metrics. Small island taxa were most likely to be both exposed and sensitive to climate change, followed by marine and shoreline taxa. While threatened birds were more likely than non-threatened taxa to be exposed or sensitive to climate change, or both, a substantial proportion was neither. A key action that needs to be undertaken immediately is fine scale modelling of regions identified as having numerous highly exposed bird taxa, in order to identify climatic refugia within the landscape. Such refugia can then be secured and managed appropriately for the future. The most urgent ongoing action is monitoring, with support for the Atlas of Australian Birds seen as a particularly cost-effective investment. In the future, the most expensive actions will be management of refugia, and captive breeding should all other approaches to conservation in the wild fail. However, most of those for which captive breeding is recommended as a last resort are subspecies of species that are widespread, either in Australia or in New Guinea.  For in situ management, the most important actions will be those that are already important – fire management, weed and feral animal control and, for marine taxa, controls on fishing. A small number of species-specific actions are suggested, and there appears to be no urgent requirement for corridors for the maintenance of taxa likely to be threatened with extinction – those few taxa not already living in areas where there are likely to be refugia will require assistance to colonise new climate space. The cost of management over the next 50 years for persistence in the face of climate change of the 396 bird taxa that are very highly exposed, sensitive or both is estimated at $18.8 million per year –$47,700 per year for each taxon. The biggest ongoing costs are monitoring and direct species management but refugia management and captive breeding may eventually be needed, and will be much more expensive. Please cite this report as: Garnett, S, Franklin, D, Ehmke, G, VanDerWal, J, Hodgson, L, Pavey, C, Reside, A, Welbergen, J, Butchart, S, Perkins, G, Williams, S 2013 Climate change adaptation strategies for Australian birds,  National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, Gold Coast. pp.109. In the first continental analysis of the effects of climate change on a faunal group, we identified that the climate space of 101 Australian terrestrial and inland water bird taxa is likely to be entirely gone by 2085, 16 marine taxa have breeding sites that are predicted to be at least 10% less productive than today, and 55 terrestrial taxa are likely to be exposed to more frequent or intense fires.  Birds confined to Cape York Peninsula, the Wet Tropics, the Top End of the Northern Territory (particularly the Tiwi Islands), the arid zone, King Island and southern South Australia (particularly Kangaroo Island) are most likely to lose climate space. There was some variation in the predictions of the 18 climate models deployed, but all predicted that the rainforest avifauna of Cape York Peninsula is likely to face the strongest challenge from climate change, particularly taxa currently confined to the Iron and McIlwraith Ranges. For marine birds, those nesting on Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands, the Great Barrier Reef and the Houtman Abrolhos are likely to face the greatest declines in local marine productivity. Changes in local marine productivity may also affect the endemic terrestrial birds of these islands, for which no climate modelling was possible. A small group of beach-nesting and saltmarsh birds may be affected by sea level rise.  Many taxa, and particularly seabirds, are potentially highly sensitive to climate change based on a set of ecological and morphological metrics. Small island taxa were most likely to be both exposed and sensitive to climate change, followed by marine and shoreline taxa. While threatened birds were more likely than non-threatened taxa to be exposed or sensitive to climate change, or both, a substantial proportion was neither. A key action that needs to be undertaken immediately is fine scale modelling of regions identified as having numerous highly exposed bird taxa, in order to identify climatic refugia within the landscape. Such refugia can then be secured and managed appropriately for the future. The most urgent ongoing action is monitoring, with support for the Atlas of Australian Birds seen as a particularly cost-effective investment. In the future, the most expensive actions will be management of refugia, and captive breeding should all other approaches to conservation in the wild fail. However, most of those for which captive breeding is recommended as a last resort are subspecies of species that are widespread, either in Australia or in New Guinea.  For in situ management, the most important actions will be those that are already important – fire management, weed and feral animal control and, for marine taxa, controls on fishing. A small number of species-specific actions are suggested, and there appears to be no urgent requirement for corridors for the maintenance of taxa likely to be threatened with extinction – those few taxa not already living in areas where there are likely to be refugia will require assistance to colonise new climate space. The cost of management over the next 50 years for persistence in the face of climate change of the 396 bird taxa that are very highly exposed, sensitive or both is estimated at $18.8 million per year –$47,700 per year for each taxon. The biggest ongoing costs are monitoring and direct species management but refugia management and captive breeding may eventually be needed, and will be much more expensive

The Effect of College Curriculum on Earnings: Accounting for Non-Ignorable Non-Response Bias

We link information on the current earnings of college graduates from many cohorts to their high-school records, their detailed college records and their demographics to infer the impact of college major on earnings. We develop an estimator to handle the potential for non-response bias and identify non-response using an affinity measure -- the potential respondent's link to the organization conducting the survey. This technique is generally applicable for adjusting for unit non-response. In the model describing earnings, estimated using the identified (for non-response bias) selectivity adjustments, adjusted earnings differentials across college majors are less than half as large as unadjusted differentials and ten percent smaller than those that do not account for selective non-response.