Small Business Participation in Federal Set-Aside Contracting

In the United States, 99.9% of small businesses, which account for two-thirds of new jobs annually, do not participate in the federal set-aside program. Half of all small businesses will not survive their first 5 years. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies that U.S. small business leaders operating within the greater Colorado Springs metro area used to participate successfully in the federal contracting set-aside program. Von Bertalanffy\u27s systems theory grounded the study. Data collection included semistructured interviews with an intensity purposeful sampling of 3 small business leaders participating successfully in the federal contracting set-aside program while operating within the greater Colorado Springs metropolitan area. Transcription of audio recordings from the interviews ensured data accuracy. Researcher interpretations were member checked to validate the credibility of the findings. Pattern matching and cross-case synthesis techniques facilitated data analysis and helped to identify emergent themes. The 3 themes from the study were (a) strategic management, (b) stakeholder recognition, and (c) value creation. Of these 3 themes, the most prolific was strategic management, as it began with a detailed strategy to target clients, create initiatives, and set priorities. This study may contribute to social change by promoting increased job creation through participation in the set-aside program. Expanded distribution of economic seeding to a broader representation of local communities may contribute to reducing social dependencies for the unemployed and the underemployed in a recovering economy. Small businesses contribute to local jobs, local revenue, and local taxes, all of which drive local economies

How to Choose? A Bioeconomic Model for Optimizing River Barrier Mitigation Actions

River infrastructure can cause adverse impacts on fish populations, which, in turn, compromises the ability of river ecosystems to provide a range of ecosystem services. In this paper, we present a methodological approach to assess the potential economics costs and benefits of river connectivity enhancement achieved through removal and mitigation of fish dispersal barriers. Our approach combines the results of a stated preference study for nonuse values of rivers and statistical models of fish population responses to barrier mitigation actions within an integrated bioeconomic optimization framework. We demonstrate the utility of our methodology using a case study of the River Wey catchment in southeast England, which contains over 650 artificial barriers. Our results reveal the presence of benefit-cost trade-offs which can form the basis for river barrier mitigation policy development. In particular, we find that benefits exceed costs in the River Wey for all levels of investment in barrier mitigation considered (£2.5 to 53.4M). Furthermore, from an economic efficiency standpoint, a total budget of approximately £22.5M allocated to barrier mitigation would maximize net societal benefits derived from anticipated increases fish species richness and abundance

Bank Standalone Credit Ratings

Standalone ratings measure a bank's intrinsic financial strength but-unlike all-in ratings-do not incorporate potential sovereign or parent-bank support. On July 20, 2011, Fitch switched from a 9-point to a 21-point scale for its standalone ratings but did not alter its all-in ratings. We investigate if the stock market reacted to this refinement of public information about bank fundamentals. We find that shareholders rewarded (penalized) banks that received positive (negative) rating surprises. We also find that Fitch used the refinement to inflate standalone ratings, in particular for large banks, banks with low 9-point standalone ratings, and banks headquartered outside North America

Bank standalone credit ratings

We study a unique experiment to examine the importance of rating agencies' private information for bank shareholders. On July 20, 2011, Fitch Ratings refined their bank standalone ratings, which measure intrinsic financial strength, from a 9-point to a 21-point scale. This refinement did not affect their all-in ratings, which combine assessments of intrinsic strength and extraordinary sovereign support and provide an estimate of banks' creditworthiness. Thus, the impact of the standalone rating refinement was cleanly limited to bank shareholders. We find evidence suggesting that the refinement resulted in higher than expected standalone ratings, but we find only weak evidence of ratings catering. We also find a positive relationship between stock price reactions and rating surprises, revealing that the rating refinement delivered useful information about the importance of bank characteristics for assessing intrinsic financial strength

Accessing Nature’s diversity through metabolic engineering and synthetic biology

In this perspective, we highlight recent examples and trends in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology that demonstrate the synthetic potential of enzyme and pathway engineering for natural product discovery. In doing so, we introduce natural paradigms of secondary metabolism whereby simple carbon substrates are combined into complex molecules through “scaffold diversification”, and subsequent “derivatization” of these scaffolds is used to synthesize distinct complex natural products. We provide examples in which modern pathway engineering efforts including combinatorial biosynthesis and biological retrosynthesis can be coupled to directed enzyme evolution and rational enzyme engineering to allow access to the “privileged” chemical space of natural products in industry-proven microbes. Finally, we forecast the potential to produce natural product-like discovery platforms in biological systems that are amenable to single-step discovery, validation, and synthesis for streamlined discovery and production of biologically active agents

Oxygen in Unevolved Metal-Poor Stars from Keck Ultraviolet HIRES Spectra

The determination of the abundance of oxygen (O) is important in our understanding of mass–spectrum of previous generations of stars, the evolution of the Galaxy, stellar evolution, and the age-metallicity relation. We have measured O in 24 unevolved stars with Keck HIRES observations of the OH lines in the ultraviolet spectral region at a spectral resolution of ~45,000. The spectra have high signal-to-noise ratios, typically 60–110, and high dispersion, 0.022 Å per pixel. Very special care has been taken in determining the stellar parameters in a consistent way and we have done this for two different, plausible temperature scales. The O abundance from OH has been computed by spectrum synthesis techniques for all 24 stars plus the Sun for which we have a Keck spectrum of the daytime sky. In addition, we determined O abundances from the O I triplet with our stellar parameters and the published equivalent widths of the three O I lines from six sources. The comparison of data analyzed with the same, consistently determined, parameter sets show generally excellent agreement in the O abundances; differences in the origin of the models (not the parameters) may result in abundance differences of 0.07 to 0.11 dex. We show that the O abundances from OH and from O I are reliable and independent and average the two for the adopted O. This averaging has the great benefit of neutralizing uncertainties in the parameters since OH and O I strengths depend on effective temperature and gravity in opposite directions. For these cool, unevolved stars we find that O is enhanced relative to Fe with a completely linear relation between [O/H] and [Fe/H] over 3 orders of magnitude with very little scatter; taking the errors into account in determining the fits, we find [O/H] = +0.66 (±0.02) [Fe/H] + 0.05 (±0.04). The O abundances from 76 disk stars of Edvardsson et al. have a measured slope of 0.66 (identical to our halo dwarf stars) and fit this relationship smoothly. The relation between [O/Fe] and [Fe/H] is robustly linear and shows no sign of a break at metallicities between -1.0 and -2.0, as has been discussed by others. At low metallicities, [Fe/H] \u3c -3.0, [O/Fe] \u3e +1.0. The fit to this relationship (taking the errors into account) is [O/Fe] = -0.35 (±0.03) [Fe/H] + 0.03 (±0.05). The enrichment of O is probably still from massive stars and Type II supernovae; however, the absence of a break in [O/Fe] versus [Fe/H] runs counter to traditional galactic evolution models, and the interplay of Type II and Type Ia supernovae in the production of O and Fe should be reexamined. It appears that either Fe or O can be used as a chronometer in studies of galactic evolution

The ACS Survey Of Globular Clusters. V. Generating A Comprehensive Star Catalog For Each Cluster

The ACS Survey of Globular Clusters has used Hubble Space Telescope's Wide-Field Channel to obtain uniform imaging of 65 of the nearest globular clusters to provide an extensive homogeneous data set for a broad range of scientific investigations. The survey goals required not only a uniform observing strategy, but also a uniform reduction strategy. To this end, we designed a sophisticated software program to process the cluster data in an automated way. The program identifies stars simultaneously in the multiple dithered exposures for each cluster and measures them using the best available point-spread function models. We describe here in detail the program's rationale, algorithms, and output. The routine was also designed to perform artificial-star tests, and we ran a standard set of similar to 10(5) tests for each cluster in the survey. The catalog described here will be exploited in a number of upcoming papers and will eventually be made available to the public via the World Wide Web.Astronom

Predicting Parental Mediation Behaviors: The Direct and Indirect Influence of Parents’ Critical Thinking About Media and Attitudes about Parent-Child Interactions

Many parents fail to interact with their children regularly about media content and past research has identified few predictors of parents’ engagement in parental mediation behaviors. The present study explored the relationship between parents’ critical thinking about media and parents’ provision of both active and restrictive mediation of television content. Results revealed that parents’ critical thinking about media is positively associated with both active and restrictive mediation, relationships mediated by parents’ attitudes toward parent-child interactions about media. These findings suggest that media literacy programs aimed at improving parents’ critical thinking about media may be an effective way to alter children’s responses to media exposure and that these media literacy programs should promote positive attitudes toward parental mediation

The ACS Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters: M54 and Young Populations in the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy

We present new Hubble Space Telescope photometry of the massive globular cluster M54 (NGC 6715) and the superposed core of the tidally disrupted Sagittarius (Sgr) dSph galaxy as part of the ACS Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters. Our deep (F606W~26.5), high-precision photometry yields an unprecedentedly detailed color-magnitude diagram showing the extended blue horizontal branch and multiple main sequences of the M54+Sgr system. The distance and reddening to M54 are revised usingboth isochrone and main-sequence fitting to (m-M)_0=17.27 and E(B-V)=0.15. Preliminary assessment finds the M54+Sgr field to be dominated by the old metal-poor populations of Sgr and the globular cluster. Multiple turnoffs indicate the presence of at least two intermediate-aged star formation epochs with 4 and 6 Gyr ages and [Fe/H]=-0.4 to -0.6. We also clearly show, for the first time, a prominent, 2.3 Gyr old Sgr population of near-solar abundance. A trace population of even younger (0.1-0.8 Gyr old), more metal-rich ([Fe/H]\sim0.6) stars is also indicated. The Sgr age-metallicity relation is consistent with a closed-box model and multiple (4-5) star formation bursts over the entire life of the satellite, including the time since Sgr began disrupting.Comment: Accepted to ApJ Letter; 11 pages, 2 figures; figure 1 uploaded as jpg; paper in ApJ format with full-resolution figures available at: http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~ata/public_hstgc/paperIV/paperIV.p