Still Working Well: Washington's Minimum Wage and the Beginnings of Economic Recovery

Critics of Washington's groundbreaking minimum wage law have repeatedly pointed to our state's relatively high minimum wage as a cause of our higher than average unemployment rate. However, the data do not support a causal connection. The United States as a whole and Washington state have continued to lose jobs since the official end of the recession in November 2001, but Washington has lost jobs at a lower rate than the national average

Who can stay home with the flu?

As fears of a swine flu pandemic spread, President Obama and public health officials are urging Americans to stay home from work and keep their children home from school if they have flu symptoms. But nearly 4 in 10 private sector workers lack even one paid sick day, and many more face disciplinary action if they do call in sick. In a world where diseases mutate and spread across the globe in weeks, Americans need paid sick days to protect our health and our economy

MANAGERIAL ECONOMICS AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

Uses examples to illustrate the trade-offs to be made between operating efficiency and customer satisfaction.Consumer/Household Economics,

PERFORMANCE: FROM THE CONSUMER VIEWPOINT

The author develops concept of customer image Profile and presents an example of its use.Consumer/Household Economics,

CUSTOMER ANALYSIS AND MARKET STRATEGY - SUPERMARKETS VS. CONVENIENCE STORES

Consumer/Household Economics,

STORE IMAGE - A MANAGEMENT TOOL

This article discusses the various factors that contribute to the food store "image" as held by the shoppers in the community. The author examines techniques for discovering the store "image," and suggests techniques that may be employed to strengthen the positive values contributing to that "image."Agribusiness,

Washington's Working Women: Not Equal Yet

Women's earnings are essential to economic security for the majority of families in Washington State, where women comprise about half of all workers. But over the past two decades, forward progress for women in the workforce has largely stalled. Women continue to earn far less than men. And workplace standards remain mired in outdated assumptions that most workers are men and most families have a full-time caregiver at home. Our children, families, businesses, and communities all pay the price for our failure to step up to the public policy needs of today's working women

Antenna induced range smearing in MST radars

There is considerable interest in developing stratosphere troposphere (ST) and mesosphere stratosphere troposphere (MST) radars for higher resolution to study small-scale turbulent structures and waves. At present most ST and MST radars have resolutions of 150 meters or larger, and are not able to distinguish the thin (40 - 100 m) turbulent layers that are known to occur in the troposphere and stratosphere, and possibly in the mesosphere. However the antenna beam width and sidelobe level become important considerations for radars with superior height resolution. The objective of this paper is to point out that for radars with range resolutions of about 150 meters or less, there may be significant range smearing of the signals from mesospheric altitudes due to the finite beam width of the radar antenna. At both stratospheric and mesospheric heights the antenna sidelobe level for lear equally spaced phased arrays may also produce range aliased signals. To illustrate this effect the range smearing functions for two vertically directed antennas have been calculated, (1) an array of 32 coaxial-collinear strings each with 48 elements that simulates the vertical beam of the Poker Flat, Glaska, MST radar; and (2) a similar, but smaller, array of 16 coaxial-collinear strings each with 24 elements

What can we infer about the underlying physics from burst distributions observed in an RMHD simulation ?

We determine that the sizes of bursts in mean-square current density in a reduced magnetohydrodynamic (RMHD)simulation follow power-law probability density function (PDF). The PDFs for burst durations and waiting time between bursts are clearly not exponential and could also be power-law. This suffices to distinguish their behaviour from the original Bak et al. sandpile model which had exponential waiting time PDFs. However, it is not sufficient to distinguish between turbulence, some other SOC-like models, and other red noise sources.Comment: In press, Planetary and Space Science. Proceedings of a session at European Geophysical Society General Assembly, Nice, 200

Power law burst and inter-burst interval distributions in the solar wind: turbulence or dissipative SOC ?

We calculate for the first time the probability density functions (PDFs) P of burst energy e, duration T and inter-burst interval tau for a known turbulent system in nature. Bursts in the earth-sun component of the Poynting flux at 1 AU in the solar wind were measured using the MFI and SWE experiments on the NASA WIND spacecraft. We find P(e) and P(T) to be power laws, consistent with self-organised criticality (SOC). We find also a power law form for P(tau) that distinguishes this turbulent cascade from the exponential P(tau) of ideal SOC, but not from some other SOC-like sandpile models. We discuss the implications for the relation between SOC and turbulence.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure. Submitted to PRL on 25th February 2000. Revised version re-submitted on 9th May 2000. Second revised version submitted Phys. Rev. E on 26th June, 200