Mobile remote manipulator system for a tetrahedral truss

The mobile remote manipulator system (MRMS) was initially developed for transit about the trusses of the delta space station; however, it can be utilized just as easily for transit about the trusses of the dual keel station. The MRMS is comprised of a mobile platform having a rail system formed of transversely disposed T-shaped tracks, which engage with guide pins located at the nodes of the trusses. The guide pins form a grid and the tracks are so designed as to permit travel in either of two orthogonal directions. The present invention provides a near-uniform traversing velocity with minimal dynamic loading on the system. Pivoting changers move the platform from one face to another

Do We Know Why Earnings Fall with Job Displacement?

After being displaced from their jobs, workers experience reduced earnings for many years and are at greater risks of other problems as well. The ills suffered by displaced workers motivated several recent expansions of government programs, including the unemployment insurance system, and have spurred calls for wage insurance that would provide longer-run earnings replacement. However, while the average size and the individual characteristics associated with the losses are relatively clear, the theory of displacement-induced earnings loss is scattered. Much of the policy discussion appears to interpret displacement-induced losses through the lens of specific human capital theory, in which skills are specific to jobs, locations, industries, or occupations, and that model has considerable empirical support. Assistance for displaced workers may improve well-being in that model since it insures workers against the risk that their consumption of goods and services might fall for idiosyncratic reasons and, as a consequence, allows workers to make more productive but higher-risk career choices. But there are other credible theories of costly job displacement that have different causal mechanisms, different interpretations and different policy implications. This paper reviews theories of costly job displacement and discusses their consistency with the available empirical evidence. We find that while specific human capital is important, we cannot rule out important roles for other theories

Getting a start in dairying in Alaska

Dairying in Alaska probably will always be confined to areas where milk can reach city markets readily. The demand £or fresh milk, even at present prices, exceeds the supply. Probably the dairy farmer always will be able to produce milk in competition with fluid mlik shipped in from the States if he is a good manager and has high producing cows. A farmer with low producing cows can show a profit at present prices, but if the price of milk dropped two dollars or more per hundred, he would have a tough time making both ends meet. It is doubtful if other dairy products can be produced in Alaska to compete with stateside prices

Fermilab Collider Run II: Accelerator Status and Upgrades

Fermilab will continue to maintain its pre-eminent position in the world of High Energy Physics, with a unique opportunity to make unprecedented studies of the top quark and major discoveries, until the Large Hadron collider (LHC) at CERN becomes operational near the end of the decade. Run II is well underway with major accelerator and detector upgrades since Run I. A program of further upgrades to the accelerator complex will result in an integrated luminosity of 4-8 fb-1 per experiment, by the year 2009.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures. To be published in the Proceedings of the 15th Topical Conference on Hadron Collider Physics, HCP2004, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, June 14-18, 2004 (American Institute of Physics, NY, 2004