Cycles in the Transportation Sector and the Aggregate Economy

Transportation plays a central role in facilitating economic activities across sectors and between regions, and is thus essential to business cycle research. Using four coincident indicators representing different aspects of the transportation sector that include an index of transportation output, payroll, personal consumption and employment, we define the classical business cycle and growth cycle chronologies for this sector. We find that, relative to the economy, business cycles in the transportation sector have an average lead of nearly 6 months at peaks and an average lag of 2 months at troughs. Similar to transportation business cycles, growth slowdowns in this sector also last longer than the economy-wide slowdowns by a few months. This study underscores the importance of transportation indicators in monitoring cyclical movements in the aggregate economy. (Keywords: Business cycle, Composite coincident index, Dynamic factor model, Regime switching, Growth cycle)

Physical Science - ENERGY TRANSFER: Heat and Light

Energy is the ability to do work. Energy can be thought of as a currency which is universally accepted as the way to make things happen. Energy can be stored in many ways and transferred from place to place in many ways. Some of the most frequently recognized types of energy are heat and light. These, along with others, can be classified as a phenomenon known as electromagnetic radiation (EM). Radiation is energy that travels and spreads out as it goes. The visible light that comes from a lamp in your house and the radio waves that come from a radio station are two types of electromagnetic radiation. The other types of EM radiation that make up the electromagnetic spectrum are microwaves, infrared light, ultraviolet light, X-rays and gamma-rays

Earth Systems - PATTERNS IN THE ROCKS: Changes in Landscape Over Time

Sedimentary rock layers are found in places all around the world. They can provide useful clues to the past. Sometimes a waterway cuts through the layers revealing a geologic record of the past. In other locations, scientists must dig trenches to see the layers. As the lower layers generally formed first, they are the oldest. Fossils within the rocks may allow some layers to be dated with accuracy. In other locations, clues may be sparse. Searching for patterns in sedimentary rock layers is a bit like solving a puzzle. The picture emerges slowly, and the picture may tell a story. Landscapes are never static; they change over time. Continents move, landforms are raised and lowered, ocean shorelines advance and retreat. Biomes and their living organisms shift with the land

Monthly Output Index for the U.S. Transportation Sector

We develop a monthly output index of the U.S. Transportation sector over 1980:1-2002:4 covering air, rail, water, truck, transit and pipeline activities. Separate indexes for freight and passenger are also constructed. Our total transportation output index matches very well with the annual transportation output figures produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The strong cyclical movements in the transportation output appear to be more synchronized with the growth slowdowns rather than full-fledged recessions of the U.S. economy. The index has led the turning points of the six NBER-defined growth cycles over the period with an average lead-time of 6 months at peaks and 5 months at troughs.

Physical Science - SUPERVILLAIN DETENTION! Properties of Matter

Scientists and engineers need to understand the properties of the materials they use. They choose the best materials for specific projects based on the properties of the materials. For example, civil engineers must have a thorough understanding of the properties of materials that might be used to build roads, dams, or bridges and plan their designs around the materials that will be used

From Parish-Based Schools to a Unified System: Sustaining a 150 Year-old Legacy

Catholic Central School consolidated the 150 year-old parish-based elementary schools and the Archdiocesan high schools to form a unified PK-12 system in 2005. Since the formation of the system, the establishment of the Board of Trustees, and the hiring of a president, teacher salaries increased by 40%, the school has maintained a strong balanced budget, major facility improvements were made, and over $6 million was raised toward the construction of a new school

The Transportation Services Index Shows Monthly Change in Freight and Passenger Transportation Service

The TSI provides a monthly measure of freight and passenger service. Statistical and economic techniques are used to present the output of the different transportation modes in comparable terms, adjusted to correct for the seasonal nature of transportation. The TSI consists of two indexes, a freight TSI and a passenger TSI, which are then combined into a total TSI (see figure 1). Using 2000 as a base year with an index value of 100, the overall TSI has ranged from a value of 66 at the beginning of 1990 to approximately 110 at the end of 2006, reflecting an increase of nearly 70 percent over 17 years

How do you say ‘hello’? Personality impressions from brief novel voices

On hearing a novel voice, listeners readily form personality impressions of that speaker. Accurate or not, these impressions are known to affect subsequent interactions; yet the underlying psychological and acoustical bases remain poorly understood. Furthermore, hitherto studies have focussed on extended speech as opposed to analysing the instantaneous impressions we obtain from first experience. In this paper, through a mass online rating experiment, 320 participants rated 64 sub-second vocal utterances of the word ‘hello’ on one of 10 personality traits. We show that: (1) personality judgements of brief utterances from unfamiliar speakers are consistent across listeners; (2) a two-dimensional ‘social voice space’ with axes mapping Valence (Trust, Likeability) and Dominance, each driven by differing combinations of vocal acoustics, adequately summarises ratings in both male and female voices; and (3) a positive combination of Valence and Dominance results in increased perceived male vocal Attractiveness, whereas perceived female vocal Attractiveness is largely controlled by increasing Valence. Results are discussed in relation to the rapid evaluation of personality and, in turn, the intent of others, as being driven by survival mechanisms via approach or avoidance behaviours. These findings provide empirical bases for predicting personality impressions from acoustical analyses of short utterances and for generating desired personality impressions in artificial voices

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

101 - Introduction to Data Sets: Bureau of Transportation Statistics Demographic Statistics

Peg Young, PhD, Senior Mathematical Statistician, U.S. Bureau of Transportation StatisticsPart of APDU's Public Data University series, this webinar serves as a baseline learning experience and systematic overview of demographic statistics at the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. This presentation will explore the following questions: What data are collected? Who are the primary users? What research questions are most frequently answered with the agency's data set? How are the data collected? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How frequently are the data updated? At what level geography are they collected? What is the delay between the reference period and publication? How are the data disseminated? How is the agency's web delivery system structured? Who can the user contact if they want to know more about the data program