A Study of the Impacts of the Panama Canal Expansion on the U.S. Northeast Ports and Strategy of the Port of Boston

When it is completed in 2016, the Panama Canal expansion will increase the trade volume and route from Asia to the United States as well as the competition amongst all U.S. ports, creating economic impacts in several areas. East Coast ports will be affected the most due to investments in harbor expansion projects and rise in cargo traffic and imports. The expansion will provide access for the Post-Panamax ships to the East Coast ports. These ships can increase cargo size from 5,000 up to 13,000 TEU’s (twenty-foot equivalent unit). It is estimated that 20-25% of import traffic will shift to the East Coast (Regional, 2013). Larger ships will be able to travel faster and carry heavier loads directly to the East Coast ports, thus eliminating the West Coast stop and reducing train transportation of cargo to the East Coast. In this study there will be a comparison of the economic impacts that the expansion of the Panama Canal creates between the Port of Boston and other major Northeast Ports, specially the Port of Baltimore, the Port of Norfolk and the Port of New York and New Jersey. This paper will evaluate the opportunities and strategies for the Port of Boston, utilizing business models of Strategy Canvas and Four Actions Framework in combination with the Port Choice Model

Understanding the Ecosystems of Chinese and American Entrepreneurship Education

Since the 1980s, entrepreneurship education in the United States has become increasingly popular. The system of entrepreneurship education in the United States is characterized by relatively scientific and systemic teaching and research. The concept of ecosystems, which comes from the natural sciences, is increasingly applied to regional development and focused on inter-organizational relationships. One way to assess the ecosystems of entrepreneurship education is to consider all components of the whole – the business model, teaching philosophy, curriculum, teaching content, teacher training, infrastructure, culture, network and practices of each country. A useful tool for understanding these interrelationships is the Triple Helix Model (university-government-industry). This approach is applied in here this research to compare and analyze the ecosystems of entrepreneurship education in the United States and China, the top two economic and entrepreneurial powers in the world. Government support and industry involvement have helped to make entrepreneurship education in the U.S. successful. Compared with the U.S., entrepreneurship education has started late in China, where a pilot entrepreneurship program was launched at nine universities in April 2002. Teacher training in both entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial consultant team-building was based on the entrepreneurship education project known as Know About Business (KAB), a model created during the 1990s by the International Labor Organization (ILO) for developing countries and adopted by the All China Youth Federation in 2005. At present, China is launching a “Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation” campaign and investing heavily in universities and government youth agencies. Using the Triple Helix Model, the ecosystems of the Chinese and U.S. entrepreneurship education will be compared and analyzed

Confronting Tracker Field Quintessence with Data

We confront tracker field quintessence with observational data. The potentials considered in this paper include $V(\phi)\propto\phi^{-\alpha}$, $\exp(M_{p}/\phi)$, $\exp(M_{p}/\phi)-1$, $\exp(\beta M_{p}/\phi)$ and $\exp(\gamma M_{p}/\phi)-1$; while the data come from the latest SN Ia, CMB and BAO observations. Stringent parameter constraints are obtained. In comparison with the cosmological constant via information criteria, it is found that models with potentials $\exp(M_{p}/\phi)$, $\exp(M_{p}/\phi)-1$ and $\exp(\gamma M_{p}/\phi)-1$ are not supported by the current data.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure

The Anticipated Severity of a “1918-Like” Influenza Pandemic in Contemporary Populations: The Contribution of Antibacterial Interventions

Recent studies have shown that most of deaths in the 1918 influenza pandemic were caused by secondary bacterial infections, primarily pneumococcal pneumonia. Given the availability of antibiotics and pneumococcal vaccination, how will contemporary populations fare when they are next confronted with pandemic influenza due to a virus with the transmissibility and virulence of that of 1918? To address this question we use a mathematical model and computer simulations. Our model considers the epidemiology of both the influenza virus and pneumonia-causing bacteria and allows for co-infection by these two agents as well as antibiotic treatment, prophylaxis and pneumococcal vaccination. For our simulations we use influenza transmission and virulence parameters estimated from 1918 pandemic data. We explore the anticipated rates of secondary pneumococcal pneumonia and death in populations with different prevalence of pneumococcal carriage and contributions of antibiotic prophylaxis, treatment, and vaccination to these rates. Our analysis predicts that in countries with lower prevalence of pneumococcal carriage and access to antibiotics and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines, there would substantially fewer deaths due to pneumonia in contemporary populations confronted with a 1918-like virus than that observed in the 1918. Our results also predict that if the pneumococcal carriage prevalence is less than 40%, the positive effects of antibiotic prophylaxis and treatment would be manifest primarily at of level of individuals. These antibiotic interventions would have little effect on the incidence of pneumonia in the population at large. We conclude with the recommendation that pandemic preparedness plans should consider co-infection with and the prevalence of carriage of pneumococci and other bacteria responsible for pneumonia. While antibiotics and vaccines will certainly reduce the rate of individual mortality, the factor contributing most to the relatively lower anticipated lethality of a pandemic with a 1918-like influenza virus in contemporary population is the lower prevalence of pneumococcal carriage