Peak oil, geopolitics and the need for relocalization: will our magnificent obsession become our obsolete obsession?

This essay will look at the peak oil question, contemporary “oil geopolitics” and their effect not only on energy supplies, but also on transportation, agriculture and food supplies, and population distribution in the United States. While the war in Iraq forms a centerpiece in the geopolitical scene, Russia, China, and other nations will be discussed as well. This essay will also examine the inevitable relocalization which appears to be a necessary result

The Greening of Faith: God, the Environment, and the Good Life (20th Anniversary Edition)

The recent release of Pope Francis’s much-discussed encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, has reinforced environmental issues as also moral and spiritual issues. This anthology, twenty years ahead of the encyclical but very much in line with its agenda, offers essays by fifteen philosophers, theologians, and environmentalists who argue for a response to ecology that recognizes the tools of science but includes a more spiritual approach—one with a more humanistic, holistic view based on inherent reverence toward the natural world. Writers whose orientations range from Buddhism to evangelical Christianity to Catholicism to Native American beliefs explore ways to achieve this paradigm shift and suggest that “the environment is not only a spiritual issue, but the spiritual issue of our time.”https://scholars.unh.edu/unh_press/1003/thumbnail.jp

The Entrepreneurial State Goes to Europe

This article investigates state-level export programs in response to the emerging new economic and political regime of Europe 1992. Little related export promotion activity is found, even in states reputed to have the most active entrepreneurial policies. The authors conclude that states have few resources to invest in export promotion and are inappropriate jurisdictions around which to organize such policy, despite the much touted entrepreneurial state

Comparison of Risk of Recrudescent Fever in Children With Kawasaki Disease Treated With Intravenous Immunoglobulin and Low-Dose vs High-Dose Aspirin

Importance: Timely initiation of intravenous immunoglobulin plus aspirin is necessary for decreasing the risk of recrudescent fever and coronary artery abnormalities in children with Kawasaki disease (KD). The optimal dose of aspirin, however, remains unclear. Objective: To evaluate whether initial treatment with low-dose compared with high-dose aspirin in children with KD is associated with an increase in fever recrudescence. Design, Setting, and Participants: A retrospective cohort study of 260 children with KD at Riley Hospital for Children, Indianapolis, Indiana, between January 1, 2007, and December 31, 2018, was conducted. Children aged 0 to 18 years with a first episode of KD, identified by International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision and International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision diagnosis codes treated within 10 days of symptom onset with high-dose intravenous immunoglobulin plus aspirin were eligible. Patients who received an alternative diagnosis, experienced a second episode of KD, did not receive intravenous immunoglobulin plus aspirin for initial treatment, were not treated within 10 days of symptoms, or had incomplete records were excluded. Exposures: High-dose (≥10 mg/kg/d) or low-dose (<10 mg/kg/d) aspirin therapy. Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome was recrudescent fever necessitating retreatment of KD. The secondary outcomes were coronary artery abnormalities and hospital length of stay. Results: Among the 260 patients included, the median (interquartile range) age was 2.5 (1.6-4.3) years, 103 (39.6%) were girls, 166 (63.8%) were non-Hispanic white, 57 (21.9%) were African American, 22 (8.5%) were Asian, 11 (4.2%) were Hispanic, and 4 (1.5%) were of unknown race/ethnicity. One hundred-forty-two patients (54.6%) were treated with low-dose aspirin. There was no association between recrudescent fever and aspirin dose, with 39 children (27.5%) having recrudescent fever in the low-dose group compared with 26 children (22.0%) in the high-dose group (odds ratio [OR], 1.34; 95% CI, 0.76-2.37; P = .31), with similar results after adjusting for potential confounding variables (OR, 1.63; 95% CI, 0.89-2.97; P = .11). In a subset analysis of 167 children with complete KD, however, there was nearly a 2-fold difference in the odds of recrudescent fever with low-dose aspirin (OR, 1.87; 95% CI, 0.82-4.23; P = .14), although this difference did not reach statistical significance. In addition, no association was identified between treatment group and coronary artery abnormalities (low-dose, 7.4% vs high-dose, 9.4%; OR, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.48-1.55; P = .62) or median (interquartile range) length of stay (3 [3-5] days for both groups; P = .27). Conclusions and Relevance: In this study, low-dose aspirin for the initial treatment of children with KD was not associated with fever recrudescence or coronary artery abnormalities. Given the potential benefits, further study of low-dose aspirin to detect potentially clinically relevant outcome differences is warranted to inform treatment decisions and guideline development

Singular Solutions in Problems of Optimal Control

The contribution of this thesis is the somewhat general analysis, of singular solutions which arise in problems of optimal control and the development of certain analytical procedures for detecting and calculating singular solutions. The basic optimal control problem considered in this study is the task of choosing a control u(t) which will a) transfer the state of a system, described by the a first order ordinary differential equations, from some prescribed initial state to some prescribed final (terminal) state and b) simultaneously minimize (with respect to the control u) an index of performance J of the form. It is assumed that the allowable values, of the control .u may be constrained to lie in some set U. The conventional mathematical techniques presently being used in optimal control theory are discussed. It is shown that for a certain class of optimal control problems, which are characterized by the control u appearing linearly in the system state equations (l) and the integrand of the index of performance (2), the optimal control u*(t) is found (formally) to the of the bang-bang type In (3), A and B are, respectively, the upper and lower hounds on the admissible control u and F(t) is a certain function of time which is called the switching function. When the switching function becomes identically zero over a finite time interval the conventional mathematical \u27techniques fail to yield any information about the desired optimal control. The solution in this ease is said to he singular and the corresponding control is termed singular control . The nature of singular solutions is being investigated in detail and the apparent failure of the conventional mathematical techniques has been shown to be due to the fact that singular optimal controls lie in the interior (rather than on the boundary) of the admissible set U. The concept of a singular control surface in the system state space was introduced and is used to examine the geometry of singular solutions. Some mathematical properties of the singular control surface are being derived and a backward tracing scheme is used to aid in establishing the role of singular sub-arcs in the solution of optimal control problems. It is being shown that the singular control u*(t) can be obtained from the condition F(t) O and in some cases can be synthesized as a function of the system state variables. The proposed techniques for solving optimal control problems with singular solutions can be illustrated by means of four examples which are worked out in detail

The Relative Impact Of Public Information In Shaping Investor Expectations

Empirical studies at the individual level (event studies) and those using more general measures of information and/or aggregate price movements often yield somewhat conflicting results regarding the relative importance of public information.&nbsp; Employing a more focused methodology that begins with no prior limitations on the number and types of public news announcements that may affect the underlying risk-return relationship, we are able to offer additional insight regarding the relative impact of public information.&nbsp; We find that approximately two-thirds of the changes can be associated with the arrival of public information.&nbsp; While, in general, this is a stronger link than previously found, it is a weaker link than expected; leading us to conclude that factors other than public information clearly play an important role.&nbsp; We also provide new results on the relative importance of different information types, and on correlates (such as firm size) of the effect of information