ESTIMATING STATE-CONTINGENT PRODUCTION FRONTIERS

Chambers and Quiggin (2000) advocate the use of state-contingent production technologies to represent risky production and establish important theoretical results concerning producer behaviour under uncertainty. Unfortunately, perceived problems in the estimation of state-contingent models have limited the usefulness of the approach in policy formulation. We show that fixed and random effects state-contingent production frontiers can be conveniently estimated in a finite mixtures framework. An empirical example is provided. Compared to standard estimation approaches, we find that estimating production frontiers in a state-contingent framework produces significantly different estimates of elasticities, firm technical efficiencies and other quantities of economic interest.

Developing e-assessment using the quiz activity within Moodle: empowering student learning

Using formative assessment within Moodle has been shown to encourage self-directed learning (Bromham & Oprandi, 2006). Our experience of using formative assessment quizzes as stand alone entities, as well as within Moodle lessons, has been used to introduce Moodle assessment quizzes over the past year in Level 1 and Level 2 Life Sciences courses. This experience has been distilled to inform the content of this workshop. Some advantages of incorporating assessments in the form of Moodle quizzes are that they allow for quick, reproducible and flexible assessment with a relatively small initial set-up cost, and substantial long-term staff and administration savings. One significant advantage is that staff and room pressures can be reduced as students can attempt the assessment at a time and location of their choice within a specified time period. This flexibility can help to reduce student stress associated with completion of a continuous assessment for their course. It is also a relatively simple process to account for students entitled to extra time during assessments. Providing clear instructions beforehand and at the start of the quiz ensures that students understand their responsibilities for completion of this assessment and ultimately the course. There are some disadvantages and limitations to the system as it currently exists, for example there is the perceived ability for students to “cheat” by completing the assessment as a group, accessing books and the internet. Strategies to account for these can be put in place and will be discussed in detail during the workshop. This workshop aims to take the participants through the initial set up of a quiz, highlighting the various question types and how these can be used to create a challenging assessment that can be quickly graded and prove informative for staff and course development. Reference Bromham L. & Oprandi P. (2006) Evolution online: developing active and blended learning by using a virtual learning environment in an introductory biology course. Journal of Biological Education 41 (1): 21-25

Investigation into the variations of moisture content of two buildings constructed with light earth walls

This paper briefly describes the background to light earth buildings and details a series of moisture measurements undertaken upon the clay and straw, (light earth) constructed walls of two UK based buildings. The methodology of measurement that was based upon previous studies undertaken on walls made from straw bales is described. A novel ‘in-wall’ wet heating system used in one of the two buildings allows the investigation of the effects of direct wall heating upon the distribution of moisture in the walls. The influence of exterior and interior temperature and humidity are described as are the variations in moisture migration introduced by the in-wall heating system. It was concluded that both buildings have exterior wall moisture content readings that indicate little risk of degradation due to interior wall moisture levels (although the Studio walls do exhibit higher and if suffered over long time periods, dangerous moisture readings for part of the measurement period)

Coffin, Frank Morey and Nicoll, Don oral history interview

Don Nicoll Donald Eugene Don Nicoll was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on August 4, 1927, and grew up in the West Roxbury section of the city. He is the son of George and Mary Nicoll. He attended Robert Gould Shaw Junior High School and Boston English High School and graduated from Colby College in Waterville, Maine in 1949, majoring in History with a minor in Government. Don met his future wife, Hilda Farnum, also a Colby student, when they worked in the resort town of Ocean Park, Maine, in the summer of 1944. Nicoll began his graduate work at Pennsylvania State College in 1949, where he received a teaching fellowship in the Department of History. His graduate studies concentrated on American history, specifically the period from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War .. His M.A. (1952) thesis was on the Alien and Sedition Acts. Starting in 1951, Nicoll and his family settled in Buckfield, Maine where he picked apples and taught part time at Stephen\u27s High School, located in Rumford. Nicoll began working as an announcer for WLAM radio in Lewiston, Maine. He became a reporter and then news editor for WLAM and WLAM-TV. In June 1954, Nicoll left WLAM to become Executive Secretary of the Democratic State Committee at the request of Frank M. Coffin, who has just become chairman. Mr. Coffin was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Maine\u27s Second Congressional District in 1956 and Nicoll went to Washington, DC, as his administrative assistant, continuing in that post until December 1960, the end of Congressman Coffin\u27s second term. Mr. Coffin ran for governor in 1960 and was defeated. After the election Senator Edmund S. Muskie asked Nicoll to join his staff as legislative assistant and news secretary. Nicoll served in that position until 1962, when he became administrative assistant. He continued in that post until 1971, when he became personal advisor to Senator Muskie. He left the senate office in mid-1972. From 1972 until his retirement in 2005 Nicoll worked as a program and policy planner, first as a consultant (1972-73), then as chairman and chief executive officer of the New England Land Grant Universities Joint Operations Committee (1973-1975), then as coordinator of planning and vice president for planning and public affairs for the Maine Medical Center (1975-1986), then as a consultant (1986-2005). His clients were primarily in the non-profit sector and included universities, libraries, education associations, health care organizations and social service agencies. He also worked as a volunteer, heading a variety of public policy projects, including the Maine Task Force on Government Reorganization, the Maine State Compensation Commission, the Maine (Mental Health) Systems Assessment Commission, the Maine Consortium for Health Professions Education, the Southern Maine Community Television Consortium, the Maine Special Commission on Government Reorganization (co-chair), the Board of Visitors of the University of Southern Maine\u27s Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service, the Maine-Aomori Sister-State Advisory Council and the Governor\u27s Allagash Wilderness Waterway Working Group. From 1998-2005, Don Nicoll was the Director of the Edmund S. Muskie Oral History Project at Bates College. Frank Coffin Frank Morey Coffin was born in Lewiston, Maine on July 11, 1919. His parents were Ruth [Morey] and Herbert Coffin, who divorced when Frank was twelve. Ruth raised Frank alone on Wood St. in Lewiston. She came from an active Democratic family, her father was Mayor of Lewiston from 1907 to 1912, and eventually she became a Democratic State Committeewoman Frank graduated from the Lewiston public schools, and then went on to Bates College, graduating in 1940. While at Bates he debated under Brooks Quimby, and majored in economics. He then went off to Harvard to continue his education. He started in the Harvard Business School while waiting to be drafted. He served in the Navy Supply Corps, and after discharge returned to Harvard to get a law degree. He graduated in 1947. He then clerked for U.S. District Court Judge John Clifford Jr. before his admittance to the Maine Bar. His law career began in a Lewiston office, and quickly grew. From 1951 to 1954 he served as Corporation Counsel to the City of Lewiston, and in 1953 he joined the law firm of Verrill Dana in Portland, Maine. At that time, he became interested in the Maine Democratic Party. Along with Lewiston area Democratic activists, he worked to reestablish the two-party system in Maine. He became Chairman of the Maine Democratic Party in 1954, and worked to field Democratic candidates for every major office for the 1954 ballot. He also created the first permanent staff position within the Maine Democratic Party. His party building included writing a party platform using public input and surveys. These efforts led to the election of Edmund Muskie as Governor of Maine. In 1956, Coffin stepped down from the chairmanship to run for United States Congress. He was elected, and served from 1957 to 1960, when he stepped down to run for Governor of Maine. He was defeated in that race. After his elected service, Frank was to be appointed Ambassador to Panama by President John Kennedy. When Kennedy was assassinated, Lyndon Johnson refused to make the appointment because of disagreements he had with Frank during his Congressional career. He was appointed to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris in 1964. In 1965, President Johnson appointed Frank to the United States 1st District Court of Appeals. He became chief judge in 1972, serving in that capacity for eleven years. He became senior member in 1989. Frank Coffin has received numerous awards and accolades, and is a highly regarded figure in Maine law and political circles. In 1942 he married a Bates graduate, Ruth Ulrich. They had four children

Processing and Weathering of Sol-Gel Clearcoats for Coil-Coated Steel

Clearcoats provide long-term aesthetics and protection for underlying coating systems, increasing product lifetimes. However, organic clearcoats are predominantly produced using fossil-fuel feedstocks. In search of a sustainable alternative, an experimental investigation was conducted on the development of glass-like clearcoats produced using the sol-gel process. The processing of sol-gel clearcoats over a pigmented polyurethane coating was studied by modifying the sol-gel solution pH, aging, curing, precursor chemistry, and deposition techniques. Under optimal formulation and processing conditions, defect-free sol-gel clearcoats were produced that have potential to be scaled up to a coil-coating line using existing technologies. Mechanical testing demonstrated the coatings had excellent adhesion, hardness, and flexibility. Furthermore, accelerated laboratory weathering tests revealed the sol-gel coatings had superior degradation resistance compared to the organic coatings tested, resulting in negligible colour changes and higher gloss retention after 4000 hours of exposure. The durability and environmental benefits of sol-gel clearcoats highlight their potential as a replacement for traditional organic clearcoats in a variety of applications

Collaborative working within UK NHS secondary care and across sectors for COPD and the impact of peer review : qualitative findings from the UK National COPD Resources and Outcomes Project

Introduction: We investigated the effects on collaborative work within the UK National Health Service (NHS) of an intervention for service quality improvement: informal, structured, reciprocated, multidisciplinary peer review with feedback and action plans. The setting was care for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Theory and methods: We analysed semi-structured interviews with 43 hospital respiratory consultants, nurses and general managers at 24 intervention and 11 control sites, as part of a UK randomised controlled study, the National COPD Resources and Outcomes Project (NCROP), using Scott’s conceptual framework for action (inter-organisational, intra-organisational, inter-professional and inter-individual). Three areas of care targeted by NCROP involved collaboration across primary and secondary care. Results: Hospital respiratory department collaborations with commissioners and hospital managers varied. Analysis suggested that this is related to team responses to barriers. Clinicians in unsuccessful collaborations told ‘atrocity stories’ of organisational, structural and professional barriers to service improvement. The others removed barriers by working with government and commissioner agendas to ensure continued involvement in patients’ care. Multidisciplinary peer review facilitated collaboration between participants, enabling them to meet, reconcile differences and exchange ideas across boundaries. Conclusions: The data come from the first randomised controlled trial of organisational peer review, adding to research into UK health service collaborative work, which has had a more restricted focus on inter-professional relations. NCROP peer review may only modestly improve collaboration but these data suggest it might be more effective than top-down exhortations to change when collaboration both across and within organisations is required

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) for depression : outcomes in a United Kingdom (UK) clinical practice

Objective: The aim of this paper is to present the outcomes data from the largest United Kingdom’s (UK) National Health Service (NHS) clinical rTMS service treating treatment resistant depression (TRD). Methods: The study was a retrospective investigation of routinely collected data on patients receiving rTMS between 2015 and 2017. Measures used were the clinician-rated Clinical Global Impression (CGI) and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D), and patient rated Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The outcome data of 73 patients with TRD was analysed. The sample included patients with co-morbid psychiatric diagnosis. Results: Response and remission rates respectively were 40.4% and 25.5% for the HAM-D; 35.6% and 20.8% for the BDI; and 51.1% and 52.1% for the CGI. Effect sizes were medium (.54, .52 and .56 respectively). Conclusions: The results show that a UK based clinical service achieves similar results to those published internationally and that clinical rTMS can have significant impact on symptoms of depression in many patients with TRD. Health services are under pressure to make financial savings, investment in rTMS could reduce the long term treatment costs associated with TRD