An economic analysis of six alternatives socio-economic data information systems for Tennessee

In this study an attempt was made to determine and compare the human and physical characteristics and costs associated with selected alternative economic and social data information systems for the state of Tennessee. The objectives were: to determine and compare the input requirements and output characteristics of selected information systems; to determine and compare the cost-effectiveness of the systems at selected output levels; and to determine and compare other advantages and disad-vantages of the various systems. The effects on costs of different computer hardware capabilities and speeds, and costs of leasing were compared with costs of purchas-ing the computer equipment. The procedure involved cost-effectiveness analysis using economic engineering data. Six alternative data information systems were chosen as being representative of the systems presently in use at information centers. The alternatives varied in computer capability and speed. The human and physical facilities, other than computer hardware, were held constant among alternatives. Working time was varied in three shifts. Costs were divided into three categories: equipment, labor, and building. The economic stages of each category were delineated and then summed to find the total cost for each alternative. Thirty-three managerial, professional, and cleri-cal personnel were needed to fulfill the data information systems functions in one shift. Additional shifts in-creased the personnel to 39 for two shifts and 45 for three shifts. This increase reflected the addition of six operators to run the computer each shift. Annual wage and fringe benefit costs were $438,154.08,$495,549.60, and $552,945.12, respectively for one shift, two shifts, and three shifts. Building costs included construction and mainte-nance of an 11,675 gross square foot building. Building costs included land costs. Total construction cost was$632,025. Annual cost to the user of the building was $111,893.20. Building and land costs were held con-stant across alternatives. Equipment costs consisted of costs for office equipment, office supplies, keypunch equipment, computer hardware, and computer software. Computer hardware storage capabilities varied from 147K bytes to 524K bytes. Two different computer processors were included with difference being speed capability. Equipment costs ranged from an annual lease cost of$243,061.68 to $390,712.50. Annual purchase costs for equipment, prorated over 60 months, ranged from$214,396.08 to $338,552.76. The number of average jobs the six alternative data information centers could produce in a month ranged from 2,400 to 42,293 jobs. The monthly cost per job in the lease option ranged from$2.08 per job to $27.54 per job. Monthly costs per job in the purchase option ranged from$1.98 to $26.54. Annual total costs for the data information center ranged from$793,108.92 to $1,055,551.08 under the lease option. Annual total costs for the data information center under the purchase option ranged from$764,443.32 to $1,003,391.04

PCB Pandemic : How Polychlorinated Biphenyls Plagued the Hudson And Why Commercial Fishermen Were Left Behind

Senior Project Submitted to The Division of Multidisciplinary Studies of Bard Colleg

Beyond Honor: Historicizing Sexual Coercion in Late Colonial Lima, 1750-1821

Sexual assault and sexual coercion are intensely emotional crimes that have been the focus of many recent public discussions around the world, including protests and reforms in Latin America. As such, the history of these crimes in countries like Peru provides vital context for reformers and scholars alike. This research aims to incorporate women’s emotional experiences of sexual coercion into the legal and cultural context of Peru’s capital city between 1750 and 1821, and thus to illustrate that social and political changes also affected individual women’s pursuit of justice. Using dozens of court cases from the ecclesiastical and royal secular courts, along with legal codes, nuns’ writings, and published newspaper editorials, I connect cultural perceptions of gender to legal decisions and thence to the ways in which women and their families articulated their coercion experiences. In late colonial Lima, gender biases and stereotypes reflected both traditional religious and modern Enlightenment interpretations of gender, embedding expectations of female inferiority into Lima’s culture. These expectations were further reflected in the fact that many coercion cases came to the courts when women’s guardians objected to runaway marriages. Nonetheless, some women—including enslaved women—advocated for themselves within a contractual definition of consensual sex, using their verbal agreements and marriage promises as leverage to gain legal protection within Lima’s patriarchal system. The courts themselves upheld many of the racial and socioeconomic divisions on which colonial Peruvian society operated, typically supporting litigants who were racially or socially superior to their antagonists. In the early nineteenth century, however, it became increasingly challenging for women and their guardians to obtain convictions for sexual coercion, as changes in administrative structures and priorities restricted the range of acceptable arguments. These structural changes in turn affected the emotions that women could express, indicating a homogenization of emotional expression in sexual coercion cases and thus of the experiences themselves. Together, the emotional, legal, and cultural dynamics of late colonial sexual coercion cases demonstrate that gendered power changed in subtle ways throughout the late colonial period, and thus affected the ways in which women and their guardians defined and sought justice

DIRECT MARKETING IN THE 1990S: TENNESSEE'S NEW FARMERS' MARKETS

Marketing,

SUPERMARKET PATRONAGE: AN ANALYSIS OF CUSTOMER COUNTS AMONG OUTLETS WITHIN A GEOGRAPHIC AREA

As new supermarket management tools are introduced, the need for an improved understanding of store patronage is growing. Weekly customer counts for five supermarkets located in a Southeastern metropolitan area covering 261 weeks are analyzed. Descriptive statistics indicate that food shopper patterns vary by outlet. Regression equations are estimated for each location. Results point to store specific relationships. They indicate that evaluation of television and radio ads and double couponing can be quite involved.Consumer/Household Economics,

FORECASTING ITEM MOVEMENT WITH SCAN DATA: BOX-JENKINS RESULTS

Preliminary forecasts using the Box-Jenkins methodology for supermarket scan data for ground beef and roast item movement are described. The functional form and the accuracy of the forecasts vary by product. Results suggest that further analyses incorporating price and advertising may increase the accuracy of the forecasts.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Marketing,

LOCATION AND OTHER MARKET ATTRIBUTES AFFECTING FARMER'S MARKET PATRONAGE: THE CASE OF TENNESSEE

Consumer/Household Economics,

Local Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter: a non-stationary control law for complex adaptive optics systems on ELTs

We propose a new algorithm for an adaptive optics system control law which allows to reduce the computational burden in the case of an Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) and to deal with non-stationary behaviors of the turbulence. This approach, using Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter and localizations by domain decomposition is called the local ETKF: the pupil of the telescope is split up into various local domains and calculations for the update estimate of the turbulent phase on each domain are performed independently. This data assimilation scheme enables parallel computation of markedly less data during this update step. This adapts the Kalman Filter to large scale systems with a non-stationary turbulence model when the explicit storage and manipulation of extremely large covariance matrices are impossible. First simulation results are given in order to assess the theoretical analysis and to demonstrate the potentiality of this new control law for complex adaptive optics systems on ELTs.Comment: Proceedings of the AO4ELT3 conference; 8 pages, 3 figure

Local ensemble transform Kalman filter, a fast non-stationary control law for adaptive optics on ELTs: theoretical aspects and first simulation results

We propose a new algorithm for an adaptive optics system control law, based on the Linear Quadratic Gaussian approach and a Kalman Filter adaptation with localizations. It allows to handle non-stationary behaviors, to obtain performance close to the optimality defined with the residual phase variance minimization criterion, and to reduce the computational burden with an intrinsically parallel implementation on the Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs).Comment: This paper was published in Optics Express and is made available as an electronic reprint with the permission of OSA. The paper can be found at the following URL on the OSA website: http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/ . Systematic or multiple reproduction or distribution to multiple locations via electronic or other means is prohibited and is subject to penalties under la

FRESH VEGETABLE PRICE LINKAGE BETWEEN GROWER/SHIPPERS, WHOLESALERS AND RETAILERS

This study focused on the transmission of price adjustments between grower/shippers and wholesalers and between wholesale handlers and retailers of nine fresh vegetables (only the results associated with bell peppers are reported in this paper). Results among the nine vegetable products were not consistent with respect to the magnitude of adjustments or the time periods involved in the adjustments. In response to wholesale price changes, upward price adjustments at the retail level occur more quickly than do downward price adjustments. Price transmission relationships also varied among the vegetable products between the wholesaler and grower. Overall, the results indicate that factors in addition to changes in upstream prices are impacting retailers' and wholesalers' pricing decisions.Demand and Price Analysis,