Incorporation of plastics and other recyclables into building materials in Nicaragua

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 29).For three communities in Nicaragua: Bluefields, Little Corn Island, and Corn Island, incentives are needed to motivate residents to not burn their trash and recyclables. There are various methods that could encourage recycling and garbage collection, although not all are appropriate for this particular community. After evaluating various project ideas, it was determined that incorporating recyclables into building materials would be a promising method for getting use out of the recyclables. Various processes for incorporating plastic into building materials were evaluated. The Pura Vida wall used in Guatemala offers a promising building design to encourage residents of these Nicaraguan communities to utilize their plastic bottles and bags. The wall frame and foundation are made of concrete and wood, but the majority of the wall's volume is composed of trash and plastic bottles. Pending further research, this design could possibly be altered for use in the walls of fixed-dome biogas digesters. A dissemination plan has been formed to test these designs in the Nicaraguan communities with a local NGO called BlueEnergy.by Christopher J. OhImacher.S.B

The Relationship Between Geology and Landslide Hazards of Atchison, Kansas, and Vicinity

Landslides along the Missouri and Kansas rivers will affect existing structures and potential development in the Kansas City metropolitan area. A pilot landslide-mapping project was conducted in the vicinity of Atchison, Kansas, to inventory existing landslides and determine the factors that caused them. Landslides are generally controlled by the slope morphology, geology, soils, and moisture conditions. For this study, landslides were divided into recent and older landslides (including earth slides and earth flows) and rock-fall hazards (including rock falls and rock topples). Recent landslides are associated with shale members of the Pennsylvanian Lawrence Formation, Oread Limestone, Kanwaka Shale, and Tecumseh Shale. Limestone layers that occur between these shale members were incorporated into recent and older landslides. Recent landslides occurred on slopes with an average angle of 22 degrees. Recent landslides were also observed in glacial drift, loess, and alluvium. Rock-fall hazards occurred in areas of nearly vertical slopes along streams, river bluffs, highways, and quarries, where limestone members of the Pennsylvanian Oread, Lecompton, and Deer Creek Limestones are exposed. Troublesome rock-fall hazards occurred where weak shale layers are eroding underneath resistant limestone layers

A high resolution solar atlas for fluorescence calculations

The characteristics required of a solar atlas to be used for studying the fluorescence process in comets are examined. Several sources of low resolution data were combined to provide an absolutely calibrated spectrum from 2250 A to 7000A. Three different sources of high resolution data were also used to cover this same spectral range. The low resolution data were then used to put each high resolution spectrum on an absolute scale. The three high resolution spectra were then combined in their overlap regions to produce a single, absolutely calibrated high resolution spectrum over the entire spectral range

Essays on the Management and Organizational Practices Survey

This dissertation examines the role that management practices play in plant performance and addresses the many challenges that accompany efforts to measure accurately the adoption of management practices. I first provide background on a recent Census Bureau survey, the Management and Organizational Practices Survey (MOPS), which measures management and organizational practices at manufacturing plants in the United States. Economists have long hypothesized that management is an important component of firm success, but until recently, the study of management was confined to hypotheses, anecdotes, and case studies. Building upon the work of Bloom and Van Reenen (2007), the Census Bureau conducted the first-ever large-scale survey of management practices in the United States, the MOPS, for 2010. The Census Bureau conducted a second, enhanced version of the MOPS for 2015. Next, I use data from the MOPS 2010 to examine changes in establishment-level management practices at approximately 12,000 continuing establishments between 2005 and 2010. I find that within-establishment changes in productivity are correlated primarily with practices related to performance incentives, particularly performance bonus practices. I present evidence that plants use performance bonuses as a channel of wage adjustment during the Great Recession, which explains most of the within-plant correlation between structured management practices and productivity. That is, negative demand shocks during the Great Recession negatively affect both measured productivity and the availability of bonuses and manufacturing plants. There is limited evidence that changes in bonus practices for reasons other than demand shocks have an impact on plant outcomes over the period from 2005 to 2010. Finally, I present further background on the cognitive testing practices that the Census Bureau used to develop the MOPS. Because management is an intangible input into plant production functions, it is not as easily measured as conventional inputs such as labor or capital. Pretesting was essential to ensure that quality data was collected. The results of the pretesting process provide insight into how respondents interpret the MOPS questionnaire, including the questions related to bonus practices, which in turn influences the interpretation of the results presented in the preceding chapter

Pay, productivity and management

Using confidential Census matched employer-employee earnings data we find that employees at more productive firms, and firms with more structured management practices, have substantially higher pay, both on average and across every percentile of the pay distribution. This pay-performance relationship is particularly strong amongst higher paid employees, with a doubling of firm productivity associated with 11% more pay for the highest-paid employee (likely the CEO) compared to 4.7% for the median worker. This pay-performance link holds in public and private firms, although it is almost twice as strong in public firms for the highest-paid employees. Top pay volatility is also strongly related to productivity and structured management, suggesting this performance-pay relationship arises from more aggressive monitoring and incentive practices for top earners

Rainfall Thresholding and Susceptibility assessment of rainfall induced landslides: application to landslide management in St Thomas, Jamaica

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10064-009-0232-zThe parish of St Thomas has one of the highest densities of landslides in Jamaica, which impacts the residents, local economy and the built and natural environment. These landslides result from a combination of steep slopes, faulting, heavy rainfall and the presence of highly weathered volcanics, sandstones, limestones and sandstone/shale series and are particularly prevalent during the hurricane season (June–November). The paper reports a study of the rainfall thresholds and landslide susceptibility assessment to assist the prediction, mitigation and management of slope instability in landslide-prone areas of the parish

A ROC analysis-based classification method for landslide susceptibility maps

[EN] A landslide susceptibility map is a crucial tool for landuse spatial planning and management in mountainous areas. An essential issue in such maps is the determination of susceptibility thresholds. To this end, the map is zoned into a limited number of classes. Adopting one classification system or another will not only affect the map's readability and final appearance, but most importantly, it may affect the decision-making tasks required for effective land management. The present study compares and evaluates the reliability of some of the most commonly used classification methods, applied to a susceptibility map produced for the area of La Marina (Alicante, Spain). A new classification method based on ROC analysis is proposed, which extracts all the useful information from the initial dataset (terrain characteristics and landslide inventory) and includes, for the first time, the concept of misclassification costs. 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