The broken trailer fallacy: seeing the unseen effects of government policies in post-Katrina New Orleans

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze some of the unseen negative effects of the post-Katrina government policies dealing with housing in New Orleans. Design/methodology/approach – Since Hurricane Katrina, the government, along with private for profit and not-for-profit organizations, has worked to rebuild the city of New Orleans. This effort is most evident in the response to the housing crisis that followed the storm. The government has spent billions of dollars and brought thousands of people in to rebuild homes and other infrastructure in the long run and to provide stopgap measures in the short run. The approximately 120,000 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailers in the region are one of the most visible examples of government efforts. Findings – The paper finds that while the trailers did provide benefits to those who received them, it could be argued that the government’s policies aimed toward solving the housing crisis suffer from Fre´de´ric Bastiat’s broken window fallacy. FEMA trailers and the multitude of workers brought in are examples of what is seen, and, as Bastiat showed, we must also look at what is unseen.United States of America; Natural Disasters; Man-Made Disasters; Floods; Economic Theory

Banks, insurance companies, and discrimination

This article examines some of the reasons why banks and insurance companies have been accused of discrimination, and shows that this is by and large a false accusation. Economic analysis demonstrates that racial discrimination is not a profit-maximizing strategy. Actually, unwise public policies are actually precluding many consumers from the market.redlining; financial regulation; unintended consequences

Force reflecting hand controller

A universal input device for interfacing a human operator with a slave machine such as a robot or the like includes a plurality of serially connected mechanical links extending from a base. A handgrip is connected to the mechanical links distal from the base such that a human operator may grasp the handgrip and control the position thereof relative to the base through the mechanical links. A plurality of rotary joints is arranged to connect the mechanical links together to provide at least three translational degrees of freedom and at least three rotational degrees of freedom of motion of the handgrip relative to the base. A cable and pulley assembly for each joint is connected to a corresponding motor for transmitting forces from the slave machine to the handgrip to provide kinesthetic feedback to the operator and for producing control signals that may be transmitted from the handgrip to the slave machine. The device gives excellent kinesthetic feedback, high-fidelity force/torque feedback, a kinematically simple structure, mechanically decoupled motion in all six degrees of freedom, and zero backlash. The device also has a much larger work envelope, greater stiffness and responsiveness, smaller stowage volume, and better overlap of the human operator's range of motion than previous designs

The load/deflection behavior of pretensioned cable/pulley transmission mechanisms

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution December 1993Mechanical transmission mechanisms enable a designer to match the abilities (e .g. velocity, torque capacity) of an actuator to the needs of an application. Unfortunately the mechanical limitations of the transmission (e.g. stiffness, backlash, friction, etc.) often become the source of new problems. Therefore identifying the best transmission option for a particular application requires the designer to be familiar with the inherent characteristics of each type of transmission mechanism. In this thesis we model load/deflection behavior of one particular transmission option; closed circuit cable/pulley transmissions. Cable drives are well suited to force and position control applications because of their unique combination of zero backlash motion, high stiffness and low friction. We begin the modelling process by determining the equilibrium elongation of a cable wrapped around a nonrotating pulley during loading and unloading. These results enable us to model the load/deflection behavior of the open circuit cable drive. Using the open circuit results we model the more useful closed circuit cable drive. We present experimental results which confirm the validity of both cable drive models and then extend these models to multistage drives. We end by discussing the use of these models in the design of force and position control mechanisms and comment on the limitations of these models

Advances in grasping and vehicle contact identification : analysis, design and testing of robust methods for underwater robot manipulation

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 1999This thesis focuses on improving the productivity of autonomous and telemanipulation systems consisting of a manipulator arm mounted to a free flying underwater vehicle. Part I minimizes system sensitivity to misalignment by developing a gripper and a suite of handles that passively self align when grasped. After presenting a gripper guaranteed to passively align cylinders we present several other self aligning handles. The mix of handle alignment and load resisting properties enables handles to be matched to the needs of each task. Part I concludes with a discussion of successful field use of the system on the Jason Remotely Operated Undersea Vehicle operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. To enable the exploitation of contact with the environment to help stabilize the vehicle, Part II develops a technique which identifies the contact state of a planar vehicle interacting with a fixed environment. Knowing the vehicle geometry and velocity we identify kinematically feasible contact points, from which we construct the set of feasible contact models. The measured vehicle data violates each model’s constraints; we use the associated violation power and work to select the best overall model. Part II concludes with experimental confirmation of the contact identification techniques efficacy

A history of Winthrop, Massachusetts

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 1939. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

Using Depot Inventory Position to Determine Transportation Mode of Retrograde Reparable Assets

Air Force logistics policies direct the expedited evacuation of repairables to the source of repair , in an effort to allow smaller inventories. Transportation Mode selection is based only on the asset itself. This focus works well when shipping assets out from the depot to a base. When a base ships an asset back to the depot however, the priority of the asset may not be the best way to select the transportation mode. The quantity of the assets at the depot may indicate that fast transportation is unnecessary. The depot may already have enough serviceable assets to meet demand or the number of unserviceable assets already waiting exceeds the depot\u27s repair capacity. If either of these inventory conditions exists, shipping an asset back to the depot using fast transportation is unnecessary and shipping the item via a slower and less costly mode could maintain the same service level. Rather than focus solely on the asset, the inventory of the depot should be involved in mode determination. This research evaluated current Air Force retrograde transportation mode selection policy. Demand and production data were compared to supply data for Oklahoma City ALC and Ogden ALC to use the inventory position of the depot to select the appropriate speed of transportation. Transportation data was then used to find cost saving potential by finding the difference between mode used and the mode indicated by the depot\u27s inventory position. The analysis found that in 97% of the trials, a mode slower than overnight was suggested and produced a potential cost savings of 38%

A new six-degree-of-freedom force-reflecting hand controller for space telerobotics

A new 6 degree of freedom universal Force Reflecting Hand Controller (FRHC) was designed for use as the man-machine interface in teleoperated and telerobotic flight systems. The features of this new design include highly intuitive operation, excellent kinesthetic feedback, high fidelity force/torque feedback, a kinematically simple structure, mechanically decoupled motion in all 6 DOF, good back-drivability, and zero backlash. In addition, the new design has a much larger work envelope, smaller stowage volume, greater stiffness and responsiveness, and better overlap of the human operator's range of motion than do previous designs. The utility and basic operation of a new, flight prototype FRHC called the Model X is briefly discussed. The design heritage, general design goals, and design implementation of this advanced new generation of FRHCs are presented, followed by a discussion of basic features and the results of initial testing

Edward Rowe Snow Correspondence

Entries include brief biographical information and an evocative, handwritten biographical letter describing her Iowa birth on a covered wagon journey and subsequent move to Peaceful Valley Farm in Exeter, Maine

The broken trailer fallacy: seeing the unseen effects of government policies in post-Katrina New Orleans

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze some of the unseen negative effects of the post-Katrina government policies dealing with housing in New Orleans. Design/methodology/approach – Since Hurricane Katrina, the government, along with private for profit and not-for-profit organizations, has worked to rebuild the city of New Orleans. This effort is most evident in the response to the housing crisis that followed the storm. The government has spent billions of dollars and brought thousands of people in to rebuild homes and other infrastructure in the long run and to provide stopgap measures in the short run. The approximately 120,000 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailers in the region are one of the most visible examples of government efforts. Findings – The paper finds that while the trailers did provide benefits to those who received them, it could be argued that the government’s policies aimed toward solving the housing crisis suffer from Fre´de´ric Bastiat’s broken window fallacy. FEMA trailers and the multitude of workers brought in are examples of what is seen, and, as Bastiat showed, we must also look at what is unseen