The Unintended Consequences of Flexicurity : The Health Consequences of Flexible Employment

Publisher PD

Economic Fluctuations and Crime : Temporary and Persistent Effects

Publisher PD

Evaluating prose style transfer with the Bible

In the prose style transfer task a system, provided with text input and a target prose style, produces output which preserves the meaning of the input text but alters the style. These systems require parallel data for evaluation of results and usually make use of parallel data for training. Currently, there are few publicly available corpora for this task. In this work, we identify a high-quality source of aligned, stylistically distinct text in different versions of the Bible. We provide a standardized split, into training, development and testing data, of the public domain versions in our corpus. This corpus is highly parallel since many Bible versions are included. Sentences are aligned due to the presence of chapter and verse numbers within all versions of the text. In addition to the corpus, we present the results, as measured by the BLEU and PINC metrics, of several models trained on our data which can serve as baselines for future research. While we present these data as a style transfer corpus, we believe that it is of unmatched quality and may be useful for other natural language tasks as well

Making a Mess with Paper

What exactly is a paper-engineer - and how do they do what they do? Keith Allen, paper engineer and professional greeting card artist, lets us into his creative process and the secrets of working with paper. He’ll share his insights on the wonders and challenges of bringing a pop-up book to life

Making a Mess with Paper

What exactly is a paper-engineer - and how do they do what they do? Keith Allen, paper engineer and professional greeting card artist, lets us into his creative process and the secrets of working with paper. He’ll share his insights on the wonders and challenges of bringing a pop-up book to life

Merleau-Ponty and Naive Realism

ABSTRACT: This paper has two aims. The first is to use contemporary discussions of naïve realist theories of perception to offer an interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception. The second is to use consideration of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception to outline a distinctive version of a naïve realist theory of perception. In a Merleau-Pontian spirit, these two aims are inter-dependent

Pardon You? Pardon Me. Controversial Usage of the Presidential Pardoning Power: from Carter to Clinton.

In this study I propose to examine the usage of the pardoning power of the president as it relates to four aspects: the Nixon pardon, political advancement, defense of the person and his party, and independent private gain through the issuance of pardons. These aspects are all a part of the modern day usage of Article II Section 2 of the Constitution. The study relies primarily on statements made from the presidents involved, as well as statements made by judicial persons involved in the pardoning process. The study is also drawn from direct investigations, both private and governmental. A good number of secondary sources were used also to establish the historical setting and round out the story where inconsistencies developed. The study concludes that presidents since Gerald Ford have used his pardon of Richard Nixon as a precedent to allow them a political alibi for questionable endeavors

Cost Evaluation of Municipal Water Hardness Reduction and Private Softening for the City of Brookings, South Dakota

Nature of the Project The City of Brookings, South Dakota, is a university town with a total estimated population of 13,000, including a campus enrollment of 6,000. On March 3; 1970, Brookings\u27 voters passed a bond issue to expand the present water treatment facilities by increasing both production and storage. The new treatment plant will have a maximum daily production capacity of 4 million gallons, storage for 3 million gallons and will supplement the supply being treated by the existing plant. The new plant will consist of aeration to remove iron and manganese, lime and alum treatment to partially soften the water and to assist in the precipitation of the iron and manganese, an upflow basin for sludge sedimentation, a rapid sand filtration unit, chlorination and fluoridation. The lime and sludge will be pumped to a lagoon for dewatering prior to final disposal. The cost of the plant including construction costs for additional water storage has been estimated at $631,000. Brookings, located in a hard water area, has an average raw water hardness of 643 mg/1 and a finished water hardness of 485 mg/1. The primary objective of this project was to assess the economic feasibility of incorporating additional water hardness reduction capabilities into the new municipal plant. Brookings\u27 residents ·presently obtain soft water by using the ion-exchange process, either by subscribing to home-serviced softening provided by companies or by operating home-owned softening units. It was desired to determine whether softened water could be obtained in the most economical manner by a combination of improved municipal hardness reduction in conjunction with home softening. The specific objectives of the study were: 1. to determine the percentage of the water used in Brookings that was softened and the cost to the residents per unit volume of soft water, 2. to determine the extent to which the water could be economically softened, 3. to determine the combination of softening practices that would be most economical to the water user, and 4. to evaluate the economic feasibility of installing additional softening capabilities in the new municipal water treatment plant. If the reduction of the water hardness by municipal treatment would prove economical then it would appear desirable to incorporate additional softening into the new plant. In this manner, the users would be provided with a softened water supply at a cost that would be less than they have paid to soften only a portion of their water supply

Brooke Group Ltd. v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.: A Victory for Consumer Welfare Under the Robinson-Patman Act

The preservation of competition among business entities is vital to the success of any economy. Recognizing the importance of competition, the United States Congress has passed antitrust laws that seek to enhance productivity and protect consumers. Although the antitrust laws, like all statutes, are vulnerable to a variety of different interpretations, [t]he language of the antitrust statutes, their legislative histories, the major structural features of the antitrust law, and considerations of the scope, nature, consistency, and ease of administration of the law all indicate that the law should be guided solely by the criterion of consumer welfare. The antitrust laws are intended to prohibit monopolization, predatory pricing, and other behaviors that adversely affect competition and ultimately consumer welfare. In the consumer-driven, capitalist economy of the United States, competition is the foundation of economic success. Price discrimination, when used to undermine competition and destroy consumer welfare, violates the purpose of the antitrust laws