Funding Resilient Infrastructure in New Jersey: Attitudes Following a Natural Disaster

Recent major natural disasters in New Jersey have demonstrated the need to increase the resilience of transportation infrastructure. This research examines public attitudes toward revenue sources that can be dedicated to protecting vulnerable areas, most notably the transportation linkages on which the state depends. A statewide survey was conducted to gather data approximately four months following Superstorm Sandy, the costliest natural disaster in the state’s history. The authors’ objective was to sample public attitudes while the impacts of the disaster were still fresh. They found little support for temporary tax increases to improve resiliency, with the most positive support for taxing visitors (i.e., a hotel and recreational tax) and for a 30-year bond measure (i.e., taxing the future). This observation seemingly contradicts broad support for investing in new infrastructure, as well as maintaining and protecting existing infrastructure. Multivariate analysis to understand the underlying attitudes toward raising revenue found that more left-leaning or communitarian attitudes are associated with more support for gasoline, income, or sales taxes devoted to mitigating vulnerability. Those who supported investment in transit and protecting infrastructure also were more likely to support these taxes. There was no parallel finding of factors associated with taxing visitors or issuing bonds

On a conjecture of Bennewitz, and the behaviour of the Titchmarsh-Weyl matrix near a pole

For any real limit-$n$ $2n$th-order selfadjoint linear differential expression on $[0,\infty)$, Titchmarsh- Weyl matrices $M(\lambda)$ can be defined. Two matrices of particu lar interest are the matrices $M_D(\lambda)$ and $M_N(\lambda)$ assoc iated respectively with Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions at $x=0$. These satisfy $M_D(\lambda) = -M_{N}(\lambda)^{-1}$. It is known that when these matrices have poles (which can only lie on the real axis) the existence of valid HELP inequalities depends on their behaviour in the neighbourhood of these poles. We prove a conjecture of Bennewitz and use it, together with a new algorithm for computing the Laurent expansion of a Titchmarsh-Weyl matrix in the neighbourhood of a pole, to investigate the existence of HELP inequalities for a number of differential equations which have so far proved awkward to analys

Modern Observational Techniques for Comets

Techniques are discussed in the following areas: astrometry, photometry, infrared observations, radio observations, spectroscopy, imaging of coma and tail, image processing of observation. The determination of the chemical composition and physical structure of comets is highlighted

H-Diplo Roundtable XXI-28 on Tworek. News from Germany: the competition to control world communications, 1900-1945

No description supplie

Strategic Outsourcing: Evidence from the British Companies

Outsourcing has become an increasingly popular option for many organisations. But they vary in terms of activities being outsourced, reasons for and benefits from outsourcing, and how the decision was made. This article presents an empirical research on fourteen companies. It found out, a) in most cases it was the ‘peripheral’ support activity being outsourced with cost reduction as the primary driver; b) outsourcing decision was being made early in the process without active involvement of the in-house provider; and c) there were problems in supplier selection and management. The research identified pre-outsourcing decision process and post-outsourcing management as the two key areas that gave cause for concern, and offered recommendations for improvement

Non-Pauli Effects from Noncommutative Spacetimes

Noncommutative spacetimes lead to nonlocal quantum field theories (qft's) where spin-statistics theorems cannot be proved. For this reason, and also backed by detailed arguments, it has been suggested that they get corrected on such spacetimes leading to small violations of the Pauli principle. In a recent paper \cite{Pauli}, Pauli-forbidden transitions from spacetime noncommutativity were calculated and confronted with experiments. Here we give details of the computation missing from this paper. The latter was based on a spacetime $\mathcal{B}_{\chi\vec{n}}$ different from the Moyal plane. We argue that it quantizes time in units of $\chi$. Energy is then conserved only mod $\frac{2\pi}{\chi}$. Issues related to superselection rules raised by non-Pauli effects are also discussed in a preliminary manner.Comment: 15 Pages, 1 Table, Full details and further developments of arXiv:1003.2250. This version is close to the one accepted by JHE