Workers' compensation in the United States: high costs, low benefits

Studies suggest that income replacement is low for many workers with serious occupational injuries and illnesses. This review discusses three areas that hold promise for raising benefits to workers while reducing workers' compensation costs to employers: improving safety, containing medical costs, and reducing litigation. In theory, workers' compensation increases the costs to employers of injuries and so provides incentives to improve safety. Yet, taken as a whole, research does not provide convincing evidence that workers' compensation reduces injury rates. Moreover, unlike safety and health regulation, workers' compensation focuses the attention of employers on individual workers. High costs may lead employers to discourage claims and litigate when claims are filed. Controlling medical costs can reduce workers' compensation costs. Most studies, however, have focused on costs and have not addressed the effectiveness of medical care or patient satisfaction. Research also has shown that workers' compensation systems can reduce the need for litigation. Without litigation, benefits can be delivered more quickly and at lower costs

Metabelian SL(n,C) representations of knot groups II: fixed points

Given a knot K in an integral homology sphere with exterior N_K, there is a natural action of the cyclic group Z/n on the space of SL(n,C) representations of the knot group \pi_1(N_K), and this induces an action on the SL(n,C) character variety. We identify the fixed points of this action in terms of characters of metabelian representations, and we apply this to show that the twisted Alexander polynomial associated to an irreducible metabelian SL(n,C) representation is actually a polynomial in t^n.Comment: 9 pages, almost identical to published versio

Metabelian SL(n,C) representations of knot groups IV: twisted Alexander polynomials

In this paper we will study properties of twisted Alexander polynomials of knots corresponding to metabelian representations. In particular we answer a question of Wada about the twisted Alexander polynomial associated to the tensor product of two representations, and we settle several conjectures of Hirasawa and Murasugi

Optimization of moth-eye antireflection schemes for silicon solar cells

Nanostructured moth-eye antireflection schemes for silicon solar cells are simulated using rigorous coupled wave analysis and compared to traditional thin film coatings. The design of the moth-eye arrays is optimized for application to a laboratory cell (air–silicon interface) and an encapsulated cell (EVA-silicon interface), and the optimization accounts for the solar spectrum incident on the silicon interface in both cells, and the spectral response of both types of cell. The optimized moth-eye designs are predicted to outperform an optimized double layer thin film coating by approximately 2% for the laboratory cell and approximately 3% for the encapsulated cell. The predicted performance of the silicon moth-eye under encapsulation is particularly remarkable as it exhibits losses of only 0.6% compared to an ideal AR surfac

Public health risk of Giardia and Cryptosporidium posed by reintroduction of beavers into Scotland

Following publication of ‘Scottish Beaver Trial Independent Public Health Monitoring 2009-2014 Report and Recommendations’ (Mackie, 2014), two pieces of complementary work were undertaken in parallel to assess the potential contribution of reintroduced beavers in Scotland to the public health burden of disease attributed to Giardia spp. and Cryptosporidium spp. parasites. The first, a risk assessment, addressing the question ‘What is the likelihood that re-introduced beavers will have a significant impact on the contamination of drinking water supplies with Cryptosporidium parvum and Giardia lamblia?’ (Appendix 1), was conducted by Scottish Government’s Centre of Expertise on Animal Disease Outbreaks (EPIC). This reviewed evidence from data and publications across the world, as well as evidence from the beaver trial and SNH’s Tayside beaver reports, and used this to assess the likely additional contribution of beavers to the risk associated with exposure to these parasites in Scotland. The second, ‘What is the likelihood that beavers will be an important source of contamination of drinking water supplies with Cryptosporidium parvum and Giardia intestinalis?’ (Appendix 2), was prepared by Health Protection Scotland (HPS), Scottish Parasite Diagnostic Reference Laboratory (SPDL) and Drinking Water Quality Regulator for Scotland (DWQR). This reviewed the diagnostics, surveillance and epidemiology of these infections in people in Scotland

The SL(2,C) Casson invariant for Dehn surgeries on two-bridge knots

We investigate the behavior of the SL(2,C) Casson invariant for 3-manifolds obtained by Dehn surgery along two-bridge knots. Using the results of Hatcher and Thurston, and also results of Ohtsuki, we outline how to compute the Culler--Shalen seminorms, and we illustrate this approach by providing explicit computations for double twist knots. We then apply the surgery formula of Curtis to deduce the SL(2,C) Casson invariant for the 3-manifolds obtained by p/q-Dehn surgery on such knots. These results are applied to prove nontriviality of the SL(2,C) Casson invariant for nearly all 3-manifolds obtained by nontrivial Dehn surgery on a hyperbolic two-bridge knot. We relate the formulas derived to degrees of A-polynomials and use this information to identify factors of higher multiplicity in the $\hat{A}$-polynomial, which is the A-polynomial with multiplicities as defined by Boyer-Zhang.Comment: 32 pages, 2 figures, to be published in Algebraic and Geometric Topolog

European integration and the case for compensatory regional policy

The ongoing process of European integration is likely to increase trade and factor mobility thereby increasing interregional competition and affecting the interregional division of labour. From a theoretical standpoint, particularly on the basis of the New Economic Geography (NEG), rising specialization and polarization of European regions could result from this process, and could entail a growing core-periphery-divide of regional income. Hence, there may be winning and losing regions of the integration process, according to the way industrial concentration and regional specialization takes place. Such an supposition evokes questions on the need of an accompanying compensatory regional policy, and whether it can be justified from an efficiency and/or distributional perspective. Also, questions arise as to the adequate design of such compensatory regional policy, with respect to institutions, measures, and recipients. The proposed paper will start reviewing the case for regional policy in Europe on theoretical and empirical grounds. It will then discuss some options for an efficient European regional policy, and compare it to the actual EU regional policy.