The anatomy of an oil price shock

Oil price shocks do not cause inflation, no matter how close the connection seems to be in our practical experience. But they can cause significant price increases throughout the economy. Tracing the way a sharp increase in the price of crude oil affects prices in various industrial sectors of the U.S. economy suggests how big these increases are. Fortunately, our economy seems better prepared now to weather such shocks than in the 1970s and 1980s.Petroleum products - Prices ; Inflation (Finance)

How can avalanche bulletins be more useful for recreationists? Exploring three opportunities for improving communication of avalanche hazard information

Avalanche warning services release public avalanche bulletins to help backcountry recreationists develop risk management approaches for winter backcountry trips. To safely recreate in the backcountry, recreationists must be able to understand and apply the avalanche hazard information presented in the avalanche bulletin. The goal of this research was to test how key elements of the avalanche bulletin affect users’ interpretation of the hazard information within the avalanche bulletin, and to determine if modifications to the bulletin could increase its’ useability among recreationists. We conducted a survey with multiple sections to test if presentation of graphic information and interactive exercises can help recreationists apply spatial hazard information, as well has how users perceive the travel and terrain advice section of the bulletin. The results of these studies can be used by avalanche warning services to improve avalanche hazard messaging in their public avalanche bulletins

From 20th Century troubles to 21st Century international terrorism: identity, securitization, and British counterterrorism from 1968 to 2011

This thesis is an exploration into the consequential interrelation of official British discourse, identity, securitization, and counterterrorism from 1968 to 2011. Through a relational-securitization approach, the thesis narrative explains how discourse is both constitutive and causal for outcomes in a particular case. It is a relational mechanism based analysis that investigates how observed rhetorical commonplaces came together to influence intersubjective understanding and security practice. The ways that identities were temporarily stabilized across discourse through particular configurations was essential to how British counterterrorism emerged, was maintained, and became normalized. The thesis does not argue that possible insecurities categorized as “terrorism” do not exist, or that a security response is in itself surprising. However, how this response unfolded was not predetermined, and instead depended upon a securitization of terrorism along distinctive patterns of us/them construction. These patterns influenced the trajectory of counterterrorism by enabling certain outcomes to arise over others. Collective understandings of identity shape the conditions of possibility for political action. As such, discourses of securitization have a causal impact over intersubjective understanding and counterterrorism ractice. Historical moments, such as the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings or 11 September 2001 attacks, can facilitate a more rapid passage of exceptional measures. But the maintenance and normalization of these powers depends upon us/them and inside/outside boundary markers. Violent acts may thus influence outcomes, but they do not determine their substance or direction. Reasserted and/or reconfigured perceptions of distance and danger stabilizing the threat and referent in particular ways played a key role in counterterrorism’s transition from emergency response to permanent practice. Through a relational-securitization approach, analysis can better map out how processes of identity construction were essential to the securitization of terrorism, and contributed to the emergence, legitimation, and normalization of British counterterrorism from 1968 to 2011

Archaeological Survey of the Proposed Crawford Memorial Park Improvements Dallas County, Texas

The City of Dallas is proposing to improve the existing Crawford Memorial Park in central-southeastern Dallas County, Texas. DIPS Environmental, Inc., contracted with AR Consultants, Inc. to conduct an intensive archaeological survey of Crawford Memorial Park under the authority of Texas Antiquities Permit number 8747. Crawford Memorial Park totals approximately 265 acres. However, modern landscape modifications including a number of sports fields, the Crawford Aquatic Center, parking lots, cement walking paths, a playground, pavilion, bathrooms, and a City of Dallas Park and Recreation Maintenance Facility exist within the park boundary and project area. As Crawford Memorial Park has never been surveyed for archaeological resources, the area of the park where these modern landscape modifications have occurred, approximately 105 acres, was subject to a reconnaissance pedestrian survey without shovel testing. Approximately 160 acres of Crawford Memorial Park was subject to an intensive pedestrian survey with shovel testing. In total, 57 shovel tests were excavated during the systematic field inspection on March 5-6, 11, 14, and 19-20, 2019. The archaeological potential for prehistoric and historic cultural resources had been considered low except for a known earthen berm and floodwater overflow feature that was constructed to dam the old Prairie Creek channel in 1961. This historic site, 41DL549, was the only site recorded during survey. Apart from 41DL549 no cultural resources were identified in the shovel tests or on the surface. Given the results of this survey, AR Consultants, Inc. recommends that further cultural resource investigations are unnecessary for this project, and requests that the Texas Historical Commission and the Fort Worth District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concur with this recommendation. The field notes, photographs, and photo logs are curated at the Center for Archaeological Studies at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas

Archaeological Survey of the Proposed Crawford Memorial Park Improvements Dallas County, Texas

The City of Dallas is proposing to improve the existing Crawford Memorial Park in central-southeastern Dallas County, Texas. DIPS Environmental, Inc., contracted with AR Consultants, Inc. to conduct an intensive archaeological survey of Crawford Memorial Park under the authority of Texas Antiquities Permit number 8747. Crawford Memorial Park totals approximately 265 acres. However, modern landscape modifications including a number of sports fields, the Crawford Aquatic Center, parking lots, cement walking paths, a playground, pavilion, bathrooms, and a City of Dallas Park and Recreation Maintenance Facility exist within the park boundary and project area. As Crawford Memorial Park has never been surveyed for archaeological resources, the area of the park where these modern landscape modifications have occurred, approximately 105 acres, was subject to a reconnaissance pedestrian survey without shovel testing. Approximately 160 acres of Crawford Memorial Park was subject to an intensive pedestrian survey with shovel testing. In total, 57 shovel tests were excavated during the systematic field inspection on March 5-6, 11, 14, and 19-20, 2019. The archaeological potential for prehistoric and historic cultural resources had been considered low except for a known earthen berm and floodwater overflow feature that was constructed to dam the old Prairie Creek channel in 1961. This historic site, 41DL549, was the only site recorded during survey. Apart from 41DL549 no cultural resources were identified in the shovel tests or on the surface. Given the results of this survey, AR Consultants, Inc. recommends that further cultural resource investigations are unnecessary for this project, and requests that the Texas Historical Commission and the Fort Worth District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concur with this recommendation. The field notes, photographs, and photo logs are curated at the Center for Archaeological Studies at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas

The structure of the American economy

We explore the relationship between input-output accounts and the national revenue function. The generalized inverse of an economy's technology matrix carries information relating changes in endowments with changes in outputs; its transpose relates output prices and factor prices. Our primary theoretical contribution is to derive an economy's revenue function for an arbitrary Leontief technology. Our main empirical contribution is to compute the national revenue function for the American economy in 2003 and to describe its properties. We implement our ideas using two different models: one where all factors are mobile and another with capital specific to each sector in the economy

Travel and terrain advice statements in public avalanche bulletins: a quantitative analysis of who uses this information, what makes it useful, and how it can be improved for users

Recreationists are responsible for developing their own risk management plans for travelling in avalanche terrain. To help recreationists mitigate their exposure to avalanche hazard, many avalanche warning services include explicit travel and terrain advice (TTA) statements in their daily avalanche bulletins where forecasters offer guidance about what specific terrain to avoid and what to favour under the existing conditions. However, the use and effectiveness of this advice has never been tested to ensure it meets the needs of recreationists developing their risk management approach for backcountry winter travel. We conducted an online survey in Canada and the United States to determine which user groups are paying attention to the TTA in avalanche bulletins, what makes these statements useful, and if modifications to the phrasing of the statements would improve their usefulness for users. Our analysis reveals that the core audience of the TTA is users with introductory-level avalanche awareness training who integrate slope-scale terrain considerations into their avalanche safety decisions. Using a series of proportional-odds ordinal mixed-effect models, we show that reducing the jargon used in the advice helped users with no or only introductory-level avalanche awareness training understand the advice significantly better and adding an additional explanation made the advice more useful for them. These results provide avalanche warning services with critical perspectives and recommendations for improving their TTA so that they can better support recreationists who are at earlier stages of developing their avalanche risk management approach and therefore need the support the most.</p

A New Measure of Economic Distance

This paper defines a new measure of economic distance. Using consistent cross-country data, we estimate local unit costs for 35 sectors in 40 countries. The distance between two countries is the largest percentage difference in unit costs among all sectors. If all goods are traded, this distance is the smallest uniform ad valorem tariff that shuts down bilateral trade. The network induced by the closest 10% of these distances has one large component, consisting primarily of the advanced industrial economies. China, India, and several other countries are isolated components, indicating that their unit costs are idiosyncratic. We also introduce a new measure of revealed comparative advantage

Assessing the Gap in Adolescent Emergency Care Training for Emergency Medicine Residents: A Systematic Review.

Over 1.5 million U.S. adolescents rely on emergency services for the majority of their healthcare, with increasing presentations (particularly for mental health complaints) during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. However, a majority of physicians practicing emergency medicine report feeling unprepared to care for adolescent patients. In turn, adolescent patients often report feeling uncomfortable or unsafe when attempting to access emergency care. Despite this deficiency, the extent to which adolescent medicine is addressed during emergency residency medical training remains unclear. Our objective in this systematic review was to identify any existing, publicly available curriculum targeted to teach adolescent emergency care during emergency medicine residency. We conducted a keyword search within the Medline Ovid, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane databases to identify relevant literature published between the years of 1968 and 2021; publications meeting inclusion criteria were then analyzed for content. Despite an extensive review of the existing literature, we identified no systematized curriculum and only seven individual papers describing educational efforts to promote competency in adolescent care among emergency medicine residents. Of the resources available, none provide instruction on the management of multiple adolescent presentations, nor common conditions that should be included in a more comprehensive general emergency residency curriculum. No standardized curricula exist for the instruction of relevant adolescent care in an emergency medicine residency. We conclude that the available education for emergency medicine residents is lacking in the area of adolescent care and future work is needed to identify specific competencies to target with further intervention

Forming the Perception of WIC Infant Feeding Recommendations: A Qualitative Study

Nearly half of newborns in the United States are enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Promoting breastfeeding is a programmatic priority, although formula vouchers are provided for those who do not exclusively breastfeed. Previous literature suggests that participant perception of WIC’s breastfeeding recommendations is a significant factor predicting breastfeeding initiation, duration, and exclusivity outcomes. However, little is known about how participants’ perceptions of WIC’s breastfeeding recommendations are formed. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a qualitative pilot study in Nevada, interviewing 10 postpartum WIC mothers and 12 WIC staff who had interacted with participants regarding infant feeding. Results showed participants and staff reported various perceptions of what WIC recommends, the factors that contribute to these perceptions, and how these perceptions affect breastfeeding practices. Respondents also described that WIC has a negative legacy as the “free formula program,” and that environmental factors, such as the recent formula recall, have had an impact on participants’ infant feeding practices. More effective public campaigns and programmatic strategies are needed to target participants’ prenatal self-efficacy and to communicate the availability of skilled lactation support in the early postpartum period to improve participants’ perceptions of WIC’s position on breastfeeding