Studies of QCD at LEPII

A combination of measurements of alpha_s in e+e- annihilation at LEP is presented. Distributions of various event-shape variables measured by ALEPH, DELPHI, L3 and OPAL at centre-of-mass energies from 41 GeV to 206 GeV are analysed in a common theoretical framework using O(a_s**2)+NLLA predictions. The dominant theoretical uncertainties associated to missing higher orders are studied in detail.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure

Effort and Achievement

Achievements have recently begun to attract increased attention from value theorists. One recurring idea in this budding literature is that one important factor determining the magnitude or value of an achievement is the amount of effort the achiever invested. The aim of this paper is to present the most plausible version of this idea. This advances the current state of debate where authors are invoking substantially different notions of effort and are thus talking past each other. While the concept of effort has been invoked in the philosophical analysis of a number of important concepts such as desert, attention, competence, and distributive justice, it has hardly ever been analyzed itself. This paper makes headway in this regard by discussing three ambiguities in the everyday notion of effort. It continues to develop two accounts of effort and shows how both of them are achievement-enhancing

Professionalism, Agency, and Market Failures

According to the Market Failures Approach to business ethics, beyond-compliance duties can be derived by employing the same rationale and arguments that justify state regulation of economic conduct. Very roughly the idea is that managers have a duty to behave as if they were complying with an ideal regulatory regime ensuring Pareto-optimal market outcomes. Proponents of the approach argue that managers have a professional duty not to undermine the institutional setting that defines their role, namely the competitive market. This answer is inadequate, however, for it is the hierarchical firm, rather than the competitive market, that defines the role of corporate managers and shapes their professional obligations. Thus, if the obligations that the market failures approach generates are to apply to managers, they must do so in an indirect way. I suggest that the obligations the market failures approach generates directly apply to shareholders. Managers, in turn, inherit these obligations as part of their duties as loyal agents

Telecollaborative Webcasting: Strengthening acquisition of humanities content knowledge through foreign language education

This Level II Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant intends to support design, implementation, and evaluation of an innovative curriculum-development project aimed at strengthening humanities content learning through a telecollaborative foreign language project which will include video/audio/textual bilingual exchanges between university students in the U.S. and Russia. The project addresses the expressed national needs to improve (1) the efficacy of foreign language instruction as well as (2) the depth of content area learning in humanities relevant to the interdisciplinary study of languages, cultures, and global communities. The project will produce learner-authored multimodal bilingual artifacts, compilations of references to digital humanities sources, and curriculum development materials via a open-access online resource which will serve scholars, learners, and general audiences interested in enriching their knowledge of humanities and foreign languages

A Study Of The Farming Systems Used By Fifty Negro Farm Families Of Henderson County, Texas

The Interest in this study as one of importance grew out of the writer\u27s observation of the growth and magnitude of the tomato, watermelon, pea, and cotton packing and shipping centers in Athens, Texas, the county seat of Henderson County. For several years the writer observed the changes in markets opened to farmers in the county and noticed that Negro farmers with marketable products of cotton, peas, tomatoes, and watermelons were seldom seen in the long lines of trucks, wagons, and trailers. The fewness of their numbers seemed to be out of proportion to the known number of Negro farm operators. It was also noticed that when a Negro appeared within the line with farm commodities for sale the quantity seemed negligible. This condition appeared to present itself year after year. Thus, the assumption was made that the Negro farmers of the county were not producing the kinds and quantities of product® for which the area afforded market outlets. It may be assumed also that the markets are usually developed around and for those commodities which the farmers of the area produce with comparative advantage. Scope and Limitations The scope of this study is to cover the geographic area of Henderson County, Texas. The problem is restricted to the study of fifty Hegro far® families located in the communities of Sandflat, Crossroad, St. Paul, Moore\u27s Station, Fincastle, and Athens

Characterization of multiaxial warp knit composites

The objectives were to characterize the mechanical behavior and damage tolerance of two multiaxial warp knit fabrics to determine the acceptability of these fabrics for high performance composite applications. The tests performed included compression, tension, open hole compression, compression after impact and compression-compression fatigue. Tests were performed on as-fabricated fabrics and on multi-layer fabrics that were stitched together with either carbon or Kevlar stitching yarn. Results of processing studies for vacuum impregnation with Hercules 3501-6 epoxy resin and pressure impregnation with Dow Tactix 138/H41 epoxy resin and British Petroleum BP E905L epoxy resin are presented

‘Some unpleasant fiscal arithmetic’: the role of monetary and fiscal policy in public debt dynamics since the 1970s

Shocks to monetary and fiscal policy have played a major role in public debt developments in the OECD countries since the mid-1970s. According to the applied VAR approach, these shocks, taken together, explained, on average, about half of the forecast error variation in the debt to GDP ratio, while the share of shocks to GDP growth was close to 30 percent. In contrast, shocks to inflation and the debt ratio itself played in most cases only a minor role. However, the inflation shocks were vital in initiating the public debt problems, as the increase in actual inflation, and particularly the persistence of high inflation expectations in the 1980s, led to a prolonged period of high real interest rates. Learning the implications of greater monetary discipline therefore gave rise to ‘some unpleasant fiscal arithmetic’ which aggravated debt problems. In most countries fiscal policy aimed at correcting the deterioration in fiscal balances, but the progress was in most cases slow and delayed. It is noticeable that public debt developments have been quite similar in both the United States and the euro area despite differences in fiscal policy and the role of the public sector. Shocks to GDP growth, inflation and monetary policy, which have been more similar in both continents, explain about two thirds of the forecast error variation of the debt to GDP ratio, while shocks to fiscal policy explain about 20 percent.public debt dynamics; fiscal policy; monetary policy; VAR models