U.S. CHAIN RESTAURANT EFFICIENCY

The growth of corporate food service firms and the resulting competition places increasing pressures on available resources and their efficient usage. This analysis measures efficiencies for U. S. chain restaurants and determines associations between managerial and operational characteristics. Using a ray-homothetic production function, frontiers were estimated for large and small restaurant chains. Technical and scale efficiencies were then derived for the firms. Finally, a Tobit analysis measured associations between technical efficiencies and firm characteristics. Results showed differences based on firm size, but factors such as experience, service format, unit size, and menu were strongly associated with efficiency, perhaps offsetting some firm size effects.Agribusiness,

Evaluation of the capture efficiency and size selectivity of four pot types in the prospective fishery for North Pacific giant octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini)

Over 230 metric tons of octopus is harvested as bycatch annually in Alaskan trawl, long-line, and pot fisheries. An expanding market has fostered interest in the development of a directed fishery for North Pacific giant octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini). To investigate the potential for fishery development we examined the efficacy of four different pot types for capture of this species. During two surveys in Kachemak Bay, Alaska, strings of 16 –20 sablefish, Korean hair crab, shrimp, and Kodiak wooden lair pots were set at depths ranging between 62 and 390 meters. Catch per-unit-of-ef for t estimates were highest for sablefish and lair pots. Sablefish pots caught significantly heavier North Pacific giant octopuses but also produced the highest bycatch of commercially important species, such as halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis), Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus), and Tanner crab (Chionoecetes bairdi)

Las Vegas Academy Jazz Band III: A Celebration of Black History Month

Program listing performers and works performed

Improving Information and Performance in Grain Marketing: an Assessment of Current Market Information Systems, and Recommendations for Developing a Public Grain MIS

This paper focuses on one dimension which is at the core of all modern economies: how to provide private and public agents with timely and accurate information regarding current and expected future market conditions. Its objective is to show the need for a public market information system for agricultural markets in Ethiopia, and to present concrete proposals that can be reviewed, debated, and modified as necessary by the relevant Ethiopian authorities in collaboration with Food Security Research Project (FSRP) personnel.food security, food policy, Crop Production/Industries, Marketing, Q18,

Serendipitous Discovery of An Infrared Bow Shock Near PSR J1549-4848 with Spitzer

We report on the discovery of an infrared cometary nebula around PSR J1549$-$4848 in our Spitzer survey of a few middle-aged radio pulsars. Following the discovery, multi-wavelength imaging and spectroscopic observations of the nebula were carried out. We detected the nebula in Spitzer IRAC 8.0, MIPS 24 and 70 $\mu$m imaging and in Spitzer IRS 7.5--14.4 $\mu$m spectroscopic observations, and also in the WISE all-sky survey at 12 and 22 $\mu$m.These data were analyzed in detail, and we find that the nebula can be described with a standard bow-shock shape, and that its spectrum contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon and H$_2$ emission features. However, it is not certain which object drives the nebula. We analyze the field stars and conclude that none of them can be the associated object because stars with a strong wind or mass ejection that usually produce bow shocks are much brighter than the field stars. The pulsar is approximately 15\arcsec\ away from the region in which the associated object is expected to be located. In order to resolve the discrepancy, we suggest that a highly collimated wind could be emitted from the pulsar and produce the bow shock. X-ray imaging to detect the interaction of the wind with the ambient medium and high-spatial resolution radio imaging to determine the proper motion of the pulsar should be carried out, which will help verify the association of the pulsar with the bow shock nebula.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Correlation Between Student Collaboration Network Centrality and Academic Performance

We compute nodal centrality measures on the collaboration networks of students enrolled in three upper-division physics courses, usually taken sequentially, at the Colorado School of Mines. These are complex networks in which links between students indicate assistance with homework. The courses included in the study are intermediate Classical Mechanics, introductory Quantum Mechanics, and intermediate Electromagnetism. By correlating these nodal centrality measures with students' scores on homework and exams, we find four centrality measures that correlate significantly with students' homework scores in all three courses: in-strength, out-strength, closeness centrality, and harmonic centrality. These correlations suggest that students who not only collaborate often, but also collaborate significantly with many different people tend to achieve higher grades. Centrality measures between simultaneous collaboration networks (analytical vs. numerical homework collaboration) composed of the same students also correlate with each other, suggesting that students' collaboration strategies remain relatively stable when presented with homework assignments targeting different skills. Additionally, we correlate centrality measures between collaboration networks from different courses and find that the four centrality measures with the strongest relationship to students' homework scores are also the most stable measures across networks involving different courses. Correlations of centrality measures with exam scores were generally smaller than the correlations with homework scores, though this finding varied across courses.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. PE

The Extremely Red Objects Found Thus Far in the Caltech Faint Galaxy Redshift Survey

We discuss the very red objects found in the first field of the Caltech Faint Galaxy Redshift Survey, for which the observations and analysis are now complete. In this field, which is 15 arcmin$^2$ and at J005325+1234 there are 195 objects with $K_s < 20$ mag, of which 84% have redshifts. The sample includes 24 spectroscopically confirmed Galactic stars, 136 galaxies, three AGNs, and 32 objects without redshifts. About 10% of the sample has $(R-K) \ge 5$ mag. Four of these objects have redshifts, with $0.78 \le z \le 1.23$. Three of these are based on absorption features in the mid-UV, while the lowest redshift object shows the standard features near 4000\AA. Many of the objects still without redshifts have been observed spectroscopically, and no emission lines were seen in their spectra. We believe they are galaxies with $z \sim 1 - 1.5$ that are red due to their age and stellar content and not to some large amount of internal reddening from dust. Among the many other results from this survey of interest here is a determination of the median extinction in the mid-UV for objects with strong emission line spectra at $z \sim 1 - 1.3$. The result is extinction by a factor of $\sim$2 at 2400\AA.Comment: 6 pages, Latex, with 2 figures. To be published in the proceedings of the conference "Infrared Surveys: A Prelude to SIRTF

The Impact of Hydrodynamic Mixing on Supernova Progenitors

Recent multidimensional hydrodynamic simulations have demonstrated the importance of hydrodynamic motions in the convective boundary and radiative regions of stars to transport of energy, momentum, and composition. The impact of these processes increases with stellar mass. Stellar models which approximate this physics have been tested on several classes of observational problems. In this paper we examine the implications of the improved treatment on supernova progenitors. The improved models predict substantially different interior structures. We present pre-supernova conditions and simple explosion calculations from stellar models with and without the improved mixing treatment at 23 solar masses. The results differ substantially.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letter