Economical and maintenance-free gas system operates railroad switches

Remote control system that uses bottled nitrogen as a power source operates infrequently used railroad switches. This system is economical and maintenance free

Computer program simplifies selection of structural steel columns

Computer program rapidly selects appropriate size steel columns and base plates for construction of multistory structures. The program produces a printed record containing the size of a section required at a particular elevation, the stress produced by the loads, and the allowable stresses for that section

2012 New Hampshire Civic Health Index

The 2012 New Hampshire Civic Health Index follows earlier studies, including the New Hampshire Civic Index compiled by the NH Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in 2006 and the 2009 Civic Health Index published by the Carsey Institute in collaboration with the National Conference on Citizenship and Knowledge Networks. This report begins with key findings, a general description of the Granite State, followed by detailed findings from the U.S. Census Current Population Survey and other surveys that illustrate patterns of volunteering and giving, voting and voter registration, civic engagement (both informal and formal), and confidence in public institutions (especially key in this Live Free or Die state)

The Effects of Quantitative Easing on Interest Rates: Channels and Implications for Policy

We evaluate the effect of the Federal Reserve’s purchase of long-term Treasuries and other long-term bonds ("QE1" in 2008-2009 and "QE2" in 2010-2011) on interest rates. Using an event-study methodology we reach two main conclusions. First, it is inappropriate to focus only on Treasury rates as a policy target because QE works through several channels that affect particular assets differently. We find evidence for a signaling channel, a unique demand for long-term safe assets, and an inflation channel for both QE1 and QE2, and an MBS pre-payment channel and a corporate bond default risk channel for QE1. Second, effects on particular assets depend critically on which assets are purchased. The event-study suggests that (a) mortgage-backed securities purchases in QE1 were crucial for lowering mortgage-backed security yields as well as corporate credit risk and thus corporate yields for QE1, and (b) Treasuries-only purchases in QE2 had a disproportionate effect on Treasuries and Agencies relative to mortgage-backed securities and corporates, with yields on the latter falling primarily through the market’s anticipation of lower future federal funds rates.

The Demand for Treasury Debt

We show that the US Debt/GDP ratio is negatively correlated with the spread between corporate bond yields and Treasury bond yields. The result holds even when controlling for the default risk on corporate bonds. We argue that the corporate bond spread reflects a convenience yield that investors attribute to Treasury debt. Changes in the supply of Treasury debt trace out the demand for convenience by investors. We show that the aggregate demand curve for the convenience provided by Treasury debt is downward sloping and provide estimates of the elasticity of demand. We analyze disaggregated data from the Flow of Funds Accounts of the Federal Reserve and show that individual groups of Treasury holders also have downward sloping demand curves. Even groups with the most elastic demand curves have demand curves that are far from flat. The results have bearing for important questions in finance and macroeconomics. We discuss implications for the behavior of corporate bond spreads, interest rate swap spreads, the riskless interest rate, and the value of aggregate liquidity. We also discuss the implications of our results for the financing of the US deficit, Ricardian equivalence, and the effects of foreign central bank demand on Treasury yields.

The Increase in Income Cyclicality of High-Income Households and Its Relation to the Rise in Top Income Shares

income, cyclicality, households

What Google Teaches Us About The Child Rights Movement

Technology both helps and hinders what we know about human rights. Use of Google is of central importance to both the Sociology of Knowledge and the creation of internet literacy. In this study, different search engines are compared regarding content of “child rights” in the fifty United States. Findings include: importance of algorithmic loading of sites; number of hits may not reflect the importance or accuracy of a topic; different search engines produce different findings; and personalized searches result in different results. Personalization of searches in accordance to one’s previous search history may result in people being given information that reinforces their views, not challenge them. This means that people opposed to child rights may not be afforded the same information as people who have a search history supporting them. Because searches do not necessarily yield the same information about human rights, scholars and the public must be attentive to adequately assess the accurate or skewed nature of a keyword search

Triumphing Over the Body: Body Fantasies and Their Protective Functions

Pregnancy, birth, and motherhood exert tremendous pressure on all of a woman’s boundaries: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social. In this article, I will discuss psychological boundary functions in relation to reproduction from psychoanalytic perspectives with a somatic focus. Reproductive functions pose special challenges for female boundary development. As the boundary transgressions of motherhood exert unique psychosomatic pressure, anxieties about loss and vulnerability are elicited, requiring the development of psychological defenses. I analyze two narratives in Western mainstream culture: The Supermodel Mother and Orgasmic Birth. The Supermodel Mother is untouched by the vulnerabilities connected to pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood. This narrative is formed in mainstream media through preoccupation with celebrity pregnancy. Orgasmic Birth is cultivated in home birth movements, where the notion of a more truthful childbirth is elevated to an ecstatic and spiritual event of female self-realization. I will argue that these narratives are illusory solutions to the boundary challenge of reproduction and that they serve to protect against body anxieties through idealization. They are narratives namely about the body because they serve to protect against pre-verbal material from an unconscious relational realm that is not available for verbalization. The protective function of these fantasies lies in their contribution to a feeling of triumph over the body