Outcomes-based Funding and Responsibility Center Management: Combining the Best of State and Institutional Budget Models to Achieve Shared Goals

State governments serve as a key funding source for public higher education. An alternative to historically based state subsidies or enrollment-based formulas, outcomes-based funding allows states to convey goals for higher education by allocating state tax dollars based on measures of outcomes. Within higher education institutions, the Responsibility Center Management model engages deans and other mid-level managers in the responsibility and accountability for revenue generation as well as expense management. Policymakers will benefit from understanding this approach and how it could be used in concert with outcomes-based funding to support the development and delivery of new academic paradigms, expand access to underrepresented students, and, ultimately, increase educational attainment for a greater number of people. This article describes the potential alignment between incentives created by the Responsibility Center Management model and goals of outcomesbased funding. With an integration of the two models, there is a greater assurance of achieving the goals of both—fiscal sustainability and student success. By using Responsibility Center Management, college and university administrators are better able to marshal resources to help students complete their degrees and other credentials while also reaping the benefits of an outcomes-based funding system that directs public funding toward institutions that are doing just that

Laboratory experiments testing the effectiveness of the commercially available product PoCo in mitigating cyanobacterial blooms and decomposing organic matter

The Dutch company WiseUse International BV has proposed using a so-called bio stimulator “PoCo” (Pollution Control) in ecological restoration of Lake Ypacarai (Paraguay). In this study results of laboratory assays are reported testing the performance of PoCo regarding the alleged enhanced mineralization of organic matter in the water phase and sediment, the inhibition of cyanobacterial growth (as a clear measure counter acting the symptoms of eutrophication) and effects on survival of the waterflea Daphnia

The current cost of avoiding degradation of the Dutch North Sea Environment

Het doel van dit rapport is een overzicht te geven van de kosten die jaarlijks worden uitgegeven om de aantasting van het milieu in het Nederlandse deel van de Noordzee te voorkomen. Dit overzicht kan wor# den gebruikt als indicatie voor de ondergrens van de werkelijke aan de aantasting van het mariene milieu verbonden kosten. Daarnaast geeft dit rapport inzicht in het type maatregelen en wie de kosten hiervan dragen. De uitkomsten van dit rapport kunnen zowel dienen als basis voor een kosteneffectiviteitsstudie, als voor het bepalen van de betaalbaarheid en/of de disproportionaliteit van kosten voor toekomstige Kaderrichtlijn Mariene Strategie (KRM) maatregele

Limiting acceptance angle to maximize efficiency in solar cells

Within a detailed balance formalism, the open circuit voltage of a solar cell can be found by taking the band gap energy and accounting for the losses associated with various sources of entropy increase. Often, the largest of these energy losses is due to the entropy associated with spontaneous emission. This entropy increase occurs because non-concentrating solar cells generally emit into 2π steradian, while the solid angle subtended by the sun is only 6.85×10^(-5) steradian. Thus, for direct normal irradiance, non-concentrating solar cells with emission and acceptance angle limited to a narrow range around the sun could see significant enhancements in open circuit voltage and efficiency. With the high degree of light trapping we expect given the narrow acceptance angle and the ray optics brightness theorem, the optimal cell thickness will result in a discrete modal structure for most materials. Thus, limiting the acceptance and emission angle can be thought of as coupling to only a subset of radiating modes, or, alternatively, as altering the modal structure such that some radiating modes become bound modes. We have shown the correspondence between the ray optics picture and the modal picture, by deriving the ray optics results for light trapping under angular restrictions using a modal formulation. Using this modal formulation we can predict the light trapping and efficiencies for various thin structures under angular restriction. We will discuss these predicted efficiencies and various options for implementing broadband and angle-specific couplers

Wars, presidents and popularity: The political cost(s) of war re-examined

Extensive research demonstrates that war casualties depress incumbent popularity. The present study argues that analyses of the political costs of warfare should also account for the financial toll of wars since a) financial costs of wars are substantial, b) these costs are publicly observed and understood and c) fiscal policy affects incumbents' approval ratings. Empirical evidence based on US data for the 1948-2008 period supports this theoretical claim: pecuniary costs of warfare either directly affect presidential popularity (e.g., in the Korean War) or their inclusion affects the predicted political cost of war casualties (e.g., in the Korean and Iraq/Afghanistan Wars). Interestingly, the adverse effect of war-spending is strongest under favourable economic conditions (i.e. low unemployment). -- Umfangreiche Forschungen zeigen, dass Kriegsopfer der Popularität des Amtsinhabers schaden. Die vorliegende Studie liefert Argumente dafür, dass Analysen der politischen Kosten der Kriegsführung in die Berechnung der finanziellen Kriegsausgaben miteinbezogen werden sollten, da a) die finanziellen Kosten von Kriegen beträchtlich sind, b) diese Kosten von der Öffentlichkeit wahrgenommen und verstanden werden, c) Fiskalpolitik die Umfragewerte des Amtsinhabers beeinflusst. Basierend auf US-Daten über den Zeitraum 1948-2008 wird dieser theoretische Anspruch empirisch unterstützt: pekuniäre Kosten der Kriegsführung haben entweder direkt eine Auswirkung auf die Popularität des Präsidenten (z. B. Koreakrieg) oder deren Einbeziehung beeinflusst die vorhergesagten politischen Kosten durch Kriegsopfer (z. B. Korea- und Irak/-Afghanistankrieg). Interessanterweise sind die negativen Auswirkungen der Kriegsausgaben am stärksten, wenn die wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen günstig (d.h. niedrige Arbeitslosigkeit) sind.Presidential approval,War,Casualties,Military spending

The Economics of Natural Disasters

Naturkatastrophe; Soziale Kosten; Messung; Prognoseverfahren; Theorie

The 2010 Volcanic Ash Cloud and Its Financial Impact on the European Airline Industry

Naturkatastrophe; Vulkan; Luftverunreinigung; Luftfahrtindustrie; Soziale Kosten; Island; Europa

Does Environmental Protection Hurt Low-Income Families?

Umweltschutz; Verteilungswirkung; Haushaltseinkommen; Soziale Kosten; Privater Haushalt; USA

The Aftermath of Natural Disasters: Beyond Destruction

Naturkatastrophe; Makroökonomischer Einfluss; Soziale Kosten; Wirtschaftliche Anpassung; Welt

Aquatic ecosystems in hot water : effects of climate on the functioning of shallow lakes

cum laude graduation (with distinction) There is concern that a warmer climate may boost carbon emissions from lakes and promote the chance that they lose their vegetation and become dominated by phytoplankton or cyanobacteria. However, these hypotheses have been difficult to evaluate due to the scarcity of relevant field data. To explore potential climate effects we sampled 83 lakes along a latitudinal gradient of more than 6000 km ranging from Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil to the South of Argentina (5-55 oS). The lakes were selected so as to be as similar as possible in morphology and altitude while varying as much as possible in trophic state within regions. All lakes were sampled once during summer (subtropical, temperate and tundra lakes) or during the dry season (tropical lakes) between November 2004 and March 2006 by the same team. In the first chapters I address the question how climate might affect the chances for shallow lakes to be dominated by submerged plants. It has been shown that temperate lakes tend to have two contrasting states over a range of conditions: a clear state dominated by aquatic vegetation or a turbid state. The turbid state is typically dominated by phytoplankton and often characterized by poorer water quality than the clear state. The backbone of the theory explaining this pattern is a supposed positive feedback of submerged vegetation on water clarity: vegetation enhances water clarity and clearer water, in turn, promotes vegetation growth. The theory furthermore asserts that submerged vegetation coverage diminishes when nutrient concentrations increase until a critical point at which the entire vegetation disappears due to light limitation. Both aspects of the alternative state theory have been well studied in temperate shallow lakes, but the validity of the theory for warmer lakes has been questioned. In chapter 2 a graphical model is used to show how climate effects on different mechanisms assumed in the theory may affect the general predictions. An analysis of our data presented in chapter 4 reveals that submerged vegetation has similar overall effects on water clarity across our climatic gradient. Nonetheless, the results hint at differences in the underlying mechanisms between climate zones. For example, the data suggest that the positive effect of vegetation on top-down control of phytoplankton by zooplankton is lost at high densities of fish that are often found in warmer regions. The main factor explaining differences in the water clearing effect of vegetation among lakes in our data set was the concentration of humic substances. In lakes with a high concentration of humic substances vegetation did not enhance the water clarity