Academic literature on the topic 'OPEN TOP DOWN'
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Journal articles on the topic "OPEN TOP DOWN"
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Park, Jungkap, Paul D. Piehowski, Christopher Wilkins, Mowei Zhou, Joshua Mendoza, Grant M. Fujimoto, Bryson C. Gibbons, et al. "Informed-Proteomics: open-source software package for top-down proteomics." Nature Methods 14, no. 9 (August 7, 2017): 909–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.4388.
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Korol, Elena, and Zarina Chipova. "Structural analysis of labor costs in the construction of tunnels by open, closed methods and the TOP DOWN method." Construction and Architecture 10, no. 2 (June 27, 2022): 31–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.29039/2308-0191-2022-10-2-31-35.
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In connection with the need to increase labor productivity, the choice of effective technologies, this paragraph discusses the technology and optimization of the work schedule for the construction of transport and pedestrian tunnels. After a structural analysis of labor costs during the construction of tunnels in an open and closed way and using the TOP DOWN method (using bored piles), a technology algorithm was proposed that will systematize, optimize the construction schedule and reduce construction time by 15-20%, which will significantly increase efficiency building production.
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Khalid, Muhammad Farhan, Kanzal Iman, Amna Ghafoor, Mujtaba Saboor, Ahsan Ali, Urwa Muaz, Abdul Rehman Basharat, et al. "PERCEPTRON: an open-source GPU-accelerated proteoform identification pipeline for top-down proteomics." Nucleic Acids Research 49, W1 (May 17, 2021): W510—W515. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkab368.
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Abstract PERCEPTRON is a next-generation freely available web-based proteoform identification and characterization platform for top-down proteomics (TDP). PERCEPTRON search pipeline brings together algorithms for (i) intact protein mass tuning, (ii) de novo sequence tags-based filtering, (iii) characterization of terminal as well as post-translational modifications, (iv) identification of truncated proteoforms, (v) in silico spectral comparison, and (vi) weight-based candidate protein scoring. High-throughput performance is achieved through the execution of optimized code via multiple threads in parallel, on graphics processing units (GPUs) using NVidia Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) framework. An intuitive graphical web interface allows for setting up of search parameters as well as for visualization of results. The accuracy and performance of the tool have been validated on several TDP datasets and against available TDP software. Specifically, results obtained from searching two published TDP datasets demonstrate that PERCEPTRON outperforms all other tools by up to 135% in terms of reported proteins and 10-fold in terms of runtime. In conclusion, the proposed tool significantly enhances the state-of-the-art in TDP search software and is publicly available at https://perceptron.lums.edu.pk. Users can also create in-house deployments of the tool by building code available on the GitHub repository (http://github.com/BIRL/Perceptron).
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Park, Jungkap, Paul D. Piehowski, Christopher Wilkins, Mowei Zhou, Joshua Mendoza, Grant M. Fujimoto, Bryson C. Gibbons, et al. "Author Correction: Informed-Proteomics: open-source software package for top-down proteomics." Nature Methods 15, no. 7 (June 13, 2018): 554. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41592-018-0040-0.
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Li, Chilin, Congling Yin, Xiaoke Mu, and Joachim Maier. "Top-Down Synthesis of Open Framework Fluoride for Lithium and Sodium Batteries." Chemistry of Materials 25, no. 6 (March 5, 2013): 962–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cm304127c.
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Sho, Kwang-Ho. "Study on the Application of Semi-open cut Top-Down Construction for Framework." Journal of the Korean Association for Spatial Structures 11, no. 2 (June 15, 2011): 129–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.9712/kass.2011.11.2.129.
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Wang, Bing, Zhiwei Wang, Ni Pan, Jiangmei Huang, and Cuihong Wan. "Improved Identification of Small Open Reading Frames Encoded Peptides by Top-Down Proteomic Approaches and De Novo Sequencing." International Journal of Molecular Sciences 22, no. 11 (May 22, 2021): 5476. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms22115476.
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Small open reading frames (sORFs) have translational potential to produce peptides that play essential roles in various biological processes. Nevertheless, many sORF-encoded peptides (SEPs) are still on the prediction level. Here, we construct a strategy to analyze SEPs by combining top-down and de novo sequencing to improve SEP identification and sequence coverage. With de novo sequencing, we identified 1682 peptides mapping to 2544 human sORFs, which were all first characterized in this work. Two-thirds of these new sORFs have reading frame shifts and use a non-ATG start codon. The top-down approach identified 241 human SEPs, with high sequence coverage. The average length of the peptides from the bottom-up database search was 19 amino acids (AA); from de novo sequencing, it was 9 AA; and from the top-down approach, it was 25 AA. The longer peptide positively boosts the sequence coverage, more efficiently distinguishing SEPs from the known gene coding sequence. Top-down has the advantage of identifying peptides with sequential K/R or high K/R content, which is unfavorable in the bottom-up approach. Our method can explore new coding sORFs and obtain highly accurate sequences of their SEPs, which can also benefit future function research.
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Giesel, Kristina, and Michael Kobler. "An Open Scattering Model in Polymerized Quantum Mechanics." Mathematics 10, no. 22 (November 13, 2022): 4248. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/math10224248.
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We derive a quantum master equation in the context of a polymerized open quantum mechanical system for the scattering of a Brownian particle in an ideal gas environment. The model is formulated in a top-down approach by choosing a Hamiltonian with a coupling between the system and environment that is generally associated with spatial decoherence. We extend the existing work on such models by using a non-standard representation of the canonical commutation relations, inspired by the quantization procedure applied in loop quantum gravity, which yields a model in which position operators are replaced by holonomies. The derivation of the master equation in a top-down approach opens up the possibility to investigate in detail whether the assumptions, usually used in such models in order to obtain a tractable form of the dissipator, hold also in the polymerized case or whether they need to be dropped or modified. Furthermore, we discuss some physical properties of the master equation associated to effective equations for the expectation values of the fundamental operators and compare our results to the already existing models of collisional decoherence.
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Chen, Y., G. Tebaldi, R. Roque, G. Lopp, and Y. Su. "Effects of interface condition characteristics on open-graded friction course top-down cracking performance." Road Materials and Pavement Design 13, sup1 (June 2012): 56–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680629.2012.657051.
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Liepelt, Roman, and Marcel Brass. "Top-Down Modulation of Motor Priming by Belief About Animacy." Experimental Psychology 57, no. 3 (January 1, 2010): 221–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/1618-3169/a000028.
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There is recent evidence that we directly map observed actions of other agents onto our own motor repertoire, referred to as direct matching (Iacoboni et al., 1999). This was shown when we are actively engaged in joint action with others’ (Sebanz et al. 2003) and also when observing irrelevant movements while executing congruent or incongruent movements (Brass et al., 2000). However, an open question is whether direct matching in human beings is limited to the perception of intentional agents. Recent research provides contradictory evidence with respect to the question whether the direct matching system has a biological bias possibly emerging from perceptual differences of the stimulus display. In this study all participants performed a motor priming task observing the identical animation showing finger lifting movements of a hand in a leather glove. Before running the experiment we presented either a human hand or a wooden analog hand wearing the leather glove. We found a motor priming effect for both human and wooden hands. However, motor priming was larger when participants believed that they interacted with a human hand than when they believed to interact with a wooden hand. The stronger motor priming effect for the biological agent suggests that the “direct matching system” is tuned to represent actions of animate agents.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "OPEN TOP DOWN"
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Eriksson, Adam, and Christian Bidebo. "Stilleståndskostnad : Framtagning av kostnadsmodell för stilleståndskostnad vid haveri ur ett top-down perspektiv." Thesis, Mälardalens högskola, Akademin för innovation, design och teknik, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-14884.
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När ett haveri inträffar uppstår direkt en mängd olika kostnader i form av underhållsinsatser, reparationsmaterial och administrationsinsatser. Utöver dessa kostnader förloras även de intäkter som maskinen genererar samt täckningen för de fasta och rörliga kostnaderna. Alla dessa kostnader skall täckas av de värdeskapande enheterna på företaget och påverkar det finansiella resultatet negativt. För att förbättra ett företags lönsamhet ökas antingen intäkterna eller så reduceras kostnaderna. Trots detta är det för många företag okänt hur stor kostnaden faktiskt är då en maskin står stilla. Arbetets uppdragsgivare är Konecranes Machine Tool Service (MTS), ett företag som erbjuder underhållstjänster och underhållslösningar till företag inom verkstadsindustrin. De vill utveckla sina metoder för att beräkna och motivera en maskins stilleståndskostnad vid haveri då de säljer sina tjänster. Författarna har med detta problem som bakgrund tagit fram en modell för att på ett enkelt sätt kunna beräkna denna kostnad. Arbetet har tagits fram via litteraturstudier inom området underhållsekonomi, och även produktkalkylering. Författarna har även haft kontakt med yrkesverksamma inom området och en undersökning har genomförts där ett antal fackmän har utvärderat modellen. Författarna har även utfört en utvärdering av modellen hos Atlas Copco i Fagersta. Resultatet av detta arbete är en teoretisk modell för att beräkna vad kostnaden för ett stillestånd hos en maskingrupp eller en maskin uppgår till. Modellen är utvecklad för att användas av MTS, men författarna ser även att modellen kan vara tillämpbar inom verkstadsindustrin.When a breakdown occurs a variety of costs immediately starts to affect the company. Such as maintenance, repair materials and management effort. In addition to these costs also a loss of income occurs when a machine no longer is operating. This income should cover all the company costs. All these costs should be covered by the value adding units and the costs also affect the financial result of the company. To improve the financial results you either lower the costs or increase the revenue. Despite this, there are several companies that do not realize how large the cost of downtime actually is. Employer of this project is Konecranes Machine Tool Service (MTS). MTS is a global company who offer maintenance services and maintenance solutions to other companies within the engineering industry. Their purpose with this project is to get new inputs to develop a method to calculate the downtime cost of a machine or machine group. The authors have, with this background, developed a method to calculate the downtime cost in a simple way. This method has been developed by literature studies within the area of maintenance economy, and also product calculation. The authors also have been in contact with professionals in the field. Above this an evaluation of the model has been done at Atlas Copco in Fagersta. The result of this thesis is a theoretical method to calculate the cost of a machine or machine group within downtime caused by a breakdown. This method is developed to be used by MTS, but the authors also see that it could be implemented by companies within the engineering industry.
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Koh, Chulseung. "Tensile properties of open graded friction course (OGFC) mixture to evaluate top-down cracking performance." [Gainesville, Fla.] : University of Florida, 2009. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/UFE0024746.
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GUPTA, ANOOP. "OPTIMAZATION OF EQUIVALENCE RATIO FOR DIFFERENT BIOMASS MIXTURE IN THE OPEN TOP DOWN DRAFT GASIFIER." Thesis, 2016. http://dspace.dtu.ac.in:8080/jspui/handle/repository/14930.
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The aim of this study is to find out the Optimize Equivalence Ratio of biomass mixture
with an open top down draft gasifier in order to improve the gasification processes &
to make it commercially viable on different type of available biomass not just only
woody biomass but also agro residues like rice husk briquette. A single reactor design
handles all the bio-residues.
While most gasifier designs are intended to operate with wood chips, the current design
is aimed at handling agro-residues that are light, fine sized and with varying ash
content. The reactor design replaces the grate by a screw for extracting ash and residual
carbon. The problems of handling fine biomass and low melting ash created by the
presence of alkalis in the biomass are overcome by briquetting the fine Bioresidue to
solid pieces of high density and low moisture content.
An open downdraft gasifier of 35kg/hr was consider to find the effect of equivalent
ratio (Actual air fuel ratio to Stoichimetric air fuel ratio: ER) on the specific gas
production, the heating value of gas produced and the cold gas efficiency using four
combination of biomass viz 100% woody biomass, 100% rice husk briquettes, mixes
of 70% wood & 30% rice husk briquettes & 50% wood & 50% rice husk briquettes.
Six trials were carried out for each mixture by varying the supply air flow to change
the ER. The gas samples were tested for their compositions under steady state
operating conditions. Using mass balances for C and N, the cold gas efficiencies,
calorific values and the specific gas production rates were determined.
The results showed that with all types of biomass mixes the calorific value of gas
reduced with the increase of ER. The cold gas efficiency reduced with ER in a similar
trend for all the mixes. The specific gas production increased with ER. Only with
100% rice husk because of its high ash content Low heat value observed & the
Equivalence ratio observed is more than 0.5 which showed the process approached
towards Combustion instead gasification & the formation of clinker takes place result
in poor gas quality because of the high ash fusion temperature of ash. Though if the
rice husk blend with other biomass in such a way that the effective bulk density & the
corresponding ash content should not exceed more than 750kg/cu.m & 10-12%, then
the equivalence ratio close to 0.36 is observed but with the very frequent removal of
ash based on the percentage of mixture from the char extraction system.
Books on the topic "OPEN TOP DOWN"
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Palazzo, Francesco, and Roberto Bartoli, eds. La mediazione penale nel diritto italiano e internazionale. Florence: Firenze University Press, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.36253/978-88-6453-249-3.
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This book contains the proceedings of the first day of the conference Strumenti alternativi di composizione dei conflitti: la mediazione civile e penale (Alternative instruments for the settlement of disputes: civil and criminal mediation), held in Florence on 20 and 21 October 2010. In recent years criminal mediation has been the subject of acute academic reflection, beginning to open a breach in both legislation and practice. Moreover, mediation has found a consistent and real application within the international perspective. This has opened up new scenarios in which the response to offences expressing a significant illegality is broken down in line with the two paradigms of judicial and "transactional", and within which these paradigms are becoming increasingly integrated.
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Focke, Jaap. Machseh Lajesoumim. NL Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.5117/9789463726955.
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The Jewish Orphanage in Leiden was the last one of 8 such care homes to open its doors in The Netherlands before the Second World War. After spending almost 39 years in an old and utterly inadequate building in Leiden’s city centre, the inauguration in 1929 of a brand-new building, shown on the front cover, was the start of a remarkably productive and prosperous period. The building still stands there, proudly but sadly, to this day: the relatively happy period lasted less than 14 years. On Wednesday evening, 17th March 1943, the Leiden Police, under German instructions, closed down the Orphanage and delivered 50 children and 9 staff to the Leiden railway station, from where they were brought to Transit Camp Westerbork in the Northeast of the country. Two boys were released from Westerbork thanks to tireless efforts of a neighbour in Leiden; one young woman survived Auschwitz, and one young girl escaped to Palestine via Bergen-Belsen. The 55 others were deported to Sobibor, not one of them survived. Some 168 children lived in the new building at one time or another between August 1929 and March 1943. This book reconstructs life in the orphanage based on the many stories and photographs which they left us. It is dedicated to the memory of those who perished in the holocaust, but also to those who survived. Without them this book could not have been written.
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The Linux(R) Kernel Primer: A Top-Down Approach for x86 and PowerPC Architectures (Prentice Hall Open Source Software Development Series). Prentice Hall PTR, 2005.
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Rodriguez, Claudia Salzberg, Gordon Fischer, and Steven Smolski. The Linux(R) Kernel Primer: A Top-Down Approach for x86 and PowerPC Architectures (Prentice Hall Open Source Software Development Series). Prentice Hall PTR, 2005.
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Nathanson, Mitchell. Tearing Down the Walls. University of Illinois Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252036804.003.0004.
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This chapter explores how the baseball club owners finally ceded much of the status and glory they had worked so hard to achieve. The civil rights movement on the left provided perhaps the most obvious test of the owners' status and independence. On the right, the owners were increasingly pressured as well, as challengers from all over the political spectrum wanted in on America's game and were less content than ever to sit on the sidelines and be dictated to by the self-appointed gatekeepers of American values. Although the official date of death on the “owners-as-manor lords” tombstone is open to debate—a likely candidate is July 12, 1976, the date of the first collective bargaining agreement granting the players free agency—the seeds of the owners' demise in status were in fact planted years earlier.
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Wolfson, Todd, ed. Governance: Democracy All the Way Down. University of Illinois Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252038846.003.0006.
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This chapter examines indymedia's multilayered, transnational application of direct democracy, which in many ways anticipates and sets the stage for Occupy Wall Street. It focuses on the ways that democracy is understood and enacted by indymedia activists—from the development of an open media system where anyone can speak (democratizing the media), to the preference for consensus-based decision making (democratic governance), and the belief that activists must develop the structures, processes, and relationships within the movement that they aim to achieve in the world (prefigurative politics). Seen from this vantage, for indymedia activists democracy is multivalent, standing in as the end goal of a new society, a revolutionary tool to remake that society, and the everyday practice that allows for innovation and new forms of collective power.
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(Illustrator), Jack Davis, and Tom Lathrop (Translator), eds. Don Quixote Fourth Centenary Translation Tom Lathrop. European Masterpieces in Translation, 2006.
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Hemmelgarn, Anthony L., and Charles Glisson. Participatory-based versus Authority-based Human Service Organizations. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190455286.003.0012.
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This chapter introduces ARC’s principle of being participatory based. This principle requires the active, open participation of front-line staff, middle managers, and top administrators in decisions about practices and policies that affect the well-being of clients served by their organization. It counters the conflicting priority of prescribing change in a top-down manner without the benefit of the experience of those closest to service provision. The chapter explains how participatory-based organizations impact staff discretion, motivation, learning, and engagement with clients and reviews the empirical evidence that supports participatory-based approaches. This evidence includes research in social cognition and neuroscience. Case examples illustrate the positive impact of participatory approaches on service provider and client outcomes, outlining their influence through norms and expectations as well as underlying beliefs and assumptions.
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Sahay, Sundeep, T. Sundararaman, and Jørn Braa. The Challenge of Integration. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780198758778.003.0004.
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This chapter explores how the Expanded PHI approach can inform the diagnosis of the fragmentation problem, and solutions to address it. Fragmentation is undoubtedly a ‘wicked’ problem, since trying to address it in one place may throw up new and unexpected issues in others. Integration is positioned as a modern solution, such as the architecture of open health information exchange to address the fragmentation problem, and significant efforts and money are being put in by ministries, donors, software vendors, and others in this area. Various global declarations have emphasized integration as a primary effort in health sector reforms in LMICs. Approaches have also often emphasized ‘big bang solutions’ that have typically not given adequate time for the solutions to take root. The Expanded PHI approach argues for incremental and bottom-up approaches informed by broader top-down visions.
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Demshuk, Andrew. Demolitions and Dread, 1961–1964. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190645120.003.0004.
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Having learned its lessons in 1960, the State pursued demolitions through the following years without serious architectural competitions or involving the public. Each time the wrecking ball danced through another monument protest letters increased in number and severity, until at last the surprise 1963 toppling of the Baroque Johannis tower, directly east of the University Church, was seen by many to anticipate the destruction of the University Church as foretold in 1960. Extreme letter exchanges unleashed the regime’s open hatred for citizens who failed to correspond to its imagined majority of supporters, and the inconceivable defection of leading authorities from the party line prompted a tightening of top-down control. Although the scale of protest frightened the regime into delaying its plans for some years, engaged citizens rejoiced but were circumspect. For by now they hardly believed anything promised from above, and the regime gave no promises in 1964, only silence.
Book chapters on the topic "OPEN TOP DOWN"
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Hettich, Peter. "Governing Decentral Energy Systems." In Swiss Energy Governance, 159–74. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80787-0_8.
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AbstractAgainst the backdrop of an energy system moving from vertically integrated monopolies towards a decentral system with a multitude of actors in ever-changing roles, we observe a gradual strengthening of central governance mechanisms on the nation-state and on the European level. Such a top-down approach to the governance of the energy system might have been necessary to open up energy markets to competitive processes and innovation. With social goals shifting and security of supply and environmental concerns gaining importance, the governance of the energy system has to be reshaped anew, enabling, e.g., the optimization of regional energy systems by local actors. In particular, strict unbundling rules may hinder or preclude system-serving behavior, to the detriment of all market participants and consumers. Lawmakers and regulators should provide some leeway to cooperative approaches, such as the empowerment of local actors to devise their own energy regimes.
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Fisher, William P., and Stefan J. Cano. "Ideas and Methods in Person-Centered Outcome Metrology." In Springer Series in Measurement Science and Technology, 1–20. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07465-3_1.
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AbstractBroadly stated, this book makes the case for a different way of thinking about how to measure and manage person-centered outcomes in health care. The basic contrast is between statistical and metrological definitions of measurement. The mainstream statistical tradition focuses attention on numbers in centrally planned and executed data analyses, while metrology focuses on distributing meaningfully interpretable instruments throughout networks of end users. The former approaches impose group-level statistics from the top down in homogenizing ways. The latter tracks emergent patterns from the bottom up, feeding them back to end users in custom tailored applications, whose decisions and behaviors are coordinated by means of shared languages. New forms of information and knowledge necessitate new forms of social organization to create them and put them to use. The chapters in this book describe the analytic, design, and organizational methods that have the potential to open up exciting new possibilities for systematic and broad scale improvements in health care outcomes.
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Hidalgo, Luciano, and Jorge Munoz-Gama. "Domain-Driven Event Abstraction Framework for Learning Dynamics in MOOCs Sessions." In Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 552–64. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27815-0_40.
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AbstractIn conjunction with the rapid expansion of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), academic interest has grown in the analysis of MOOC student study sessions. Education researchers have increasingly regarded process mining as a promising tool with which to answer simple questions, including the order in which resources are completed. However, its application to more complex questions about learning dynamics remains a challenge. For example, do MOOC students genuinely study from a resource or merely skim content to understand what will come next? One common practice is to use the resources directly as activities, resulting in spaghetti process models that subsequently undergo filtering. However, this leads to over-simplified and difficult-to-interpret conclusions. Consequently, an event abstraction becomes necessary, whereby low-level events are combined with high-level activities. A wide range of event abstraction techniques has been presented in process mining literature, primarily in relation to data-driven bottom-up strategies, where patterns are discovered from the data and later mapped to education concepts. Accordingly, this paper proposes a domain-driven top-down framework that allows educators who are less familiar with data and process analytics to more easily search for a set of predefined high-level concepts from their own MOOC data. The framework outlined herein has been successfully tested in a Coursera MOOC, with the objective of understanding the in-session behavioral dynamics of learners who successfully complete their respective courses.
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Bond, William J. "Uncertain ecosystems: the conceptual framework." In Open Ecosystems, 27–42. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198812456.003.0003.
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Climate sets the potential biomass of trees and physiologists have made considerable progress in understanding and predicting that potential and applying it in global vegetation models. The problem is in understanding and predicting tree cover where it is far from the climate potential. Vast areas of non-forested vegetation occur where climates are suitable for forests. Arguments over why forests are absent, ongoing for over a century, are generally polarized between favouring bottom-up factors (resource constraints) or top-down factors (herbivory, predation, fire). There is increasing support for hypotheses invoking the interaction between the two. This chapter introduces the key hypotheses, their assumptions and predictions. Trophic ecology is a useful framework for exploring departures from the climate potential for trees, focussing explicitly on regulation by consumers, including fire. Alternative stable state theory is emerging as particularly appropriate for explaining forest/non-forest mosaics with each state maintained by positive feedbacks to the preferred environment.
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Díaz, Paula, and Joan Masó. "Social Networks and Internet Communities in the Field of Geographic Information and Their Role in Open Data Government Initiatives." In Open Source Technology, 1586–618. IGI Global, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-7230-7.ch081.
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Users are playing an increasingly relevant role in geospatial data production. The traditional procedure for creating cartography, mainly by experts in official mapping agencies, has evolved into a more participative process for generating data: neogeography. Technology and the Internet are now user-friendly for a wide range of people who have become active users of global networks, such as GEOSS, INSPIRE, Eye On Earth, and EarthCube, and official producers need to adapt to the new era of openness, collaboration, and hybrid maps by adopting open standards. Although the creation of geospatial information is notably growing worldwide, and is enhanced by user-generated content, we may wonder whether this is a feasible alternative to official cartography. This chapter reviews the main geospatial networks based on both bottom-up and top-down data creation approaches, as well as the potentialities and limitations of user-generated content in the scientific field and in decision-making organisms.
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Ona, Sherwin E., and Ma Beth S. Concepcion. "Building Performance Competencies in Open Government." In Optimizing E-Participation Initiatives Through Social Media, 176–207. IGI Global, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-5326-7.ch008.
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Open government initiatives around the world have encouraged governments to be more transparent and accessible while its partners have found new venues to further participate and collaborate. However, realities on the ground have begun to show the complexities of openness, raising questions on how these initiatives could be sustained. In the Philippines, most of the open government-open government data (OG-OGD) programs are considered top-down. This means that almost all of the activities are initiated by the national government and are often funded by multilateral agencies such as the World Bank. However, due to the changes in political priorities, the future of these programs remains uncertain. Current experiences further highlight the importance of institutionalization as one of the ingredients to sustain these initiatives; thus, the authors believe that building capacities play an important part in such an endeavor. As such, this chapter presents an initial set of OG-OGD performance competencies for local government executives and their civil society partners.
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Lee, Chao. "Security Management." In Utilizing Open Source Tools for Online Teaching and Learning, 220–50. IGI Global, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60566-376-0.ch008.
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During the operation of an online teaching/learning system, security is a top priority. As an online system, the teaching/learning system is vulnerable to Internet hackers and hundreds of malicious viruses. A security related problem can cause significant damage to the online teaching/learning system. This kind of damage can possibly shut down the entire system or even spread viruses to the university’s network and infect other systems on the network. To ensure the health of the online teaching/learning system, great effort has to be made to ensure the system’s security. In this chapter, we will investigate issues on securing the online teaching/ learning system.
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Jakimow, Tanya. "Conclusion." In Susceptibility in Development, 175–88. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198854739.003.0009.
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A more ethical and just development practice requires a full account of the various forms of power operational in development terrains. This chapter revisits the ways the capacity/susceptibility to affect and be affected operates at the three levels explored in the book: the self, collective conditions, and encounters. It proposes ‘vulnerability’, an intentional practice of being open and responsive to the other, as a means to transform unequal and top-down power relations within development. It further argues for attention to the unevenness of the burden of susceptibility within development.
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Belyaeva, Elena, Lyudmila Kuznetsova, Olga Nikiforova, and Svetlana Suchkova. "The place of English in the Russian higher education landscape." In The Englishization of Higher Education in Europe. Nieuwe Prinsengracht 89 1018 VR Amsterdam Nederland: Amsterdam University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.5117/9789463727358_ch09.
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The dissemination of English and the role it plays in Russian higher education are connected with its internationalization – a process that has been gaining momentum over recent decades spurred by a number of top-down and bottom-up initiatives. The role of English in university teaching and research is illustrated by the analysis of open access data on two leading Russian universities and the findings of a survey of teaching staff’s perceptions of English in academia. The views of some other stakeholders have been collected from the existing publications on the topic. The term Englishization is inappropriate to describe the Russian context because the use of English in Russian academia is not as far-reaching as the term implies.
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Gueorguiev, Dimitar D. "Foundations of Controlled Inclusion." In Retrofitting Leninism, 41–66. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197555668.003.0002.
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Chapter 2 provides a historical overview of controlled inclusion in modern China. It covers both traditional roots of consultative administration in Chinese history and the potential influence of democratic institutions for open governance and transparency. More importantly, the chapter explains why the primary foundations for inclusive control were most likely imported from revolutionary Russia and reinterpreted during China’s interwar period. The blending of Leninist thought with Maoist mobilizational philosophy contributed to informal institutions for bringing public input into bureaucratic oversight and planning. While this approach to administration has at times been on the brink of collapse, the chapter also illustrates how modern technology has helped to revive bottom-up governance while enhancing top-down control.
Conference papers on the topic "OPEN TOP DOWN"
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Liu, Tay-Jian, and Chien-Hsiung Lee. "IIST Passive Core Cooling on Pressurizer Top Break." In ASME 2003 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition. ASMEDC, 2003. http://dx.doi.org/10.1115/imece2003-41738.
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Two experiments for small-break loss-of-coolant accident on pressurizer top were conducted at the INER Integral System Test (IIST) facility to investigate thermal-hydraulic behavior of a passive core cooling system (PCCS) in a Westinghouse pressurized water reactor (PWR). The test results are compared with the previous IIST tests under the same initial and boundary conditions for a power-operated relief valve (PORV) stuck-open incident. The objectives of this study are to understand of the key thermal-hydraulic phenomena associated with PCCS and to compare the effectiveness of accident management with or without PCCS. The break sizes were scaled down based on one and all three fully-opened PORVs. This paper identified the key phenomena commonly observed and the phenomena unique to a PWR with PCCS.
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Zeid, Abe, Sagar Kamarthi, Claire Duggan, and Jessica Chin. "CAPSULE: An Innovative Capstone-Based Pedagogical Approach to Engage High School Students in STEM Learning." In ASME 2011 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition. ASMEDC, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1115/imece2011-62187.
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School children in general and high school students, in particular more often than not lose interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education. Underrepresented and female students are even more discouraged by STEM courses. Our investigation and interviews with high school teachers cite that the main reason for such disinterest is the disconnect between school and reality. Students cannot relate the abstract concepts they learn in physics, biology, chemistry, or math to their surroundings. This paper discusses a new capstone project-based approach that closes this gap. This work is an outcome of an NSF funded project called CAPSULE (Capstone Unique Learning Experience). We use the top-down pedagogical approach instead of the traditional bottom-up approach. The top-down approach relates the abstract concepts to exciting open-ended capstone projects where students are engaged in designing solutions, like products to solve open-ended problems. This top-down approach is modeled after the college-level capstone design courses. The paper presents the model, its details, and implementation. It also presents the formative and summative evaluation of the model after deploying it in the Boston Public Schools, a system heavily populated by the targeted student groups.
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Jewels, Tony, Marilyn Ford, and Wendy Jones. "What Exactly Do You Want Me To Do? Analysis of a Criterion Referenced Assessment Project." In InSITE 2007: Informing Science + IT Education Conference. Informing Science Institute, 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.28945/3105.
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In tertiary institutions in Australia, and no doubt elsewhere, there is increasing pressure for accountability. No longer are academics assumed a priori to be responsible and capable of self management in teaching and assessing the subjects they run. Procedures are being dictated more from the ‘top down’. Although academics may not always appreciate ‘top down’ policies on teaching and learning, they should at least be open to the possibility that the policies may indeed have merit. On the other hand, academics should never be expected to blindly accept policies dictated from elsewhere. Responsible academics generally also need to evaluate for themselves the validity and legitimacy of externally introduced new policies and procedures.
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Asprino, Luigi, Valerio Basile, Paolo Ciancarini, and Valentina Presutti. "Empirical Analysis of Foundational Distinctions in Linked Open Data." In Twenty-Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence {IJCAI-18}. California: International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2018/551.
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The Web and its Semantic extension (i.e. Linked Open Data) contain open global-scale knowledge and make it available to potentially intelligent machines that want to benefit from it. Nevertheless, most of Linked Open Data lack ontological distinctions and have sparse axiomatisation. For example, distinctions such as whether an entity is inherently a class or an individual, or whether it is a physical object or not, are hardly expressed in the data, although they have been largely studied and formalised by foundational ontologies (e.g. DOLCE, SUMO). These distinctions belong to common sense too, which is relevant for many artificial intelligence tasks such as natural language understanding, scene recognition, and the like. There is a gap between foundational ontologies, that often formalise or are inspired by pre-existing philosophical theories and are developed with a top-down approach, and Linked Open Data that mostly derive from existing databases or crowd-based effort (e.g. DBpedia, Wikidata). We investigate whether machines can learn foundational distinctions over Linked Open Data entities, and if they match common sense. We want to answer questions such as “does the DBpedia entity for dog refer to a class or to an instance?”. We report on a set of experiments based on machine learning and crowdsourcing that show promising results.
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Ngo, Vuong Thanh, and Lesley A. James. "Optimization of Well Completion Strategy for Double Displacement Process (DDP) and Water Alternating Gas (WAG) Injection in a Dipping Stratified Reservoir." In Offshore Technology Conference. OTC, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.4043/32336-ms.
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Abstract This study assesses how zone-by-zone completion strategy which including top-down & bottom-up mechanisms affect the performance of the double displacement process (DDP) and water alternating gas (WAG) up-dip and down-dip. It further seeks to develop an optimal zone-by-zone completion strategy to overcome the gas override problem and increase oil recovery in a dipping stratified reservoir. The impact of connection transmissibility on completion strategies in a dipping stratified reservoir is also investigated. The research was conducted on a stratified block model reservoir with dimension 4000 m × 1000 m × 80 m and is divided into four main reservoir zones in Z direction. Zones are separated from each other by a thin shale bed with thickness of 0.2 m. The communication between reservoir zones and shale beds have level of 0, 0.1, 0.01 relating to completely sealing shale, leaky shale and completely open shale. Well completion strategies simulated included all zones injecting and producing, top-down and bottom-up. The simulation begins with waterflooding to obtain 95% water cut, then the performance of DDP, WAG up-dip, and WAG down-dip with the various completion strategies were simulated. The results prove that zone-by-zone completion strategy is a successful way to overcome gas override and improve vertical conformance with WAG injection in a stratified reservoir to maximize oil recovery from the offshore field in East Canada. With zone-by-zone completion strategy, the recovery factor of WAG up-dip increased 0.8% more than the all-zone injecting and producing scheme. The results also identified bottom-up was effective completion strategy for WAG up-dip in stratified reservoirs without zonal communication and top-down was a successful completion strategy for communicating stratified reservoirs with 0.01 level of connection transmissibility with WAG up-dip and without zonal communication with WAG down-dip. DDP and WAG are considered as potentially effective enhanced oil recovery methods for offshore reservoir. However, most of studies be conducted on laboratory and reservoir simulation scale, and focus on operation parameters such as WAG ratio, WAG cycle, slug size. Our understanding is that this is the first study on the effect of top-down and bottom-up completion strategies to the performance of DDP and WAG in pilot stage on a dipping stratified reservoir block model.
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Li, Yunpeng, Utpal Roy, Y. Tina Lee, and Sudarsan Rachuri. "Integrating Rule-Based Systems and Data Analytics Tools Using Open Standard PMML." In ASME 2015 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference. American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1115/detc2015-46412.
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Rule-based expert systems such as CLIPS (C Language Integrated Production System) are 1) based on inductive (if-then) rules to elicit domain knowledge and 2) designed to reason new knowledge based on existing knowledge and given inputs. Recently, data mining techniques have been advocated for discovering knowledge from massive historical or real-time sensor data. Combining top-down expert-driven rule models with bottom-up data-driven prediction models facilitates enrichment and improvement of the predefined knowledge in an expert system with data-driven insights. However, combining is possible only if there is a common and formal representation of these models so that they are capable of being exchanged, reused, and orchestrated among different authoring tools. This paper investigates the open standard PMML (Predictive Model Mockup Language) in integrating rule-based expert systems with data analytics tools, so that a decision maker would have access to powerful tools in dealing with both reasoning-intensive tasks and data-intensive tasks. We present a process planning use case in the manufacturing domain, which is originally implemented as a CLIPS-based expert system. Different paradigms in interpreting expert system facts and rules as PMML models (and vice versa), as well as challenges in representing and composing these models, have been explored. They will be discussed in detail.
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Zelinsky, Greg J., and Heinrich H. Bülthoff. "Hypothesis testing in the planning of saccadic eye movements." In OSA Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C.: Optica Publishing Group, 1990. http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/oam.1990.mqq10.
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Recent computer models of active vision adopt the broad categories of stimulus-driven and concept-driven eye movements to control the saccade-like movements of their cameras. Although low-level target selection may be accomplished by assigning priorities to areas on a saliency map, the question of how high-level feedback might influence saccadic movements is open to debate. One widely recognized solution to this problem defines this top-down input in terms of a hypothesistesting strategy. According to this model, foveal information and peripheral information are combined to suggest various hypothetical descriptions of a scene. Saccadic movements would then be used to confirm or reject the most likely of these hypotheses. An experiment was conducted to determine under what conditions a hypothesis-testing scheme is used and at what stage such information becomes available to the human occulomotor system. Subjects were asked to discriminate among four similar patterns while their eye movements were recorded by a two-dimensional binocular eye-tracker. The initial saccade made to each pattern was then used to determine if and when targets providing disambiguating information were preferred over targets providing only redundant information. This paradigm permits a systematic study of these top-down influences on the planning of saccades and may have implications for models of active vision.
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Shi, Hongfu, Yingxian Liu, Lifu Jiang, Jingding Zheng, and Liqin Gan. "Integrated Solutions for the Redevelopment Plan of Offshore Mature-Oilfield." In International Petroleum Technology Conference. IPTC, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.2523/iptc-21268-ms.
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Abstract Abundant faults, long oil-bearing intervals (up to 500m), and diverse fluids including conventional oil and heavy oil, result in P oilfield became one of the most complex oil fields in the Bohai Bay. The main characters ofinitial development plan are directional well with commingle production, open hole completion, large draw down, high oil production rate, and reverse nine-point well pattern. At present, the oilfield has entered a stage of high water cut, with average water cut more than 85%. What can we do next, decommissioning or rebirthing? An integrated solution was proposed to redevelop the oilfield which focus on the layers’ subdivision, the fine description of the sand body,a large number of horizontal wells on the top of the water-flooded layer are used to tap the potential, increase the water injector to transform the stream lines and rebuild the reservoir pressure, and search for potential sand bodies to increase reserves.
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Kunju, Mahendra R., and Mauricio Almeida. "Comparison of Riser Gas Unloading in Water and SBM: Full-Scale Experiments." In SPE Latin American and Caribbean Petroleum Engineering Conference. SPE, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/213195-ms.
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Abstract The potential for a gas-in-riser situation to become uncontrollable by the rapid displacement of mud out of the riser is extremely high if the riser-top is left open. The unloading can be catastrophic in synthetic-based mud (SBM) or oil-based mud (OBM) when the gas remains dissolved and undetected till pressure reduction causes sudden desorption of dissolved gas closer to the surface. This work demonstrates, investigates, and provides insights into the riser gas unloading phenomena with the help of full-scale gas migration experiments. A 5200 ft deep vertical test well (9 5/8" x 2 7/8" casing/drill-pipe) at LSU instrumented with 4 down-hole PT gauges was used for the tests. Tests were carried out in water, and SBM. Each test started by injecting a fixed volume of nitrogen gas (5 to 15 bbl) at a low (0.3 bbl/min) or high flow rate (4 bbl/min) from the bottom of the annulus while keeping the annulus open. After the influx, the annulus was either closed at the surface to study the effects of gas migration under shut-in conditions or left open to study the effects of gas migration under open-top annulus conditions. The rate of pit-gain reduced during the low-void-fraction gas tests in water, and SBM-filled-annulus when gas influx stopped (closing of subsea BOP). However, for the high-void-fraction test in SBM, the pit-gain stopped once influx stopped and remained negative from 6.5 minutes to 35.5 minutes due to a reduction in mud level caused by the dissolution of gas in SBM. The pit gain later resumed and continued to increase. Keeping the annulus open resulted in a rapid exponential increase in pit-gain as the gas-front neared the surface requiring an immediate shut-in of the annulus to avoid unsafe rapid discharge. The final estimated outflow rate based on cumulative pit-gain (Coriolis) was 160gpm for the high-void-fraction test in SBM. Pressure, and differential pressure data from pairs of gauges were used to make real-time decisions during the tests and to estimate the location and migration velocities of gas-front and tail. The model developed for analysis and comparison of test results in water is used here to explain the behavior of gas migration under open-top conditions. A thorough investigation with the help of gauge data and pit gain has explicated our understanding of gas migration behavior and its effect on the dynamics of gas-liquid equilibrium from influx to impending unloading situation. The interesting results from the tests are extremely useful in explaining the dangers of using open-top annulus on rigs.
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Henson, Brian W., Neal P. Juster, and Alan de Pennington. "Towards a Product Model for Virtual Prototyping." In ASME 1995 15th International Computers in Engineering Conference and the ASME 1995 9th Annual Engineering Database Symposium collocated with the ASME 1995 Design Engineering Technical Conferences. American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1995. http://dx.doi.org/10.1115/cie1995-0823.
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Abstract Most virtual prototypes used within the domain of mechanical engineering are well defined geometric representations loosely linked to analysis packages. By taking a holistic, top-down view of the product introduction process this paper argues that virtual prototypes should be based upon product models that allow for the representation of more than just geometric information. A methodology based upon the reference model for open distributed processing is presented that simplifies the task of deciding what information should be supported. The paper argues that virtual prototypes should use product models that integrate the representation of the geometry, function and behaviour of a product. A case study is presented to show how experimental virtual prototyping software, based on such a product model, can aid the product introduction process.
Reports on the topic "OPEN TOP DOWN"
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Levy, Brian. How Political Contexts Influence Education Systems: Patterns, Constraints, Entry Points. Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE), December 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.35489/bsg-rise-2022/pe04.
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This paper synthesises the findings of a set of country studies commissioned by the RISE Programme to explore the influence of politics and power on education sector policymaking and implementation. The synthesis groups the countries into three political-institutional contexts: Dominant contexts, where power is centred around a political leader and a hierarchical governance structure. As the Vietnam case details, top-down leadership potentially can provide a robust platform for improving learning outcomes. However, as the case studies of Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Tanzania illustrate, all-too-often dominant leaders’ goals vis-à-vis the education sector can veer in other directions. In impersonal competitive contexts, a combination of strong formal institutions and effective processes of resolving disagreements can, on occasion, result in a shared commitment among powerful interests to improve learning outcomes—but in none of the case studies is this outcome evident. In Peru, substantial learning gains have been achieved despite messy top-level politics. But the Chilean, Indian, and South African case studies suggest that the all-too-common result of rule-boundedness plus unresolved political contestation over the education sector’s goals is some combination of exaggerated rule compliance and/or performative isomorphic mimicry. Personalised competitive contexts (Bangladesh, Ghana, and Kenya for example) lack the seeming strengths of either their dominant or their impersonal competitive contexts; there are multiple politically-influential groups and multiple, competing goals—but no credible framework of rules to bring coherence either to political competition or to the education bureaucracy. The case studies show that political and institutional constraints can render ineffective many specialised sectoral interventions intended to improve learning outcomes. But they also point to the possibility that ‘soft governance’ entry points might open up some context-aligned opportunities for improving learning outcomes. In dominant contexts, the focus might usefully be on trying to influence the goals and strategies of top-level leadership. In impersonal competitive contexts, it might be on strengthening alliances between mission-oriented public officials and other developmentally-oriented stakeholders. In personalised competitive contexts, gains are more likely to come from the bottom-up—via a combination of local-level initiatives plus a broader effort to inculcate a shared sense among a country’s citizenry of ‘all for education’.
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Levy, Brian. How Political Contexts Influence Education Systems: Patterns, Constraints, Entry Points. Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE), December 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.35489/bsg-rise-wp_2022/122.
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This paper synthesises the findings of a set of country studies commissioned by the RISE Programme to explore the influence of politics and power on education sector policymaking and implementation. The synthesis groups the countries into three political-institutional contexts: Dominant contexts, where power is centred around a political leader and a hierarchical governance structure. As the Vietnam case details, top-down leadership potentially can provide a robust platform for improving learning outcomes. However, as the case studies of Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Tanzania illustrate, all-too-often dominant leaders’ goals vis-à-vis the education sector can veer in other directions. In impersonal competitive contexts, a combination of strong formal institutions and effective processes of resolving disagreements can, on occasion, result in a shared commitment among powerful interests to improve learning outcomes—but in none of the case studies is this outcome evident. In Peru, substantial learning gains have been achieved despite messy top-level politics. But the Chilean, Indian, and South African case studies suggest that the all-too-common result of rule-boundedness plus unresolved political contestation over the education sector’s goals is some combination of exaggerated rule compliance and/or performative isomorphic mimicry. Personalised competitive contexts (Bangladesh, Ghana, and Kenya for example) lack the seeming strengths of either their dominant or their impersonal competitive contexts; there are multiple politically-influential groups and multiple, competing goals—but no credible framework of rules to bring coherence either to political competition or to the education bureaucracy. The case studies show that political and institutional constraints can render ineffective many specialised sectoral interventions intended to improve learning outcomes. But they also point to the possibility that ‘soft governance’ entry points might open up some context-aligned opportunities for improving learning outcomes. In dominant contexts, the focus might usefully be on trying to influence the goals and strategies of top-level leadership. In impersonal competitive contexts, it might be on strengthening alliances between mission-oriented public officials and other developmentally-oriented stakeholders. In personalised competitive contexts, gains are more likely to come from the bottom-up—via a combination of local-level initiatives plus a broader effort to inculcate a shared sense among a country’s citizenry of ‘all for education’.
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Cavallo, Eduardo A., Arturo Galindo, Victoria Nuguer, and Andrew Powell. Open configuration options 2022 Latin American and Caribbean Macroeconomic Report: From Recovery to Renaissance: Turning Crisis into Opportunity. Inter-American Development Bank, March 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0004180.
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Economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean was stronger than expected in 2021 but waned at the start of 2022. High commodity prices due to the war between Russia and Ukraine will provide a boost to exporters, while imposing significant costs on commodity importers and pushing up inflation across countries. The ongoing conflict, together with policy normalization in advanced economies, carries significant risks for the region. Volatility in financial markets could depress investment and bring down growth further. Policymakers need to take urgent measures to boost inclusive growth. As minor fixes are unlikely to result in notable benefits, governments should consider more fundamental resets of policy frameworks. This report analyzes growth prospects, monetary policy, and external and financial sectors. The recommendations stress the need for a new architecture for both fiscal and labor market policies. Policymakers should seize the window of opportunity provided by the COVID-19 crisis and global security concerns to improve the outlook for the region.
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Lazonick, William, and Matt Hopkins. Why the CHIPS Are Down: Stock Buybacks and Subsidies in the U.S. Semiconductor Industry. Institute for New Economic Thinking Working Paper Series, September 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.36687/inetwp165.
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The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) is promoting the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) for America Act, introduced in Congress in June 2020. An SIA press release describes the bill as “bipartisan legislation that would invest tens of billions of dollars in semiconductor manufacturing incentives and research initiatives over the next 5-10 years to strengthen and sustain American leadership in chip technology, which is essential to our country’s economy and national security.” On June 8, 2021, the Senate approved $52 billion for the CHIPS for America Act, dedicated to supporting the U.S. semiconductor industry over the next decade. As of this writing, the Act awaits approval in the House of Representatives. This paper highlights a curious paradox: Most of the SIA corporate members now lobbying for the CHIPS for America Act have squandered past support that the U.S. semiconductor industry has received from the U.S. government for decades by using their corporate cash to do buybacks to boost their own companies’ stock prices. Among the SIA corporate signatories of the letter to President Biden, the five largest stock repurchasers—Intel, IBM, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Broadcom—did a combined $249 billion in buybacks over the decade 2011-2020, equal to 71 percent of their profits and almost five times the subsidies over the next decade for which the SIA is lobbying. In addition, among the members of the Semiconductors in America Coalition (SIAC), formed specifically in May 2021 to lobby Congress for the passage of the CHIPS for America Act, are Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, and Google. These firms spent a combined $633 billion on buybacks during 2011-2020. That is about 12 times the government subsidies provided under the CHIPS for America Act to support semiconductor fabrication in the United States in the upcoming decade. If the Congress wants to achieve the legislation’s stated purpose of promoting major new investments in semiconductors, it needs to deal with this paradox. It could, for example, require the SIA and SIAC to extract pledges from its member corporations that they will cease doing stock buybacks as open-market repurchases over the next ten years. Such regulation could be a first step in rescinding Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 10b-18, which has since 1982 been a major cause of extreme income inequality and loss of global industrial competitiveness in the United States.
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Jones, Natalie, Miquel Muñoz Cabré, Georgia Piggot, and Michael Lazarus. Tapping the potential of NDCs and LT-LEDS to address fossil fuel production. Stockholm Environment Institute, June 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.51414/sei2021.010.
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The need for a managed transition away from fossil fuel production raises the question of whether and how countries are addressing this need in their national communications to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A previous 2019 analysis of the first round of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and long-term, low-emissions development strategies (LT-LEDS) found that few countries discussed how they would address fossil fuel production as part of their climate mitigation activities. Here, we examine new and updated NDCs and LT-LEDS, finding a growing number of NDCs and LT-LEDS that address fossil fuel production as part of mitigation. For the first time, several countries incorporate policies and/ or pathways for a managed decline of fossil fuel production. In contrast, many others foresee continued or expanded fossil fuel production, with no mention of efforts to prepare for a transition. Opportunities remain for countries to make better use of NDCs and LT-LEDS to align fossil fuel production with the Paris Agreement, including by more comprehensively reflecting on the equity implications of their plans, as well as addressing how countries plan to diversify their economies, ensure a just transition for workers, and cooperate internationally on a managed wind-down of fossil fuel supply. As COP26 approaches, this window of opportunity is still open, but it is rapidly closing.
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Tao, Yang, Amos Mizrach, Victor Alchanatis, Nachshon Shamir, and Tom Porter. Automated imaging broiler chicksexing for gender-specific and efficient production. United States Department of Agriculture, December 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.32747/2014.7594391.bard.
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Extending the previous two years of research results (Mizarch, et al, 2012, Tao, 2011, 2012), the third year’s efforts in both Maryland and Israel were directed towards the engineering of the system. The activities included the robust chick handling and its conveyor system development, optical system improvement, online dynamic motion imaging of chicks, multi-image sequence optimal feather extraction and detection, and pattern recognition. Mechanical System Engineering The third model of the mechanical chick handling system with high-speed imaging system was built as shown in Fig. 1. This system has the improved chick holding cups and motion mechanisms that enable chicks to open wings through the view section. The mechanical system has achieved the speed of 4 chicks per second which exceeds the design specs of 3 chicks per second. In the center of the conveyor, a high-speed camera with UV sensitive optical system, shown in Fig.2, was installed that captures chick images at multiple frames (45 images and system selectable) when the chick passing through the view area. Through intensive discussions and efforts, the PIs of Maryland and ARO have created the protocol of joint hardware and software that uses sequential images of chick in its fall motion to capture opening wings and extract the optimal opening positions. This approached enables the reliable feather feature extraction in dynamic motion and pattern recognition. Improving of Chick Wing Deployment The mechanical system for chick conveying and especially the section that cause chicks to deploy their wings wide open under the fast video camera and the UV light was investigated along the third study year. As a natural behavior, chicks tend to deploy their wings as a mean of balancing their body when a sudden change in the vertical movement was applied. In the latest two years, this was achieved by causing the chicks to move in a free fall, in the earth gravity (g) along short vertical distance. The chicks have always tended to deploy their wing but not always in wide horizontal open situation. Such position is requested in order to get successful image under the video camera. Besides, the cells with checks bumped suddenly at the end of the free falling path. That caused the chicks legs to collapse inside the cells and the image of wing become bluer. For improving the movement and preventing the chick legs from collapsing, a slowing down mechanism was design and tested. This was done by installing of plastic block, that was printed in a predesign variable slope (Fig. 3) at the end of the path of falling cells (Fig.4). The cells are moving down in variable velocity according the block slope and achieve zero velocity at the end of the path. The slop was design in a way that the deacceleration become 0.8g instead the free fall gravity (g) without presence of the block. The tests showed better deployment and wider chick's wing opening as well as better balance along the movement. Design of additional sizes of block slops is under investigation. Slops that create accelerations of 0.7g, 0.9g, and variable accelerations are designed for improving movement path and images.
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Breman, Carlotta, and Servaas Storm. Betting on black gold: Oil speculation and U.S. inflation (2020-2022). Institute for New Economic Thinking Working Paper Series, June 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.36687/inetwp208.
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Sharp increases in systemically important crude oil prices have been a major cause of the recent surge in the inflation rate in the U.S. This paper investigates the extent to which the increase in oil prices can be attributed to excessive speculation in the oil futures market. Our analysis suggests that excessive speculation in the crude oil market has been responsible for 24%-48% of the increase in the WTI crude oil price during October 2020-June 2022. These estimates translate into an oil price increase of around $18-$36 per barrel and an increase in the U.S. PCE inflation rate by circa 0.75 to 1.5 percentage points during the same period. We complement the analysis with an empirical investigation of the crude oil market which shows that (speculative) long non-commercial open-interest positions in oil futures have increased considerably relative to short non-commercial positions. We further find that higher futures prices for crude oil ‘Granger-cause’ oil spot prices, the futures prices of corn and soybeans and the fertilizer price. These econometric results show that oil speculators have to be held accountable for not just raising oil prices, but also driving up food commodity prices. We finally discuss measures to clamp down on excessive speculation in oil in order to eliminate its systemically adverse consequences for the U.S. economy.
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Haider, Huma. Political Empowerment of Women, Girls and LGBTQ+ People: Post-conflict Opportunities. Institute of Development Studies, June 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.19088/k4d.2022.108.
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The instability and upheaval of violent conflict can break down patriarchal structures, challenge traditional gender norms and open up new roles and spaces for collective agency of women, sexual and gender minorities (SGM), and other marginalised groups (Yadav, 2021; Myrittinen & Daigle, 2017). A recent study on the gendered implications of civil war finds that countries recovering from ‘major civil war’ experience substantial improvements in women’s civil liberties and political participation—complementary aspects of political empowerment (Bakken & Bahaug, 2020). This rapid literature review explores the openings that conflict and post-conflict settings can create for the development of political empowerment of women and LGBTQ+ communities—as well as challenges. Drawing primarily on a range of academic, non-governmental organisation (NGO), and practitioner literature, it explores conflict-affected settings from around the world. There was limited literature available on experience from Ukraine (which was of interest for this report); and on specific opportunities at the level of local administrations. In addition, the available literature on empowerment of LGBTQ+ communities was much less than that available for women’s empowerment. The literature also focused on women, with an absence of information on girls. It is important to note that while much of the literature speaks to women in society as a whole, there are various intersectionalities (e.g. class, race, ethnicity, religion, age, disability, rural/urban etc.) that can produce varying treatment and degrees of empowerment of women. Several examples are noted within the report.
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Juárez, Leticia. Buyer Market Power and Exchange Rate Pass-through. Inter-American Development Bank, August 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0005083.
Full textAbstract:
This paper studies the role of buyer market power in determining the response of international prices to exchange rate changes (i.e., exchange rate pass-through). Using a novel dataset of the universe of Colombian export transactions that links Colombian exporters (sellers) to their foreign importers (buyers), I document three facts: i) most Colombian exports are concentrated in a few foreign buyers in each market, ii) the same seller charges different prices to different buyers in the same product and destination, and iii) markets with a higher concentration of sales among buyers display lower exchange rate pass-through. Motivated by these stylized facts, I propose an open economy model of oligopsony, a market with large number of sellers and a few buyers, that accounts for buyer market power in international markets and its consequences for price determination in international transactions. The model shows that larger foreign buyers pay a marked-down price, i.e., a price below the marginal product value for the buyer. Most importantly, these markdowns are flexible and play a role when adjusting prices to exchange rate shocks. I derive a model-based equation relating pass-through to buyer size and estimate it on the micro transaction level data for Colombia. I find that after an exchange rate shock, sellers connected to larger buyers face more moderate changes in their prices in the seller currency (i.e., lower exchange rate pass-through) than those connected to small buyers. Pass-through ranges from 1% for firms connected with the largest buyers to 17% for firms connected with the smallest buyers. I use the estimates from the empirical analysis to calibrate the model and propose a counterfactual where buyer market power is eliminated. Under this scenario, sellers' revenues increase; however, the price in seller currency is more responsive to exchange rate shocks.
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Glewwe, Paul, and Kenn Chua. Learning Environments under COVID-Induced School Closures: Evidence from Vietnam. Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE), March 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.35489/bsg-rise-ri_2023/056.
Full textAbstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the education of over 1.5 billion students globally. A majority of students live in countries where schools were either fully closed or were operational only through remote access. As school disruptions are likely to have lasting impacts on children’s human capital accumulation, data documenting how schools and households have adapted to this new learning environment have the potential to provide information on how to curb the adverse effects of school closures on children’s educational progress. Using a telephone survey, the RISE Vietnam country research team (CRT) collected data from 134 school principals from a nationally representative sample of 140 primary schools (a response rate of 95.7 percent). A telephone survey was also conducted of 2,389 parents of Grade 3 and 4 students enrolled in these 140 primary schools; this survey covers all 140 schools, with an average of 17 parents per school. Principals were asked what schools did to provide instruction while schools were closed in early 2020, while parents were interviewed regarding children’s weekday activities as well as the types of instruction the children received during this period. The telephone interviews with school principals and parents were conducted between July and September of 2020. In 2020, Vietnam was in many ways an outlier in that it flattened its epidemic curve early in that year, thereby allowing schools to reopen as early as May 4, 2020—roughly three months after schools were first directed to shut down. Vietnam’s schools continued to stay open and ended its 2019-2020 school year towards the end of June. While the period of school closure in Vietnam was brief, the country’s example may provide lessons for other nations that faced, and are still facing, the educational consequences of the pandemic.