Planning for technological innovation part I. Investment in technology

In the modern industrial age, investment can no longer be seen purely in terms of expenditure on hardware or ‘tangible’ investment; the knowledge content or ‘intangible’ investment is equally important. Of course, intangible investment was always a feature of the manufacturing business but in earlier times the additional effort was mostly supplied by the entrepreneur. The complexity of modern technology, the multidisciplinary skills required and the sheer speed of change have altered this; except possibly in the new venture companies. It follows that a full understanding of the effects of technological change on industry can only be obtained if all aspects of investment are identified and measured. It is then possible to determine how much of its resources any particular industry is allocating to its promotion of products for the future, and whether this has changed significantly over time.

This paper therefore is concerned with the totality of investment, its size, content and economic importance.     

The effect of geographic mobility on male labor-force participants in the United States

We use both fixed-effects and random-effects regression models to measure the effect of geographic mobility on earnings of labor-force participants in the United States. The results support the humancapital hypothesis: six years after moving, real earnings of male labor-force participants are about 20 percent higher than they would have been had the move not occurred. Men younger than 40, and men with family-unit incomes no more than five times the poverty line, experience even larger benefits from moving. The geographic mobility that is characteristic of the United States’ flexible labor market, in general, is beneficial to the movers. Support for this research was provided by the United States Department of Agriculture, a research grant from the Faculty of Commerce, University of Wollongong, and a grant from the Labor Market and Regional Studies Center, University of Wollongong.     

Negotiating Quality: Total Quality Management and the Complexities of Transforming Professional Organizations

During the past two decades organizations in many industries have introduced management-style changes, such as employee involvement (EI) and total quality management (TQM). In the health care sector, one change has been the inclusion of TQM into the accreditation process. Using ethnographic and interview data, this case study examines the process of introducing TQM into a professional organization—a hospital—and shows how successful implementation of such new management styles in professional organizations requires complex negotiations of existing formal and informal power relationships. Some employees and middle managers embraced the TQM philosophy and techniques and successfully influenced the implementation and project-team design. In this case, administrators used TQM as rhetoric and justification for increased bureaucratic control, goals that are distinctly at odds with the ideological objectives of TQM.     

A Psychometric Evaluation of the Facial Action Coding System for Assessing Spontaneous Expression

The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) (Ekman & Friesen, 1978) is a comprehensive and widely used method of objectively describing facial activity. Little is known, however, about inter-observer reliability in coding the occurrence, intensity, and timing of individual FACS action units. The present study evaluated the reliability of these measures. Observational data came from three independent laboratory studies designed to elicit a wide range of spontaneous expressions of emotion. Emotion challenges included olfactory stimulation, social stress, and cues related to nicotine craving. Facial behavior was video-recorded and independently scored by two FACS-certified coders. Overall, we found good to excellent reliability for the occurrence, intensity, and timing of individual action units and for corresponding measures of more global emotion-specified combinations.     

Improving the Quality of Outcome Evaluation Plans

Nonprofit agencies are struggling to meet new funder demands in outcome evaluation. This study is the first of its kind to examine factors that contribute to agency progress in this area. Path analysis is used to examine chains of influence among five predictors of success as well as three control variables. Study findings indicate that agency culture, technology, management support, and involvement are key predictors of quality. Nonprofit managers who want to succeed in the new era of accountability should consider the potential impact of these factors on the quality of outcome evaluation plans in their agencies.     

Nonparametric estimation of the mean function of a stochastic process with missing observations

In an attempt to identify similarities between methods for estimating a mean function with different types of response or observation processes, we explore a general theoretical framework for nonparametric estimation of the mean function of a response process subject to incomplete observations. Special cases of the response process include quantitative responses and discrete state processes such as survival processes, counting processes and alternating binary processes. The incomplete data are assumed to arise from a general response-independent observation process, which includes right- censoring, interval censoring, periodic observation, and mixtures of these as special cases. We explore two criteria for defining nonparametric estimators, one based on the sample mean of available data and the other inspired by the construction of Kaplan-Meier (or product-limit) estimator [J. Am. Statist. Assoc. 53 (1958) 457] for right-censored survival data. We show that under regularity conditions the estimated mean functions resulting from both criteria are consistent and converge weakly to Gaussian processes, and provide consistent estimators of their covariance functions. We then evaluate these general criteria for specific responses and observation processes, and show how they lead to familiar estimators for some response and observation processes and new estimators for others. We illustrate the latter with data from an recently completed AIDS clinical trial.     

Spatial distribution and the value of green spaces for urban red-tailed hawks

Raptors increasingly live and nest successfully in urban areas. In the urban landscape of Hartford, CT, red-tailed hawks established home ranges in large green spaces such as parks, golf courses, and cemeteries but also nested successfully in the commercial district of downtown and in densely built urban and suburban neighborhoods. Data collected from 11 radio-tagged breeding adult hawks indicated that year-round home ranges averaged 107.7 ha, much smaller than home ranges reported for hawks inhabiting rural areas. Most hawk home ranges had multiple core areas that were usually associated with favored perches or larger patches of ‘usable’ green space, defined as patches ≥0.25 ha in size, and home range size was positively associated with larger usable green space patches in core areas. Most nests were located in the largest core area and were within a larger patch of green space within the largest core area. Rather than just the amount or size of green space patches, the value of urban green spaces for these hawks likely also varies with the number and proximity of suitable perches such as buildings or tall trees, types and density of prey, and amount of human activity in and adjacent to these spaces. Territoriality and intraspecific competition may also influence home range size and dispersion of red-tailed hawks nesting in Hartford. In this urban area, mortality due to ingestion of rodenticides and collisions with vehicles affected hawk reproductive success.

     

A Case Study Evaluating the Risk of Infection from Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS‐CoV) in a Hospital Setting Through Bioaerosols

Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, an emerging viral infection with a global case fatality rate of 35.5%, caused major outbreaks first in 2012 and 2015, though new cases are continuously reported around the world. Transmission is believed to mainly occur in healthcare settings through aerosolized particles. This study uses Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment to develop a generalizable model that can assist with interpreting reported outbreak data or predict risk of infection with or without the recommended strategies. The exposure scenario includes a single index patient emitting virus‐containing aerosols into the air by coughing, leading to short‐ and long‐range airborne exposures for other patients in the same room, nurses, healthcare workers, and family visitors. Aerosol transport modeling was coupled with Monte Carlo simulation to evaluate the risk of MERS illness for the exposed population. Results from a typical scenario show the daily mean risk of infection to be the highest for the nurses and healthcare workers (8.49 × 10^?4 and 7.91 × 10^?4, respectively), and the lowest for family visitors and patients staying in the same room (3.12 × 10^?4 and 1.29 × 10^?4, respectively). Sensitivity analysis indicates that more than 90% of the uncertainty in the risk characterization is due to the viral concentration in saliva. Assessment of risk interventions showed that respiratory masks were found to have a greater effect in reducing the risks for all the groups evaluated (>90% risk reduction), while increasing the air exchange was effective for the other patients in the same room only (up to 58% risk reduction).     

Relationship Status and Activated Kin Support: The Role of Need and Norms

Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examined whether mothers' (N = 4,127) and fathers' (N = 3,405) relationship status influenced their activation of financial support from relatives over time. We found that relationship status influenced the activation of financial support from relatives but that the effects differed somewhat by gender. Mothers were significantly more likely to activate financial assistance if they did not reside with the focal father, whereas fathers had lower odds of activating support if they were no longer in a relationship with the mother. Thus, the need for assistance may encourage mothers to access support; fathers may be less likely to access support when they deviate from social norms.