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ItemAmerican scientists survey-phase II(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-03-15) Walsh, John P. ; Huang, Hsin-I ; No, Yeonji ; Wartell, Roger M. ; Bayer, Charlene W. ; Tornabene, Thomas G.
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ItemEffect of oil prices on returns to alternative energy investments(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-12-02) Schmitz, AnthonyThis paper presents the role of alternative energy technologies in displacing fossil fuels as the world's primary energy source. To that end, a CAPM-GARCH multi-factor market model is used to investigate the relationship between returns on oil and alternative energy stocks. Results show that an increase in oil prices and the broad market have a statistically significant and positive impact on alternative energy stock returns. Furthermore, the alternative energy sector is substantially more risky than the broad market but has the potential for higher returns. This highlights the infancy and inherently risky nature of the alternative energy sector today, but demonstrates the potential for substantial future investment gain as alternative energy technologies become more mature and widely available. Interestingly, estimation of the alternative energy index model indicated the presence of abnormal returns which was not the case for the solar index model, implying that the abnormal returns were generated from a different sectoral component of the alternative energy index.
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ItemThe environmental Kuznets curve case for the USA and the BRIC countries(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-11-20) Rashid, ShehryarPrevious literature on the Environmental Kuznets Curve has focused extensively on why or why not such a relationship is observed given specific scenarios. More recent literature has shifted attention towards factors that may explain differences in the distribution or threshold of the curve. The purpose of this paper is to determine why we witness different cutoff points for environmental improvement given the same dependent variable. For this analysis, the relationship between CO2 emissions and GDP growth is observed in the United States and the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) from 1981-2006. The results suggest that the standard for environmental improvement is lower for the BRIC countries compared with the United States. Factors that explain this are FDI inflow, share of production from different industries, share of energy from different sources, and overall incentives.
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ItemThe impact of performance ratings on federal personnel decisions(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-11-16) Oh, Seong SooCan pay-for-performance increase the motivation of public employees? By providing a basis for personnel decisions, particularly linking rewards to performance, performance appraisals aim to increase employees' work motivation and ultimately to improve their work performance and organizational productivity. With the emphasis on results-oriented management, performance appraisals have become a key managerial tool in the public sector. Critics charge, however, that pay-for-performance is ineffective in the public sector, largely because the link between performance and rewards is weak. However, no one has empirically measured the strength of the linkage. If performance ratings do have an impact on career success in the federal service, they might contribute to race and gender inequality. Although many studies have examined factors affecting gender and racial differences in career success, studies that try to connect gender and racial inequalities to managerial tools are scarce. Using a one percent sample of federal personnel records, the first essay examines the impact of performance ratings on salary increases and promotion probabilities, and the second essay explores whether women and minorities receive lower ratings than comparable white males, and women and minorities receive lower returns on the same level of performance ratings than comparable white males. The first essay finds that performance ratings have only limited impact on salary increases, but that they significantly affect promotion probability. Thus, the argument that performance-rewards link is weak could be partially correct, if it considers only pay-performance relationships. The second essay finds that women receive equal or higher performance ratings than comparable white men, but some minority male groups, particularly black men, tend to receive lower ratings than comparable white men. On the other hand, the returns on outstanding ratings do not differ between women and minority male groups and white men, though women groups seem to have disadvantages in promotion with the same higher ratings as comparable men in highly male-dominant occupations.
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ItemThe amphetamine years: a study of the medical applications and extramedical consumption of psychostimulant drugs in the postwar united states, 1945-1980(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-11-16) Moon, Nathan WilliamThe Amphetamine Years is a history of psychostimulant drugs and their clinical applications in post-World War II American medicine. Comprising such well-known substances as the amphetamines (Benzedrine, Dexedrine), methylphenidate (Ritalin), and phenmetrazine (Preludin), this class of pharmaceuticals has been among the most widely consumed in the past half-century. Their therapeutic uses for a variety of indications such as depression, obesity, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children, not to mention their relevance for a number of different medical specialties, reveals that psychostimulants have occupied an important, if underappreciated role in the practice of modern medicine. In this dissertation, I illuminate the various ways in which physicians, particularly psychiatrists, put these drugs to work in clinical practice. In short, I contend that physicians exploited the wide range of physiological and psychological effects of psychostimulants and made a place for them in different therapeutic settings, even ones characterized by competing views and theories about the workings of the human body and mind. My dissertation is distinguished by two prominent themes. First, I emphasize the clinician perspective as a vehicle for understanding the history of the psychostimulants, as well as related developments in psychiatry, pharmacotherapy, and the political economy of drugs, in the second half of the twentieth century. Scholars such Nicolas Rasmussen, David Courtwright, and Ilina Singh have elucidated the history of psychostimulants by emphasizing how pharmaceutical companies positioned their products in the medical marketplace. My dissertation takes a different, yet complimentary approach by studying clinicians, themselves, to further historical comprehension of the place of these pharmaceuticals within postwar medicine, society, and culture. Second, I advance the concept of "therapeutic versatility" to explain their historical trajectories. The complex set of psychological and physical effects these drugs produced made them ideal for a diverse range of therapeutic applications, which explains why they were embraced by many different medical specialties, why they were marketed by manufacturers for a variety of indications, and why they have enjoyed an enduring therapeutic lifespan, in spite of increasing efforts since the mid-1960s to regulate their availability and control their consumption. In addition to these two overarching themes, I advance five specific arguments in my dissertation. First, I contend that pharmaceutical markets were simultaneously created by the drug industry and clinicians. Pharmaceutical firms' efforts to develop markets for their products have been well documented by historians, but in my dissertation, I underscore the role also played by clinicians in discerning drugs' applications. Second, I argue that twentieth-century psychiatry's conception of illness and therapeutics may not be served best by strictly dividing its history along lines of institutional and outpatient treatment. Third, I demonstrate how the use of psychostimulants by analytically oriented psychiatrists during the 1950s complicates historical notions of paradigm shift from a psychodynamic to biological orientation. Psychotherapy and psychopharmacology were not competing paradigms; in practice, doctors often employed both. Fourth, I assert that an appreciation of psychiatrists' empirical and eclectic approaches to the use of drugs is necessary to comprehend the rise of psychiatric pharmacotherapy in the postwar era. Finally, I contend that in order to understand the relationship between medical applications of psychostimulants and their extramedical consumption, it is necessary to conceive of a plurality of distinct "amphetamine cultures," each characterized by a unique set of relationships between physician-prescribers, patient-consumers, pharmaceutical firms, and political authorities.
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ItemThe tribulations of adventure games: integrating story into simulation through performance(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-11-13) Fernandez Vara, ClaraThis dissertation aims at positioning adventure games in game studies, by describing their formal aspects and how they have integrated game design with stories. The adventure game genre includes text adventures (also known as interactive fiction), graphical text adventures, and graphic adventures, also referred to as point-and-click adventure games. Adventure games have been the first videogames to evidence the difficulty of reconciling games and stories, an already controversial topic in game studies. An adventure game is a simulation, the intersection between the rule system of the game and its fictional world. The simulation becomes a performance space for the player. The simulation establishes how the player can interact with the world of the game. The simulated world integrates a series of concatenated puzzles, which structure the performance of the player. Solving the puzzles thus means advancing in the story of the game. The integration of the story with the simulation is done through the performance of the player. The game design establishes a specific set of actions necessary to complete both the game and the story, and this set of actions constitutes a behavior that must be restored through performance. The player can also explore the world and its workings, which is necessary to solve the puzzles. By solving the puzzles, the player restores this pre-set behavior. The simulation in adventure games may not be evident because of a historical shift in the level of abstraction, which determines how the world is implemented in the game mechanics. Adventure games have increasingly curbed the agency of the player in the world, in order to facilitate completing the story of the game. This move to a less fine-grained interaction has affected different aspects of game design, from reducing the number of possible actions to limiting the interactivity of non-player characters. The dissertation discusses how adventure games have integrated story with the performance in the simulated world of the game. This integration is further evidenced by how they apply to the four basic elements that bridge story and game design: space, player character, non-player character and time. The qualities of these elements help us understand how the player performs in the simulation, and how that performance is designed. Analyzing the properties of the simulation in adventure games helps draw comparisons with other videogame genres. The rich history of adventure games can inform the game design of other videogames, particularly in relation to the creation of fictional worlds, strategies to script the interactor, and design of non-player characters.
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ItemA study of the impact of decentralization on access to service delivery(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-11-10) Saavedra, Pablo A.This research builds further on the existing conceptual framework of the relationship between decentralization and service delivery and provides a cross-country empirical examination of the core dimensions of decentralization reform on access to two key services: health care and improved drinking water sources. The regression results provide evidence supporting positive and significant effects of fiscal, administrative, and political decentralization, individually, on the variables used to measure access to health care, and improved water provision; although the size and robustness of such effects varies for each dimension of decentralization in relation to each service examined. The results obtained in this study suggest that there is an additional (or "extra") positive effect coming from the interaction of two decentralization dimensions on access to health care and water services (that is, a mutually-reinforcing effect additional to the individual effect of each dimension of decentralization). The results obtained also support the expectation that developing countries could benefit significantly more from decentralization reforms compared to developed countries. These findings underscore the importance of considering all dimensions of the decentralization process when investigating the effects of this reform on any economic, institutional, or social variable. The policy implications are highly relevant, particularly for developing countries: decentralization implemented only through one dimension may render fewer positive fruits in terms of access to services than a multi-dimensional approach. Moreover, learning more about the most beneficial mutually-reinforcing effects across dimensions of decentralization may also help strategically in how the overall decentralization reform is designed.
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ItemDesigning the Future: Strategic Planning at Georgia Tech(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-11-05) Peterson, G. P.
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ItemInside the White House Situation Room(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-11-03) Metzger, James W.James W. Metzger is a retired Vice Admiral of the US Navy. His positions included Assistant to the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff;Commander of United States Seventh Fleet; Commander Submarines Mediterranean. Also, Director of Strategy and Policy for the military; Executive Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, two Vice Chiefs of Naval Operations and the Commander of the Atlantic Fleet; Commander of the Submarine Development Squadron comprised of seven submarines; Director of the Submarine Prospective Commanding Officer School; Commanding Officer of a 750 million dollar Los Angeles Class nuclear submarine; Engineer during new construction, as well as most other positions while serving on nuclear submarines. Member of the Nuclear Propulsion Examining Board for two years involved in detailed evaluations of over 50 reactor operation organizations. Vice Admiral Metzger has a B.S. in electrical engineering, United States Naval Academy and an M.S. in electrical engineering, Michigan State University.
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ItemDoes social capital determine poverty? Evidence from Cameroon household survey(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-08) Tabi, Johannes AtemnkengThis paper has examined the effect of social capital on household poverty using the 2001 Cameroon household survey. We rely on three indicators for social capital – network membership, decision making index and network support or solidarity– and employ alternative procedures to consistently estimate the impact of social capital on household per capita expenditure. Memberships in organizations, social support or decision making indices are choice variables implying that social capital indicators are by definition endogenously determined and depend on household specificities. We exploit the advantages of longitudinal data and community fixed effects to mitigate some of the concerns about spuriousness and reverse causality that predominate in this literature. Our results show that, membership in associations and the indicator for decision making index are positively correlated with household per capita expenditure (i.e. poverty reducing), this being true with classical OLS estimates as well as when we control for the endogeneity and reverse causality bias. However, the indicator for network support significantly mitigate household poverty when we control for endogeneity and reverse causality bias, an indication that households with higher incomes tend to group together. Secondly, there are limited economies of scale in social capital (i.e. more than one member of the same household belonging to networks does not necessarily mean more benefits). Our analysis suggest that policy makers interested in improving the living conditions of households may be advised to consider promoting social capital as one relevant ingredient to achieve the Millennium development goals of reducing poverty by half.