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Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University / Public relations probably can do more to gain public tolerance of a phenomenon such as the sonic boom than any other procedure or proqram that might be undertaken by a service or commercial organization. This study attempts to show how the United States Air Force has applied an intense program of public relations toward that goal. T11e Air Force campaign of briefings, publicity, and handling of citizens' complaints was -investigated through inspection of Air Force official records and joint Air Force-commercial campaign materials. The methods currently used were found to be generally effective, with some parts more effective than others. The findings of this study may be of interest to commercial airlo.nes for assistance in planning their own approach to the problem when supersonic airliners are put into general use.

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Student Number : 9709049J - MSc research report - School of Construction Economics and Management - Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment / Spiralling violent crime in South Africa has led to the increased use of access control to restrict access to suburbs and thus make it more difficult to perpetrate violent crime against residents. This neighbourhood enclosure normally takes the form of booms, palisade fences and security guards to close off entire suburbs that were once or still are public property. This study examines the effect of the implementation of neighbourhood enclosure on property values. The primary methodology used to research this concentrated on the analysis of residential property values, bond approvals and relative amounts of property transferred within the period of late 2002 and mid 2004. Analysis was based on information available at the deed’s office. Limitations included the small sample size and the availability of information. Applicants for suburban closures can use the results of the study to verify or discredit claims of property value increases. Municipalities can match property values to services and rates. Results showed that property values that were found to be either similar in adjacent open and enclosed areas or more expensive in enclosed areas. The latter trend was evident in higher value properties. This illustrates a higher demand for properties in these enclosed areas than in the adjacent open areas. Further analysis of prices showed that, in all cases over the same period, prices increased by more in enclosed areas than in open areas. This statistic proves the hypothesis, that neighbourhood enclosure increases the value of properties within the enclosure when compared to similar properties in adjacent open areas. Analysis of the value of bonds granted in an area showed that banks appear to ignore the enclosure status of the immediate area.

This thesis consists of five stand-alone chapters empirically evaluating questions relating to the life cycle of natural resource extraction. We use three different data sets to shed light on the local impacts of natural resource booms and busts. In chapter 2 to 4 we use the household budget survey of Kazakhstan to explore the impacts of the oil boom on the local population. In the second chapter, we explore the distributional effects of the oil boom and show that average household income increased and income inequality decreased. In the third chapter we study how the increase in average income was perceived by the local population and find that households' satisfaction with income decreased. In the fourth chapter we study how the boom affected households' expenditure and show that the likelihood that households pay tuition fees for tertiary education increased. In chapter 5, we explore the long-term impacts of a negative labour demand shock following the coal mine closures in the UK. To do this we construct a new data set containing the location of all active coal mines since 1981 and link it to the UK census. We find that the dramatic lay off of miners since 1981 was associated with a persistent reduction in female labour force participation in the affected districts. In chapter 6, we study the determinants of drilling costs and their impact on the real price of oil using a new global data set on the number of exploration wells drilled and costs of drilling. To do this, we propose a structural model of the upstream sector in the oil and gas industry. The model allows us to decompose the variation in the reduced form errors of the estimated VAR into three structural shocks, and estimate the dynamic responses of the variables in the system to these shocks. We confirm that the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry is subject to increasing costs. But we do not find that the real oil price is permanently affected by shocks to costs of drilling.

Thesis. 1976. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Ocean Engineering. / Microfiche copy available in Archives and Engineering. / Bibliography: leaves 83-84. / by Robert J. Van Houten. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M. S.)--Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009. / Committee Chair: Singhose, William; Committee Member: Costello, Mark; Committee Member: Whiteman, Wayne

The stiffness and frequency properties of tensegrity structures are functions of the pre-stress, topology, configuration, and axial stiffness of the elements. The tensegrity structures considered are tensegrity booms, tensegrity grids, and tensegrity power lines. A study has been carried out on the pre-stress design. It includes (i) finding the most flexible directions for different pre-stress levels, (ii) finding the pre-stress pattern which maximizes the first natural frequency. To find the optimum cross-section areas of the elements for triangular prism and Snelson tensegrity booms, an optimization approach is utilized. A constant mass criterion is considered and the genetic algorithm (GA) is used as the optimization method. The stiffness of the triangular prism and Snelson tensegrity booms are modified by introducing actuators. An optimization approach by means of a GA is employed to find the placement of the actuators and their minimum length variations. The results show that the bending stiffness improves significantly, but still an active tensegrity boom is less stiff than a passive truss boom. The GA shows high accuracy in searching the non-structural space. The tensegrity concept is employed to design a novel transmission power line .A tensegrity prism module is selected as the building block. A complete parametric study is performed to investigate the influence of several parameters such as number of modules and their dimensions on the stiffness and frequency of the structure. A general approach is suggested to design the structure considering wind and ice loads. The designed structure has more than 50 times reduction of the electromagnetic field and acceptable deflections under several loading combinations. A study on the first natural frequencies of Snelson, prisms, Micheletti, Marcus and X-frame based tensegrity booms has been carried out. The result shows that the differences in the first natural frequencies of the truss and tensegrity booms are significant and not due to the number of mechanisms or pre-stress levels. The tensegritybooms of the type Snelson with 2 bars and prism with 3 bars have higher frequencies among tensegrity booms. / <p>QC 20120904</p>

The thesis focuses on the analysis of a Behavioral New Keynesian DSGE model. In particular, various specifications of the model are collected from the existing literature and their combinations are simulated. The specifications include heuristics for forecasting output gap, sets of estimated or calibrated parameters and model structures. The resulting simulated output and inflation gap series are compared with the macroeconomic stylized facts and real world data from the US and Euro area based on their distributional characteristics and autocorrelation structures. In addition, a comparison of various simulated model specifications is performed based on the level of correlation between fractions of agents following a specific heuristic and the resulting output and inflation gap values. The distributional characteristics of the US output gap seem to be matched the best by the specifications with unbiased and extrapolative output gap heuristics generating series with higher levels of variance and kurtosis. Contrarily, the Euro output gap is best matched by specifications with optimistic, pessimistic and unbi- ased heuristics producing series with lower levels of variance and kurtosis. Second, the autocorrelation structure of the simulated series tends to mirror the stylized facts as opposed to the...