Legislative capital plan analysis.

Title from cover.

The artist, the merchant, and the statesman, of the age of the Medici, and of our own times /

Goldsmiths'-Kress no. 34096.23.

Legislative record of California congressmen on measures of interest to labor as expressed by roll-call vote.

Cover title.

Legislative series.

"Advance prints of the laws and orders included in each year's Legislative series are issued in the form of brochures."

Peter Powers, pioneer; the story of the first settler in Hollis, New Hampshire,

"Five hundred and fifty copies printed."

The revision of the state constitution.

--pt. II. City and county government: Home rule for cities, by H. L. McBain. A proposal for a revision of the municipal article, by L. A. Tanzer. Local government and the state constitution, by M. H. Glynn. The city and the state constitution, by J. P. Mitchel. The organization of county government, by G. S. Buck. Regulation of economic and social conditions: Constitutional limitations on governmental powers, by S. McC. Lindsay. The future of the workmen's compensation amendment, by T. I. Parkinson. Labor legislation, by A. I. Elkus. State policy of forest and water-power conservation, by J. G. Agar. Public service commissions and the state constitution, by J. N. Carlisle. Charitable and correctional institutions and public health, by H. Folks. The Constitution and public franchises, by D. F. Wilcox. Report of the meeting.

Public and local acts of the Legislature of the State of Michigan

Includes regular, special, adjourned and extra sessions

Public and local acts of the Legislature of the State of Michigan.

Printed Detroit : J.S. Bagg (1836)

The development of an observation tool for use with parents with psychiatric disability and their preschool children

Community-based treatment and care of people with psychiatric disabilities has meant that they are now more likely to engage in the parenting role. This has led to the development of programs designed to enhance the parenting skills of people with psychiatric disabilities. Evaluation of these programs has been hampered by a paucity of evaluation tools. This study's aim was to develop and trial a tool that examined the parent-child interaction within a group setting, was functional and easy to use, required minimum training and equipment, and had acceptable levels of reliability and validity. The revised tool yielded a single scale with acceptable reliability. It had discriminative validity and concurrent validity with non-independent global ratings of parenting. Sensitivity to change was not investigated. The findings suggest that this method of evaluating parenting is likely to have both clinical and research utility and further investigation of the psychometric properties of the tool is warranted.

The missing ingredient:inter-municipal cooperation and central-local relations in the UK

The thrust of the argument presented in this chapter is that inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) in the United Kingdom reflects local government's constitutional position and its exposure to the exigencies of Westminster (elected central government) and Whitehall (centre of the professional civil service that services central government). For the most part councils are without general powers of competence and are restricted in what they can do by Parliament. This suggests that the capacity for locally driven IMC is restricted and operates principally within a framework constructed by central government's policy objectives and legislation and the political expediencies of the governing political party. In practice, however, recent examples of IMC demonstrate that the practices are more complex than this initial analysis suggests. Central government may exert top-down pressures and impose hierarchical directives, but there are important countervailing forces. Constitutional changes in Scotland and Wales have shifted the locus of central- local relations away from Westminster and Whitehall. In England, the seeding of English government regional offices in 1994 has evolved into an important structural arrangement that encourages councils to work together. Within the local government community there is now widespread acknowledgement that to achieve the ambitious targets set by central government, councils are, by necessity, bound to cooperate and work with other agencies. In recent years, the fragmentation of public service delivery has affected the scope of IMC. Elected local government in the UK is now only one piece of a complex jigsaw of agencies that provides services to the public; whether it is with non-elected bodies, such as health authorities, public protection authorities (police and fire), voluntary nonprofit organisations or for-profit bodies, councils are expected to cooperate widely with agencies in their localities. Indeed, for projects such as regeneration and community renewal, councils may act as the coordinating agency but the success of such projects is measured by collaboration and partnership working (Davies 2002). To place these developments in context, IMC is an example of how, in spite of the fragmentation of traditional forms of government, councils work with other public service agencies and other councils through the medium of interagency partnerships, collaboration between organisations and a mixed economy of service providers. Such an analysis suggests that, following changes to the system of local government, contemporary forms of IMC are less dependent on vertical arrangements (top-down direction from central government) as they are replaced by horizontal modes (expansion of networks and partnership arrangements). Evidence suggests, however that central government continues to steer local authorities through the agency of inspectorates and regulatory bodies, and through policy initiatives, such as local strategic partnerships and local area agreements (Kelly 2006), thus questioning whether, in the case of UK local government, the shift from hierarchy to network and market solutions is less differentiated and transformation less complete than some literature suggests. Vertical or horizontal pressures may promote IMC, yet similar drivers may deter collaboration between local authorities. An example of negative vertical pressure was central government's change of the systems of local taxation during the 1980s. The new taxation regime replaced a tax on property with a tax on individual residency. Although the community charge lasted only a few years, it was a highpoint of the then Conservative government policy that encouraged councils to compete with each other on the basis of the level of local taxation. In practice, however, the complexity of local government funding in the UK rendered worthless any meaningful ambition of councils competing with each other, especially as central government granting to local authorities is predicated (however imperfectly) on at least notional equalisation between those areas with lower tax yields and the more prosperous locations. Horizontal pressures comprise factors such as planning decisions. Over the last quarter century, councils have competed on the granting of permission to out-of-town retail and leisure complexes, now recognised as detrimental to neighbouring authorities because economic forces prevail and local, independent shops are unable to compete with multiple companies. These examples illustrate tensions at the core of the UK polity of whether IMC is feasible when competition between local authorities heightened by local differences reduces opportunities for collaboration. An alternative perspective on IMC is to explore whether specific purposes or functions promote or restrict it. Whether in the principle areas of local government responsibilities relating to social welfare, development and maintenance of the local infrastructure or environmental matters, there are examples of IMC. But opportunities have diminished considerably as councils lost responsibility for services provision as a result of privatisation and transfer of powers to new government agencies or to central government. Over the last twenty years councils have lost their role in the provision of further-or higher-education, public transport and water/sewage. Councils have commissioning power but only a limited presence in providing housing needs, social care and waste management. In other words, as a result of central government policy, there are, in practice, currently far fewer opportunities for councils to cooperate. Since 1997, the New Labour government has promoted IMC through vertical drivers and the development; the operation of these policy initiatives is discussed following the framework of the editors. Current examples of IMC are notable for being driven by higher tiers of government, working with subordinate authorities in principal-agent relations. Collaboration between local authorities and intra-interand cross-sectoral partnerships are initiated by central government. In other words, IMC is shaped by hierarchical drivers from higher levels of government but, in practice, is locally varied and determined less by formula than by necessity and function. © 2007 Springer.

Systemic analysis of concurrent engineering practice

This paper discusses three major areas of knowledge; business process reengineering (BPR), soft systems methodology (SSM) and concurrent engineering (CE) to demonstrate that their philosophies are complementary. An example is given depicting how a manufacturing resource planning system is set up and how improvements can be achieved by applying CE best practice.

A study of thermodynamic characteristics and predictive computer modelling of an air to water heat pump system

A study on heat pump thermodynamic characteristics has been made in the laboratory on a specially designed and instrumented air to water heat pump system. The design, using refrigerant R12, was based on the requirement to produce domestic hot water at a temperature of about 50 °C and was assembled in the laboratory. All the experimental data were fed to a microcomputer and stored on disk automatically from appropriate transducers via amplifier and 16 channel analogue to digital converters. The measurements taken were R12 pressures and temperatures, water and R12 mass flow rates, air speed, fan and compressor input powers, water and air inlet and outlet temperatures, wet and dry bulb temperatures. The time interval between the observations could be varied. The results showed, as expected, that the COP was higher at higher air inlet temperatures and at lower hot water output temperatures. The optimum air speed was found to be at a speed when the fan input power was about 4% of the condenser heat output. It was also found that the hot water can be produced at a temperature higher than the appropriate R12 condensing temperature corresponding to condensing pressure. This was achieved by condenser design to take advantage of discharge superheat and by further heating the water using heat recovery from the compressor. Of the input power to the compressor, typically about 85% was transferred to the refrigerant, 50 % by the compression work and 35% due to the heating of the refrigerant by the cylinder wall, and the remaining 15% (of the input power) was rejected to the cooling medium. The evaporator effectiveness was found to be about 75% and sensitive to the air speed. Using the data collected, a steady state computer model was developed. For given input conditions s air inlet temperature, air speed, the degree of suction superheat , water inlet and outlet temperatures; the model is capable of predicting the refrigerant cycle, compressor efficiency, evaporator effectiveness, condenser water flow rate and system Cop.

Myopia control with orthokeratology contact lenses in Spain (MCOS):refractive and biometric changes

PURPOSE. To compare axial length growth between white children with myopia wearing orthokeratology contact lenses (OK) and distance single-vision spectacles (SV) over a 2-year period. METHODS. Subjects 6 to 12 years of age with myopia -0.75 to -4.00 diopters of sphere (DS) and astigmatism ≤1.00 diopters of cylinder (DC) were prospectively allocated OK or SV correction. Measurements of axial length (Zeiss IOLMaster), corneal topography, and cycloplegic refraction were taken at 6-month intervals. RESULTS. Thirty-one children were fitted with OK and 30 with SV. Following 24 months, axial length increased significantly over time for both the OK group (0.47 mm) and SV group (0.69 mm; P < 0.001), with a significant interaction between time and group (P = 0.05) reflecting a greater increase in the SV group. Significant differences in refraction were found over time, between groups and for the interaction between time and group for spherical (all P < 0.001) but not cylindrical components of refraction (all P > 0.05). Significantly greater corneal flattening was evident in the OK group for the flatter and steeper corneal powers and for corneal shape factor (all P ≤0.05). CONCLUSIONS. Orthokeratology contact lens wear reduces axial elongation in comparison to distance single-vision spectacles in children. © 2012 The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, Inc.

Noise and gain optimisation in bi-directionally pumped dispersion compensating amplifier modules

We perform optimisation of bi-directionally pumped dispersion compensating Raman amplifier modules. Optimal forward and backward pump powers for basic configurations using different commercially available fibers are presented for both single- and multi-channel systems. Optical signal-to-noise ratio improvement of up to 8 dB is achieved as a result of optimisation. © 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Optimization of gain and SNR in bi-directionally pumped dispersion compensating amplifier modules

In this paper, we present an analysis and optimisation of the performance of bi-directionally pumped dispersion compensation modules acting as simultaneous Raman amplifiers, with optimal configurations for operation with different fibers commercially available. The ratio between forward and backward pump powers for minimum noise influence is obtained in each case, with improvements in the SNR of up to 8 dB when compared to a purely backward-pumped case.