In January the leaders of two great automobile companies made separate appearances before the media of their respective countries to demonstrate how Japanese- and American-style capitalism continue to differ.

In the United States, Bill Ford, the chairman and chief executive of the automobile company that bears his family name, announced that his firm is embarking on a recovery plan that involves laying off 30,000 workers over the next six years, many of them in the next twelve months. The latest cuts bring the total announced job cuts of the Big Three auto firms over the past five years to 140,000-one-third of their former workforce.

In vitro evidence of antidepressant-driven antibiotic resistance has recently been described. In this retrospective cohort study, significant associations are identified between antidepressant use and antibiotic resistance on urine cultures taken in the Emergency Department. This epidemiologic data supports previous in vitro work and raises additional questions for further study.

Environmental impacts of food systems have stimulated research to examine how to create healthy diets that will be more sustainable while meeting nutrient requirements. Increasing compliance with existing food-based dietary guidelines in most jurisdictions could be a first step to improve health and reduce environmental impact. MyPlanetDiet was an all-Ireland 12-week randomised controlled trial designed to inform sustainable healthy dietary guidelines. Healthy adults (n 355) aged 18–64 years with moderate-to-high greenhouse gas emitting (GHGE) diets were recruited from three study sites on the island of Ireland. The aim of this research is to assess the relationship between dietary intakes, diet-related environmental impacts and metabolic health using baseline data collected during the MyPlanetDiet study. Dietary assessments collected using Foodbook24 were used to calculate diet-related GHGE, adherence to healthy eating guidelines (HEG) and healthy eating index (HEI) score. Anthropometrics and metabolic health markers (e.g. lipids, glucose and insulin) were included. Overall HEG adherence was low, with 43 % meeting zero or one HEG food group recommendations. Adherence to 4 + HEG food group targets was associated with 31 % lower diet-related GHGE compared with those with lowest adherence. Higher HEG adherence was associated with lower BMI and waist circumference and higher HEI scores. While our findings suggest HEG adherence is associated with positive health and environmental impacts, substantial behaviour change will be needed to meet existing HEG. Further research is needed to assess response and acceptability to HEG. However, adherence to HEG may be an important first step to reducing the environmental impact of food consumption.

Here we evaluate the skin coefficient of friction for steady turbulent radial wall jets across smooth and rough surfaces. Although the Colebrook equation has been used successfully for many decades to evaluate friction factors for flows through smooth and rough pipes, how roughness affects the skin friction coefficient for steady turbulent radial wall jets remains unclear. Here we explore a Colebrook-type equation for skin friction coefficients associated with single-phase turbulent radial wall jets arising from orthogonally impinging circular jets. The fully iterative solution, based on well-established concepts of turbulent wall-bounded flow, is presented along with a power-law approximation and a non-iterative approximation for the friction coefficient derived therefrom. We find the skin coefficient of friction defined on the peak radial velocity to be a function of position over rough but not smooth surfaces in contrast to pipe friction factors that remain independent of axial position. These results follow expected trends, explain prior heterogeneity in power-law expressions for the skin friction coefficient and have significant implications for the industrial use of jets in mixing vessels.

We develop a mechanism based on the Colonel Blotto game to elicit (subjective) expectations in a group-based manner. In this game, two players allocate resources over possible future events. A fixed prize is awarded based on the amounts the players allocate to the realized event. We consider two payoff variations: under the proportional-prize rule, the award is split proportionally to the resources that players allocate to the realized event; under the winner-takes-all rule, the full award is given to the player who allocate the most resources to the realized event. When probabilities by which events realize are common knowledge to the players, both games are Bayesian–Nash incentive compatible in the sense that (expected) equilibrium allocations perfectly reflect the true realization probabilities. By means of a laboratory experiment, we find that in a setting where realization probabilities are common knowledge the game with the proportional-prize rule (Prop) elicits better distributions compared to both the winner-takes-all variation (Win) and a benchmark mechanism based on an individual-based proper scoring rule (Ind). Without common knowledge of realization probabilities Prop is at least as good as Ind, showing that it is possible to use a game to elicit expectations in a similar fashion to using a proper scoring rule.

Glufosinate resistance was previously confirmed in three Palmer amaranth accessions from Arkansas (MSR1, MSR2, and CCR). Greenhouse screening results suggested the presence of multiple herbicide resistance. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the postemergence resistance profile of these three glufosinate-resistant Palmer amaranth accessions. Field experiments were also conducted to assess preemergence and postemergence herbicide options to control the accession with the highest glufosinate resistance level (MSR2). A dose-response assay with the three resistant accessions and two susceptible standards was conducted with the herbicides 2,4-D, atrazine, dicamba, diuron, fomesafen, glyphosate, imazethapyr, and mesotrione. The preemergence and postemergence field experiments with MSR2 evaluated 15 and 16 single active ingredients, respectively. The Palmer amaranth accessions that carried glufosinate resistance were also confirmed to be resistant to six other postemergence herbicides: 2,4-D, diuron, fomesafen, glyphosate, imazethapyr, and mesotrione. CCR is also resistant to dicamba. Therefore, accessions MSR1, MSR2, and CCR have evolved resistance to postemergence herbicides pertaining to seven sites of action. A shift toward increased tolerance to atrazine has also been observed among all resistant accessions. Overall, field preemergence treatments with atrazine, pyroxasulfone, or trifludimoxazin obtained the highest MSR2 control levels at all evaluation times and the lowest number of seedlings emerging at 3 and 6 wk after treatment. In the postemergence experiment, only paraquat obtained MSR2 control levels above 90% at all ratings. The lowest number of alive MSR2 plants was observed after postemergence treatments with paraquat or trifludimoxazin. Fields near where glufosinate resistance has been confirmed in Palmer amaranth will likely demand a more diverse and proactive management strategy that relies on combinations of chemical, cultural, and mechanical control tactics. Future efforts should focus on sequential applications and mixture, the elucidation of all resistance mechanisms in the evaluated accessions, and soil-applied dose-response.

Let $E/\mathbb {Q}$ be an elliptic curve and let p be a prime of good supersingular reduction. Attached to E are pairs of Iwasawa invariants $\mu _p^\pm $ and $\lambda _p^\pm $ which encode arithmetic properties of E along the cyclotomic $\mathbb {Z}_p$-extension of $\mathbb {Q}$. A well-known conjecture of B. Perrin-Riou and R. Pollack asserts that $\mu _p^\pm =0$. We provide support for this conjecture by proving that for any $\ell \geq 0$, we have $\mu _p^\pm \leq 1$ for all but finitely many primes p with $\lambda _p^\pm =\ell $. Assuming a recent conjecture of D. Kundu and A. Ray, our result implies that $\mu _p^\pm \leq 1$ holds on a density 1 set of good supersingular primes for E.

$\mu$Cap is a software package (citeware) for economic experiments enabling experimenters to analyze emotional states of subjects using z-Tree and FaceReader™. $\mu$Cap is able to create videos of subjects on client computers based on stimuli shown on screen and restrict recording material to relevant time frames. Another feature of $\mu$Cap is the creation of time stamps in csv format at prespecified screens (or at prespecified points in time) during the experiment, measured on the client computer. The software makes it possible to import these markers into FaceReader™ easily. $\mu$Cap is the first program that significantly simplifies the process of connecting z-Tree and FaceReader™ with the additional benefit of extremely high precision. This paper describes the usage, underlying principles as well as advantages and limitations of $\mu$Cap. Furthermore, we give a brief outlook of how $\mu$Cap can be beneficial in other contexts.

We introduce stochastic loss into a gift exchange game to study how information on intentions affects reciprocity. In one treatment, the respondent observes the amount received and whether a loss occurred, so both the consequential outcome and the sender’s original intention are known. In the other two treatments, information about whether a loss occurred is hidden, and the respondent is only informed of the amount received (outcome) or the amount initially sent (intention). Using both regression-based approaches and non-parametric tests, we find greater reciprocity in the two treatments that reveal intentions. These differences arise even in a simple one-shot setting without reputational benefits and are economically meaningful; they are similar in magnitude to the difference attributable to a full point reduction in the amount received. Our findings show the impact of the information environment on reciprocity in settings with uncertainty and suggest that transparency is important to reciprocity.

The purpose of this note is to reconsider the Kelley-Cureton definition of optimal extreme groups for estimating item-criterion correlations. Optimal tail per cents are derived, using the criterion of minimum sampling variance of the tetrachoric correlation coefficient, and the findings are related to earlier work of Mosteller. It is shown that upper and lower 27 per cent groups yield the most precise estimate of the tetrachoric coefficient only when the population correlation is close to zero. When the population value is .4, extreme 20 per cent groups provide estimates with the smallest sampling error variance. It is further shown, however, that 27 per cent extremes yield highly efficient estimates. Thus no change is recommended in traditional item analysis procedures.

An approximate statistical test is derived for the hypothesis that the reliability coefficients (Cronbach's α) associated with two measurement procedures are equal. Control of Type I error is investigated by comparing empirical sampling distributions of the test statistic with the theoretical model derived for it. The effect of platykurtosis in the test-score distribution on the test statistic is also considered.