Openness and inflation

This paper reviews the evidence on the relationship between openness and inflation. There is a robust negative relationship across countries, first documented by Romer (1993), between a country's openness to trade and its long-run inflation rate. However, a key part of the standard explanation for this relationship—that central banks have a smaller incentive to engineer surprise inflations in more-open economies because the Phillips curve is steeper—seems at odds with the facts. While the United States is still not a very open economy by conventional measures, there are channels through which global developments may influence the nation's inflation. We document evidence that global resource utilization may play a role in U.S. inflation and suggest avenues for future research.Inflation (Finance) ; Trade ; Phillips curve

The globalization of U.S. business investment

This paper documents some key facts about foreign direct investment flows by U.S. businesses overseas and foreign businesses in the United States. We show how the pattern of flows has evolved, examine the sources and destination of these flows, document associated employment and productivity gains, and show how investment-related sales compare with traditional exports. While the United States is a net debtor to the rest of the world, direct investment overseas by U.S. businesses exceeds direct investment in the U.S. by foreign businesses. Furthermore, U.S. businesses seem to earn more on their foreign investments than foreign firms earn on their U.S. investments. The globalization of business investment is a long-standing phenomenon, but it has accelerated in recent years and become a source of concern for some, as it is intimately related to the debate on offshore outsourcing. Yet contrary to what some think, the bulk of U.S. investment overseas is in other high-income countries. And foreign investment in the U.S. has been an important source of employment growth in recent years.Investments, Foreign - United States

Service-Learning in the United States and South Africa: A Comparative Analysis Informed by John Dewey and Julius Nyerere

As the prevalence of service-learning within higher education institutions grows across the globe there is value to explore, discuss, and describe the similarities and differences between the various expressions that are emerging. Such comparative analysis can deepen understanding of service-learning pedagogy, improve practice, and create a framework for future research. This paper compares service-learning in the United States and South Africa to understand Western-oriented and Africanized expressions of this promising teaching strategy. The analysis identifies three dimensions derived from the educational theories of John Dewey and Julius Nyerere and finds there is mutual agreement as to the value of developing civic-minded graduates. However, in the U.S., service-learning is supported primarily by nonprofit associations and stakeholders within higher education, whereas in South Africa, service-learning is a part of state mandated transformations for higher education

The KELT-South Telescope

The Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) project is a survey for new transiting planets around bright stars. KELT-South is a small-aperture, wide-field automated telescope located at Sutherland, South Africa. The telescope surveys a set of 26 degree by 26 degree fields around the southern sky, and targets stars in the range of 8 < V < 10 mag, searching for transits by Hot Jupiters. This paper describes the KELT-South system hardware and software and discusses the quality of the observations. We show that KELT-South is able to achieve the necessary photometric precision to detect transits of Hot Jupiters around solar-type main-sequence stars.Comment: 26 pages, 13 figure

Improving hand hygiene compliance in child daycare centres: a randomized controlled trial

Gastrointestinal and respiratory infections in children attending daycare centres (DCCs) are common and compliance with hand hygiene (HH) guidelines to prevent infections is generally low. An intervention was developed to increase HH compliance and reduce infections in DCCs. The objective of this paper was to evaluate the effectiveness of this intervention on HH compliance. The intervention was evaluated in a two-arm cluster randomized controlled trial in 71 DCCs in The Netherlands. Thirty-six DCCs received the intervention including: (1) HH products; (2) training about HH guidelines; (3) two team training sessions aimed at goal setting and formulating HH improvement activities; and (4) reminders and cues for action (posters/ stickers). Intervention DCCs were compared to 35 control DCCs that continued usual practice. HH compliance of caregivers and children was observed at baseline and at 1, 3 and 6 months follow-up. Using multilevel logistic regression, odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were obtained for the intervention effect. Of 795 caregivers, 5042 HH opportunities for caregivers and 5606 opportunities for supervising children’s HH were observed. At 1 month follow-up caregivers’ compliance in intervention DCCs was 66% vs. 43% in control DCCs (OR 6·33, 95% CI 3·71–10·80), and at 6 months 59% vs. 44% (OR 4·13, 95% CI 2·33–7·32). No effect of the intervention was found on supervising children’s HH (36% vs. 32%; OR 0·64, 95% CI 0·18–2·33). In conclusion, HH compliance of caregivers increased due to the intervention, therefore dissemination of the intervention can be considered

CELT site testing program

The California Extremely Large Telescope, CELT, is a proposed 30-m telescope. Choosing the best possible site for CELT is essential in order to extract the best science from the observations and to reduce the complexity of the telescope. Site selection is therefore currently one of the most critical pacing items of the CELT project. In this paper, we first present selected results from a survey of the atmospheric transparency at optical and infrared wavelengths over the southwestern USA and northern Mexico using satellite data. Results of a similar study of South America have been reported elsewhere. These studies will serve as the pre-selection criterion of the sites at which we will perform on-site testing. We then describe the current status of on-site turbulence evaluation efforts and the future plans of the CELT site testing program