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Dominant Variable (dominant + variable)
Selected AbstractsResource Accessibility and Vulnerability in Andhra Pradesh: Caste and Non-Caste InfluencesDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 4 2007Lee Bosher ABSTRACT Coastal Andhra Pradesh in southern India is prone to tropical cyclones. Access to key resources can reduce the vulnerability of the local population to both large-scale disasters, such as cyclones, and to the sort of small-scale crises that affect their everyday lives. This article uses primary fieldwork to present a resource accessibility vulnerability index for over 300 respondents. The index indicates that caste is the key factor in determining who has assets, who can access public facilities, who has political connections and who has supportive social networks. The ,lower' castes (which tend to be the poorest) are marginalized to the extent that they lack access to assets, public facilities and opportunities to improve their plight. However, the research also indicates that the poor and powerless lower castes are able to utilize informal social networks to bolster their resilience, typically by women's participation with CBOs and NGOs. Nevertheless it is doubtful whether this extra social capital counterbalances the overall results which show that , despite decades of counteractions by government , caste remains a dominant variable affecting the vulnerability of the people of coastal Andhra Pradesh to the hazards that they face. [source] Seismic demand sensitivity of reinforced concrete shear-wall building using FOSM methodEARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING AND STRUCTURAL DYNAMICS, Issue 14 2005Tae-Hyung Lee Abstract The uncertainty in the seismic demand of a structure (referred to as the engineering demand parameter, EDP) needs to be properly characterized in performance-based earthquake engineering. Uncertainties in the ground motion and in structural properties are responsible for EDP uncertainty. In this study, sensitivity of EDPs to major uncertain variables is investigated using the first-order second-moment method for a case study building. This method is shown to be simple and efficient for estimating the sensitivity of seismic demand. The EDP uncertainty induced by each uncertain variable is used to determine which variables are most significant. Results show that the uncertainties in ground motion are more significant for global EDPs, namely peak roof acceleration and displacement, and maximum inter-storey drift ratio, than those in structural properties. Uncertainty in the intensity measure (IM) of ground motion is the dominant variable for uncertainties in local EDPs such as the curvature demand at critical cross-sections. Conditional sensitivity of global and local EDPs given IM is also estimated. It is observed that the combined effect of uncertainties in structural properties is more significant than uncertainty in ground motion profile at lower IM levels, while the opposite is true at higher IM levels. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Workers' Remittances to India: An Examination of Transfer Cost and EfficiencyINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 5 2010Bhupal Singh Regarding the time efficiency of remittance transfer channels to India, the evidence suggests that traditional banking instruments are relatively inefficient as compared to the new information technology-enabled products. Transfer arrangement of the Indian banks with overseas exchange houses has reduced the settlement cycle and the cost. Both the banks and money transfer operators (MTOs) are able to keep the transaction cycle low through the use of information technology-enabled formats. Given that the average cost curve of the banks is located to the right of the average cost curve of the MTOs, greater potential exists for the improvement in overall efficiency of the two entities, particularly through the sharing of messaging and the access and disbursement networks to reduce the overhead cost. The estimates of error correction model reveal that the transaction fee and payment infrastructure are significant determinants of remittance flows, underscoring the scope of policy measures in influencing remittance inflows. The estimates indicate that over the medium to long-term horizon, transaction cost emerges as the most dominant variable explaining the variation in remittances. The payments infrastructure also explains about 10 per cent variation in remittances over the medium-term. The impulse response analysis further reveals that the favourable shocks to transaction fees and the payments infrastructure cause steady improvement in remittance inflows over the medium-term horizon, thus underlining the importance of cost and efficiency in affecting the workers' remittances. [source] Investigation of the temporal effects of spawning season and maternal and paternal differences on egg quality in Atlantic cod Gadus morhua L. broodstockAQUACULTURE RESEARCH, Issue 14 2009Dounia Hamoutene Abstract A better understanding of the parameters affecting egg quality and larval survival is of importance for continued development of cod broodstock and efficient husbandry practices. Decision tree analysis (DTA) was applied to analyse 3 years of egg quality data in an effort to extract the most important variables (i.e. predictors) in explaining differences in egg quality. The effect of three predictors (spawning time, maternal and paternal differences) has been studied on early cleavage pattern parameters, egg diameters, fertilization and hatching rates and has shown that females are the dominant variable and that time has a limited and inconsistent impact on the data. When using maternal, paternal differences and batch number (instead of spawning time) as predictors, the results confirm that no particular relationship is found between batch order (i.e. order in time) and egg quality. Moreover, batches with a higher egg quality show a consistency in the parameters assessed (i.e. batches with higher rates of normality in any parameter tend to be normal for other parameters). This is confirmed by the significant correlations found between cleavage parameters. Our results highlight that spawning time is of less importance than female parent contribution in ensuring high rates of fertilization and larval hatch, and maximizing general egg quality. [source] Enactment, Sensemaking and Decision Making: Redesign Processes in the 1976 Reorganization of US IntelligenceJOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 2 2000James Douglas Orton Weick's theories of organizing and sensemaking help enrich the assumptions in the organization design school. This study builds on Weick's theories of sensemaking to illustrate how three fundamental organization design assumptions , dominant variables, causal laws and executive dictates , were found to be restrictive in the explanation of redesign processes in the 1976 reorganization of the US intelligence community. The assumption of dominant variables was challenged by the appearance of a multitude of events, or enactments, which were selected by organization members for further attention. The assumption of causal laws was challenged by the appearance of individual-level cause maps which were filtered, through sensemaking processes, into organization-level workable realities. The assumption of executive dictates was challenged by the appearance of attempts to punctuate redesign processes as organizational decisions. The study suggests value in moving from simple organization design assumptions to more reliable findings drawn from detailed observations of redesign processes. [source] | ||||||||||