全新技术提高公路隧道安全——Swaroline-当代LED交通诱导的急先锋

现状反思2006标志着中国第十一个“五年计划”的开始。中国政府再次强调在建筑行业中首先要落实“提高能效”和建设“绿色建筑”。隧道内部通风、照明、交通诱导等设备的安全可靠运行都需要大量的能源支持。而“能效”和“绿色”的要求无疑对于公路隧道建筑的设计者是巨大的挑战。与此同时隧道内设置的各种紧急援救设备正常工作也需要一定的能源消耗。     

Global civil society: lessons from ocean governance

Late 20th century ideas about governance of the world's oceans may provide clues to the role of “civil society” in the 21st century. The UN Convention on Law of the Sea has radically changed traditional ideas about “national sovereignty”, shifting its focus from territorial to functional, imposing on states the duty to cooperate and pay taxes, requiring the sharing of sovereign rights, and transcending sovereignty with the “common heritage” concept. The proliferation of nongovernmental organisations operating on the international stage is empowering all elements of a burgeoning global civil society. In some pioneering experiences in international relations, nongovernmental representatives sit on a par with delegates from governments. Most of the elements of global civil society—NGOs, international business, the community of scientists, worldwide media, and local communities—are not yet focused on the kinds of globalization that can narrow the rich–poor gap and promote sustainable development, but in the new century, a more global civil society can play a more constructive role.     

Book Reviews

This study applies data envelopment analysis to evaluate the financial efficiency of a sample of 63 top US pharmaceutical advertisers, based on their sales and media advertising expenditures in 11 key media outlets (i.e. network TV, cable TV, syndicated TV, spot TV, magazines, Sunday magazines, national newspapers, newspapers, network radio, national spot radio, and outdoor). The analyses reveal that, on average, 35% of a pharmaceutical advertising budget is wasted, the largest portion of which is on network TV. In addition, the results of tobit regression indicate that magazines and Sunday magazines significantly contribute to the advertising inefficiency.     

Determinants of bond tender premiums and the percentage tendered

We analyze a large sample of US corporate bond tender offers to understand what affects tender premiums as well as the percentage of bonds tendered. For the average (median) tender offer, the tender price is 5.55% (3.24%) greater than the pre-tender market price while the percentage of bonds tendered is 82.3% (94.6%). Premiums offered by firms are greater when the firm is simultaneously soliciting consents to amend restrictive covenants and when the bond has a greater number of restrictive covenants. Premiums are also greater when long-term risk-free yields are low and the yield curve is flatter – conditions where a firm might want to lock in favorable long-term rates by issuing new debt and retiring old debt. Bondholders respond to higher tender premiums by tendering a greater percentage of their bonds – a 1% increase in tender premium increases the tendering rate by approximately 9%. Bondholders also tender a greater percentage of bonds possessing less desirable characteristics such as a short remaining maturity or bonds that are simultaneously undergoing consent solicitations. Finally, we find that tender offers are easier to complete when bond ownership concentration is greater.     

Utility maximizing portfolio insurance strategies when hedgers consider the impact of their trading on security prices

Portfolio insurance strategies can destabilize markets to such an extent that they may be counterproductive. Destabilization results when hedgers take share prices as given and follow exogenously specified price-based trading rules. We recognize that such trading rules may not be utility maximizing and that hedging affects share prices. Accordingly, we develop a portfolio insurance strategy where hedgers consider the impact of their trading on prices and endogenize their trading rule which is obtained by maximizing expected utility. Moreover, our strategy does not require the dissemination of information about the extent of portfolio-insurance based hedging activity in the economy.     

Detecting Deception: The Benefit of Looking at a Combination of Behavioral, Auditory and Speech Content Related Cues in a Systematic Manner

People communicate with each other across distance in a variety of ways, for example, via the telephone, via electronic forms of communication (the written word) or via videolinks. In this article, behavioral, auditory and speech content related cues which research has shown discriminate (to some extent) between liars and truth tellers will be discussed. Although research has indicated that people are generally poor at detecting deceit, some recent studies suggest that looking at nonverbal, auditory and speech content related responses in an objective and systematic manner will lead to more accurate classifications of liars and truth tellers. These studies will be discussed. Apart from examining the available cues objectively and systematically, lie detection might further improve if the lie detector employs certain communication techniques. In the final part of this article we will discuss some of these techniques.     

On Returning Inflation to Target

To gauge the breadth of current inflation and prospects for inflation returning to target, we consider disaggregated measures of CPI infl ation to evaluate trends and then consider diff erent scenarios for the realisation for wages and prices.