DOI 10.1007/s10040-002-0225-5 Abstract Suzhou City, located at the lower reaches of the Yangtze River in southeastern Jiangsu Province, is one of the few cities in China which suffer from severe ground settlement. A research project was carried out to investigate this problem. Geological and hydrogeological studies show that there is a multi-layered aquifer system with three distinct, soft mud ...

We introduce a dynamic model in which the ability of agents to perform certain welfare improving transactions is subject to random and unobservable shocks. We characterize the optimal setup for incentive compatible transactions, the optimal payment system. Implementation involves assigning balances to individual agents and optimally adjusting these balances given the agents’ histories of transa...

Ground improvement has been used on many construction sites to densify granular material, in other word to improve soil properties and reduce potential settlement. This paper evaluates the efficiency of rapid impact compaction (RIC), which is an improvement on the process of deep dynamic compaction, in improving soil properties and controlling soil settlement. In this technique ground improveme...

THE 1959 Mental Health Act emphasises the need to integrate psychiatric patients with the community at large rather than to isolate them from it, as hitherto. This identification with the normal community has been the Ministry of Labour's approach to the employment of disabled people since the time of the Disabled Persons (Employment) <4ct of 1944. For the past 17 years all disabled people, whe...

Suppose that victim j employs a bandwagon strategy {δ, δ&j}. We will characterize victim i’s best response, beginning with period 2. If victim i filed suit in period 1, then he has no further action to take. Suppose that victim i did not file suit in period 1. If victim j filed suit in period 1, then victim j has no further action to take and nothing will change in the future; thus victim i wil...

Increasing settlement and post-settlement survival during the critical transition from planktonic larvae to benthic juveniles will increase efficiency for sea urchin aquaculture. This study investigated the effects of temperature and settlement cues on the settlement and post-settlement survival of the sea urchin Tripneustes gratilla during this phase. The current commercial methodology, which ...

A settlement system is a set of rules and procedures that govern when and how funds are transferred between banks in order to finalize their customers’ transactions. Perhaps the most crucial feature of such a system is the frequency with which settlement occurs. A lower frequency allows banks to retain fewer idle reserves, and therefore economizes on financial opportunity costs. However, the ac...

Recovery of degraded reefs is dependent on the settlement of coral larvae into habitats typically dominated by benthic algae, so that benthic algae may play pivotal roles in coral settlement and reef recovery. Here we demonstrate that waterborne influences of macroalgae could affect coral settlement before larvae contact reef substrata and that such effects vary between macroalgae. We tested fo...

A third dynamic behind the increased concern about systemic risk in the payments system is the globalization of financial markets, which is tying economies and markets together in ways that introduce additional issues about the mechanisms by which traditional clearing (the notification and transfer of documents and orders to purchase and sell assets) and settlement (the transfer of final paymen...