designing

11 of the Best Gutenberg Plugins for Designing Websites

Now that the early concerns surrounding Gutenberg have subsided it is clear that the new editor for WordPress is actually an excellent resource for web designers. Especially if you are not the most confident coder. Gutenberg and its block plugins are an intuitive way to build your website and ensure it looks as good as...




designing

4 Things to Consider While Designing Minimalist Presentation Design

Creating a presentation is one of the best ways to convey information to a wide audience in an easy-to-follow manner. Such presentations are often made using attractive and unique designs to help draw-in viewers. One style that has remained popular among presentation designers throughout the years is “minimalist” presentations. Minimalist presentations rely on the concept...




designing

How Can SEO Help Market Your Designing Agency?

It's unusual, as indeed Google says that in case you've got to enlist an SEO strategy, you ought to do so early instead of late, like when you're appropriate arranging to launch a new site. Because...




designing

Sunny Pointer: Designing a mouse pointer for people with peripheral vision loss. (arXiv:2005.03504v1 [cs.HC])

We present a new mouse cursor designed to facilitate the use of the mouse by people with peripheral vision loss. The pointer consists of a collection of converging straight lines covering the whole screen and following the position of the mouse cursor. We measured its positive effects with a group of participants with peripheral vision loss of different kinds and we found that it can reduce by a factor of 7 the time required to complete a targeting task using the mouse. Using eye tracking, we show that this system makes it possible to initiate the movement towards the target without having to precisely locate the mouse pointer. Using Fitts' Law, we compare these performances with those of full visual field users in order to understand the relation between the accuracy of the estimated mouse cursor position and the index of performance obtained with our tool.




designing

Interconnection substrate design supporting device, method of designing interconnection substrate, program, and interconnection substrate

A via disposition information acquiring unit acquires via disposition information indicating a disposition of the plurality of first vias (212). A second conductor information acquiring unit acquires second conductor information indicating disposition positions of a plurality of second conductors (232) repeatedly disposed in the second conductor layer (230). A via extracting unit extracts an extraction via with respect to each of the plurality of second conductors (232). The extraction via is each of the first vias (212) overlapping the second conductor (232). A via selecting unit selects a selection via with respect to each of the plurality of second conductors (232). The selection via is each of first vias (212) selected in a predetermined number from the extraction vias. An opening introducing unit introduces a first opening (234) to each of the plurality of second conductors (232). The first opening (234) overlaps the extraction via not selected by the via selecting unit in plan view.




designing

Method for designing a natural laminar flow wing of a supersonic aircraft

In designing supersonic aircrafts, a method of designing a natural laminar flow wing is provided which reduces friction drag by delaying boundary layer transition under flight conditions of actual aircrafts. A target Cp distribution on wing upper surface, suited to natural laminarization in which boundary layer transition is delayed rearward in desired Reynolds number states, is defined by a functional type having as coefficients parameters depending on each spanwise station, a sensitivity analysis employing a transition analysis method is applied to the parameters, and a search is performed for the optimum combination of parameters to delay transition rearward.




designing

Custom braces, casts and devices having fenestrations and methods for designing and fabricating

A custom brace and method for fabricating the custom brace includes marking a body with reference points and/or other indicators. Multiple images of the body from multiple angles are then obtained. The images are used to determine the contours of the body and the other markings are located and used to design the custom brace. Fenestrations can be added to the brace design. The custom brace can be fabricated with the fenestrations as a single piece structure or in multiple pieces that are assembled to complete the custom device.




designing

Method for designing a fuel assembly optimized as a function of the stresses in use in light-water nuclear reactors, and resulting fuel assembly

A method for design of a fuel assembly for nuclear reactors, including structural components made from zirconium alloy: the mean uniaxial tensile or compressive stress to which the components are subjected during the assembly life is calculated, the zirconium alloy of which the components are made is selected according to the following criteria: those components subjected to an axial or transverse compressive stress of between −10 et −20 MPa are made from an alloy with a content of Sn between Sn=(=0.025σ−0.25)% and Sn=−0.05σ%: those components subjected to such a stress of between 0 et −10 MPa are made from an alloy the Sn content of which is between Sn=traces and Sn=(0.05σ+1)%: those components subjected to such a stress of between 0 and +10 MPa are made from an alloy the Sn content of which is between Sn=0.05% and Sn=(0.07σ+1)%: and those components subjected to such a stress of between +10 and +20 MPa are made from an alloy the content of SN of which is between 0.05% and 1.70%. A fuel assembly made according to the method.




designing

DYNAMICALLY DESIGNING WEB PAGES

Various embodiments of systems, computer program products, and methods for dynamically designing webpages are described herein. In an aspect, a request for designing a webpage may be received. Based upon the request, a metadata related to the webpage may be identified. Based upon the identified metadata, one or more widgets for designing the webpage may be rendered. A selection of a widget from the one or more widgets may be received from a user. Multiple sections of the webpage and the widgets positioned in corresponding sections may be identified. The identified widgets of the webpage may be integrated with one or more security rules.




designing

RAILCAR BRAKE BEAM ASSEMBLY AND RELATED METHOD OF DESIGNING A RAILCAR BRAKE BEAM ASSEMBLY

A railcar brake beam assembly including a brake beam formation having a tension member, a compression member and strut, and with the strut defining an axis for the brake beam assembly. First and second brake head assemblies are disposed to opposite lateral sides of the axis, with each brake head assembly being operably carried by the brake beam formation and includes a guide member extending in a direction away from the axis. The first and second brake head assemblies are generally centered laterally relative to the axis of the brake beam assembly. A distal end of the guide member on the first brake head assembly is disposed a different lateral distance from the axis of the brake beam assembly than is a distal end of the guide member on the second brake head assembly to minimize lateral shifting movements while maintaining adequate clearances for permitting reciprocal moments of the brake beam assembly during application of braking forces. A method of designing a brake beam assembly for a railcar is also disclosed.




designing

Fusion 360: Designing for Metal

If you're designing metal parts, you'll need to do things differently than you would for other materials and processes. This course shows how to use Autodesk Fusion 360—the affordable cloud-powered CAD and CAM tool that works like more expensive, industry-focused tools—to build effective designs specifically for subtractive manufacturing in metal. Thom Tremblay shows how to build solid designs, simulate how the model will hold up to the stress of production and use, render the design for presentation, and finalize it for manufacturing. The workflows showcased in this course are tailored to help the nonprofessional CAD user, and the maker, to be more effective and quickly have access to the tools that a few years ago were only available to the few and at an astronomical price.




designing

Fusion 360: Designing for Plastics

Plastic has unique properties not shared by other materials. If you're designing something that will eventually be created in plastic, considering the complexities of manufacturing in your design process is critical. In this course, learn how to design parts for additive manufacturing in plastic using Autodesk Fusion 360—the affordable cloud-powered CAD and CAM tool that works like more expensive, industry-focused tools. Instructor Thom Tremblay explains how to create a form, complete and visualize your design, and set it up for 3D printing, all while designing a ready-to-manufacture part. Plus, learn a more complex alternative modeling processes for creating a solid from surfaces and subdividing a solid model.




designing

Designing Characters Using Adobe Fresco

Learn how to approach character design and get a better understanding of the powerful illustration tools in Adobe Fresco. In this course, instructor Renee di Cherri explains how to use this digital drawing and painting app—optimized for touch-based devices like the iPad—to bring your character to life. Learn how to use a mindmap to build your imagined world and guide the ideation process of creating your character and what they look like. Then discover how to sketch thumbnail drawings directly in Fresco and turn them into crisp linework with its vector brushes and painting tools. Finally, find out how to add color and final touches to your character, such as realistic fur and lighting, and use companion apps like Photoshop for the iPad to create variations on your character.




designing

Looking for Studio Sound 'Designing a Studio Mixer' Article

Hi all I have the EQ article and did a proto a few years ago, sounded very nice, typically 70s, fat, big sound. I only have part 5 (Nov 71), does anyone have the others on a dusty shelf? I'm guessing Aug 71 til Jan/Feb 72. The series was writ ...




designing

TRB Webinar: Designing Landscapes to Enhance Roadside Water Management

How do transportation agencies apply principles of green infrastructure (GI) to roadside water management? TRB is hosting a webinar on Monday, May 18, 2020 from 2:00 to 3:30 PM Eastern that aims to answer this question. Presenters will identify how GI may be used to mitigate impacts of flooding, drought, and temperature extremes that affect infrastructure. This webinar draws on research from the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Domestic Scan Program 16-02: Leading Landscape Design Pr...




designing

Impacts on Practice: Redesigning the Communications Center at Phoenix–Mesa Gateway Airport

As a reliever airport for the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, Phoenix–Mesa Gateway Airport must keep track of information for nearly 300,000 aircraft operations and 1.4 million passengers a year. To meet this challenge, the airport developed an innovative, digitally connected solution with the help of ACRP Research Report 182: Guidancefor Planning, Design, and Operationsof Airport Communications Centers . The TRB Airport Cooperartive Research Program's ACRP Impacts on Practice 182: Redesigning ...



  • http://www.trb.org/Resource.ashx?sn=cover_acrp_iop_182

designing

"Three Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Designing Languages"

The transcript of Three Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Designing Languages, a talk given by Peter Alvaro somewhere or other, is up at Info Q.

Peter Alavaro's main research interest is in taming distributed systems. He starts his talk with the provocative thesis, "In the future, all radical new languages will be domain-specific languages." He talks of the evolution of his ideas about dealing with distributed systems:

  1. Little interest by designers of programming-language designers in filling huge difficulty of debugging in context of distributed systems;
  2. PLs often make handling of data somewhat implicit, even with functional programming, which he says is dangerous in distributed programming;
  3. To talk about the flow of data properly, we need to talk about time;
  4. Two things that influenced him as a grad student: Jeff Ullman's claim that encapsulation and declarativity are in tension, and Fagin's theorem (the existential fragment of second-order logic characterises NP);
  5. Idea that distributed systems can be considered as protocols specified a bit like SQL or Datalog queries;
  6. Triviality with query languages of characterising the idea of place in distributive systems: they are just another relation parameter;
  7. Describing evolution of a system in time can be done with two other things: counters and negation, leading to Bertram Ludäscher's language Statelog. But this way of doing things leads to the kind of low-level overexpressive modelling he was trying to avoid;
  8. "What is it about...protocols that they seem to require negation to express?” Turns out that if you drop negation, you characterise the protocols that deliver messages deterministically.

He summarises by saying the only good reason to design a programming language (I assume he means a radically novel language) is to shape your understanding of the problem. No regrets of being the only user of his first language, Datalist, because the point is that it shaped all his later thought in his research.




designing

I was designing a website for a client. Over time, the client requested lots of little changes to...

I was designing a website for a client. Over time, the client requested lots of little changes to the content. One weird result of this, though, is that any photos that included women were slowly removed.

Client: Could you remove that person in this photo?

Me: Okay, but that means there are now no more women on the website?

Client: That’s fine, we’re not marketing just for women. We’re not sexist!



  • breasts and brains

designing

Going Over the Top - Designing roller coasters

Researcher: Meredith Greer, Bates College. Going Over the Top Description: Meredith Greer talks about math and roller coasters.




designing

Designing Better Bicycles

Researcher: Jim Papadopoulos, Northeastern University
Description: Jim Papadopoulos talks about his years of research analyzing bicycles.




designing

HIGH QUALITY LOGO DESIGNING SERVICES




designing

Redesigning Primary Care to Improve Diabetes Outcomes (the UNITED Study)

OBJECTIVE

The effective redesign of primary care delivery systems to improve diabetes care requires an understanding of which particular components of delivery consistently lead to better clinical outcomes. We identified associations between common systems of care management (SysCMs) and the frequency of meeting standardized performance targets for Optimal Diabetes Care (NQF#0729) in primary care practices.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

A validated survey of 585 eligible family or general internal medicine practices seeing ≥30 adult patients with diabetes in or near Minnesota during 2017 evaluated the presence of 62 SysCMs. From 419 (72%) practices completing the survey, NQF#0729 was determined in 396 (95%) from electronic health records, including 215,842 patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes.

RESULTS

Three SysCMs were associated with higher rates of meeting performance targets across all practices: 1) a systematic process for shared decision making with patients (P = 0.001), 2) checklists of tests or interventions needed for prevention or monitoring of diabetes (P = 0.002), and 3) physician reminders of guideline-based age-appropriate risk assessments due at the patient visit (P = 0.002). When all three were in place, an additional 10.8% of the population achieved recommended performance measures. In subgroup analysis, 15 additional SysCMs were associated with better care in particular types of practices.

CONCLUSIONS

Diabetes care outcomes are better in primary care settings that use a patient-centered approach to systematically engage patients in decision making, remind physicians of age-appropriate risk assessments, and provide checklists for recommended diabetes interventions. Practice size and location are important considerations when redesigning delivery systems to improve performance.




designing

"Merit-Based" Immigration: Designing Successful Selection Systems

With the U.S. administration calling for the United States to adopt a more “merit-based” immigrant selection system, this conversation focused on what policymakers should consider in designing—and managing—immigrant selection systems in a time of intense labor-market and demographic change.




designing

"Merit-Based" Immigration: Designing Successful Selection Systems

MPI and OECD experts discuss what policymakers should consider in designing and managing immigrant selection systems in a time of intense labor-market and demographic change.




designing

Preparing for the Unknown: Designing Effective Predeparture Orientation for Resettling Refugees

Refugees encounter a range of challenges after resettlement—from adjusting to a new culture and language, to finding a job. Many resettlement countries invest in predeparture orientation to help refugees develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to face these challenges. This report explores the many forms these programs take, highlighting important design questions and key elements that effective programs share.




designing

Designing for resilient energy systems : choices in future engineering / edited by Paul Barnes and Neil Greet.




designing

Designing the John B Fairfax Learning Centre

The John B Fairfax Learning Centre is officially launched and we look forward to welcoming visitors to this fabulous new




designing

Genomic designing of climate-smart vegetable crops

9783319974156 (electronic bk.)




designing

Neighbourhood : designing a liveable community

Friedman, Avi, 1952- author.
9781550654981 (paperback)




designing

Designing Floating Buildings With an Eye to the Marine Species Living Underneath

A prototype deployed in San Francisco Bay imagines the underside of a floating building as an upside-down artificial reef




designing

Designing and 3D Printing At Home

While I’m working from home, I thought this would be a really great time to invest in a 3D printer for myself. I purchased a budget-friendly printer that can still achieve quality prints. I’ve also found it really important to

Author information

Matthew Desrochers

Matthew DesRochers is a SOLIDWORKS Education Engineering Intern working in the Dassault Sytèmes 3DExperience Lab in Waltham. He is a Mechanical Engineering student at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. In his free time Matt enjoys working on his Volkswagen and screen printing.

The post Designing and 3D Printing At Home appeared first on SOLIDWORKS Education Blog.




designing

Designing and Troubleshooting Immunopanning Protocols for Purifying Neural Cells

Purifying and culturing cells from the central nervous system (CNS) has proved to be an incredibly powerful tool for dissecting fundamental neuron and glial properties, and especially powerful in understanding neuronal–glial interactions. In a series of detailed protocols, we have provided step-by-step instructions for purifying and culturing specific types of neurons, glia, and vascular cells from the CNS by immunopanning. This article discusses common pitfalls and errors as well as important design considerations for the immunopanning procedure.




designing

Redesigning advertising strategies for digital

In digital advertising today, innovation is the name of the game. The idea is to create customer-centric campaigns that leverage reach, hold attention and help in conversion.




designing

Website Design Delhi, Web Designing Specialists, Web Designing Delhi: H K Digital Online

H K Digital Online is the Best Web Design Company to outsource your web designing needs in India. Our web designers specialize in creative fresh web designs with an artistic flare with affordable rates.




designing

Website Design Services India, Web Designing Specialists, Web Designing Company India: H K Digital Online

H K Digital Online is the Best Web Design Company to outsource your web designing needs in India. Our web designers specialize in creative fresh web designs with an artistic flare with affordable rates.




designing

Website Design India, Web Designing Specialists, Web Designing India: H K Digital Online

H K Digital Online is the Best Web Design Company to outsource your web designing needs in India. Our web designers specialize in creative fresh web designs with an artistic flare with affordable rates.




designing

Website Design Company, Web Designing Specialists, Web Designing Company: H K Digital Online

H K Digital Online is the Best Web Design Company to outsource your web designing needs in India. Our web designers specialize in creative fresh web designs with an artistic flare with affordable rates.




designing

Print Designing India | Brochure Designing | Logo Designing|Leaflet Designing - H K Digital Online

H K Digital Online offers Print Designing, Brochure designing, logo designing, leaflet designing, graphic designing with affordable rates.




designing

India: Web Design Delhi Website Designing Delhi India Web Development India Web Site Designing Company Delhi

H K Digital Online delhi based web design company India provides web designing delhi and Web application, Web development, Search engine promotion and web page designing services in india Delhi.




designing

Designing the perfect range map for electric cars

MapmyIndia says it has a solution that tells the exact range of an electric car, as it is being driven




designing

Designing Connected Experiences in the Consumer Age: Q&A with HARMAN’s Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Ralph Santana

Today’s companies see the importance of design as more consumers demand elegance alongside flawless functionality and exceptional user experience. As a company that has created countless ingenious product designs in different markets all over the ...




designing

Designing and Evaluating a Prediabetes Shared Decision Aid

Background:

Prediabetes is increasing in prevalence and is associated with risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and retinopathy. Clinicians have limited tools to facilitate prediabetes discussions within primary care visits.

Purpose:

1) Develop a Patient and Stakeholder Advisory Committee (PASAC) to design, evaluate, and revise a prediabetes shared decision aid, and 2) evaluate the feasibility and experience of implementing the tool within primary care practice.

Methods:

A prediabetes decision aid (double-sided infographic with decision questions) was created by a PASAC that included patients, primary care clinicians, diabetes educators, endocrinologists, and pharmacists. Five clinicians within 3 primary care practices tested the prediabetes tool with 50 adult patients with prediabetes. Patients completed 2 surveys immediately after the office visit and 6 weeks later. Clinicians and PASAC members completed a postintervention survey.

Results:

The prediabetes shared decision aid was created through a deliberative process over 3 PASAC meetings. Ninety-six percent of patients felt the tool prepared them to decide on a diabetes prevention plan, and 100% of clinicians would use the tool again and felt the tool did not extend visit length.

Discussion:

It was feasible to cocreate a prediabetes shared decision aid within a PASAC and implement the tool within a primary care setting. Patients and clinicians reported a prediabetes discussion, which may mitigate rates of progression to diabetes and associated complications. Future research should evaluate which of the intervention components most effectively promotes discussion of prediabetes within a primary care setting.




designing

Designing and Evaluating Scalable Child Marriage Prevention Programs in Burkina Faso and Tanzania: A Quasi-Experiment and Costing Study

ABSTRACTBackground:A significant number of girls are married as children, which negatively impacts their health, education, and development. Given the sheer numbers of girls at risk of child marriage globally, the challenge to eliminate the practice is daunting. Programs to prevent child marriage are typically small-scale and overlook the costs and scalability of the intervention.Implementation:This study tested and costed different approaches to preventing child marriage in rural Burkina Faso and Tanzania. The approaches tested were community dialogue, provision of school supplies, provision of a livestock asset, a model including all components, and a control arm. A quasi-experimental design was employed with surveys undertaken at baseline and after 2 years of intervention. We examined the prevalence of child marriage and school attendance controlling for background characteristics and stratified by age group. Programmatic costs were collected prospectively.Results:Among those in the community dialogue arm in Burkina Faso, girls aged 15 to 17 years had two-thirds less risk (risk ratio [RR]=0.33; 95% confidence interval [CI]=0.19, 0.60) of being married and girls aged 12 to 14 years had a greater chance of being in school (RR=1.18; 95% CI=1.07,1.29) compared to the control site. In Tanzania, girls aged 12 to 14 years residing in the multicomponent arm had two-thirds less risk of being married (RR=0.33; 95% CI=0.11, 0.99), and girls 15 to 17 in the conditional asset location had half the risk (RR=0.52; 95% CI=0.30, 0.91). All the interventions tested in Tanzania were associated with increased risk of girls 12 to 14 years old being in school, and the educational promotion arm was also associated with a 30% increased risk of girls aged 15 to 17 years attending school (RR=1.3; 95% CI=1.01, 1.67). Costs per beneficiary ranged from US$9 to US$117.Conclusion:The study demonstrates that minimal, low-cost approaches can be effective in delaying child marriage and increasing school attendance. However, community dialogues need to be designed to ensure sufficient quality and intensity of messaging. Program managers should pay attention to the cost, quality, and coverage of interventions, especially considering that child marriage persists in the most hard-to-reach rural areas of many countries.




designing

View From the Canoe: Co-Designing Research Pacific Style [Reflections]

In 2016, Rose Lamont and Tana Fishman were the first patient-clinician dyad from outside North America to attend the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) Patient and Clinician Engagement Program workshop. They returned to New Zealand inspired and formed the Pacific People’s Health Advisory Group and a Pacific practice-based research network (PBRN). They are guided by the principles of co-design, and the Samoan research framework fa’afaletui, which emphasizes a collective approach and importance of reciprocity and relationships. Their collective inquiry aims to reduce health inequalities experienced by Pacific people in South Auckland. Their community group members and PBRN are generating research questions being answered by university-based graduate students. When they embarked, they knew not the direction in which they headed. With guidance, their community members and clinicians have led the way. By giving everyone a say in where they are going and how they get there, they are modeling what they wish to achieve—an egalitarian approach which decreases disparities for Pacific people.




designing

Codesigning care improvements for women living with HIV: a patient-oriented deliberative dialogue workshop in Montreal, Quebec

Background:

Care services have not been sufficiently adapted to meet the comprehensive care needs of women living with HIV. Our study objective was to engage patients and providers in codesigning care recommendations to improve care for this population in the province of Quebec.

Methods:

We conducted a 5-hour deliberative dialogue workshop in April 2019 in Montréal as the final phase of a mixed-methods study investigating comprehensive care for women living with HIV. The study drew on data from the Canadian HIV Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Cohort Study (CHIWOS). Recruitment was guided by a purposive maximum-variation sampling strategy to ensure an appropriate mix of participants and was facilitated by our existing CHIWOS networks. Participants included patients (women living with HIV) and HIV care providers (doctors, nurses, pharmacists). The workshop was facilitated professionally and included a synthesis of the evidence, small- and large-group deliberations, and voting on care improvements.

Results:

Eight patients and 8 HIV care providers participated. Drawing on identified care priorities, the participants identified 4 relatively rapid care improvements and 3 longer-term improvements. The rapid care improvements included delegating medical acts to members of multidisciplinary care teams; greater involvement of HIV community members within care settings and health care decision-making; creating a women’s health information booklet; and increasing HIV education among all health care providers and raising awareness of women’s care needs beyond HIV-specific care among HIV care providers. The longer-term care improvements included advocating for complete financial coverage of antiretroviral therapy within the government-sponsored Medicare program, facilitating access to allied care providers (e.g., physiotherapists and psychologists) and launching a population-wide campaign to increase awareness about the Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U) initiative and other HIV advances.

Interpretation:

The deliberative dialogue workshop yielded evidence-based, stakeholder-driven recommendations to improve the comprehensive care of women living with HIV in Quebec.




designing

Designing the 1960s Battleground for ‘Feud: Bette and Joan’

If Judy Becker is forced to pick a side in “Feud: Bette and Joan,” the production designer for the FX series says she’s team Bette Davis, but she’d rather live in Joan Crawford’s house. “We designed an amazing closet for her and I can’t deny that I would love to have that,” she says. The […]




designing

Designing of improved drugs for COVID-19: Crystal structure of SARS-CoV-2 main protease M<sup>pro</sup>




designing

Designing Thoughtful Minimum Wage Policy at the State and Local Levels


Rising wage inequality and stagnant real wages have contributed to inequality in family incomes during the past three decades. While the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) have helped mitigate the impact on low-income families (Bitler and Hoynes 2010), federal minimum wage policy has not contributed to the solution. The federal minimum wage has failed to keep pace with both the cost of living and the median wage in the labor market. As a consequence, working full-time at the minimum wage does not allow many families to escape poverty, or to attain economic self-sufficiency.

State and local governments can set minimum wages in excess of the statutory federal minimum wage. Indeed, state and local governments have played an important role in establishing minimum wages across the country; as a result, thirty-seven states had state minimum wages exceeding the federal level in 2007 prior to the most recent federal increase. Cities, too, have begun setting higher minimum wages, as evidenced by city-level wage minimums in Albuquerque, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Fe, Seattle, and Washington, DC; other cities are actively exploring possibilities of raising minimum wages. 

In this policy memo, I propose a framework for effective state and local minimum wage policy. First, I propose using half the local-area median wage as an important gauge for setting an appropriate level of the minimum wage. Second, I propose that state and local governments take into account the local cost of living as a relevant consideration in setting a minimum wage, and I provide estimates of how state minimum wages would vary if they reflected cost-of-living differences. I also recommend the use of regional consumer price indexes (CPIs) to index the local minimum wage. Finally, I propose that cities and counties coordinate regional wage setting to mitigate possible negative effects of local mandates. 

The implementation of the state and local framework does not override the need for reform at the federal level. Thoughtful reforms to the federal minimum wage can help reduce poverty and mitigate inequality. The federal minimum wage has been the focus of substantial debate by academics and policymakers; this proposal focuses on state and local reforms that have received substantially less attention. These state and local reforms can be an important part of the policy portfolio for reducing the incidence of poverty and for helping low-income families support themselves as they strive toward the middle class. In particular, although the federal minimum wage serves as a floor in the labor market, there is some room for additional increases in higher-wage areas.

Downloads

Authors

  • Arindrajit Dube
Publication: The Hamilton Project
Image Source: Hero Images
     
 
 




designing

Designing pan-Atlantic and international anti-crime cooperation


In “Designing Pan-Atlantic and International Anti-Crime Cooperation,” a chapter for the new book, Dark Networks in the Atlantic Basin: Emerging Trends and Implications for Human Security (Center for Transatlantic Relations, January 2015), Vanda Felbab-Brown discusses the context and challenges of designing policies to counter organized crime and illicit economies in West Africa. She argues that although large-scale illicit economies and organized crime have received intense attention from governments and international organizations since the end of the Cold War, the strategies designed to combat these developments have been ineffective and, at times, counterproductive. Many populations experiencing inadequate state presence, great poverty, and social and political marginalization are dependent on illicit economies; and policies prioritizing suppression of these economies can, paradoxically, increase the economic and political capital of criminal or militant groups.

The recent drug trade epidemic and the connections between various illicit economies and terrorism have cast a spotlight on West Africa, Felbab-Brown explains. But in analyzing how the drug trade affects West Africa, it is important to note that preexisting institutional and governance deficiencies crucially amplify the destabilizing effects of the drug trade. Neither the  drug trade nor the entrenchment of political corruption and misgovernance in West Africa are new phenomena emerging in the wake of cocaine flows through the region. Rather, political contestation in West Africa has long centered on the capture of rents from legal, semi-illegal, or outright illegal economies such as diamonds, gold, timber, cacao, human trafficking, and illegal fishing, resulting in a pervasive culture of illegality, in which society expects that laws will be broken, enforcement evaded, and that the state will be the source of rents rather than an equitable provider of public goods. A long history of rentier economies, illicit activity, smuggling, endemic corruption, weak institutions, and governance as mafia rule—that provides exceptions from law enforcement to the ruler's clique—has left West Africa with what Felbab-Brown terms the technology of illegality and the state as mafia bazaar.

This context makes West Africa a particularly vexing area for policymakers and international donors who want to combat militancy or organized crime in West Africa. The United States and international community should consider any intervention in the region strategically, calibrating assistance packages to the absorptive capacity of the partner country, focusing on broad state-building, and fostering good governance. The priority of the United States must be to combat the most disruptive and dangerous networks of organized crime and belligerency, recognizing that anti-crime interventions cannot eradicate the majority of organized crime, illicit economies, and drug trafficking in the region. Moreover, efforts by external donors, such as Colombia or Brazil, to transfer policy practices to West African countries need to carefully consider which external lessons and policies are suited for local contexts.

The full book, Dark Networks in the Atlantic Basin: Emerging Trends and Implications for Human Security, is available for purchase from The Brookings Institution Press.

Downloads

Publication: Center for Transatlantic Relations
Image Source: © Joe Penney / Reuters
       




designing

Redesigning How We Clean: Ami Shah of iQ on Their Award Winning Refill Packaging (Interview)

Over one billion plastic cleaning containers go into landfill each year, according to the Canadian eco-cleaning company Planet People. And did you know that the majority of household cleaners are 95 per cent water and only five per