An analysis of the nature of good governance as it figures into the Royal Government of Bhutan's policy of Gross National Happiness.

The Barnett Shale in the Fort Worth Basin is one of the most important resource plays in the USA. The total organic carbon and brittleness can help to characterize a resource play to assist in the search for sweet spots. Higher TOC or organic content are generally associated with hydrocarbon storage and with rocks that are ductile in nature. However, brittle rocks are more amenable to fracturing with the fractures faces more resistant to proppant embedment. Productive intervals within a resource (...) play should therefore contain a judicious mix of organics and mineralogy that lends to hydraulic fracturing. Identification of these intervals through core acquisition and laboratory-based petrophysical measurements can be accurate but expensive in comparison with wireline logging. We have estimated TOC from wireline logs using Passey’s method and attained a correlation of 60%. However, errors in the baseline interpretation can lead to inaccurate TOC. Using nonlinear regression with Passey’s TOC, normalized stratigraphic height, and acquired wireline logs, the correlation increased to 80%. This regression can be applied to uncored wells with logs to estimate TOC, and we used it as a ground truth in integrated analysis of seismic and well log data. The brittleness index is computed based on core Fourier transform infrared mineralogy using Wang and Gale’s formula. The correlation between core BI and estimated BI using elastic logs combined with wireline logs was 78%. However, this correlation decreases to 66% if the BI is estimated using only wireline logs. Therefore, the later serves as a less reliable proxy. We have correlated production to volumetric estimate of TOC and brittleness by computing distance-weighted averages in 120 horizontal wells. We have obtained a production correlation of 38% on blind wells, which was encouraging, suggesting that the geologic component in completions provides an important contribution to well success. (shrink)

Legacy seismic surveys cover much of the midcontinent USA and Texas, with almost all 3D surveys acquired in the 1990s considered today to be low fold. Fortunately, recent advances in 5D interpolation have not only enhanced the quality of structural and stratigraphic images, but they have also improved the data sufficiently to allow more quantitative interpretation, such as impedance inversion. Although normal-moveout-corrected, common-midpoint-based 5D interpolation does an excellent job of amplitude balancing and the suppression of acquisition footprint, it appears to (...) misinterpolate undercorrected diffractions, thus smearing fault and stratigraphic edges. We described a least-squares migration-driven 5D interpolation workflow, in which data were interpolated by demigrating the current subsurface image to the missing offsets and azimuths. Such demigration accurately interpolates fault edges and other diffractors, thereby preserving lateral discontinuities, while suppressing footprint and balancing the amplitudes. We have applied this workflow to a highly aliased low-fold survey acquired in the early 1990s now of use in mapping the newly reinvigorated Mississippi Lime play. This workflow improves reflector continuity, preserves faults delineated by coherence, balances the amplitude, and provides improved well ties. (shrink)

Background Tuberculosis is a major cause of morbidity and mortality globally. Recent scholarly attention to public health ethics provides an opportunity to analyze several ethical issues raised by the global tuberculosis pandemic. Discussion Recently articulated frameworks for public health ethics emphasize the importance of effectiveness in the justification of public health action. This paper critically reviews the relationship between these frameworks and the published evidence of effectiveness of tuberculosis interventions, with a specific focus on the controversies engendered by the endorsement (...) of programs of service delivery that emphasize direct observation of therapy. The role of global economic inequities in perpetuating the tuberculosis pandemic is also discussed. Summary Tuberculosis is a complex but well understood disease that raises important ethical challenges for emerging frameworks in public health ethics. The exact role of effectiveness as a criterion for judging the ethics of interventions needs greater discussion and analysis. Emerging frameworks are silent about the economic conditions contributing to the global burden of illness associated with tuberculosis and this requires remediation. (shrink)

Ethics training—an important means to foster ethical decision-making in organisations—is carried out formally as well as informally. There are mixed findings as regards the effectiveness of formal versus informal ethics training. This study is one of its first kinds in which we have investigated the effectiveness of ethics training as it is carried out in the Indian IT sector. We have collected the views of Indian IT industry professionals concerning ethics training, and employed positivist and interpretive research. We first have (...) argued that the importance of the perception towards ethics has bearings not only on the individual ideologies but also on the organisational ethical values. In doing so, first we have conceptualised a theoretical framework: Perception of Ethics Training in Employees and Organisations. Second, we have studied the correlations between various components of this model. Third, we, under the rubric of PETINEO, examined the effectiveness of ethics training programmes for the Indian IT companies. Fourth, we have elaborated upon the results of our study. Our results suggest that the combination of both formal and informal means to undertake ethics training has superior impact on ethical decision-making in the Indian IT industry as compared to the use of any one of them in isolation. (shrink)

While recent studies have increasingly suggested leadership as a major precursor to corporate social responsibility, empirical studies that examine the impact of various leader aspects such as style and ethics on CSR and unravel the mechanism through which leadership exerts its influence on CSR are scant. Ironically, paucity of research on this theme is more prevalent in the sphere of social enterprises where it is of utmost importance. With the aim of addressing these gaps, this research empirically examines the interaction (...) between ethical leadership and CSR and, in addition, investigates organic organizational cultures as mediators in the above interaction. To this end, a model was developed and tested on the sample of 350 middle- and top-level managers associated with 28 Indian healthcare social enterprises, using Structural Equation Modeling Analysis, Bootstrapping and PROCESS. Results reveal that ethical leadership both directly and indirectly influences CSR practices. The indirect influence of ethical leadership involves nurturing clan and adhocracy cultures, which in turn influence CSR. These findings are significant for social enterprise leaders seeking to encourage their organizations’ socially responsible behavior. (shrink)

Seismic attenuation, generally related to the presence of hydrocarbon accumulation, fluid-saturated fractures, and rugosity, is extremely useful for reservoir characterization. The classic constant attenuation estimation model, focusing on intrinsic attenuation, detects the seismic energy loss because of the presence of hydrocarbons, but it works poorly when spectral anomalies exist, due to rugosity, fractures, thin layers, and so on. Instead of trying to adjust the constant attenuation model to such phenomena, we have evaluated a suite of seismic spectral attenuation attributes to (...) quantify the apparent attenuation responses. We have applied these attributes to a conventional and an unconventional reservoir, and we found that those seismic attenuation attributes were effective and robust for seismic interpretation. Specifically, the spectral bandwidth attribute correlated with the production of a gas sand in the Anadarko Basin, whereas the spectral slope of high frequencies attribute correlated with the production in the Barnett Shale of the Fort Worth Basin. (shrink)

Knowledge of induced fractures can help to evaluate the success of reservoir stimulation. Seismic P-waves through fracturing media can exhibit azimuthal variation in traveltime, amplitude, and thin-bed tuning, so amplitude variation with azimuth can be used to evaluate the hydraulic-fracturing-caused anisotropy. The Barnett Shale of the Fort Worth Basin was the first large-scale commercial shale gas play. We have analyzed two adjacent Barnett Shale seismic surveys: one acquired before hydraulic fracturing and the other acquired after hydraulic fracturing by more than (...) 400 wells. Although not a rigorous time-lapse experiment, comparison of AVAz anisotropy of these two surveys provided valuable insight into the possible effects of hydraulic fracturing. We found that in the survey acquired prior to hydraulic fracturing, AVAz anomalies were stronger and highly correlated with major structural lineaments measured by curvature. In contrast, AVAz anomalies in the survey acquired after hydraulic fracturing were weaker and compartmentalized by rather than correlated to the most-positive curvature lineaments. We found in five microseismic experiments within the survey that these ridge lineaments form fracture barriers. These findings suggested that future time-lapse experiments may be valuable in mapping the modified horizontal stress field to guide future drilling and in recognizing zones of bypassed pay. (shrink)

Seismic modeling is commonly used in determining subsurface illumination of alternative seismic survey designs, in the calibration of seismic processing and imaging algorithms, and in the design of effective processing workflows. Seismic modeling also forms the mathematical kernel of impedance inversion and is routinely used to predict the amplitude-variation-with-offset response as a function of rock and fluid properties. However, the use of seismic modeling in seismic attribute studies is less common. We have evaluated four case studies in which 2D synthetic (...) common shot gathers were computed and processed to evaluate possible interpretation hypotheses. The modeling we used in our study shows that the lack of continuous coherence anomalies in a faulted Chicontepec Basin survey was due to overprinting by coherent interbed multiples. Attributes computed from the resulting processed model data revealed that subtle curvature anomalies in a Mississippi Lime survey were due to karst collapse rather than to velocity pushdown related to vertical gas migration. Impedance attributes computed from a Woodford Shale model favored the hypothesis of increased porosity correlated with the occurrence of subtle faults rather than amplitude dimming due to poor fault imaging. Finally, modeling of a fractured basement survey in the Texas Panhandle survey indicated that headwave suppression preserved the basement fracture response while increasing the signal-to-noise ratio. Seismic attribute study on seismic modeling results helped significantly in testing possible interpretation hypotheses in all of our case studies. (shrink)

The Permian Basin is a structurally complex sedimentary basin with an extensive history of tectonic deformation. As the basin evolved through time, sediments dispersed into the basin floor from surrounding carbonate platforms leading to various mass movements. One such mass movement is observed on a 3D seismic survey in the Upper Leonard interval of the Midland Basin that is characteristic of a mass transport deposit. The 350 ft thick MTD mapped in the study area is 5 mi wide, extends up (...) to 14 mi basinward, and covers only the translational and compressional regime of the mass movement. A unique sedimentary feature, unlike those observed previously, is mapped and interpreted as gravity spreading. MTDs have been extensively studied in the Delaware Basin of Permian-aged strata; however, only a few works have been published on the geomorphological expression of MTDs using seismic and seismic attributes to delineate the shape, size, and anatomy of this subsurface feature. The MTD in the study area exhibits an array of features including slide, slump, basal shear surface, and MTD grooves. In cross section, the MTD is characterized as chaotic with semitransparent reflectors terminating laterally against a coherent package of seismic facies, or the lateral wall. Sobel filter-based coherence, structural curvature, dip magnitude, and dip azimuth attributes are used to map thrust faults within the discontinuous MTD. Kinematic evidence provided by the Upper Spraberry isopach suggests that this MTD was sourced north of the Midland Basin and deposited on the basin floor fairway. Slope strata are interpreted from well-log analysis showing MTD as a mixture of carbonates and siliciclastics with a moderate to high resistivity response. (shrink)

The term acquisition footprint is commonly used to define patterns in seismic time and horizon slices that are closely correlated to the acquisition geometry. Seismic attributes often exacerbate footprint artifacts and may pose pitfalls to the less experienced interpreter. Although removal of the acquisition footprint is the focus of considerable research, the sources of such artifact acquisition footprint are less commonly discussed or illustrated. Based on real data examples, we have hypothesized possible causes of footprint occurrence and created them through (...) synthetic prestack modeling. Then, we processed these models using the same workflows used for the real data. Computation of geometric attributes from the migrated synthetics found the same footprint artifacts as the real data. These models showed that acquisition footprint could be caused by residual ground roll, inaccurate velocities, and far-offset migration stretch. With this understanding, we have examined the real seismic data volume and found that the key cause of acquisition footprint was inaccurate velocity analysis. (shrink)

The article explores some of the theoretical and political issues which underpin the current conflict over the accountability of the global economic order. The article develops in five parts, starting with an initial section on the changing nature and form of globalization and ending with an account of how markets and business activities can be reframed. The focus is on the emergence of a number of cosmopolitan social standards which are embedded in human rights regimes and other international legal instruments. (...) These standards are explicated, elaborated and defended. The article argues that these standards need to be clarified further and developed in order to create the basis for global economic accountability and social justice. (shrink)

Exploration of the Brookian sandstone reservoirs in the Nanushuk and Torok Formations on the North Slope of Alaska is a hot topic and presents opportunities to the oil and gas community because of their shallow depth, vast extent, and scope of development. The consecutive hydrocarbon discoveries announced by Repsol-Armstrong, Caelus Energy, and ConocoPhillips in 2015, 2016, and 2017 have indicated the presence of the vast recoverable resources on the North Slope in the Nanushuk and Torok reservoirs. We have investigated the (...) detailed geophysical and petrophysical characteristics of these reservoirs. Our goal is to detect dominant geologic features in these formations using a combination of seismic attributes at the regional scale and analyze critical petrophysical and rock physics properties to evaluate formation heterogeneities and identify the reservoir targets by integrating well log and core data at the well scale. The Nanushuk Formation is expressed as topset reflections, whereas the Torok and gamma-ray zone formations are expressed as foresets and bottomsets on the seismic reflection data. Using seismic attributes, we mapped the extent of different geomorphological features, including shelf edges, channels, slides, and basin-floor fans, all with significant amplitude anomalies. The shelf edges continue for tens to hundreds of miles along the north/northwest and east–west directions, depending on the areas. The internal characters of these formations delineated by conventional well logs and advanced petrophysical analysis reveal their vertical heterogeneities and complexities, in terms of reservoir properties. We conclude that the reservoirs are vertically and laterally heterogeneous. These are thin-bedded low-resistivity reservoirs. Only a few zones in the parasequences are oil-saturated. We find that a combination of low [Formula: see text] ratio and acoustic impedance can be a useful proxy to detect the hydrocarbon-bearing sand intervals in these formations. (shrink)

Modern 3D seismic surveys are often of such good quality and 3D interpretation packages so user-friendly that seismic interpretation is no longer exclusively carried out by geophysicists. This ease-of-use has also been extended to more quantitative workflows, such as 3D prestack inversion, putting it in the hands of the “nonexpert” — be it geologist, engineer, or new-hire geophysicist. Indeed, given good quality input seismic data, almost any interpreter who can generate good well ties and define an accurate background model of (...) P-impedance, S-impedance, and density can generate a quality prestack inversion. Two of the authors are new geophysicists who fell into the prestack inversion “pit.” Fortunately, they were able to recognize that something was wrong. We applied prestack inversion to gathers that were carefully reprocessed by a major service company. The problem, however, was not with the processing, but with our lack of understanding of the input legacy data that formed part of a larger “megamerge” survey. Not all of the surveys that were merged had the same offset range. In the migration step, gaps in long offsets of the older surveys were not muted. Migration noise from newer surveys was allowed to fill this space. We share our initial workflow and suspicious results. We also clarify the meaning of “fold” and “offset” for prestack-migrated gathers. In addition to presenting some QC tools useful in analyzing megamerge surveys, we show how, by limiting the offsets used in our prestack inversion, we obtain less aggressive but still useful results. (shrink)

The study explored the role of moral identity in the civic engagement of youth through ethical ideology. A total of 217 individuals comprising of 104 girls and 113 boys completed three scales, namely, moral identity scale, ethics position questionnaire and civic engagement scale.The results showed that moral identity internalization significantly predicted civic engagement attitude and moral identity symbolization significantly predicted civic engagement behaviour. Furthermore, idealism partially mediated the relationship between moral identity and civic engagement.

The world is really feeling the heat, not only in the form of climate change, but because of fuming farmers’ unrest. Farmers’ suicides have become a common way of expressing their anger and anxiety as no one is there to take heed to their problems. This research paper tries to examine the in-depth analysis of the great agrarian crisis in India and how it was completely mistaken in understanding the real cause. With the comparative studies of the two villages of (...) India, with a completely different technological, economical and cultural background, a deep observation was made possible in finding out that, it is the growing alienation of farmers with new agricultural technologies and the collapsing local natural resource base, which will further uproot the farmers and aggravate the great Indian agrarian crisis. Traditional agricultural knowledge and practices immensely contribute in preserving the identity of farm community and gives them a feeling of pride, which is vital for the reviving and resurrection of farmers’ dignity in India. Agriculture preserves the Indianness of India, and uprooting of farmers is analogous to uprooting our own identity. (shrink)

Many recommender systems frequently make suggestions for group consumable items to the individual users. There has been much work done in group recommender systems with full ranking, but partial ranking where items are partially ranked still remains a challenge. The ultimate objective of this work is to propose rank aggregation technique for effectively handling the PR problem. Additionally, in real applications, most of the studies have focused on PR without ties. However, the rankings may have ties where some items are (...) placed in the same position, but where some items are partially ranked to be aggregated may not be permutations. In this work, in order to handle problem of PR in GRS for PRWOT and PR with ties, we propose a novel approach to GRS based on genetic algorithm where for PRWOT Spearman foot rule distance and for PRWT Kendall tau distance with bucket order are used as fitness functions. Experimental results are presented that clearly demonstrate that our proposed GRS based on GA for PRWOT and PRWT outperforms well-known baseline GRS techniques. (shrink)

Recommender systems have focused on algorithms for a recommendation for individuals. However, in many domains, it may be recommending an item, for example, movies, restaurants etc. for a group of persons for which some remarkable group recommender systems has been developed. GRSs satisfy a group of people optimally by considering the equal weighting of the individual preferences. We have proposed a multi-expert scheme for group recommendation using genetic algorithm MES-GRS-GA that depends on consensus techniques to further improve group recommendations. In (...) order to deal with this problem of GRS, we also propose a consensus scheme for GRSs where consensus from multiple experts are brought together to make a single recommended list of items in which each expert represents an individual inside the group. The proposed GA based consensus scheme is modeled as many consensus schemes within two phases. In the consensus phase, we have applied GA to obtain the maximum utility offer for each expert and generated the most appropriate rating for each item in the group. In the recommendation generation phase, again GA has been employed to produce the resulting group profile, i.e. the list of ratings with the minimum sum of distances from the group members. Finally, the results of computational experiments that bear close resemblance to real-world scenarios are presented and compared to baseline GRS techniques that illustrate the superiority of the proposed model. (shrink)

The Chicontepec Formation in east-central Mexico is comprised of complex unconventional reservoirs consisting of low-permeability disconnected turbidite reservoir facies. Hydraulic fracturing increases permeability and joins these otherwise tight reservoirs. We use a recently acquired 3D seismic survey and well control to divide the Chicontepec reservoir interval in the northern part of the basin into five stratigraphic units, equivalent to global third-order seismic sequences. By combining well-log and core information with principles of seismic geomorphology, we are able to map deepwater facies (...) within these stratigraphic units that resulted from the complex interaction of flows from different directions. Correlating these stratigraphic units to producing and nonproducing wells provides the link between rock properties and Chicontepec reservoirs that could be delineated from surface seismic data. The final product is a prestack inversion-driven map of stacked pay that correlates to currently producing wells and indicates potential untapped targets. (shrink)

Peter Spirtes and Thomas Verma. Equivalence of Causal Models with Latent Variables.

We present a characterization of confluence for term rewriting systems, which is then refined for special classes of rewriting systems. The refined characterization is used to obtain a polynomial time algorithm for deciding the confluence of ground term rewrite systems. The same approach also shows the decidability of confluence for shallow and linear term rewriting systems. The decision procedure has a polynomial time complexity under the assumption that the maximum arity of a function symbol in the signature is a constant.

We build on the emerging research that shows aversive subordinate workplace behaviors are likely related to abusive supervision in the workplace. Specifically, we develop and test a moderated-mediation model outlining the process of abusive supervision based on the stressor-emotion model of counterproductive work behavior. We argue that subordinate interpersonal deviance prompts supervisor negative emotions, which then leads supervisors to engage in abusive supervision. We also argue that subordinate organizational citizenship behavior is likely to play a crucial role in predicting abusive (...) supervision. We argue that interpersonal deviance is more likely to prompt abusive supervision through supervisor negative emotions when the magnitude of an employee’s engagement in OCB is weaker. Study 1, a time-lagged field study, tests and provides support for the relationships among our key variables. Study 2, utilizing multisource field data, replicates the results from Study 1 and provides support for the entire moderated-mediation model while controlling for tenure with supervisor, subordinate task performance, and subordinate conscientiousness. We find general support for our predictions. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications as well as future research directions. (shrink)

1 23 Fig. 2 25 Fig. 3 25 Fig. 4 60 Fig. 5 159 Fig. 6 161 Fig. 7 161 TABLES Table 1 28 Table 2 29 Table 3 48 Table 4 53 Table 5 67 Table 6 .72-73 Table 7 80 ...

Seismic coherence is commonly used to delineate structural and stratigraphic discontinuities. We generally use full-bandwidth seismic data to calculate coherence. However, some seismic stratigraphic features may be buried in this full-bandwidth data but can be highlighted by certain spectral components. Due to thin-bed tuning phenomena, discontinuities in a thicker stratigraphic feature may be tuned and thus better delineated at a lower frequency, whereas discontinuities in the thinner units may be tuned and thus better delineated at a higher frequency. Additionally, whether (...) due to the seismic data quality or underlying geology, certain spectral components exhibit higher quality over other components, resulting in correspondingly higher quality coherence images. Multispectral coherence provides an effective tool to exploit these observations. We have developed the performance of multispectral coherence using different spectral decomposition methods: the continuous wavelet transform, maximum entropy, amplitude volume technique, and spectral probe. Applications to a 3D seismic data volume indicate that multispectral coherence images are superior to full-bandwidth coherence, providing better delineation of incised channels with less noise. From the CWT experiments, we find that providing exponentially spaced CWT components provides better coherence images than equally spaced components for the same computation cost. The multispectral coherence image computed using maximum entropy spectral voices further improves the resolution of the thinner channels and small-scale features. The coherence from AVT data set provides continuous images of thicker channel boundaries but poor images of the small-scale features inside the thicker channels. Additionally, multispectral coherence computed using the nonlinear spectral probes exhibits more balanced and reveals clear small-scale geologic features inside the thicker channel. However, because amplitudes are not preserved in the nonlinear spectral probe decomposition, noise in the noisier shorter period components has an equal weight when building the covariance matrix, resulting in increased noise in the generated multispectral coherence images. (shrink)

A careful and wide-ranging assessment of the notion of justice in the Marxist tradition is provided by this book. Vidhu Verma demonstrates that Marx's analysis of exploitation provides a fruitful starting point to analyze current social conflicts. She examines three main themes: what she calls Marx's "critical non-juridical" concept of justice; different theories about what justice is in the context of social change; and the relevance of Marx's theory in the contemporary world in which new social movements - such (...) as the green and women's movements - have looked to forge new conceptions of justice. (shrink)

La cobertura universal de salud está en el centro de la acción actual para fortalecer los sistemas de salud y mejorar el nivel y la distribución de la salud y los servicios de salud. Este documento es el informe fi nal del Grupo Consultivo de la OMS sobre la Equidad y Cobertura Universal de Salud. Aquí se abordan los temas clave de la justicia (fairness) y la equidad que surgen en el camino hacia la cobertura universal de salud. Por lo (...) tanto, el informe es pertinente para cada agente que infl uye en ese camino y en particular para los gobiernos, ya que se encargan de supervisar y guiar el progreso hacia la cobertura universal de salud. (shrink)

The Grand Challenges were launched in 2003 by the Gates Foundation and other collaborators to address the health needs of developing countries. This paper outlines the current problem with health research and development in the context of inequality as conveyed by the 90/10 divide. The paper then looks at the focus and nature of press reporting of global health issues by analysing how press articles have portrayed the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative. Analysis of the mass media illustrates that (...) the focus of reporting on the Grand Challenges tends to be on utilitarian themes, leaving issues related to justice and equity comparatively under-reported. (shrink)

The debate on equality and non-discrimination is certainly not a new one, but the way it is incorporated in that on social exclusion leads to several shifts within the discourse on social justice. The term social exclusion is multidimensional although its western use in a selective way about markets promoting equality separates it from the Indian emphasis on social justice as linked to ending discrimination of dalit groups. The concept of social exclusion is inherently problematic as it faces three major (...) challenges in India: the first relates to the historical discrimination of certain groups and their exclusion; the second is about the political economy of the excluded; and the third questions the way in which equality responses are restricted within the framework of social exclusion. (shrink)

Recent feminist critiques of development have questioned some fundamental assumptions of feminist political theory; such critiques have also been successful in subverting long-held assumptions of conventional economic development. Viewed in the context of women’s subordination in third world countries, a redefinition of development must not only be about economic growth, but ensure a redistribution of resources, challenge the gender-based division of labour and also seek to provide for an egalitarian basis in social arrangements. Further, as this article argues, any starting (...) point for feminist critiques of development must also seek to link the end of gender oppression to multiple theories of justice – a justice not juridical but one that recognises the cultural membership of women in the community. (shrink)