Your original post must well detailed and should demonstrate an understanding and ability to apply relevant key concepts. In addition to your original post, you should respond to at least two of your peers. Make your responses constructive, and include your sources of information where applicable.

The Uruguay Round of the GATT began a process of phasing out the use of voluntary export restraints. Why did they come into widespread use in the 1980s? For instance, given that VERs (voluntary export restraints) are a form of quotas, and that they create quota rents and a larger reduction in national welfare than tariffs, why did nations use them instead of tariffs?

The GATT strongly favors tariffs as a protective measure over quotas or other non-tariff measures. It encourages new members to convert quotas to their tariff equivalents. One of the main reasons that tariffs are preferred is because they are more transparent, particularly by comparison to non-tariff measures. Explain the idea of transparency and how non-tariff measures may be non-transparent. Use examples to support your arguments.

1. %) Even integers with non repeating digits. Even integers are integers ending in 0, 2, 4, 6, 8. It is easy to see that for 2 digits integers, the number of 2 digits even integers is 45 (i.e. from 10 to 99, 10, 12, 14, …, 96, 98 are the 2 digits even integers); for 3 digits integers, the number of 3 digits even integers is 450 (from 100 to 999, 100, 102, 104, .. , till 994, 996, 998), and so on.

Now consider even integers with non-repeating digits. Calculate the number of even integers where digits can not be repeated

1. (3%) For 2 digits (how many even integers are among 10, 12, .., 96, 98 with non-repeating digits? This means 22, 444, 66, and 88 are not counted. Anything else)?
2. (5%) For 3 digits (how many even integers are among 100, 102, .., 996, 998 with non-repeating digits? Note this means 112, 202, 222, etc. are not included, but 102, 104 etc. are included.)
3. (7%) For 4 digits.

Refined crude oil has been used to lubricate moving parts in a wide variety of machines and engines. These petroleum-based lubricants are extracted from natural crude oil, and must be refined, desalted, dewaxed, and distilled from crude feedstock. However, recently, engineers are moving towards non-petroleum based lubricants or known as synthetic lubricants. Obtain information about non-petroleum based lubricants and summarize your findings in a brief report by following the format given below. The report should contain minimum 1500 words (excluding figure and table title and content, references)

With a town of 20 people, 2 have a certain disease that spreads as follows: Contacts between two members of the town occurred in accordance with a Poisson process having rate ?. When contact occurs, it is equally likely to involve any of the possible pairs of people in the town. If a diseased and non-diseased person interect, then, with probability p the non-diseased person becomes diseased. Once infected, a person remains infected throughout. Let ?(?) denote the number of diseased people of the town at time t. Considering the current time as t = 0, we want to model this process as a continuous-time Markov chain.

(a) What is the state space of this process?

(b) What is the probability that a diseased person contacts a non-diseased person?

(c) What is the rate at which a diseased person contacts a non-diseased person (we denoted this type of contact by I-N contact) when there are X diseased people in the town?

(d) Is the inter-contact time between two I-N contacts exponentially distributed? Why?

(e) Compute the expected time until all people of the town are infected by the disease.

A sample of ? = 50 non-listed UK companies had an average level of profit/loss (divided by turnover) during the previous year equal to ? = 0.27%, with a sample standard deviation of ? = 1.25%.

(i) Test whether there is convincing evidence that non-listed UK companies on average made a profit during the previous year (at a significance level of 5%).

(ii) Test whether there is convincing evidence that non-listed UK companies on average made a loss during the previous year (at a significance level of 5%). Considering your results from (i) and (ii), briefly discuss what you can conclude about the average profitability of non-listed UK firms.

(iii) Construct a 95% confidence interval around the sample mean ?, and briefly discuss the intuition behind this interval.

(iv) Re-do the test in (i) assuming that the sample size was equal to ? = 200. Briefly compare the results to those obtained in (i).

(v) Re-do the test in (i) assuming a significance level of 10%. Briefly compare the results to those obtained in (i).

Identify two important operating standards that are routinely measured in your organization. These measures must meet the criteria for qualitative, nominal measures. Observations must be cross-classified into a contingency table. Obtain a sample that will produce at least five observations into each group of the cross-classification.

Purpose:  To demonstrate the application of non-parametric tests in your organization.

Example:  A standard measure that fits these requirements is the human resource department’s employee tracking system. The director of human resources of my company wants to do a study to determine if there is a relationship between the management status and gender of the employees. She creates a contingency table that has Male or Female categories for the rows, and Manager or non-manager categories for the columns. Then she counts the number of female managers, female non-managers, male managers, and male non-managers and enters the numbers in the table. This is the observed value table. Then she conducts the hypothesis test.

a)      Perform the cross-classification of the two nominal variables into a contingency table.

b)       Test the hypothesis that there is no relationship between the two variables.

c)       Discuss the result and interpretation of your hypothesis test

Geoffrey’s cardiovascular function improves, and he starts following a healthier lifestyle. After a couple of years, his daughter takes him to the hospital for a surgical procedure requiring mechanical.ventilation. To facilitate this, his doctor plans to use a non-depolarising neuromuscular blocker, with an appropriate reversal agent thereafter. The surgery goes well, however, Geoffrey experiences facial flushing, and starts complaining of breathing difficulties thereafter. His doctor diagnoses him with non-cardiogenic pulmonary oedema due to the reversal agent, and decides to use furosemide to treat it. Based on the procedure and clinical outcomes, i) suggest which non-depolarising neuromuscular blocker was used and explain your reasoning, ii) explain how the non-depolarising neuromuscular blocker would facilitate mechanical ventilation by referring to physiological processes, iii) explain whether the reversal agent may cause peripheral or central side effects with at least one associated side effect other than already mentioned, and iv) explain how furosemide would treat his pulmonary oedema.  

A nutritionist is interested in the relationship between cholesterol and diet. The nutritionist developed a non-vegetarian and vegetarian diet to reduce cholesterol levels. The nutritionist then obtained a sample of clients for which half are told to eat the new non-vegetarian diet and the other half to eat the vegetarian diet for five months. The nutritionist hypothesizes that the non-vegetarian diet will increase cholesterol levels more. What can the nutritionist conclude with α = 0.05. Below are the cholesterol levels of all the participants after five months.

If appropriate, compute the CI. If not appropriate, input "na" for both spaces below.
[   ,   ]

e) Compute the corresponding effect size(s) and indicate magnitude(s).
If not appropriate, input and/or select "na" below.
d =   ;  ---Select--- na trivial effect small effect medium effect large effect
r² =   ;  ---Select--- na trivial effect small effect medium effect large effect

The therm dataset contains information on survey respondents’ opinions about various public figures. These are “feeling thermometer” scores, which range from 0 (total dislike of the person) to 100 (total like). The relevant variables for this question are:

• white: a dummy variable indicating whether the respondent is white (ie, 1 for white and 0 for non-white)

• ideology: the respondent’s ideology on a scale of 1 (most liberal) to 7 (most conservative)

• obama: the respondent’s “feeling thermometer” score for Barack Obama

(a) One regression with obama as the dependent variable and white and ideology as the independent variables shows that

obama = 111.2 − 21.2 ∗ white − 8.7 ∗ ideology

What is the estimated intercept for white respondents? What about for non-white respondents?

(b) Another regression that includes a term for the interaction between white and ideology shows that

obama = 90.3+ 8.3∗white−3.0∗ideology−7.6∗(white ·ideology)

What are the estimated intercept and slope of ideology among white respondents? What about among non-white respondents? Is the relationship between ideology and Obama opinion stronger for white respondents, or non-white respondents?

Write a report discussing the effect of implementing Lean Operations on performance. This assessment should be written and structured in the form of a business report.

Your report should include the following key elements:.

A brief description and overview of the topic selected. This section may include examples, case studies or vignettes from real life operations that are sourced from both the academic (e.g. journal papers, manuscripts) and non-academic (e.g. economist, business week etc.) literatures. Note, you may also decide to focus in on one key aspect of Lean Operations, one key sector, if you wish to.

An analysis of the topic regarding their contribution to the performance of operations. In particular, I expect to see a synthesis of empirical evidence that is available in the existing academic and practitioner literature. Please note that this evidence can be either quantitative or qualitative (I do not have a preference as long as the evidence is robust). Note, you may decide to focus on one key aspect of performance or multiple measures of performance.

Strong analysis may also include contextual factors. For example, you might find that the performance effect of lean (or some aspect of lean) is affected by firm size, country, organizational culture, customer characteristics, approach to implementation, etc. Your work could present evidence for this and a discussion of the reasons for the contingency effect.

A summary and conclusion based on your findings.

Sources:

Your analysis will be based on background reading and you should provide references from academic as well as practitioner articles to justify your assumptions and statements. Your reading could possibly include but not necessarily be limited to the following suggested Journals:

Journal of Operations Management

International Journal of Operations and Production Management

Journal of Supply Chain Management

Production and Operations Management

Sloan Management Review

Harvard Business Review

International Journal of Production Economics

International Journal of Production Research

…

Typically the more evidence the better, however, I would expect a minimum of 10 academic references to be used in this report. You may also find it helpful to read the Lean chapter in the core textbook as a start for this piece of work.