Shanthi Nataraj

The Qatar Foundation is establishing a national research institute to conduct and collaborate on applied research in energy, environment, and water issues, the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute. This book recommends research priorities for the new institution and reports on a survey of relevant research institutions in the region.

Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City is a planned environmentally and technologically advanced city in China's Guangzhou Development District that will host innovative industries and their workers. This report serves as an outline for a set of strategies for Knowledge City and is intended to help the developers create conditions that are conducive to innovation and the commercialization of new technologies.

To help the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia develop its private sector and generate quality employment for Saudi citizens, the authors of this report assess the potential for Saudi Arabia to develop a specific industry -- food manufacturing -- as a means of increasing the demand for Saudi labor.

U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) have been deployed intensively in recent years, and this is expected to continue. SOF membership is highly selective, and members receive lengthy and costly training, making retention of those who qualify a high priority. This report focuses on the effectiveness of monetary incentives for SOF commissioned officer retention and the development of a models to assess how such incentives affect retention.

Over 5 million Syrian refugees entered Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon due to the civil war. This report examines the labor market for refugees in these countries. In Turkey, a barrier was speaking Turkish; in Jordan and Lebanon, the refugees' arrival exacerbated existing economic slowdowns. Working legally was a challenge for all. Recommendations are tailored to each country in order to improve the socioeconomic environment for all.

This report examines what the career of a "typical" Army civilian looks like. Using a statistical clustering technique to group career trajectories together by length of service, promotion frequency and timing, and transfers between the Army and other Department of Defense components, the researchers identified common career patterns among individuals who entered the Army civilian workforce between 1981 and 2000 as General Schedule employees.

This analysis modeled the Army's ability to increase ("regenerate") its active component (AC) end strength over a five-year period in two scenarios--starting from a Total Army of 980,000 (450,000 AC) and starting from a Total Army of 920,000 (420,000 AC)--so that the Army could provide the number of deployable troops available at the end of the last conflict in 2010.

Officer special and incentive (S&I) pays are used to create incentives for officer retention to meet manning requirements. This report describes a methodology, based on RAND's dynamic retention model, for assessing how alternative S&I pay adjustments affect the retention of mental health care officers.

This report presents estimates of the gross regional product (GRP) of the Kurdistan Region Iraq in 2012 (excluding natural resources, because of lack of available data). It also describes efforts to set up a system for continuing data collection and analysis to support the annual calculation of the GRP, a critical indicator for successful policy planning."

The DoD is planning to scale back its civilian workforce in the next few years. To help the Army participate in this reduction, the authors examined how the Army might manage supply to meet changes in demand for civilians, and projected where cuts and growth are likely to occur. For projected requirements based on the FY 2014 President s Budget, nominal costs will remain stable, with expected civilian pay raises offsetting workforce reductions."

This report assesses the evidence that exists for the ways in which local air quality could influence local economic growth through health and workforce issues, quality-of-life issues, or air-quality regulations and business operations. It then extrapolates some of the existing results to the Pittsburgh region.