Financial Literacy and Women: Overcoming the Barriers

Women are facing increasing financial responsibility, while at the same time, the consumer financial world is evolving at an extraordinary pace. These trends make a imperative that we better understand the evolving nature of gender-based inequities across our current socio-economic systems and intentionally examine those areas that are most essential in accelerating the narrowing of these gaps. The results of the study indicate that the assumption can on longer be made that women simply need better financial knowledge in order to reach a certain level of financial behavior, without increased access to capital. This study shows that the re-examination of a key component of financial literacy is necessary: the idea that financial knowledge leads to responsible financial behavior, and that responsible financial behavior is a result of financial knowledge. This finding may indicate that women have different dispositions regarding how they use the financial resources, knowledge, and skills that they have acquired

Book Review: Race, Class & Conservatism. by Thomas D. Boston.

Book review: Race, Class & Conservatism. By Thomas D. Boston. Boston: Unwin Hyman. 1988. Pp. xix, 172. Reviewed by: William A. Donohue

For Charity or Profit? A Case Study of The Friends of Ferguson Library\u27s Used Bookshop Program

This paper hopes to contribute to inter-disciplinary literature by mapping out the ability of one community library\u27s used bookshop volunteers to resolve a potential conflict, that of working in a Used Bookshop Program that both gives away books to institutional recipients deemed as eligible, with its overarching purpose: to maximize profitability on behalf of the library, for serving its programming to the urban City of Stamford, located in Stamford, Connecticut. The study encompasses visual sociological methods, and discusses multi-faceted concepts of community-building from a variety of social science perspectives, but mainly based in sociolog

Coralline algal Mg-O bond strength as a marine <i>p</i>CO₂ proxy

Past ocean acidification recorded in the geological record facilitates the understanding of rates and influences of contemporary &lt;i&gt;p&lt;/i&gt;CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; enrichment. Most pH reconstructions are made using boron, however there is some uncertainty associated with vital effects and isotopic fractionation. Here we present a new structural proxy for carbonate chemistry; Mg-O bond strength in coralline algae. Coralline algae were incubated in control (380 μatm &lt;i&gt;p&lt;/i&gt;CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;), moderate (750 μatm&lt;i&gt;p&lt;/i&gt;CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;), and high (1000 μatm &lt;i&gt;p&lt;/i&gt;CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;) acidification conditions for 24 months. Raman spectroscopy was used to determine skeletal Mg-O bond strength. There was a positive linear relationship between &lt;i&gt;p&lt;/i&gt;CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; concentration and bond strength mediated by positional disorder in the calcite lattice when accounting for seasonal temperature. The structural preservation of the carbonate chemistry system in coralline algal high-Mg calcite represents an alternative approach to reconstructing marine carbonate chemistry. Significantly, it also provides an important mechanism for reconstructing historic atmospheric CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; concentrations

Regression of ranked responses when raw responses are censored

We discuss semiparametric regression when only the ranks of responses are observed. The model is $Y_i = F (\mathbf{x}_i'{\boldsymbol\beta}_0 + \varepsilon_i)$, where $Y_i$ is the unobserved response, $F$ is a monotone increasing function, $\mathbf{x}_i$ is a known $p-$vector of covariates, ${\boldsymbol\beta}_0$ is an unknown $p$-vector of interest, and $\varepsilon_i$ is an error term independent of $\mathbf{x}_i$. We observe $\{(\mathbf{x}_i,R_n(Y_i)) : i = 1,\ldots ,n\}$, where $R_n$ is the ordinal rank function. We explore a novel estimator under Gaussian assumptions. We discuss the literature, apply the method to an Alzheimer's disease biomarker, conduct simulation studies, and prove consistency and asymptotic normality.Comment: 33 pages, 6 figure

Model results of flow instabilities in the tropical Pacific Ocean

A two‐and‐a‐half‐layer model of the tropical Pacific Ocean is used to investigate the energy source for the intraseasonal dynamic‐height variability observed near 6°N. A simulation of equatorial circulation is produced by forcing the model with mean‐monthly wind‐stress climatology. Two westward‐propagating waves appear in the upper layer in the central and eastern portion of the model basin. These two waves are distinguished by period and meridional structure. An off‐equatorial wave with period of 30 days and wavelength of 1100 km has a meridional sea‐level maximum near 6°N similar to that of the 30–50 day intraseasonal wave observed in the ocean. The meridional velocity signal also is asymmetric with respect to the equator, with maximum near 4°N. The second wave with period of 15 days has a strong meridional velocity signal centered on the equator. The sea‐level and zonal velocity signals associated with this equatorial wave have maxima near 1.5°N and 1.5°S. The eddy‐energy budget reveals strong conversions from the mean‐flow to eddy field through baroclinic and upper‐layer barotropic conversion terms. Conversion terms north of the equator exhibit a bimodal structure: one maximum between the equator and 3°N is dominated by upper‐layer barotropic conversion spatially coincident with the cyclonic shear along the equatorward edge of the South Equatorial Current (SEC), and a second smaller maximum between 3°N and 5°N is a combination of upper‐layer barotropic conversion along the poleward edge of the SEC (anticyclonic shear) and baroclinic conversion near the core of the SEC. The two peaks in the conversion terms, combined with similar structure in the flux‐divergence terms in the model eddy‐energy budget, provide evidence that two wave processes are generated at the different source regions: one near the equator and a second between 2°N and 5°N

Transverse momentum dependence of the angular distribution of the Drell-Yan process

We calculate the transverse momentum Q_{\perp} dependence of the helicity structure functions for the hadroproduction of a massive pair of leptons with pair invariant mass Q. These structure functions determine the angular distribution of the leptons in the pair rest frame. Unphysical behavior in the region Q_{\perp} --> 0 is seen in the results of calculations done at fixed-order in QCD perturbation theory. We use current conservation to demonstrate that the unphysical inverse-power and \ln(Q/Q_{\perp}) logarithmic divergences in three of the four independent helicity structure functions share the same origin as the divergent terms in fixed-order calculations of the angular-integrated cross section. We show that the resummation of these divergences to all orders in the strong coupling strength \alpha_s can be reduced to the solved problem of the resummation of the divergences in the angular-integrated cross section, resulting in well-behaved predictions in the small Q_{\perp} region. Among other results, we show the resummed part of the helicity structure functions preserves the Lam-Tung relation between the longitudinal and double spin-flip structure functions as a function of Q_{\perp} to all orders in \alpha_s.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures; typos corrected, references updated, a few clarifications recommended by the referee. Paper accepted for publication in Physical Review

Absolute geostrophic velocity within the Subantarctic Front in the Pacific Ocean

Velocity measurements from a shipboard acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) are used as a reference for geostrophic current calculations on six sections across the Subantarctic Front (SAF) in the Pacific Ocean. The resulting cross‐track velocity estimates near the bottom range from 4 to 10 cm s−1 to the east in the eastward jet at the SAF; in adjacent regions of westward surface flow, the near‐bottom velocity is usually to the west. On one section where simultaneous lowered ADCP velocity profiles are available, they confirm the results from the shipboard ADCP. Annual mean velocity sections from the Parallel Ocean Program numerical model also show near‐bottom velocities exceeding 5 cm s−1, with the same tendency for the zonal velocity component near the bottom to match the direction of the surface jets. Transport across the entire Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) cannot be estimated accurately from ADCP‐referenced geostrophic sections because even a very small cross‐track bias integrates to a large error. A preliminary look at the 1992 model transport stream function shows that the effect of bottom‐referencing varies from section to section; it can cause 40‐Sv recirculations to be missed, and can cause net transport to be underestimated or overestimated by O (30 Sv)

Axial anomaly and magnetism of nuclear and quark matter

We consider the response of the QCD ground state at finite baryon density to a strong magnetic field B. We point out the dominant role played by the coupling of neutral Goldstone bosons, such as pi^0, to the magnetic field via the axial triangle anomaly. We show that, in vacuum, above a value of B ~ m_pi^2/e, a metastable object appears - the pi^0 domain wall. Because of the axial anomaly, the wall carries a baryon number surface density proportional to B. As a result, for B ~ 10^{19} G a stack of parallel pi^0 domain walls is energetically more favorable than nuclear matter at the same density. Similarly, at higher densities, somewhat weaker magnetic fields of order B ~ 10^{17}-10^{18} G transform the color-superconducting ground state of QCD into new phases containing stacks of axial isoscalar (eta or eta') domain walls. We also show that a quark-matter state known as ``Goldstone current state,'' in which a gradient of a Goldstone field is spontaneously generated, is ferromagnetic due to the axial anomaly. We estimate the size of the fields created by such a state in a typical neutron star to be of order 10^{14}-10^{15} G.Comment: 18 pages, v2: added a discussion of the energy cost of neutralizing the domain wall charg