Introduction to Library Trends 28 (1) Summer 1979: The Economics of Academic Libraries

published or submitted for publicatio

Information Flow in an R and D Laboratory

Statistical analysis of hypotheses concerning roles of technological gatekeeper and primary groups in flow of information in small research and development laborator

Does the Evidence Favor State Competition in Corporate Law?

In the ongoing debate on state competition over corporate charters, supporters of state competition have long claimed that the empirical evidence clearly supports their view. This paper suggests that the body of empirical evidence on which supporters of state competition have relied does not warrant this claim. The paper first demonstrates that reported findings of a positive correlation between incorporation in Delaware and increased shareholder wealth are not robust and, furthermore, do not establish causation. The paper then shows that, even if Delaware incorporation were found to cause an increase in shareholder value, this finding would not imply that state competition is working well; benefits to incorporating in the dominant state would likely exist in a race-toward-the bottom' equilibrium in which state competition provided undesirable incentives. Third, the analysis shows that empirical claims that state competition rewards moderation in the provision of antitakeover protections are not well grounded. Finally, we endorse a new approach to the empirical study of the subject that is based on analyzing the determinants of companies' choices of state of incorporation. Recent work based on this approach indicates that, contrary to the beliefs of state competition supporters, states that amass antitakeover statutes are more successful in the incorporation market.

Feeding Fitness and Quality of Domesticated and Feral Predators: Effects of Long-Term Rearing on Artificial Diet

Predatory geocorids, Geocoris punctipes Say (Geocoridae: Hemiptera), that had been reared (domesticated) for over 6 years (60 continuous generations) on an artificial diet were compared with feral (F1) counterparts to determine possible domestication-associated losses in predatory capabilities. Using adult female predators provided with either tobacco budworm larvae, Heliothis uirescens F., or pea aphids, Acyrthosiphon pisum Harris, as prey, I measured predator weights, handling time with a single prey, amount extracted, consumption rate, and feeding (gut) capacity. Domesticated females were significantly smaller than ferals, weighing 4.53 mg versus 5.09 mg, respectively. Domestication did not significantly influence handling times, which averaged 131 (domesticated) and 122 min (feral) for predators feeding on H. uirescens larvae and 106 (domesticated) and 94 min (feral) for G. punctipes feeding on A. pisum. Although there were significant differences in the weights of the two kinds of prey (H. uirescens larvae being about twice as heavy as the A. pisum), both prey species exceeded the ingestion capacity of the predators. Amounts extracted by predators were 1.12 to 1.20 mg and were not significantly influenced by rearing background, prey biomass, or prey type. Consumption rates of 11.86 and 12.91 µg/min were nearly identical for both domesticated and feral predators regardless of prey species

Content Control: The Motion Picture Association of America's Patrolling of Internet Piracy in America, 1996-2008

This historical and political economic investigation aims to illustrate the ways in which the Motion Picture Association of America radically revised their methods of patrolling and fighting film piracy from 1996-2008. Overall, entertainment companies discovered the World Wide Web to be a powerful distribution outlet for cultural works, but were suspicious that the Internet was a Wild West frontier requiring regulation. The entertainment industry's guiding belief in regulation and strong protection were prompted by convictions that once the copyright industries lose control, companies quickly submerge like floundering ships. Guided by fears regarding film piracy, the MPAA instituted a sophisticated and seemingly impenetrable "trusted system" to secure its cultural products online by crafting relationships and interlinking the technological, legal, institutional, and rhetorical in order to carefully direct consumer activity according to particular agendas. The system created a scenario in which legislators and courts of law consented to play a supportive role with privately organized arrangements professing to serve the public interest, but the arrangements were not designed for those ends. Additionally, as cultural products became digitized consumers experienced a paradigm shift that challenged the concept of property altogether. In the digital world the Internet gives a consumer access to, rather than ownership of, cultural products in cyberspace. The technology granting consumers, on impulse, access to enormous amounts of music and films has been called, among many things, the "celestial jukebox." Regardless of what the technology is called, behind the eloquent veneer is the case in point of a systematic corrosion of consumer rights that, in the end, results in an unfair exchange between the content producers and consumers. What is the relationship of the MPAA to current piracy practices in America? How will Hollywood's enormous economic investment in content control affect future film distribution, exhibition, and consumer reception? Through historical analysis regarding the MPAA's campaign against film piracy along with interviews from key media industry personnel and the pirate underground, this contemporary illustration depicts how the MPAA secures its content for Internet distribution, and defines and criticizes the legal and technological controls that collide with consumer freedoms

Urethral Defect in Setting of Recurrent Urethral Foreign Body Insertion.

We present a case of recurrent episodes of foreign body insertion into the urethra, ultimately resulting in urethral defect at the penoscrotal junction. We have decided against treating the urethral defect as it facilitates nonoperative retrieval of the urethral foreign bodies. We present our experience and rationale for the clinical management of this complex patient

Adiabatic Elimination in a Lambda System

This paper deals with different ways to extract the effective two-dimensional lower level dynamics of a lambda system excited by off-resonant laser beams. We present a commonly used procedure for elimination of the upper level, and we show that it may lead to ambiguous results. To overcome this problem and better understand the applicability conditions of this scheme, we review two rigorous methods which allow us both to derive an unambiguous effective two-level Hamiltonian of the system and to quantify the accuracy of the approximation achieved: the first one relies on the exact solution of the Schrodinger equation, while the second one resorts to the Green's function formalism and the Feshbach projection operator technique.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure

Metals with Small Electron Mean-Free Path: Saturation versus Escalation of Resistivity

Resistivity of metals is commonly observed either to 'escalate' beyond the Ioffe-Regel limit (mean free path l equal to lattice constant a) or to 'saturate' at this point. It is argued that neither behavior is well-understood, and that 'escalation' is not necessarily more mysterious than 'saturation.'Comment: 3 pages with 3 embedded figures. This article is intended for the Zacchary Fisk festschrift, which will be published in Physica

Echo spectroscopy and Atom Optics Billiards

We discuss a recently demonstrated type of microwave spectroscopy of trapped ultra-cold atoms known as "echo spectroscopy" [M.F. Andersen et. al., Phys. Rev. Lett., in press (2002)]. Echo spectroscopy can serve as an extremely sensitive experimental tool for investigating quantum dynamics of trapped atoms even when a large number of states are thermally populated. We show numerical results for the stability of eigenstates of an atom-optics billiard of the Bunimovich type, and discuss its behavior under different types of perturbations. Finally, we propose to use special geometrical constructions to make a dephasing free dipole trap

Analytic solutions for a three-level system in a time-dependent field

This paper generalizes some known solitary solutions of a time-dependent Hamiltonian in two ways: The time-dependent field can be an elliptic function, and the time evolution is obtained for a complete set of basis vectors. The latter makes it feasible to consider arbitrary initial conditions. The former makes it possible to observe a beating caused by the non-linearity of the driving field.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure