A New State Record for \u3ci\u3eOlixon Banksii\u3c/i\u3e (Hymenoptera: Rhopalosomatidae) in Missouri.

(excerpt) The cosmopolitan family Rhopalosmatidae is comprised of four genera and 37 species (Townes 1977, Goulet and Huber 1993, Fernandez and Sarmiento-M 2002, Lohrmann and Ohl 2007)

The Determinants Of Success In the New Financial Services Environment: Now That Firms Can Do Everything, What Should They Do And Why Should Regulators Care?

The United States government enacted the Banking Act of 1933, commonly known as the Glass-Steagall Act, at least partially in an effort to calm fears stemming from bank failures during the Great Depression. While there has been a recent debate concerning the historic realism of characterizing the banking industry structure as the cause of the financial crisis (Benston, 1990), the perception of bank activities in the financial market as risky (Puri, 1994), and the motivation of the legislators (Benston, 1996), the historical outcome of this legislation is clear. Glass-Steagall placed a heavy regulatory burden on commercial banks by limiting their product array, the prices they could charge, and the types of firms with whom they may affiliate. It short, it restricted the activities in which banks may participate. During the ensuing sixty-five years, this landmark piece of regulation slowly has become both outdated and untenable. Technological innovation, regulatory circumvention, and new delivery mechanisms all have conspired to make the restrictions of the Act increasingly irrelevant. The first force of change, technology, permitted firms to create and recreate products and services in different ways than had been envisioned decades ago. The most obvious example is the transformation of the local mortgage loan market into the global securities giant of today. However, one could equally cite the explosive growth of both derivatives and trading activity as areas where technology has transformed the very core of financial services (Allen and Santomero, 1997). Because of regulation, however, individual financial firms were still limited in the scope of the activities that was permissible. Commercial banks could not offer the full range of security investment services; investment firms could not offer demand deposits; and, insurance firms were limited in offering services beyond their own "appropriate" products as well. Many firms responded by circumventing regulation, either explicitly or implicitly (Kane, 1999, Kaufman, 1996). Some more aggressive members of the fraternity simply acted in a manner not allowed by regulation in hopes of either an innovative interpretation of the law, e.g., NOW accounts, or money funds, or formal regulatory relief, e.g., Citigroup. The results were, almost always, regulatory accommodation or capitulation. These decisions, at times, made economic sense, e.g., the decisions on private placement activity, or advisory services, but at other times they stretched the credibility of the rules, if not the English language, e.g., non-bank banks, the facilitation of commercial paper placement, and mutual funds distribution. Yet, through this mechanism of regulatory evolution the industry progressed. Banks were granted greater latitude in product mix, as well as permitted to form holding companies that expanded their operations further. At the same time, competition increased as the rules permitted new entrants who flourished in focused areas, e.g., GE Capital. Today, a myriad of financial services firms, operating under different regulatory charters are competing in the broad financial marketplace. The final force of change is the continual evolution of the delivery channels through which financial services are offered. This has occurred in many ways and in several stages. First, the use of postal services substituted for physical market presence; this was followed by increased use of telephones for both customer service and outbound marketing; and now, personal computers and the web have altered the very balance of the financial industry. Throughout this period the application of technology has disrupted the industry's delivery paradigms and the traditional channels of service distribution. The combined use of new technology, conduits of distribution, and financial innovation have broadened the product offerings of all firms beyond their historic core business. Nonetheless, by law, financial service firms of specific types continued to be expressly limited in their activities. Finally, the Financial Modernization Act of 1999 (FMA), introduced on January 6, 1999 in the House of Representatives as H.R.10, has become law under the name the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The bill's stated purpose was "[t]o enhance competition in the financial services industry by providing a prudential framework for the affiliation of banks, securities firms, and other financial service providers, and for other purposes." The potential ramifications of FMA have been, and surely will be, continuously analyzed as the details of the enabling regulation emerge and the industry responds to its new perspective on firm structure and allowable activity (ABA,1999, Stein and Perrino, 2000). Yet, the proponents of the FMA have already heralded its passage and argued that the legislation will result in more competitive, stable, and efficient financial firms, and a better overall capital market (Greenspan, 1997). Detractors, and there have been some, claim the new law will result in unfair business practices and less stable capital markets (Berger and Udell, 1996). In this contribution to the debate we attempt to consolidate many of the arguments for and against the financial conglomeration that will inevitably follow the passage of the new law. We offer our view of the effects of this new competitive landscape on affected financial firms, as well as the behavior of the capital market itself. Our focus is on the impact of the changing nature of both the market infrastructure and the regulatory regime on the behavior and likely span of activity conducted by large financial firms. In the words of our title: now that firms can do everything, what should they do, and why should regulators care?

The determinants of success in the new financial services environment: now that firms can do everything, what should they do and why should regulators care?

Financial services industry ; Financial services industry - Europe ; Bank supervision ; Business forecasting

Measuring Beliefs Supportive of Environmental Action and Inaction: A Reinterpretation of the Awareness of Consequences Scale

The Value-Belief-Norm model assumes that egoistic, social-altruistic and biospheric value orientations causally influence how people cognitively structure beliefs regarding adverse environmental consequences. Empirical studies have administered the Awareness of Consequences (AC) scale to differentiate between these three orientations. We report an analysis which challenges previous work in the field. Evidence is presented that indicates the AC scale should be reinterpreted as a measure of beliefs supporting environmental action and beliefs supporting environmental inaction. The beliefs supporting environmental action appear to be differentiable according to beliefs in the positive consequences from environmental protection and the seriousness of environment harm. This has major implications for the Value-Belief-Norm model and its application.Environmental attitudes; awareness of consequences scale; environmental beliefs; value orientations; environmental scales; egoistic; altruistic; biospheric; value-belief-norm model

Recombinant DNA Molecules of Bacteriophage phi X174

phi X174 DNA structures containing two different parental genomes were detected genetically and examined by electron microscopy. These structures consisted of two monomeric double-stranded DNA molecules linked in a figure 8 configuration. Such DNA structures were observed to be formed preferentially in host recA+ cells or recA+ cell-free systems. Since the host recA+ allele is required for most phi X174 recombinant formation, we conclude that the observed figure 8 molecules are intermediates in, or end products of, a phi X174 recombination event. We propose that recombinant figure 8 DNA molecules arise as a result of "single-strand aggression," are stabilized by double-strand "branch migration," and represent a specific example of a common intermediate in genetic recombination

Dynamics of merging: Post-merger mixing and relaxation of an Illustris galaxy

During the merger of two galaxies, the resulting system undergoes violent relaxation and seeks stable equilibrium. However, the details of this evolution are not fully understood. Using Illustris simulation, we probe two physically related processes, mixing and relaxation. Though the two are driven by the same dynamics---global time-varying potential for the energy, and torques caused by asymmetries for angular momentum---we measure them differently. We define mixing as the redistribution of energy and angular momentum between particles of the two merging galaxies. We assess the degree of mixing as the difference between the shapes of their N(E)s, and their N(L^2)s. We find that the difference is decreasing with time, indicating mixing. To measure relaxation, we compare N(E) of the newly merged system to N(E) of a theoretical prediction for relaxed collisionless systems, DARKexp, and witness the system becoming more relaxed, in the sense that N(E) approaches DARKexp N(E). Because the dynamics driving mixing and relaxation are the same, the timescale is similar for both. We measure two sequential timescales: a rapid, 1 Gyr phase after the initial merger, during which the difference in N(E) of the two merging halos decreases by ~80%, followed by a slow phase, when the difference decreases by ~50% over ~8.5 Gyrs. This is a direct measurement of the relaxation timescale. Our work also draws attention to the fact that when a galaxy has reached Jeans equilibrium it may not yet have reached a fully relaxed state given by DARKexp, in that it retains information about its past history. This manifests itself most strongly in stars being centrally concentrated. We argue that it is particularly difficult for stars, and other tightly bound particles, to mix because they have less time to be influenced by the fluctuating potential, even across multiple merger events.Comment: accepted for publication in JCA

Ubiquity of density slope oscillations in the central regions of galaxy and cluster-sized systems

One usually thinks of a radial density profile as having a monotonically changing logarithmic slope, such as in NFW or Einasto profiles. However, in two different classes of commonly used systems, this is often not the case. These classes exhibit non-monotonic changes in their density profile slopes which we call oscillations for short. We analyze these two unrelated classes separately. Class 1 consists of systems that have density oscillations and that are defined through their distribution function $f(E)$, or differential energy distribution $N(E)$, such as isothermal spheres, King profiles, or DARKexp, a theoretically derived model for relaxed collisionless systems. Systems defined through $f(E)$ or $N(E)$ generally have density slope oscillations. Class 1 system oscillations can be found at small, intermediate, or large radii but we focus on a limited set of Class 1 systems that have oscillations in the central regions, usually at $\log(r/r_{-2})\lesssim -2$, where $r_{-2}$ is the largest radius where $d\log(\rho)/d\log(r)=-2$. We show that the shape of their $N(E)$ can roughly predict the amplitude of oscillations. Class 2 systems which are a product of dynamical evolution, consist of observed and simulated galaxies and clusters, and pure dark matter halos. Oscillations in the density profile slope seem pervasive in the central regions of Class 2 systems. We argue that in these systems, slope oscillations are an indication that a system is not fully relaxed. We show that these oscillations can be reproduced by small modifications to $N(E)$ of DARKexp. These affect a small fraction of systems' mass and are confined to $\log(r/r_{-2})\lesssim 0$. The size of these modifications serves as a potential diagnostic for quantifying how far a system is from being relaxed.Comment: accepted by the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP

Exploring adaptation & self-adaptation in autonomic computing systems

This panel paper sets out to discuss what self-adaptation means, and to explore the extent to which current autonomic systems exhibit truly self-adaptive behaviour. Many of the currently cited examples are clearly adaptive, but debate remains as to what extent they are simply following prescribed adaptation rules within preset bounds, and to what extent they have the ability to truly learn new behaviour. Is there a standard test that can be applied to differentiate? Is adaptive behaviour sufficient anyway? Other autonomic computing issues are also discussed

Deletion mutants of bacteriophage phiX174

Mutants of bacteriophage phiX174 have been isolated that are less dense than wild-type phiX particles in CsCl. When mutant viral (+) strand DNA and wild-type complementary (-) strand DNA are hybridized, the resulting duplex molecules have single-stranded loops characteristic of wild-type-deletion heteroduplexes. The mutant bacteriophages fail to complement phiX amber mutants in cistron E. We conclude that the mutant viruses have deleted approximately 7% of the phiX genome in the region of cistron E