Progress Towards an ab initio, Standard Model Calculation of Direct CP-Violation in K-decays

We discuss the RBC & UKQCD collaboration's progress towards a first-principles calculation of direct CP-violation in the Standard Model via K ->pi pi decays. In particular we focus upon the calculation of the I=0 channel amplitude A_0, for which obtaining physical kinematics requires more sophisticated techniques than those used for the I=2-channel decay. We discuss our chosen techniques along with preliminary demonstrations of their application to simpler lattice quantities, and finally discuss our progress in generating the large-volume, physical-pion-mass ensembles that will be used to perform the A_0 calculation.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figures. Presentation at the DPF 2013 Meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Particles and Fields, Santa Cruz, California, August 13-17, 201

Risk management, player welfare and privacy : player development managers and dilemmas for employee relations in Australian football league clubs

This paper reports on one aspect of a research project that was funded by the Australian Football League (AFL) to explore the emergence and evolution of a ‘professional identity’ for AFL footballers. The research was informed by Foucault\u27s later work on the care of the Self to focus on the ways in which player identities are governed by coaches, club officials, and the AFL Commission/Executive; and the manner in which players conduct themselves in ways that can be characterised as professional - or not. The paper explores the roles of Player Development Managers (PDMs) in emerging processes of risk and player management. These roles increasingly involve PDMs in risk management practices and processes that can be seen as intrusive in players’ lives. These risk management processes raise a number of concerns about player privacy and the rights of Clubs to know what their employees are up to away from the workplace

The Importance of Audit Committees in Initial Public Offerings

This paper follows Balvers, McDonald and Miller (1988) and Beatty (1989), who find lower underpricing in initial public offerings (IPOs) when prestigious auditors are used to attest to the IPO's financial statements. Australian IPOs are not obliged to nominate audit firms in the prospectus but often identify that they will have audit committees so as to assist in more appropriate corporate governance. This paper analyses if IPOs identifying the existence of audit committees in the prospectus have a lower underpricing return. While our findings are consistent with previous studies concluding that both the size of the new issue and the use of an underwriter are important ingredients in the level of underpricing return, the inclusion of an audit committee in the prospectuses has actually increased underpricing returns. The capital market may view the audit committee identification with some skepticism.

Sloth: America\u27s Ironic Structural Vice

Individualism is a popular cultural trope in the United States, often touted for its promotion of industriousness and rejection of laziness. This essay argues that, ironically, America\u27s brand of individualism actually promotes a more fundamental form of the very vice it purports to oppose. To make this case, the essay defines the unique form of individualism in the United States and then retrieves the classical definition of sloth as a vice against charity (not diligence), contrasting Aquinas and Barth with Weber to demonstrate that this peculiarly American individualist impulse undermines civic charity by reaping the benefits of civic relationships while denying any concomitant responsibilities. Identifying this narrative of individualism as a structural vice, the essay proposes structural remedies for reinvigorating civic charity, solidarity, and the common good in the United States

Characterizing the Frequency and Seasonal Dependence of the Sea Breeze in Houston, Texas and Its Impact on Surface Ozone

Sea breezes arise from temperature differences between land and an adjacent body of water, forming a thermally direct circulation within the boundary layer. During summer, the resulting circulation carries air offshore during the nighttime and early morning and onshore during the afternoon. Banta et al. [2005] noted the impact of recirculation of pollution on high ozone events in Houston. This study characterizes the frequency of flow reversals that accompany the arrival of sea breeze fronts in Houston and the seasonal dependence of that frequency. Furthermore, we quantitatively analyze the effect of the sea breeze on ozone concentrations in the Houston area

Effects of urbanisation and landscape heterogeneity mediated by feeding guild and body size in a community of coprophilous beetles

Although the impacts of urbanisation on biodiversity are well studied, the precise response of some invertebrate groups remains poorly known. Dung-associated beetles are little studied in an urban context, especially in temperate regions. We considered how landscape heterogeneity, assessed at three spatial scales (250, 500 and 1000 metre radius), mediates the community composition of coprophilous beetles on a broad urban gradient. Beetles were sampled using simple dung-baited traps, placed at 48 sites stratified across three distance bands around a large urban centre in England. The most urban sites hosted the lowest abundance of saprophagous beetles, with a lower mean body length relative to the least urban sites. Predicted overall species richness and the richness of saprophagous species were also lowest at the most urban sites. Ordination analyses followed by variation partitioning revealed that landscape heterogeneity across the urban gradient explained a small but significant proportion of community composition. Heterogeneity data for a 500-metre radius around each site provided the best fit with beetle community data. Larger saprophagous species were associated with lower amounts of manmade surface and improved grassland. Some individual species, particularly predators, appeared to be positively associated with urban or urban fringe sites. This study is probably the first to examine the response of the whole coprophilous beetle community to urbanisation. Our results suggest that the response of this community to urbanisation matches expectations based on other taxonomic groups, whilst emphasising the complex nature of this response, with some smaller-bodied species potentially benefitting from urbanisation

Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Estimating Marginal Willingness to Pay for Differentiated Products Without Instrumental Variables

The hedonic model of Rosen (1974) has become a workhorse for valuing the characteristics of differentiated products despite a number of well-documented econometric problems. For example, Bartik (1987) and Epple (1987) each describe a source of endogeneity in the second stage of Rosen's procedure that has proven difficult to overcome. In this paper, we propose a new approach for recovering the marginal willingness-to-pay function that altogether avoids these endogeneity problems. Applying this estimator to data on large changes in violent crime rates, we find that marginal willingness-to-pay increases by ten cents with each additional violent crime per 100,000 residents.