What's under the TARP?

The Financial Stability Plan, initiated under the belief that "[t]here is more risk and greater cost in gradualism than in aggressive action," has several features.Troubled Asset Relief Program

The Fed's response to the credit crunch

The Federal Reserve Board has used Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act to create several new lending facilities to address the ongoing strains in the credit market.Financial crises ; Credit

Shaping interactions between polar molecules with far-off-resonant light

We show that dressing polar molecules with a far-off-resonant optical field leads to new types of intermolecular potentials, which undergo a crossover from the inverse-power to oscillating behavior depending on the intermolecular distance, and whose parameters can be tuned by varying the laser intensity and wavelength. We present analytic expressions for the potential energy surfaces, thereby providing direct access to the parameters of an optical field required to design intermolecular interactions experimentally.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

The Health Consequences of Senior Hunger in the United States: Evidence from the 1999-2010 NHANES

Millions of seniors are food insecure in the United States, meaning that scores do not have access to enough food at all times for an active, healthy life. What makes food insecurity an even more pressing issue is its association with a wide array of negative nutrition and health consequences. In earlier reports on food insecurity among seniors it was documented that food insecure seniors, even after controlling for other factors, were at higher risk of experiencing negative nutrition and health consequences than food secure seniors. In this report, we build on those earlier findings in three main directions. Namely, we add in several new health outcomes; we use four more years of data ; and we examine how trends in health and nutrition outcomes among food secure and food insecure seniors have changed over the past decade. Using data from the 1999-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), we considered the following outcomes related to nutrient intakes: energy intake, protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, thiamin, riboflavin, vitamin B6, calcium, phosphorous, magnesium, and iron. The set of health outcomes we analyzed were diabetes, general health , depression, diabetes, ADL limitations, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, congestive heart failure, coronary heart disease, cancer, reports of chest pain, gum disease, psoriasis, asthma, having had a heart attack, and a self-report of gum health

Buying Time 2000: Television Advertising in the 2000 Federal Elections

Summarizes a study of political television advertising in the 2000 federal primaries and elections with a focus on the use of the issue ad loophole to evade campaign finance laws. Questions the standard used to differentiate issue ads from election ads

The shape of hyperbolic Dehn surgery space

In this paper we develop a new theory of infinitesimal harmonic deformations for compact hyperbolic 3-manifolds with ``tubular boundary''. In particular, this applies to complements of tubes of radius at least R_0 = \arctanh(1/\sqrt{3}) \approx 0.65848 around the singular set of hyperbolic cone manifolds, removing the previous restrictions on cone angles. We then apply this to obtain a new quantitative version of Thurston's hyperbolic Dehn surgery theorem, showing that all generalized Dehn surgery coefficients outside a disc of ``uniform'' size yield hyperbolic structures. Here the size of a surgery coefficient is measured using the Euclidean metric on a horospherical cross section to a cusp in the complete hyperbolic metric, rescaled to have area 1. We also obtain good estimates on the change in geometry (e.g. volumes and core geodesic lengths) during hyperbolic Dehn filling. This new harmonic deformation theory has also been used by Bromberg and his coworkers in their proofs of the Bers Density Conjecture for Kleinian groups.Comment: 46 pages, 3 figure

Development of an automated aircraft subsystem architecture generation and analysis tool

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a new computational framework to address future preliminary design needs for aircraft subsystems. The ability to investigate multiple candidate technologies forming subsystem architectures is enabled with the provision of automated architecture generation, analysis and optimization. Main focus lies with a demonstration of the frameworks workings, as well as the optimizers performance with a typical form of application problem. Design/methodology/approach – The core aspects involve a functional decomposition, coupled with a synergistic mission performance analysis on the aircraft, architecture and component levels. This may be followed by a complete enumeration of architectures, combined with a user defined technology filtering and concept ranking procedure. In addition, a hybrid heuristic optimizer, based on ant systems optimization and a genetic algorithm, is employed to produce optimal architectures in both component composition and design parameters. The optimizer is tested on a generic architecture design problem combined with modified Griewank and parabolic functions for the continuous space. Findings – Insights from the generalized application problem show consistent rediscovery of the optimal architectures with the optimizer, as compared to a full problem enumeration. In addition multi-objective optimization reveals a Pareto front with differences in component composition as well as continuous parameters. Research limitations/implications – This paper demonstrates the frameworks application on a generalized test problem only. Further publication will consider real engineering design problems. Originality/value – The paper addresses the need for future conceptual design methods of complex systems to consider a mixed concept space of both discrete and continuous nature via automated methods