24,244 research outputs found
[Book Review of] \u3cem\u3eTwo Comments on: Medicine and Christian Morality\u3c/em\u3e, by Thomas J. O \u27Donnell, S.J.
Why Water Markets Are Not Quick Fixes for Droughts in the Western United States
Water in the western United States can be bought and sold, but the transactions will always be complicated. Transfers of water will always be expensive and time consuming because of the hydrologic and institutional interconnections inherent to water. Our data show that most of the water rights in the West are messy. Therefore, markets cannot be quick fixes, and using markets for future water allocation, even if it is economically efficient, will take time and resources to set up. Untangling serial uses and negotiating multiple ownership claims are hurdles, not barriers, and they can be overcome in time but will require both time and money. Buying existing water rights may be less costly than building infrastructure to transport available water from long distances or desalinating seawater, but the transactions will come at a price. Municipalities may purchase water from farmers and thus bear the transaction costs directly, or the private sector may purchase agricultural water (e.g., Two Rivers Water and Farming, Colorado (Landry 2012)), bear the associated risk and transaction costs, and sell it on to municipalities. In either case, the end users will inevitably pay higher prices for water. Markets can and will be part of western U.S. water allocation, but they do not provide quick solutions. Droughts can focus public attention on the value of water and potentially increase the willingness-to-pay prices that reflect the transaction costs of tangled western water markets
Quantum Uncertainty Considerations for Gravitational Lens Interferometry
The measurement of the gravitational lens delay time between light paths has
relied, to date, on the source having sufficient variability to allow
photometric variations from each path to be compared. However, the delay times
of many gravitational lenses cannot be measured because the intrinsic source
amplitude variations are too small to be detectable. At the fundamental quantum
mechanical level, such photometric time stamps allow which-path knowledge,
removing the ability to obtain an interference pattern. However, if the two
paths can be made equal (zero time delay) then interference can occur. We
describe an interferometric approach to measuring gravitational lens delay
times using a quantum-eraser/restorer approach, whereby the time travel along
the two paths may be rendered measurably equal. Energy and time being
non-commuting observables, constraints on the photon energy in the energy-time
uncertainty principle, via adjustments of the width of the radio bandpass,
dictate the uncertainty of the time delay and therefore whether the path taken
along one or the other gravitational lens geodesic is knowable. If one starts
with interference, for example, which-path information returns when the
bandpass is broadened (constraints on the energy are relaxed) to the point
where the uncertainty principle allows a knowledge of the arrival time to
better than the gravitational lens delay time itself, at which point the
interference will disappear. We discuss the near-term feasibility of such
measurements in light of current narrow-band radio detectors and known short
time-delay gravitational lenses.Comment: 22 page
Managing global expansion of media products and brands: A case study of FHM
By focusing on the case study of For Him Magazine (FHM)—a magazine that currently sells in 30 editions across 5 continents—this article explores the economics and main managerial challenges associated with global expansion of media products. The success of FHM demonstrates that, to calculate the full returns available from the brand image created by a magazine title, publishers will take into account not only opportunities for domestic and international exploitation of the magazine, but also the potential to extend the brand across additional media platforms and additional complementary product markets. This study focuses on how global expansion of FHM has been managed
When is electromagnetic spectrum fungible?
Fungibility is a common assumption for market-based spectrum management. In this paper, we explore the dimensions of practical fungibility of frequency bands from the point of view of the spectrum buyer who intends to use it. The exploration shows that fungibility is a complex, multidimensional concept that cannot casually be assumed. We develop two ideas for quantifying fungibility-(i) of a fungibility space in which the 'distance' between two slices of spectrum provides score of fungibility and (ii) a probabilistic score of fungibility. © 2012 IEEE
Discrete analogue computing with rotor-routers
Rotor-routing is a procedure for routing tokens through a network that can
implement certain kinds of computation. These computations are inherently
asynchronous (the order in which tokens are routed makes no difference) and
distributed (information is spread throughout the system). It is also possible
to efficiently check that a computation has been carried out correctly in less
time than the computation itself required, provided one has a certificate that
can itself be computed by the rotor-router network. Rotor-router networks can
be viewed as both discrete analogues of continuous linear systems and
deterministic analogues of stochastic processes.Comment: To appear in Chaos Special Focus Issue on Intrinsic and Designed
Computatio
New ways of being public: the experience of foundation degrees
This article explores the recent development of new spheres of public engagement within UK higher education through an analysis of the foundation degree qualification. These, according to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), were designed to equip students with the combination of technical skills, academic knowledge, and transferable skills increasingly being demanded by employers, and they have been identified as being at the forefront of educational agendas aimed at increasing employer engagement in the higher education (HE) sector. As such, they might be regarded as an expression of the 'increasing privatisation' of HE. However, this article argues that, on the contrary, they have enabled the development of new areas of public engagement relating to the design and delivery of courses as well as providing new opportunities for the pursuit of public policy goals such as widening participation. Such outcomes, it is argued, are the result of a number of factors that explain the 'publicness' of the qualification and that should be sustained to ensure the implementation of the 2006 Leitch Report in a manner that further develops public engagement
The great war and Tommy Atkins
What Tommy Took to War tells sobering, fascinating stories that bring the ordinary British soldier's experiences back to life with poignant immediac
Coherent-feedback quantum control with a dynamic compensator
I present an experimental realization of a coherent-feedback control system
that was recently proposed for testing basic principles of linear quantum
stochastic control theory [M. R. James, H. I. Nurdin and I. R. Petersen, to
appear in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (2008),
arXiv:quant-ph/0703150v2]. For a dynamical plant consisting of an optical
ring-resonator, I demonstrate ~ 7 dB broadband disturbance rejection of
injected laser signals via all-optical feedback with a tailored dynamic
compensator. Comparison of the results with a transfer function model pinpoints
critical parameters that determine the coherent-feedback control system's
performance.Comment: 4 pages, 4 EPS figure
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