832 research outputs found
Toward Reasonable Regulation of Debit Card Interchange Fees: The Case for Modifying the Federal Reserve Board’s December 16, 2010 Proposals
This paper shows why the Federal Reserve Board’s proposed alternatives for regulating interchange fees are not “reasonable” and therefore in direct violation of the statutory mandate that these rules be “reasonable” and “proportional” to the costs incurred by debit card issuers. The Board’s December 16, 2010 proposal is not “reasonable” because it would lead to a series of “unreasonable” outcomes, which, in significant part, flow from the predictable responses issuers of debit cards would take in response to the proposal. Policy makers cannot reasonably assume that banks in competitive markets will sit idly by while being forced to reduce their current market-determined debit card interchange fees, which comprise much of their debit-card revenues and a material portion of bank profits, by anywhere from 73 to 84 percent. To the contrary, banks will attempt to make up as much of the lost revenue as they can by some combination of higher fees on checking accounts, fees or reductions of benefits for debit card use, or more refusals by issuers to permit consumers to conduct higher-cost types of transactions that impose greater fraud risk. We argue that the Board should find that, in the absence of empirical evidence evaluated using the analytical framework governing two-sided markets proving otherwise, market-set interchange fees are reasonable and proportional to cost. Any other decision would lead to the unreasonable outcomes.
Exploring the notion of emotional attachment in Orford\u27s model of addiction : Review, and a step towards operationalising Orford\u27s concept of strong attachment in addiction : A qualitative study
Orford\u27s (2001) notion that a strong emotional attachment to an object (drug) or activity (gambling) is a central component of addiction has received little empirical attention. The published research on attachment to inanimate objects was reviewed and led to the following conclusions. First, attachment theory has been validly applied to people\u27s relationships with inanimate objects. Second, researchers have developed technologies (e.g., psychological measures, operational definitions) to enable empirical research in this area. Third, this research is in its early phases, but has produced reliable standardised measures of people\u27s emotional attachment to brands. Further research is needed to operationalise Orford\u27s (2001) concept of strong attachment to a drug or addictive activity, although the progress on brand attachment and place attachment provides researchers with a framework for undertaking such research. Within Orford\u27s (200 1) model of addiction, a person\u27s emotional attachment to a substance (drug) or activity (e.g., gambling) is considered a central aspect of developing an addiction to that substance or activity. The aim of this study was to determine how emotional attachment to a substance manifests behaviourally, cognitively, and emotionally so that an operational definition of emotional attachment can be constructed. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews and analysed using Creswell\u27s (2003) thematic content analysis. The 23 cognitive and emotional themes that were detected appear to be central to defining attachment to a substance, whereas the 16 behavioural manifestations are difficult to distinguish from standard indicators of dependence. Consequently, a measure of attachment to a substance should focus on the emotional and cognitive aspects in order that it not be confounded with measures of dependence
Changes in the frequency distribution of energy deposited in short pathlengths as a function of energy degradation of the primary beam
Frequency distributions of event size in deposition of energy over small pathlengths measured after penetration of 44.3 MeV protons through thicknesses of tissue-like materia
A STRINGENT CONSTRAINT ON ALTERNATIVES TO A MASSIVE BLACK HOLE AT THE CENTER OF NGC 4258
There is now dynamical evidence for massive dark objects at the center of
several galaxies, but suggestions that these are supermassive black holes are
based only on indirect astrophysical arguments. The recent unprecedented
measurement of the rotation curve of maser emission sources at the center of
NGC 4258, and the remarkable discovery that it is Keplerian to high precision,
provides us a unique opportunity for testing alternatives to a BH (e.g., a
massive cluster of stellar remnants, brown dwarfs, low-mass stars, or halo dark
matter).
We use a conservative upper limit on the systematic deviation from a
Keplerian rotation curve to constrain the mass distribution at the galaxy
center. Based on evaporation and physical collision time-scale arguments, we
show that a central cluster is ruled out, *unless* the cluster consists of
*extremely* dense objects with mass less than about 0.05 solar masses (e.g.,
low mass BHs or elementary particles). Since both of these dynamically-allowed
systems are very improbable for other astrophysical reasons, we conclude that a
central dense cluster at the center of NGC 4258 is *very* improbable, thus
leaving the alternative possibility of a massive BH. We also show that the mass
of the BH must be at least 98% of the mass enclosed within the inner edge of
the masering disk (3.6*10^7 solar masses). A substantial contribution to that
mass from a density cusp in the background mass distribution is excluded.Comment: Submitted to ApJ (Letters) on March 15, 1995. 11 pages including 1
figure; uuencoded, compressed postscript
Teaching and understanding of quantum interpretations in modern physics courses
Just as expert physicists vary in their personal stances on interpretation in
quantum mechanics, instructors vary on whether and how to teach interpretations
of quantum phenomena in introductory modern physics courses. In this paper, we
document variations in instructional approaches with respect to interpretation
in two similar modern physics courses recently taught at the University of
Colorado, and examine associated impacts on student perspectives regarding
quantum physics. We find students are more likely to prefer realist
interpretations of quantum-mechanical systems when instructors are less
explicit in addressing student ontologies. We also observe contextual
variations in student beliefs about quantum systems, indicating that
instructors who choose to address questions of ontology in quantum mechanics
should do so explicitly across a range of topics.Comment: 18 pages, references, plus 2 pages supplemental materials. 8 figures.
PACS: 01.40.Fk, 03.65.-
Development of quantum perspectives in modern physics
Introductory undergraduate courses in classical physics stress a perspective
that can be characterized as realist; from this perspective, all physical
properties of a classical system can be simultaneously specified and thus
determined at all future times. Such a perspective can be problematic for
introductory quantum physics students, who must develop new perspectives in
order to properly interpret what it means to have knowledge of quantum systems.
We document this evolution in student thinking in part through pre- and
post-instruction evaluations using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about
Science Survey. We further characterize variations in student epistemic and
ontological commitments by examining responses to two essay questions, coupled
with responses to supplemental quantum attitude statements. We find that, after
instruction in modern physics, many students are still exhibiting a realist
perspective in contexts where a quantum-mechanical perspective is needed. We
further find that this effect can be significantly influenced by instruction,
where we observe variations for courses with differing learning goals. We also
note that students generally do not employ either a realist or a quantum
perspective in a consistent manner.Comment: 18 pages, plus references; 3 figures; 9 tables. PACS: 01.40.Fk,
03.65._
The Role of Water in a Dairy Cow\u27s Ration
In connection with the investigations by this department on \u27\u27The Effect of Alkali Water on Dairy Cows and Dairy Products\u27\u27 it became evident that the information on the functions of water in the ration of a dairy cow was meager. Furthermore, during this work some clews were obtained which the investigators desired to carry to a conclusion. . . . It is the object of the investigation reported in this bulletin to study the effects of watering the cow at different intervals and in varying amounts upon the amount of food consumed, digestibility of nutrients, amount and composition of feces and urine, amount and composition of milk, composition and quality of butterfat, body temperature and physical condition of cows. Incidentally, the bulletin furnishes some data on the mineral metabolism of the cow
Comparing monitoring data collected by volunteers and professionals shows that citizen scientists can detect long-term change on coral reefs
Citizen science is increasing and can complement the work of professional scientists, but the value of citizen data is often untested. We therefore compared the long-term changes to coral reefs that were detected by a professional and volunteer monitoring program, operated by University of Rhode Island (URI) staff and Reef Check volunteers, respectively. Both groups monitored reefs in the British Virgin Islands from 1997 to 2012 but mostly monitored different sites (URI 8 sites and Reef Check 4 sites). When URI staff visited the Reef Check sites to perform a side-by-side to comparison, Reef Check fish density estimates were consistently higher than those made by URI observers but benthic indicators showed better agreement. When long-term trends were compared, the two programs detected qualitatively similar trends in the % cover of live coral and coral rubble, but temporal changes in the cover of other benthic indicators were less consistent. The URI program detected a widespread increase in parrotfish densities and a decline in snappers, whereas the Reef Check surveys detected no consistent changes in any fish density indicators. Overall, site-specific temporal trends revealed by the URI program were more often statistically significant than those from Reef Check (twice as often for benthic taxa, and five times as often for fish taxa), which implies greater precision of the scientists’ counts. Nonetheless, volunteers were able to detect important changes in benthic communities and so have a valuable role to play in assessing change on coral reefs
The Volume of some Non-spherical Horizons and the AdS/CFT Correspondence
We calculate the volumes of a large class of Einstein manifolds, namely
Sasaki-Einstein manifolds which are the bases of Ricci-flat affine cones
described by polynomial embedding relations in C^n. These volumes are important
because they allow us to extend and test the AdS/CFT correspondence. We use
these volumes to extend the central charge calculation of Gubser (1998) to the
generalized conifolds of Gubser, Shatashvili, and Nekrasov (1999). These
volumes also allow one to quantize precisely the D-brane flux of the AdS
supergravity solution. We end by demonstrating a relationship between the
volumes of these Einstein spaces and the number of holomorphic polynomials
(which correspond to chiral primary operators in the field theory dual) on the
corresponding affine cone.Comment: 25 pp, LaTeX, 1 figure, v2: refs adde
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