66,817 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Building an alternative social currency: Dematerialising and rematerialising digital money across media
This paper reports on the user experience and design of physical and digital forms of a mixed-media local currency. We reconceive digitally mediated transactions as social interactions and report on the development of conceptual designs informed by user research and interactive workshops. Our findings show that use is strongly tied to conceptions of locality and community, markers of identity, information exchange and the digital and physical forms as tools for shaping interactions. The form of the currency can make the invisible visible, exposing our identities and values, business models, and the details of the transactions themselves. Our analysis stresses the need to provide opportunities for extending social interaction, making more local connections and deriving the best value from those connections, without insulating individuals from each other, or from the wider geographical context. Themes that emerged from the user research were visualized as conceptual designs for digitally augmented media, allowing us to explore the monetary transaction at three levels: the material, as interaction between two parties, and the context of the transaction.The RCUK Digital Economy theme (EP/K012304/1)
The radial structure of protostellar accretion disks: influence of jets
The radial structure of accretion disks is a fundamental issue regarding star
and planet formation. Many theoretical studies, focussing on different aspects
such as e.g. disk emissivity or ionization, have been conducted in the context
of the Standard Accretion Disk (SAD) model, where no jet is present. We wish to
calculate the structure of YSO accretion disks in an approach that takes into
account the presence of the protostellar jets. The radial structure of these
Jet Emitting Disks (JED) should then be compared to that of standard accretion
disks. The analytical treatment used in this work is very similar to that of
standard accretion disks but is using the parameter space of Magnetised
Accretion-Ejection Structures that include the jet torque on the underlying
disk. In this framework, the analytical expressions of key quantities, such as
mid-plane temperatures, surface densities or disk aspect ratio are derived. It
is found that JEDs present a structure very different from the SADs and that
can be observationally tested. The implications on planet formation in the
inner regions of accretion disks are briefly discussed. We also supply sets of
analytical formulae, valid in different opacity regimes, for the disk
quantities. These expressions can be readily used for any work where the disk
structure is needed as an input for the model.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in A&
Are Magnetic Wind-Driving Disks Inherently Unstable?
There have been claims in the literature that accretion disks in which a
centrifugally driven wind is the dominant mode of angular momentum transport
are inherently unstable. This issue is considered here by applying an
equilibrium-curve analysis to the wind-driving, ambipolar diffusion-dominated,
magnetic disk model of Wardle & Konigl (1993). The equilibrium solution curves
for this class of models typically exhibit two distinct branches. It is argued
that only one of these branches represents unstable equilibria and that a real
disk/wind system likely corresponds to a stable solution.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, to be published in ApJ, vol. 617 (2004 Dec 20).
Uses emulateapj.cl
Interpreting infrastructure: Defining user value for digital financial intermediaries.
The 3DaRoC project is exploring digital connectivity and peer-to-peer relationships in financial
services. In the light of the near collapse of the UK and world financial sector, understanding and
innovating new and more sustainable approaches to financial services is now a critical topic. At the
same time, the increasing penetration and take-up of robust high-speed networks, dependable peerto-
peer architectures and mobile multimedia technologies offer novel platforms for offering financial
services over the Internet. These new forms of digital connectivity give rise to opportunities in doing
financial transactions in different ways and with radically different business models that offer the
possibility of transforming the marketplace. One area in the digital economy that has had such an
effect is in the ways that users access and use digital banking and payment services.
The impact of the new economic models presented by these digital financial services is yet to be fully
determined, but they have huge potential as disruptive innovations, with a potentially transformative
effect on the way that services are offered to users. Little is understood about how technical
infrastructures impact on the ways that people make sense of the financial services that they use, or
on how these might be designed more effectively. 3DaRoC is exploring this space working with our
partners and end users to prototype and evaluate new online, mobile, ubiquitous and tangible
technologies, exploring how these services might be extended.Executive Summary: Drawing from Studies of Use - the value, use and interpretation of infrastructure in digital intermediaries to their users. The UK economy has a huge dependence on financial services, and this is increasingly based on digital platforms. Innovating new economic models around consumer financial services through the use of digital technologies is seen as increasingly important in developed economies. There are a number of drivers for this, ranging from national economic factors to the prosaic nature of enabling cheap, speedy and timely interactions for users. The potential for these new digital solutions is that they will allay an over-reliance on the traditional banking sector, which has proved itself to be unstable and risky, and we have seen a number of national policy moves to encourage growth in this sector. Partly as a result of the 2008 banking crisis, there has been an explosion in peer-to-peer financial services for non-professional consumers. These organisations act as intermediaries between users looking to trade goods or credit. However, building self-sustaining or profitable financial services within this novel space is itself fraught with commercial, regulatory, technical and social problems. This document reports on the value, use and interpretation of infrastructure in digital intermediaries to their users, describing analysis of contextual field studies carried out in two retail digital financial intermediary organisations: Zopa Limited and the Bristol Pound. It forms the second milestone document in the 3DaRoC project, developing patterns of use that have arisen on the back of the technical infrastructures in the two organisations that form cases for examination. Its purpose is to examine how the two different technical infrastructures that underpin the transactions that they support–composed of the back-office hardware and software, data structures, the networking and communications technologies used, supported consumer devices, and the user interfaces and interaction design–have provided opportunities for users to realise their financial and other needs. While we orient towards the issues of service use (and its problems), we also examine the activities and expectations of their various users. Our research has involved teams from Lancaster University examining Zopa and Brunel University focusing on the Bristol Pound over approximately a one-year period from October 2013 to October 2014. Extensive interviews, document analysis, observation of user interactions, and other methods have been employed to develop the process analyses of the firms presented here. This report comprises of three key sections: descriptions of the user demographics for Zopa and the Bristol Pound, a discussion about the user experience and its role in community, and an examination of the role of usage data in the development of these a products. We conclude with final analytical section drawing preliminary conclusions from the research presented.The 3DaRoC project is funded by the RCUK Digital Economy ‘Research in the Wild’ theme (grant no.
EP/K012304/1)
Many-body effects on the ringlike structures in two-subband wells
The longitudinal resistivity of two-dimensional electron gases
formed in wells with two subbands displays ringlike structures when plotted in
a density--magnetic-field diagram, due to the crossings of spin-split Landau
levels (LLs) from distinct subbands. Using spin density functional theory and
linear response, we investigate the shape and spin polarization of these
structures as a function of temperature and magnetic-field tilt angle. We find
that (i) some of the rings "break" at sufficiently low temperatures due to a
quantum Hall ferromagnetic phase transition, thus exhibiting a high degree of
spin polarization (%) within, consistent with the NMR data of Zhang
\textit{et al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 98}, 246802 (2007)], and (ii) for
increasing tilting angles the interplay between the anticrossings due to
inter-LL couplings and the exchange-correlation (XC) effects leads to a
collapse of the rings at some critical angle , in agreement with the
data of Guo \textit{et al.} [Phys. Rev. B {\bf 78}, 233305 (2008)].Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Magnetic braking in young late-type stars: the effect of polar spots
The concentration of magnetic flux near the poles of rapidly rotating cool
stars has been recently proposed as an alternative mechanism to dynamo
saturation in order to explain the saturation of angular momentum loss. In this
work we study the effect of magnetic surface flux distribution on the coronal
field topology and angular momentum loss rate. We investigate if magnetic flux
concentration towards the pole is a reasonable alternative to dynamo
saturation. We construct a 1D wind model and also apply a 2-D self-similar
analytical model, to evaluate how the surface field distribution affects the
angular momentum loss of the rotating star. From the 1D model we find that, in
a magnetically dominated low corona, the concentrated polar surface field
rapidly expands to regions of low magnetic pressure resulting in a coronal
field with small latitudinal variation. We also find that the angular momentum
loss rate due to a uniform field or a concentrated field with equal total
magnetic flux is very similar. From the 2D wind model we show that there are
several relevant factors to take into account when studying the angular
momentum loss from a star. In particular, we show that the inclusion of force
balance across the field in a wind model is fundamental if realistic
conclusions are to be drawn from the effect of non-uniform surface field
distribution on magnetic braking. This model predicts that a magnetic field
concentrated at high latitudes leads to larger Alfven radii and larger braking
rates than a smoother field distribution. From the results obtained, we argue
that the magnetic surface field distribution towards the pole does not directly
limit the braking efficiency of the wind.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, accepted in A&
Recommended from our members
#CHIMoney: Financial interactions, digital cash, capital exchange and mobile money
Interactions around money and financial services are a critical part of our lives on and off-line. New technologies and new ways of interacting with these technologies are of huge interest; they enable new business models and ways of making sense of this most important aspect of our everyday lives. At the same time, money is an essential element in HCI research and design. This workshop is intended to bring together researchers and practitioners involved in the design and use of systems that combine digital and new media with monetary and financial interactions to build on an understanding of these technologies and their impacts on users' behaviors. The workshop will focus on social, technical, and economic aspects around everyday user interactions with money and emerging financial technologies and systems
Putting the ‘digital’ in Digital Intermediaries: the role of technical infrastructure in building business models
Digital Technology Innovation and Financial Business Practices The UK economy has a huge dependence on financial services, and this is increasingly based on digital platforms. Innovating new economic models around consumer financial services through the use of digital technologies is seen as increasingly important in developed economies. There are a number of drivers for this, ranging from national economic factors to the prosaic nature of enabling cheap, speedy and timely interactions for users. The potential for these new digital solutions is that they will allay an over-reliance on the traditional banking sector, which has proved itself to be unstable and risky, and we have seen a number of national policy moves to encourage growth in this sector. Partly as a result of the 2008 banking crisis, there has been an explosion in peer-to-peer financial services for non-professional consumers. These organisations act as intermediaries between users looking to trade goods or credit. However, building self-sustaining or profitable financial services within this novel space is itself fraught with commercial, regulatory, technical and social problems. This report addresses the mutual shaping of business models and innovations in digital technical infrastructure – both client-facing and administrative back-end – in two retail financial products currently in use in the United Kingdom: peer-to-peer consumer lending and a local digital/paper hybrid currency system. The two products and their issuing firms, Zopa Limited (Zopa) and The Bristol Pound Community Interest Company (the Bristol Pound), respectively, are established leaders in their respective product areas: Zopa was established in 2005 and the Bristol Pound in 2010. Each of these firms seeks to disrupt an established financial market through the application of digital technologies and processes: consumer lending for Zopa and retail payment for the Bristol Pound. Our research has involved teams from Lancaster University examining Zopa and Brunel University focusing on the Bristol Pound over approximately a one-year period from October 2013 to October 2014. Extensive interviews, document analysis, observation of user interactions, and other methods have been employed to develop the process analyses of the firms presented here. This report is comprised of three primary sections: descriptions of the business and technological processes of each of Zopa and the Bristol Pound, and a final analytical section drawing preliminary conclusions from the research presented.3DaRoC is funded by the UK’s Digital Economy ‘Research in the Wild’ initiative. It has a substantial research budget of over £320K, with £35K of additional industrial support
- …