Small Business Access to Bank Credit: The Little Engine that Could

Small business is the economic engine of every community and is particularly critical for low income communities. Two-thirds of all California businesses are estimated to have four or fewer employees and 85 percent are so small that their annual revenues are less than $1 million. These employers provide employment, goods and services and positive models for local communities in an environment starved for positive economic opportunity. A recent Wall Street Journal article focuses specifically on the key role that small business plays in employment and the GDP. This report looks specifically at the 30 major small business lenders' credit activity in five California counties

Image based tracking approaches to AR/C at the Johnson Space Center

Automated Rendezvous and Capture (AR&C) requires the determination of the six degrees of freedom relating two free bodies. Sensor systems that can provide such information have varying sizes, weights, power requirements, complexities and accuracies. One type of sensor system which can provide several key advantages is an image based tracking system, or better known as a machine vision system. By image based tracking we mean that the sensor is some imaging device such as one or more video cameras, from which the tracking parameters necessary to support the rendezvous and capture operations (range, attitude, etc.) can be derived. Image based tracking offers many advantages such as relative hardware simplicity and reprogrammability. These advantages must be weighed against the disadvantages of these systems, such as limited operational range, poorer accuracy at greater distances and sensitivity to lighting conditions. However, with properly designed algorithms and targets these disadvantages can be minimized for many important applications. Rigorous testing in realistic environments can further increase the robustness and reliability of these systems. This presentation describes the facilities used at JSC to support AR&C image based tracking development and the details of our binocular stereo approach to image based tracking

A binocular stereo approach to AR/C at the Johnson Space Center

Automated Rendezvous and Capture requires the determination of the 6 DOF relating two free bodies. Sensor systems that can provide such information have varying sizes, weights, power requirements, complexities, and accuracies. One type of sensor system that can provide several key advantages is a binocular stereo vision system

The Financial Divide: An Unequal Playing Field

Driving through California towns and cities, the economic division between lower-income and wealthier neighborhoods is reflected in the starkly separate locations of check cashers and payday lenders in lower-income neighborhoods on the one hand and mainstream banks and savings and loans in wealthier neighborhoods on the other. This two-tier consumer finance system has a dramatic negative impact on California's diverse communities. In contrast to outward appearances, the two seemingly-separate financial sectors are, in fact, two faces of a seamless financial web

Small Business Access to Credit- The Little Engine that Could: If Banks Would Help

CRC's fourth report looking at small businesses finds that despite receiving subsidies from the Federal Government, banks have not expanded their lending to small businesses since they tightly restricted it in 2008. Businesses owned by Latinos, African-Americans, and women have seen an enormous decrease in availability of credit- both in loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration and conventional loans

Towards Verifiably Ethical Robot Behaviour

Ensuring that autonomous systems work ethically is both complex and difficult. However, the idea of having an additional `governor' that assesses options the system has, and prunes them to select the most ethical choices is well understood. Recent work has produced such a governor consisting of a `consequence engine' that assesses the likely future outcomes of actions then applies a Safety/Ethical logic to select actions. Although this is appealing, it is impossible to be certain that the most ethical options are actually taken. In this paper we extend and apply a well-known agent verification approach to our consequence engine, allowing us to verify the correctness of its ethical decision-making.Comment: Presented at the 1st International Workshop on AI and Ethics, Sunday 25th January 2015, Hill Country A, Hyatt Regency Austin. Will appear in the workshop proceedings published by AAA

The effect of weight, body mass index, age, sex, and race on plasma concentrations of subcutaneous sumatriptan: a pooled analysis.

Objective/backgroundFactors such as body size (weight and body mass index [BMI]), age, sex, and race might influence the clinical response to sumatriptan. We evaluated the impact of these covariates on the plasma concentration (Cp) profile of sumatriptan administered subcutaneously.MethodsWe conducted three pharmacokinetic studies of subcutaneous sumatriptan in 98 healthy adults. Sumatriptan was administered subcutaneously (236 administrations) as either DFN-11 3 mg, a novel 0.5 mL autoinjector being developed by Dr. Reddy's Laboratories; Imitrex(®) (Sumatriptan) injection 3 mg or 6 mg (6 mg/0.5 mL); or Imitrex STATdose 4 mg or 6 mg (0.5 mL). Blood was sampled for 12 hours to determine sumatriptan Cp. Maximum Cp (Cmax), area under the curve during the first 2 hours (AUC0-2), and total area under the curve (AUC0-∞) were determined using noncompartmental methods. Post hoc analyses were conducted to determine the relationship between these exposure metrics and each of body weight, BMI, age, sex, and race (categorized as white, black, or others).ResultsBoth weight and BMI correlated negatively with each exposure metric for each treatment group. Across all treatment groups, AUC0-2 for subjects with BMI less than or equal to median value was 1.03-1.12 times the value for subjects with BMI more than median value. For subjects with BMI less than or equal to median value receiving DFN-11, median AUC0-2 was slightly less than that for subjects with BMI more than median value receiving Imitrex 4 mg and larger than that for subjects with BMI more than median value receiving Imitrex 3 mg. Results were similar for the other exposure metrics and for weight. Exposure was higher in women than in men, which can be attributed in part to differences in weight. There was no relationship between exposure and age. For DFN-11, AUC0-2 and AUC0-∞ were lower in nonwhites compared with whites; the ratio of median values was 0.84 and 0.89, respectively. A similar, nonstatistically significant, trend was observed in the other products (ratio of median values ranging from 0.84 to 0.89).ConclusionWeight and BMI appear to be important covariates for sumatriptan exposure: subjects with lower values for either metric of body size have higher systemic exposure compared with subjects with higher values. Additional studies are required to determine if doses of subcutaneous sumatriptan may be adjusted based on BMI for comparable efficacy and a potentially improved tolerability profile

One of ten thousand: a way for the printmaker; thoughts and images related to involvement in Zen Buddhism

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Studies of adrenergic hormone action and protein thiolation in beating rat heart cells

Beating rat heart cell cultures were used to study the effects of (alpha)- and (beta)-adrenergic stimulation on contraction rate, cAMP, glycogen phosphorylase, glycogen synthase, and protein phosphorylation in the myocardial cell. Both (alpha)- and (beta)-adrenergic stimulation increased the beating rate of the heart cells. (alpha)-Adrenergic stimulation produced stable increases in the beating rate which were not depenent upon or modified by cellular cAMP increases. (beta)-Adrenergic stimulation of the beating rate was transient and dependent upon increases in cellular cAMP. The (beta)-adrenergic cAMP response was unchanged by simultaneous stimulation of the (alpha)-adrenergic receptor, but was desensitized by previous (beta)-stimulation of the heart cells. (beta)-Adrenergic desensitization was (beta)-receptor-specific and was not due to increases in cAMP in the heart cells. Epinephrine treatment of the heart cells produced activation of glycogen phosphorylase and inactivation of glycogen synthase. These responses were mediated exclusively by the (beta)-adrenergic receptor and resulted from increases in cellular cAMP. The effects of (alpha)- and (beta)-adrenergic stimulation on phosphorylation of glycogen phosphorylase in the heart cells was examined by isolating heart cell glycogen phosphorylase. These studies clearly showed that heart cell glycogen phosphorylase was phosphorylated only in response to (beta)-adrenergic stimulation. (beta)-Adrenergic stimulation increased the phosphorylation of seven other proteins with apparent subunit molecular weights of 236,000, 229,000, 161,000, 125,000, 102,000, 86,000, and 25,000. A 78,000 dalton protein was dephosphorylated in response to (beta)-adrenergic stimulation;The extent of protein thiolation in a soluble fraction of the heart cells was examined. (\u2735)S-cysteine was incorporated into reduction-sensitive bonds of heart cell proteins. The rate of labeling of protein was very similar to the rate of glutathione labeling. Cysteine and glutathione were identified as the only radioactive thiols released from the heart proteins by reduction. SDS-polyacrylamide electrophoresis showed that a large number of heart cell proteins were thiolated