8,883 research outputs found
Putting Ethics on the Agenda for Real Estate Agents
This article uses sociological role theory to
help understand ethical challenges faced by Norwegian
real estate agents. The article begins with an introductory
case, and then briefly examines the strengths and limitations
of using legal definitions and rules for understanding
real estate agency and real estate agent ethics. It goes on to
argue that the ethical challenges of real estate agency can
be described and understood as a system of conflicting
roles with associated rights and duties, in particular sales
agent, intermediary and adviser sub-roles. The arguments
are developed using exploratory findings from a survey of
Norwegian real estate agents and from several focus
groups. The article then suggests the use of various
intranet tools as a kind of action research aimed at putting
ethics on the real estate agents’ agenda, working to
develop a collective conscience and collective selfcriticism
among the agents, and, in doing so, building
bridges between academic research and the practical
working world of the agents
The impact of relative position and returns on sacrifice and reciprocity: an experimental study using individual decisions
We present a comprehensive experimental design that makes it possible to characterize other-regarding preferences and their relationship to the decision maker’s relative position. Participants are faced with a large number of decisions involving variations in the trade-offs between own and other’s payoffs, as well as in other potentially important factors like the decision maker’s relative position. We find that: (1) choices are responsive to the cost of helping and hurting others; (2) The weight a decision maker places on others’ monetary payoffs depends on whether the decision maker is in an advantageous or disadvantageous relative position; and (3) We find no evidence of reciprocity of the type linked to menu-dependence. The results of a mixture-model estimation show considerable heterogeneity in subjects’ motivations and confirm the absence of reciprocal motives. Pure selfish behavior is the most frequently observed behavior. Among the subjects exhibiting social preferences, social-welfare maximization is the most frequent, followed by inequality-aversion and by competitiveness
Closing in on the picture : analyzing interactions in video recordings
This paper provides a detailed account of the processing and analysing of data, obtained through video recording during reflective practitioner research. It sets out five stages in the analysis of video recordings of classroom interactions during a series of educational drama lessons: from decisions relating to the selection of data for close analysis, to the seeking of themes, and finally to the presentation of conclusions. The researcher adapted and synthesised several processes derived from discourse analysis (Wells, 2001; Spiers, 2004; Gee, 2005) to produce a range of instruments for use in transcription and analysis of verbal and non-verbal discourse. These include: a simple transcription key; classifications for verbal and non-verbal discourse; and a template for a transcription and analysis matrix
Pay What You Want as a Marketing Strategy in Monopolistic and Competitive Markets
Pay What You Want (PWYW) can be an attractive marketing strategy to price discriminate between fair-minded and selfish customers, to fully penetrate a market without giving away the product for free, and to undercut competitors that use posted prices. We report on laboratory experiments that identify causal factors determining the willingness of buyers to pay voluntarily under PWYW. Furthermore, to see how competition affects the viability of PWYW, we implement markets in which a PWYW seller competes with a traditional seller. Finally, we endogenize the market structure and let sellers choose their pricing strategy. The experimental results show that outcome-based social preferences and strategic considerations to keep the seller in the market can explain why and how much buyers pay voluntarily to a PWYW seller. We find that PWYW can be viable in isolation, but it is less successful as a competitive strategy because it does not drive traditional posted-price sellers out of the market. Instead, the existence of a posted-price competitor reduces buyers’ payments and prevents the PWYW seller from fully penetrating the market. If given the choice, the majority of sellers opt for setting a posted price rather than a PWYW pricing. We discuss the implications of these results for the use of PWYW as a marketing strategy
Science Goals and Overview of the Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) Energetic Particle, Composition, and Thermal Plasma (ECT) Suite on NASA’s Van Allen Probes Mission
The Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP)-Energetic Particle, Composition, and Thermal Plasma (ECT) suite contains an innovative complement of particle instruments to ensure the highest quality measurements ever made in the inner magnetosphere and radiation belts. The coordinated RBSP-ECT particle measurements, analyzed in combination with fields and waves observations and state-of-the-art theory and modeling, are necessary for understanding the acceleration, global distribution, and variability of radiation belt electrons and ions, key science objectives of NASA’s Living With a Star program and the Van Allen Probes mission. The RBSP-ECT suite consists of three highly-coordinated instruments: the Magnetic Electron Ion Spectrometer (MagEIS), the Helium Oxygen Proton Electron (HOPE) sensor, and the Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope (REPT). Collectively they cover, continuously, the full electron and ion spectra from one eV to 10’s of MeV with sufficient energy resolution, pitch angle coverage and resolution, and with composition measurements in the critical energy range up to 50 keV and also from a few to 50 MeV/nucleon. All three instruments are based on measurement techniques proven in the radiation belts. The instruments use those proven techniques along with innovative new designs, optimized for operation in the most extreme conditions in order to provide unambiguous separation of ions and electrons and clean energy responses even in the presence of extreme penetrating background environments. The design, fabrication and operation of ECT spaceflight instrumentation in the harsh radiation belt environment ensure that particle measurements have the fidelity needed for closure in answering key mission science questions. ECT instrument details are provided in companion papers in this same issue. In this paper, we describe the science objectives of the RBSP-ECT instrument suite on the Van Allen Probe spacecraft within the context of the overall mission objectives, indicate how the characteristics of the instruments satisfy the requirements to achieve these objectives, provide information about science data collection and dissemination, and conclude with a description of some early mission results
K_L \ra \mu^\pm e^\mp \nu \overline{\nu} as background to K_L \ra \mu^\pm e^\mp
We consider the process K_L \ra \mu^\pm e^\mp \nu \overline{\nu} at next to
leading order in chiral perturbation theory. This process occurs in the
standard model at second order in the weak interaction and constitutes a
potential background in searches for new physics through the modes K_L \ra
\mu^\pm e^\mp. We find that the same cut, ~MeV, used to remove
the sequential decays K_{l3}\ra \pi_{l2} pushes the B(K_L \ra \mu^\pm e^\mp
\nu \overline{\nu}) to the level, effectively removing it as a
background.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, 1 figure appended as postscript file after
\end{document}. Fermilab-Pub-93/024-
Approximate formula for the ground state energy of anyons in 2D parabolic well
We determine approximate formula for the ground state energy of anyons in 2D
parabolic well which is valid for the arbitrary anyonic factor \nu and number
of particles N in the system. We assume that centre of mass motion energy is
not excluded from the energy of the system. Formula for ground state energy
calculated by variational principle contains logarithmic divergence at small
distances between two anyons which is regularized by cut-off parameter. By
equating this variational formula to the analogous formula of Wu near bosonic
limit (\nu ~ 0)we determine the value of the cut-off and thus derive the
approximate formula for the ground state energy for the any \nu and N. We
checked this formula at \nu=1, when anyons become fermions, for the systems
containing two to thirty particles. We find that our approximate formula has an
accuracy within 6%. It turns out, at the big number N limit the ground state
energy has square root dependence on factor \nu.Comment: 7 page
Prospects for detecting the 21cm forest from the diffuse intergalactic medium with LOFAR
We discuss the feasibility of the detection of the 21cm forest in the diffuse
IGM with the radio telescope LOFAR. The optical depth to the 21cm line has been
derived using simulations of reionization which include detailed radiative
transfer of ionizing photons. We find that the spectra from reionization models
with similar total comoving hydrogen ionizing emissivity but different
frequency distribution look remarkably similar. Thus, unless the reionization
histories are very different from each other (e.g. a predominance of UV vs.
x-ray heating) we do not expect to distinguish them by means of observations of
the 21cm forest. Because the presence of a strong x-ray background would make
the detection of 21cm line absorption impossible, the lack of absorption could
be used as a probe of the presence/intensity of the x-ray background and the
thermal history of the universe. Along a random line of sight LOFAR could
detect a global suppression of the spectrum from z>12, when the IGM is still
mostly neutral and cold, in contrast with the more well-defined, albeit broad,
absorption features visible at lower redshift. Sharp, strong absorption
features associated with rare, high density pockets of gas could be detected
also at z~7 along preferential lines of sight.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figures. MNRAS, in pres
BAT X-ray Survey - III: X-ray Spectra and Statistical Properties
In this concluding part of the series of three papers dedicated to the
Swift/BAT hard X-ray survey (BXS), we focus on the X-ray spectral analysis and
statistical properties of the source sample. Using a dedicated method to
extract time-averaged spectra of BAT sources we show that Galactic sources
have, generally, softer spectra than extragalactic objects and that Seyfert 2
galaxies are harder than Seyfert 1s. The averaged spectrum of all Seyfert
galaxies is consistent with a power-law with photon index of 2.00 (+/-0.07).
The cumulative flux-number relation for the extragalactic sources in the 14-170
keV band is best described by a power-law with a slope alpha=1.55 (+/-0.20) and
a normalization of 9.6 AGN deg (or 396(+/-80) AGN
all-sky) above a flux level of 2erg cm s (~0.85
mCrab). The integration of the cumulative flux per unit area indicates that BAT
resolves 1-2% of the X-ray background emission in the 14-170 keV band. A
sub-sample of 24 extragalactic sources above the 4.5 sigma detection limit is
used to study the statistical properties of AGN. This sample comprises local
Seyfert galaxies (z=0.026, median value) and ~10% blazars. We find that 55% of
the Seyfert galaxies are absorbed by column densities of Log(N_H)>22, but that
none is a bona fide Compton-thick. This study shows the capabilities of BAT to
probe the hard X-ray sky to the mCrab level.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal; 42 pages, 4
tables, 51 figure
PKS B1400-33: an unusual radio relic in a poor cluster
We present new arcminute resolution radio images of the low surface
brightness radio source PKS B1400-33 that is located in the poor cluster Abell
S753. The observations consist of 330 MHz VLA, 843 MHz MOST and 1398 and 2378
MHz ATCA data. These new images, with higher surface brightness sensitivity
than previous observations, reveal that the large scale structure consists of
extended filamentary emission bounded by edge-brightened rims. The source is
offset on one side of symmetrically distributed X-ray emission that is centered
on the dominant cluster galaxy NGC 5419. PKS B1400-33 is a rare example of a
relic in a poor cluster with radio properties unlike those of most relics and
halos observed in cluster environments.
The diffuse source appears to have had an unusual origin and we discuss
possible mechanisms. We examine whether the source could be re-energized relic
radio plasma or a buoyant synchrotron bubble that is a relic of activity in NGC
5419. The more exciting prospect is that the source is relic plasma preserved
in the cluster gaseous environment following the chance injection of a radio
lobe into the ICM as a result of activity in a galaxy at the periphery of the
cluster.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in the Astronomical
Journa
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