40,858 research outputs found
STATE TRADING ENTERPRISES AND REVENUE GAINS FROM MARKET POWER: THE CASE OF BARLEY MARKETING AND THE CANADIAN WHEAT BOARD
According to the U.S. General Accounting Office, the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) is the largest state trading enterprise reporting to the World Trade Organization under article XVII requirements. This study estimates the market power exerted by the CWB in international barley markets. The analysis incorporates international price discrimination across markets for similar types of barley, the intertwining relationships between feed and malting barley markets, and producer behavior in the absence of the CWB. The CWB was able to capture an annual average of $72 million in additional revenue beyond the amount that would have been generated by purely competitive multiple sellers of Canadian barley during the period 1985-94.Marketing,
The magnetic fields of forming solar-like stars
Magnetic fields play a crucial role at all stages of the formation of low
mass stars and planetary systems. In the final stages, in particular, they
control the kinematics of in-falling gas from circumstellar discs, and the
launching and collimation of spectacular outflows. The magnetic coupling with
the disc is thought to influence the rotational evolution of the star, while
magnetised stellar winds control the braking of more evolved stars and may
influence the migration of planets. Magnetic reconnection events trigger
energetic flares which irradiate circumstellar discs with high energy particles
that influence the disc chemistry and set the initial conditions for planet
formation. However, it is only in the past few years that the current
generation of optical spectropolarimeters have allowed the magnetic fields of
forming solar-like stars to be probed in unprecedented detail. In order to do
justice to the recent extensive observational programs new theoretical models
are being developed that incorporate magnetic fields with an observed degree of
complexity. In this review we draw together disparate results from the
classical electromagnetism, molecular physics/chemistry, and the geophysics
literature, and demonstrate how they can be adapted to construct models of the
large scale magnetospheres of stars and planets. We conclude by examining how
the incorporation of multipolar magnetic fields into new theoretical models
will drive future progress in the field through the elucidation of several
observational conundrums.Comment: 55 pages, review article accepted for publication in Reports on
Progress in Physics. Astro-ph version includes additional appendice
Integration of tools for the Design and Assessment of High-Performance, Highly Reliable Computing Systems (DAHPHRS), phase 1
Systems for Space Defense Initiative (SDI) space applications typically require both high performance and very high reliability. These requirements present the systems engineer evaluating such systems with the extremely difficult problem of conducting performance and reliability trade-offs over large design spaces. A controlled development process supported by appropriate automated tools must be used to assure that the system will meet design objectives. This report describes an investigation of methods, tools, and techniques necessary to support performance and reliability modeling for SDI systems development. Models of the JPL Hypercubes, the Encore Multimax, and the C.S. Draper Lab Fault-Tolerant Parallel Processor (FTPP) parallel-computing architectures using candidate SDI weapons-to-target assignment algorithms as workloads were built and analyzed as a means of identifying the necessary system models, how the models interact, and what experiments and analyses should be performed. As a result of this effort, weaknesses in the existing methods and tools were revealed and capabilities that will be required for both individual tools and an integrated toolset were identified
TMCalc - A fast code to derive Teff and [Fe/H] for FGK stars
We present a new direct spectroscopic calibration for a fast estimation of
the stellar metallicity [Fe/H]. These calibrations were computed using a large
sample of 451 solar-type stars for which we have precise spectroscopic
parameters derived from high quality spectra. The new [Fe/H] calibration is
based on weak Fe I lines, which are expected to be less dependent on surface
gravity and microturbulence, and require only a pre-determination of the
effective temperature. This temperature can be obtained using a previously
presented line-ratio calibration. We also present a simple code that uses the
calibrations and procedures presented in these works to obtain both the
effective temperature and the [Fe/H] estimate. The code, written in C, is
freely available for the community and may be used as an extension of the ARES
code. We test these calibrations for 582 independent FGK stars. We show that
the code can be used as a precise and fast indicator of the spectroscopic
temperature and metallicity for dwarf FKG stars with effective temperatures
ranging from 4500 K to 6500 K and with [Fe/H] ranging from -0.8 dex to 0.4 dex.Comment: 10 pages, 8 Figures, published in A&
The B_s and D_s decay constants in 3 flavor lattice QCD
Capitalizing on recent advances in lattice QCD, we present a calculation of
the leptonic decay constants f_{B_s} and f_{D_s} that includes effects of one
strange sea quark and two light sea quarks. The discretization errors of
improved staggered fermion actions are small enough to simulate with 3
dynamical flavors on lattices with spacings around 0.1 fm using present
computer resources. By shedding the quenched approximation and the associated
lattice scale ambiguity, lattice QCD greatly increases its predictive power.
NRQCD is used to simulate heavy quarks with masses between 1.5 m_c and m_b. We
arrive at the following results: f_{B_s} = 260 \pm 7 \pm 26 \pm 8 \pm 5 MeV and
f_{D_s} = 290 \pm 20 \pm 29 \pm 29 \pm 6 MeV. The first quoted error is the
statistical uncertainty, and the rest estimate the sizes of higher order terms
neglected in this calculation. All of these uncertainties are systematically
improvable by including another order in the weak coupling expansion, the
nonrelativistic expansion, or the Symanzik improvement program.Comment: 4 page
A possible new phase of antagonistic nematogens in a disorienting field
A simple model is proposed for nematogenic molecules that favor perpendicular
orientations as well as parallel ones. (Charged rods, for example, show this
antagonistic tendency.) When a small disorienting field is applied along , a
low density phase of nematic order parameter coexists with a
dense biaxial nematic . (At zero field, becomes isotropic and
uniaxial.) But at stronger fields, a new phase , invariant under
rotations around the field axis, appears in between and .
Prospects for finding the phase experimentally are briefly discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in PR
- …