3,576 research outputs found
Rethinking the Role of Regulation in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis: The Case of the UK
Following the global financial crisis, many countries have embarked on fundamental reviews of their regulatory systems in an attempt to identify the causes of the near collapse in financial systems and to pave the way for a new approach to regulation. The focus of this paper concerns the intellectual assumptions on which previous regulatory approaches have largely been built, both in the UK and in a number of other countries. We examine the analysis provided by the UK’s Turner Review (2009) which follows the “market failure†approach to regulation and we contrast this with the alternative “state failure†approach. Both approaches only offer partial and polarised views into the causes of the crisis. We offer a synthesis and argue that a new conceptual approach to the management of financial markets is required. The essence of this new approach is the recognition that the state and regulation are not external to the market. While this paper largely relates to the UK, it provides potentially important lessons for many other countries.Regulation, Global financial crisis, Market failure, State failures
Photochemical long-period grating fabrication in pure-fused-silica photonic crystal fiber
We report on first photochemical recording of a long-period fiber grating (LPFG) in a pure fused silica photonic crystal fiber (PCF), which is based on two-photon absorption (TPA) of high-intensity femtosecond 264 nm pulses. The main disadvantage of previously used nonphotochemical methods of LPFG inscription in PCF fiber (electric arc, mechanical pressure or CO2 laser irradiation) is that they easily damage the fragile holey structure, especially in PCFs with large hole diameters. Besides, photochemical LPFG fabrication in PCF not only allows recording by adding new periods to the grating, but also by repetitive exposure over the fixed number of periods. This important improvement results in production of stronger grating resonances with narrower bandwidths
Effects of a giant impact on Uranus
The effects of a giant impact on Uranus with respect to the axis tilt of Uranus and its satellites are discussed. The simulations of possible giant impacts were carried out using Cray supercomputers. The technique used is called smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH). In this technique, the material in the proto-Uranus planet and in the impactor is divided into a large number of particles which can overlap one another so that local averages over these particles determine density and pressure in the problem, and the particles themselves have their own temperatures and internal energies. During the course of the simulation, these particles move around under the influence of the forces acting on them: gravity and pressure gradients. The results of model simulations are presented
Comparison of Power Dependence of Microwave Surface Resistance of Unpatterned and Patterned YBCO Thin Film
The effect of the patterning process on the nonlinearity of the microwave
surface resistance of YBCO thin films is investigated. With the use of a
sapphire dielectric resonator and a stripline resonator, the microwave of
YBCO thin films was measured before and after the patterning process, as a
function of temperature and the rf peak magnetic field in the film. The
microwave loss was also modeled, assuming a dependence of
on current density . Experimental and modeled results
show that the patterning has no observable effect on the microwave residual
or on the power dependence of .Comment: Submitted to IEEE Trans. MT
Wage payment and incentive plans used by department and departmentalized specialty stores in six North Carolina cities
The compensation of salespeople by methods which are fair to the employee and satisfactory to the store itself is one of the major problems of retailing. An inspection of the programs of the annual conventions of the National Retail Dry Goods Association for the last five years shows that the problem of finding satisfactory plans for compensating salespeople is still unsolved. At each of these national conventions the subject of wage payment and incentive plans for salespeople has come up for major discussions. As late as May 1950, the Store Management and Personnel Groups of this association gave a very prominent place to a panel discussion of "The Perfect Payment Plan for Salespeople” during the midyear convention of these groups held in Detroit, Michigan. A recent letter from the Assistant Manager of the Personnel Group of the National Retail Dry Goods Association bears out the fact that the Association still considers the problems of wage payment plans in the field of retailing as one of major importance. The following is a quotation from this letter.
Light curves and colours of the faint Uranian irregular satellites Sycorax, Prospero, Stephano, Setebos and Trinculo
After the work of Gladman et al. (1998), it is now assessed that many
irregular satellites are orbiting around Uranus. Despite many studies have been
performed in past years, very few is know for the light-curves of these objects
and inconsistencies are present between colours derived by different authors.
This situation motivated our effort to improve both the knowledge of colours
and light curves. We present and discuss time series observations of Sycorax,
Prospero, Stephano, Setebos and Trinculo, five faint irregular satellites of
Uranus, carried out at VLT, ESO Paranal (Chile) in the nights between 29 and 30
July, 2005 and 25 and 30 November, 2005. We derive light curves for Sycorax and
Prospero and colours for all of these these bodies. For Sycorax we obtain
colours B-V =0.839 +/- 0.014, V-R = 0.531 +/- 0.005 and a light curve which is
suggestive of a periodical variation with period about 3.6 hours and amplitude
about 0.067 +/- 0.004 mag. The periods and colours we derive for Sycorax are in
agreement with our previous determination in 1999 using NTT. We derive also a
light-curve for Prospero which suggests an amplitude of about 0.2 mag and a
periodicity of about 4 hours. However, the sparseness of our data, prevents a
more precise characterization of the light-curves, and we can not determine
wether they are one-peaked or two-peaked. Hence, these periods and amplitudes
have to be considered preliminary estimates. As for Setebos, Stephano and
Trinculo the present data do not allow to derive any unambiguous periodicity,
despite Setebos displays a significant variability with amplitude about as
large as that of Prospero. Colours for Prospero, Setebos, Stephano and Trinculo
are in marginal agreement with the literature.Comment: Submitted to A&A 13 Dec 2006, Accepted 17 Apr 2007. 18 pages, 8
colours figures BW printable, 6 tables. LaTeX 2.09, with packages: natbib,
graphicx, longtable, aa4babbage included in the submission file (tar gzipped
of 349 KBytes
Photoacclimatization by the coral Montastraea cavernosa in the mesophotic zone: light, food, and genetics
Most studies on coral reefs have focused on shallow reef (<30 m) systems due
to the technical limitations of conducting scientific diving deeper than 30 m. Compared to their
shallow-water counterparts, these mesophotic coral reefs (30–150 m) are understudied, which
has slowed our broader understanding of the biodiversity, ecology, and connectivity of
shallow and deep coral reef communities. We know that the light environment is an important
component of the productivity, physiology, and ecology of corals, and it restricts the
distribution of most species of coral to depths of 60 m or less. In the Bahamas, the coral
Montastraea cavernosa has a wide depth distribution, and it is one of the most numerous
corals at mesophotic depths. Using a range of optical, physiological, and biochemical
approaches, the relative dependence on autotrophy vs. heterotrophy was assessed for this
coral from 3 to 91 m. These measurements show that the quantum yield of PSII fluorescence
increases significantly with depth for M. cavernosa while gross primary productivity decreases
with depth. Both morphological and physiological photoacclimatization occurs to a depth of
91 m, and stable isotope data of the host tissues, symbionts, and skeleton reveal a marked
decrease in productivity and a sharp transition to heterotrophy between 45 and 61 m. Below
these depths, significant changes in the genetic composition of the zooxanthellae community,
including genotypes not previously observed, occur and suggest that there is strong selection
for zooxanthellae that are suited for survival in the light-limited environment where
mesophotic M. cavernosa are occurring
An equation of state from cool-dense fluids to hot gases for mixed elements
An equation of state for the domain extending from hot gases to cool-dense
fluids is formulated for a hydrogen-helium mixture. The physical processes take
account of temperature ionization and dissociation, electron degeneracy,
Coulomb coupling and pressure ionization. Pressure ionization and Coulomb
coupling are studied with simple and comprehensive modeling. A single and
complete algorithm is achieved with explicit expressions available for the
whole domain from hot gases to cool dense fluids (). Pressure
ionization and Coulomb coupling have been examined for their contributions to
the pressure and internal energy. The result reveals that their contributions
smooth the variation of the pressure and internal energy in the region of
pressure ionization even at very low temperatures.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, ApJ, accepted, E-mail: [email protected]
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