The Gender Pay Gap: Can Behavioral Economics Provide Useful Insights?

People are faced with numerous decisions every day. Whether we must choose our outfit for the day, which cell phone brand to buy, what college to attend, to buy a car or house insurance, or even when or to whom to get married, decisions are a permanent presence in our daily activities. Behavioral economics is a multi-disciplinary field of study investigating how people make judgments and decisions (Camerer and Loewenstein, 2004; Heilman, 2014). Even though, from a historic point of view, behavioral economics is considered to be a relatively young field of research, the large number of studies that were undertaken and their theoretical and practical implications have made the field of behavioral economics increasingly visible among scholars. More importantly, they have also facilitated contexts to transform behavioral results into social policy programs. Starting in 2010, the UK government launched the Behavioral Insights Team, also known as The Nudge Unit, which was then followed by the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST), established by the Obama administration in 2014. Both teams aim to apply behavioral sciences, including behavioral economics, in governmental programs in order to increase people's quality of life at lower costs. The efforts of the Nudge Unit and the SBST or other agencies and individual researchers who are trying to improve people's overall quality of life should be supported by the research community through relevant scientific projects and by constantly finding new ways to capitalize research derived knowledge for the general use of a community

Nonthermal Emission from Star-Forming Galaxies

The detections of high-energy gamma-ray emission from the nearby starburst galaxies M82 & NGC253, and other local group galaxies, broaden our knowledge of star-driven nonthermal processes and phenomena in non-AGN star-forming galaxies. We review basic aspects of the related processes and their modeling in starburst galaxies. Since these processes involve both energetic electrons and protons accelerated by SN shocks, their respective radiative yields can be used to explore the SN-particle-radiation connection. Specifically, the relation between SN activity, energetic particles, and their radiative yields, is assessed through respective measures of the particle energy density in several star-forming galaxies. The deduced energy densities range from O(0.1) eV/cm^3 in very quiet environments to O(100) eV/cm^3 in regions with very high star-formation rates.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, to be published in Astrophysics and Space Science Proceeding

Observation of electron-antineutrino disappearance at Daya Bay

The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment has measured a non-zero value for the neutrino mixing angle $\theta_{13}$ with a significance of 5.2 standard deviations. Antineutrinos from six 2.9 GW$_{\rm th}$ reactors were detected in six antineutrino detectors deployed in two near (flux-weighted baseline 470 m and 576 m) and one far (1648 m) underground experimental halls. With a 43,000 ton-GW_{\rm th}-day livetime exposure in 55 days, 10416 (80376) electron antineutrino candidates were detected at the far hall (near halls). The ratio of the observed to expected number of antineutrinos at the far hall is $R=0.940\pm 0.011({\rm stat}) \pm 0.004({\rm syst})$. A rate-only analysis finds $\sin^22\theta_{13}=0.092\pm 0.016({\rm stat})\pm0.005({\rm syst})$ in a three-neutrino framework.Comment: 5 figures. Version to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Bifactor analysis of motivation for charity sport event participation

The purpose of this study was to examine the utility of the existing subscales of charity sport events (CSEs) participation motivation by adopting both a second-order modeling and a bifactor modeling approaches. The results with 488 college students revealed that the bifactor model provided a better interpretation of the data compared to second-order model. The five-factor CSE motivation significantly predict the intention to participate in CSEs along with two domain-specific motivations, namely ‘sport and event’ and ‘cause’ while other three domain-specific motivations including ‘philanthropic’, ‘social interaction’, and ‘reference group’ are not statistically significant predictors. The results suggest that the bifactor model is more useful in predicting this group’s participation in charity sport events. © 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

A side-by-side comparison of Daya Bay antineutrino detectors

The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment is designed to determine precisely the neutrino mixing angle $\theta_{13}$ with a sensitivity better than 0.01 in the parameter sin$^22\theta_{13}$ at the 90% confidence level. To achieve this goal, the collaboration will build eight functionally identical antineutrino detectors. The first two detectors have been constructed, installed and commissioned in Experimental Hall 1, with steady data-taking beginning September 23, 2011. A comparison of the data collected over the subsequent three months indicates that the detectors are functionally identical, and that detector-related systematic uncertainties exceed requirements.Comment: 24 pages, 36 figure

Improved Measurement of Electron Antineutrino Disappearance at Daya Bay

We report an improved measurement of the neutrino mixing angle $\theta_{13}$ from the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment. We exclude a zero value for $\sin^22\theta_{13}$ with a significance of 7.7 standard deviations. Electron antineutrinos from six reactors of 2.9 GW$_{\rm th}$ were detected in six antineutrino detectors deployed in two near (flux-weighted baselines of 470 m and 576 m) and one far (1648 m) underground experimental halls. Using 139 days of data, 28909 (205308) electron antineutrino candidates were detected at the far hall (near halls). The ratio of the observed to the expected number of antineutrinos assuming no oscillations at the far hall is $0.944\pm 0.007({\rm stat.}) \pm 0.003({\rm syst.})$. An analysis of the relative rates in six detectors finds $\sin^22\theta_{13}=0.089\pm 0.010({\rm stat.})\pm0.005({\rm syst.})$ in a three-neutrino framework.Comment: 21 pages, 24 figures. Submitted to and accepted by Chinese Physics C. Two typos were corrected. Description improve

Search for a Light Sterile Neutrino at Daya Bay

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