Circular, No. 4

Many requests for information regarding the best varieties of field crops for interior Alaska have been received by the Alaska Agricultural Experiment Stations. Field crops have- been tested by the stations in the interior for a number of years. The purpose of this circular is to discuss briefly the history, characteristics, and field performance of varieties of grain, legumes, grasses, root crops, and potatoes that have been found to be best adapted to local conditions.Introduction -- Grain crops -- Legumes -- Grasses -- Root crops -- Potatoe

Building Imaginary Worlds (2012) by Mark J.P. Wolf and Revisiting Imaginary World (2016) edited by Mark J.P. Wolf

Book review of Building Imaginary Worlds (2012) by Mark J.P. Wolf and Revisiting Imaginary Worlds (2016), edited by Mark J.P. Wolf, reviewed by Andrew Higgin

The 'public inquisitor' as media celebrity

This article looks at the development and utility of celebrity among high-profile political interviewers. Offering the revised description 'public inquisitor', the article presents an overview of the rise of the political interviewer as a celebrity form of the 'tribune of the people' (Clayman 2002). It focuses on the UK-based journalists and broadcasters Jeremy Paxman and John Humphrys, and looks at the expansion of their professional activities and their attendant construction as media personalities. It argues that the forms of celebrity presented by Paxman and Humphrys draw upon discourses of integrity and authenticity associated with practices of advocacy, and suggests that their extension beyond the formal political realm into media genres traditionally excluded from the established political domain might work to consolidate the public inquisitor as a discursive figure. Therefore, while acknowledging that this depends on the effective management of individual media profiles, the article proposes a critical reappraisal of the place of the celebrity personae in political communication in order to account for the possibility of constructive modes of media performance

Stochastic Spot/Volatility Correlation in Stochastic Volatility Models and Barrier Option Pricing

Most models for barrier pricing are designed to let a market maker tune the model-implied covariance between moves in the asset spot price and moves in the implied volatility skew. This is often implemented with a local volatility/stochastic volatility mixture model, where the mixture parameter tunes that covariance. This paper defines an alternate model where the spot/volatility correlation is a separate mean-reverting stochastic variable which is itself correlated with spot. We also develop an efficient approximation for barrier option and one touch pricing in the model based on semi-static vega replication and compare it with Monte Carlo pricing. The approximation works well in markets where the risk neutral drift is modest.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figure

Political action committees

The Political Action Committee (known by the conventional acronym of PAC) is a privately-organised group dedicated to shaping and influencing political policy and law making. PACs operate to generate, distribute and spend campaign funding. While they are required to register with state regulators, PACs are normally conceived as a way of pursuing particular issues outside of or parallel with the formal political framework. In the way they set about this, PACs are permitted to advocate the election of a candidate to a federal election, or to subject opposition candidates to attack. It all means that the sets of alliances and monetary arrangements that develop between PACs and the political establishment are important factors to consider when reporting on and critically assessing the US democratic arrangement: a political system that aspires to the fair distribution of political arguments. More broadly, an informed understanding of the role of PACs and the restrictions they face provides the journalist and the academic alike with an insight into the links between finance and political power

Yakuza Past, Present and Future: The Changing Face of Japan\u27s Organized Crime Syndicates

While Japanese crime syndicates are deeply entrenched in the history and culture of Japan, much of what is known in the Western world about the Yakuza is primarily the result of stereotyping generated by media-driven sensationalism and lowbudget motion pictures. Judgment on the crime syndicates\u27 continued existence, modes of operation, and relatively high visibility in Japan is oftentimes passed based on socio-cultural perceptions of deviance that differ from those in Japanese culture. Taking the form of a book review essay, this paper aims to re-introduce the reader to Japan\u27s crime syndicates with the goal of replacing stereotypes and myths with factual information. Utilizing two seminal works written by authorities of the field, the paper chronicles the history of the Yakuza\u27s origins and evolution, outlines their organizational structures, describes the groups\u27 past and current operations, and provides a brief overview of the crime syndicates\u27 likely future

Book Review: The British Press

Book Review of The British Press by Mick Temple. Setting out with a conventional rehearsal of how the press has come to be the way it is, Temple discusses the popularisation of news and information from Gutenberg onwards. Most usefully, Temple highlights the nuances to emerge from the nineteen‐forties, when the press became newly radicalised, saw retreats in sales and a loss of discursive control to broadcasting, and became instrumental in a broader "decline of deference". Other chapters offer clear and accessible accounts of the various approaches to analysing news, the production environment of post‐Wapping, strategies of censorship both formal and informal, and the rise of public relations