Payroll Disparity Among Major League Baseball Teams: Building a Competitive Team Despite Limited Resources

There has been an inequality in payroll among Major League Baseball teams for many years that became increasingly evident in the late 1990s. Revenue disparities among teams cause a competitive imbalance for the league and make it harder for small-market teams to compete with large-market teams with much higher payrolls. MLB has attempted to alleviate this disparity, but the implementation of revenue sharing and the competitive balance tax alone is not enough for small-market clubs to build a competitive team. There are a number of ways that small-market clubs can build a competitive team despite limited resources, including employing the moneyball hypothesis, quantifying market inefficiencies, utilizing the team’s farm system, taking advantage of trade opportunities, and making intelligent contract decisions

Biconical structures in two-dimensional anisotropic Heisenberg antiferromagnets

Square lattice Heisenberg and XY antiferromagnets with uniaxial anisotropy in a field along the easy axis are studied. Based on ground state considerations and Monte Carlo simulations, the role of biconical structures in the transition region between the antiferromagnetic and spin--flop phases is analyzed. In particular, adding a single--ion anisotropy to the XXZ antiferromagnet, one observes, depending on the sign of that anisotropy, either an intervening biconical phase or a direct transition of first order separating the two phases. In case of the anisotropic XY model, the degeneracy of the ground state, at a critical field, in antiferromagnetic, spin--flop, and bidirectional structures seems to result, as in the case of the XXZ model, in a narrow disordered phase between the antiferromagnetic and spin--flop phases, dominated by bidirectional fluctuations.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, accepted by Phys. Rev.

Classical and quantum two-dimensional anisotropic Heisenberg antiferromagnets

The classical and the quantum, spin $S=1/2, versions of the uniaxially anisotropic Heisenberg antiferromagnet on a square lattice in a field parallel to the easy axis are studied using Monte Carlo techniques. For the classical version, attention is drawn to biconical structures and fluctuations at low temperatures in the transition region between the antiferromagnetic and spin-flop phases. For the quantum version, the previously proposed scenario of a first-order transition between the antiferromagnetic and spin-flop phases with a critical endpoint and a tricritical point is scrutinized.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures, accepted by Phys. Rev.

Ising antiferromagnet with mobile, pinned and quenched defects

Motivated by recent experiments on (Sr,Ca,La)_14 Cu_24 O_41, a two-dimensional Ising antiferromagnet with mobile, locally pinned and quenched defects is introduced and analysed using mainly Monte Carlo techniques. The interplay between the arrangement of the defects and the magnetic ordering as well as the effect of an external field are studied.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures. Condensed Matter Physics (Festschrift in honour of R. Folk

Quenched charge disorder in CuO2 spin chains: Experimental and numerical studies

We report on measurements of the magnetic response of the anisotropic CuO_2 spin chains in lightly hole-doped La_x (Ca,Sr)_14-x Cu_24 O_41, x>=5. The experimental data suggest that in magnetic fields B >~ 4T (applied along the easy axis) the system is characterized by short-range spin order and quasi-static (quenched) charge disorder. The magnetic susceptibility chi(B) shows a broad anomaly, which we interpret as the remnant of a spin-flop transition. To corroborate this idea, we present Monte Carlo simulations of a classical, anisotropic Heisenberg model with randomly distributed, static holes. Our numerical results clearly show that the spin-flop transition of the pure model (without holes) is destroyed and smeared out due to the disorder introduced by the quasi-static holes. Both the numerically calculated susceptibility curves chi(B) and the temperature dependence of the position of the anomaly are in qualitative agreement with the experimental data.Comment: 10 pages, REVTeX4. 11 figures; v2: Fig.2 replaced, small changes in Figs.1 and 11; minor revisons in Sec. III.C; accepted by Phys. Rev.

Commments: Putting the House in Order: An Analysis of and Planning Considerations for Home Office Deduction

Section 280A of the Internal Revenue Code allows a taxpayer to deduct expenses incurred with respect to his home office only if the home office qualifies as a principal place of business, is a place of business where he meets or deals with patients, clients, or customers, or is in a separate structure detached from his residence. These exceptions, designed to permit a home office deduction only to deserving taxpayers, have been a point of contention between the Internal Revenue Service and taxpayers. In this comment, the author examines the statutory components of section 280A, reviews the decisional law, suggests possible methods for resolution of inconsistencies in judicial interpretation and application of the section, and posits tax planning considerations

Two-dimensional anisotropic Heisenberg antiferromagnet in a field

The classical, square lattice, uniaxially anisotropic Heisenberg antiferromagnet in a magnetic field parallel to the easy axis is studied using Monte Carlo techniques. The model displays a long-range ordered antiferromagnetic, an algebraically ordered spin-flop, and a paramagnetic phase. The simulations indicate that a narrow disordered phase intervenes between the ordered phases down to quite low temperatures. Results are compared to previous, partially conflicting findings on related classical models as well as the quantum variant with spin S=1/2.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure

No Small Matter: Leadership for Institutional Culture in Vincentian Higher Education

The consideration of “Vincentian leadership” exists within the larger context of the loss of religious personnel from Catholic universities across the United States. For the religious mission and identity to remain strong at these institutions, Vincentian leaders must leverage a primarily lay-led, self-sustaining culture