The Effect of Strikes and Lockouts on the Strength of Professional Sports Leagues

Most, if not all, professional sports leagues have adopted an internal structure that provides much economic success, but that creates a division within each league composed of two sides: the owners of the teams and the players on those teams. Due to this division and the creation of goals that usually contrast with each other, there has long been strife between the two factions. In most cases both parties are able to come together and formulate an agreement, but on rare occasions one group decides that it is time to act on their dissatisfaction, anger, or even greed and refuse to participate in these negotiations. This generally leads to an owners’ lockout or a players’ strike, similar to those found in other industries. After an extensive meta-analysis, conducted using data and research from past sports strikes and lockouts, I have found that the effects of a work stoppage on the strength of a league is not uniform, that players salaries generally are negatively affected, and that players most often lose the most as a result.No embarg

It Came from Somewhere and it Hasn’t Gone Away: Black Women’s Anti-Poverty Organizing in Atlanta, 1966-1996

Black women formed the first welfare rights organization in Atlanta composed of recipients and continued anti-poverty organizing for decades. Their strategy adapted to the political climate, including the ebb and flow of social movements. This thesis explores how and why that strategy changed as well as how the experiences of the women involved altered ideas of activism and movements

Stability of AdSp×Mq compactifications without supersymmetry

We study the stability of Freund-Rubin compactifications, AdSp×Mq, of (p+q)-dimensional gravity theories with a q-form field strength and no cosmological term. We show that the general AdSp×S^q vacuum is classically stable against small fluctuations, in the sense that all modes satisfy the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound. In particular, the compactifications used in the recent discussion of the proposed bosonic M theory are perturbatively stable. Our analysis treats all modes arising from the graviton and the q form, and is completely independent of supersymmetry. From the masses of the linearized perturbations, we obtain the dimensions of some operators in possible holographic dual CFT’s. Solutions with more general compact Einstein spaces need not be stable, and in particular AdSp×S^n×S^(q-n) is unstable for q~9. We also study the AdS4×S^6 compactification of massive type IIA supergravity, which differs from the usual Freund-Rubin compactification in that there is a cosmological term already in ten dimensions. This nonsupersymmetric vacuum is unstable

Comment on "The black hole final state"

Horowitz and Maldacena have suggested that the unitarity of the black hole S-matrix can be reconciled with Hawking's semiclassical arguments if a final-state boundary condition is imposed at the spacelike singularity inside the black hole. We point out that, in this scenario, departures from unitarity can arise due to interactions between the collapsing body and the infalling Hawking radiation inside the event horizon. The amount of information lost when a black hole evaporates depends on the extent to which these interactions are entangling.Comment: 4 pages, REVTe

Entanglement and entropy operator for strings in pp-wave time dependent background

In this letter new aspects of string theory propagating in a pp-wave time dependent background with a null singularity are explored. It is shown the appearance of a 2d entanglement entropy dynamically generated by the background. For asymptotically flat observers, the vacuum close to the singularity is unitarily inequivalent to the vacuum at $\tau = -\infty$ and it is shown that the 2d entanglement entropy diverges close to this point. As a consequence, the positive time region is inaccessible for observers in $\tau =-\infty$. For a stationary measure, the vacuum at finite time is seen by those observers as a thermal state and the information loss is encoded as a heat bath of string states.Comment: revtex4, 15 pages, revised version to appear in Physics Letters

Sustainable by design: an investigation into ecologically friendly typography

This research investigates the effects that font choice, typographic design, and page layout have on the conservation of ink and paper. This is one part of a broader concern with the environmental sustainability of digital printing. The particular focus of this report is on thesis guidelines for graduate students in the School of Print Media at RIT. The preparation and printing of theses is a salient area of paper and ink consumption at an institution of higher education and research. Established, well-defined thesis guidelines permit precise comparisons of the effects of different typographic factors on materials consumption. Three different aspects were investigated in the preparation and publication of graduate theses in order to determine the amount of reduction possible in paper and ink consumption. A high measurable potential for waste reduction was found. The first aspect is the modification of typographic parameters—within current established guidelines—to reduce paper use. Following this, changes to the typographic components of the thesis guidelines were recommended to increase paper savings further. The second aspect is the selection of alternative, ink-economical typefaces and fonts to reduce ink consumption. The third aspect is modification of the letter forms of fonts to reduce ink consumption even further while maintaining apparent readability. It was found that measurable, material savings can be derived from changes to all these aspects of thesis guidelines, and it is expected that similar savings may be derived from the applications of similar methods to more general institutional printing

Ground access to domestic airports : the creation of a federal program to streamline enhancement and modernization projects

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-106).This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.With few exceptions, airport ground access tends to be an issue that is overlooked by airlines, airport operators, and metropolitan planning organizations. Given the current structure of federal aviation and surface transportation funding, little incentive is provided for these organizations to develop a comprehensive intermodal outlook towards airport access projects. Given the concurrent reauthorization during the next legislative session of several major pieces of authorizing legislation involving domestic transportation projects, including TEA-21 (surface transportation) and AIR-21 (aviation and airports), it would be the ideal time to implement a program for airport ground access projects that bridges these areas. Under such an intermodal system, a solitary federal office, such as the Office of Intermodalism, would become both a central repository for technical guidance, as well as a central source of regulation and interpretation of federal law. In addition, a mixture of local and federal funds should be used to encourage cooperation between the various entities involved with a ground access project, such as the airport owner/operator, regional transit operator, metropolitan planning organization, and the state highway authority. The proposed authorizing legislation would allow an airport operator to levy a Passenger Facility Charge (PFC) beyond current regulatory limits, subject to the approval of the Office of Intermodalism. Further, new categorized surface transportation funds would be authorized, which could be used by the Office of Intermodalism as a match to PFC funding. The remaining funding would be provided by local sources.by Daniel Austin Horowitz.S.M

Spatial methods for event reconstruction in CLEAN

In CLEAN (Cryogenic Low Energy Astrophysics with Noble gases), a proposed neutrino and dark matter detector, background discrimination is possible if one can determine the location of an ionizing radiation event with high accuracy. We simulate ionizing radiation events that produce multiple scintillation photons within a spherical detection volume filled with liquid neon. We estimate the radial location of a particular ionizing radiation event based on the observed count data corresponding to that event. The count data are collected by detectors mounted at the spherical boundary of the detection volume. We neglect absorption, but account for Rayleigh scattering. To account for wavelength-shifting of the scintillation light, we assume that photons are absorbed and re-emitted at the detectors. Here, we develop spatial Maximum Likelihood methods for event reconstruction, and study their performance in computer simulation experiments. We also study a method based on the centroid of the observed count data. We calibrate our estimates based on training data

Universal computing by DNA origami robots in a living animal

Biological systems are collections of discrete molecular objects that move around and collide with each other. Cells carry out elaborate processes by precisely controlling these collisions, but developing artificial machines that can interface with and control such interactions remains a significant challenge. DNA is a natural substrate for computing and has been used to implement a diverse set of mathematical problems1-3, logic circuits4-6 and robotics7-9. The molecule also naturally interfaces with living systems, and different forms of DNA-based biocomputing have previously been demonstrated10-13. Here we show that DNA origami14-16 can be used to fabricate nanoscale robots that are capable of dynamically interacting with each other17-18 in a living animal. The interactions generate logical outputs, which are relayed to switch molecular payloads on or off. As a proof-of-principle, we use the system to create architectures that emulate various logic gates (AND, OR, XOR, NAND, NOT, CNOT, and a half adder). Following an ex vivo prototyping phase, we successfully employed the DNA origami robots in living cockroaches (Blaberus discoidalis) to control a molecule that targets the cells of the animal

Local and Remote Mean and Extreme Temperature Response to Regional Aerosol Emissions Reductions

The climatic implications of regional aerosol and precursor emissions reductions implemented to protect human health are poorly understood. We investigate the mean and extreme temperature response to regional changes in aerosol emissions using three coupled chemistryclimate models: NOAA GFDL CM3, NCAR CESM1, and NASA GISS-E2. Our approach contrasts a long present-day control simulation from each model (up to 400 years with perpetual year 2000 or 2005 emissions) with 14 individual aerosol emissions perturbation simulations (160240 years each). We perturb emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and/or carbonaceous aerosol within six world regions and assess the statistical significance of mean and extreme temperature responses relative to internal variability determined by the control simulation and across the models. In all models, the global mean surface temperature response (perturbation minus control) to SO2 and/or carbonaceous aerosol is mostly positive (warming) and statistically significant and ranges from +0.17 K (Europe SO2) to -0.06 K (US BC). The warming response to SO2 reductions is strongest in the US and Europe perturbation simulations, both globally and regionally, with Arctic warming up to 1 K due to a removal of European anthropogenic SO2 emissions alone; however, even emissions from regions remote to the Arctic, such as SO2 from India, significantly warm the Arctic by up to 0.5 K. Arctic warming is the most robust response across each model and several aerosol emissions perturbations. The temperature response in the Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes is most sensitive to emissions perturbations within that region. In the tropics, however, the temperature response to emissions perturbations is roughly the same in magnitude as emissions perturbations either within or outside of the tropics. We find that climate sensitivity to regional aerosol perturbations ranges from 0.5 to 1.0 K (W m(exp -2))(exp -1) depending on the region and aerosol composition and is larger than the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 in two of three models. We update previous estimates of regional temperature potential (RTP), a metric for estimating the regional temperature responses to a regional emissions perturbation that can facilitate assessment of climate impacts with integrated assessment models without requiring computationally demanding coupled climate model simulations. These calculations indicate a robust regional response to aerosol forcing within the Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes, regardless of where the aerosol forcing is located longitudinally. We show that regional aerosol perturbations can significantly increase extreme temperatures on the regional scale. Except in the Arctic in the summer, extreme temperature responses largely mirror mean temperature responses to regional aerosol perturbations through a shift of the temperature distributions and are mostly dominated by local rather than remote aerosol forcing