The POPOP4 library and codes for preparing secondary gamma-ray production cross sections

The POPOP4 code for converting secondary gamma ray yield data to multigroup secondary gamma ray production cross sections and the POPOP4 library of secondary gamma ray yield data are described. Recent results of the testing of uranium and iron data sets from the POPOP4 library are given. The data sets were tested by comparing calculated secondary gamma ray pulse height spectra measured at the ORNL TSR-II reactor

Cultural Values and Government

Mr. Dellinger Mr. Dellinger originally delivered these remarks for the panel entitled The Role of Government in Defining Our Culture, at the Federalist Society’s 2006 National Lawyers Convention, on Saturday, November 18, 2006, in Washington, D.C. commenting on the Ninth Circuit decision Finley v. National Endowment for the Arts. The case involved the constitutionality of the Helms Amendment which required that the National Endowment for the Arts take decency into account in choosing who should be awarded artistic grants

The “risk-adjusted” price-concentration relationship in banking

Price-concentration studies in banking typically find a significant and negative relationship between consumer deposit rates (i.e., prices) and market concentration. This relationship implies that highly concentrated banking markets are “bad” for depositors. It also provides support for the Structure-Conduct-Performance hypothesis and rejects the Efficient-Structure hypothesis. However, these studies have focused almost exclusively on supply-side control variables and have neglected demand-side variables when estimating the reduced form price-concentration relationship. For example, previous studies have not included in their analysis bank-specific risk variables as measures of cross-sectional derived deposit demand. The authors find that when bank-specific risk variables are included in the analysis the magnitude of the relationship between deposit rates and market concentration decreases by over 50 percent. They offer an explanation for these results based on the correlation between a bank’s risk profile and the structure of the market in which it operates. These results suggest that it may be necessary to reconsider the well-established assumption that higher market concentration necessarily leads to anticompetitive deposit pricing behavior by commercial banks. This finding has direct implications for the antitrust evaluations of bank merger and acquisition proposals by regulatory agencies. And, in a more general sense, these results suggest that any Structure-Conduct-Performance-based study that does not explicitly consider the possibility of very different risk profiles of the firms analyzed may indeed miss a very important set of explanatory variables. And, thus, the results from those studies may be spurious.

Inter-industry contagion and the competitive effects of financial distress announcements: evidence from commercial banks and life insurance companies

Contagion usually refers to the spillover of the effects of shocks from one or more firms to other firms. Most studies of contagion limit their analysis to how shock affect firms in the same industry, or "intra-industry" contagion. The purpose of this paper is to explore and document the likely magnitude of "inter-industry" contagion. In their comprehensive study of intra-industry contagion using many individual industries Lang and Stulz (1992) argue that if contagion is not simply an informational effect it will impose a social cost on our economic system. If this is true for intra-industry contagion, then the same argument must hold for inter-industry contagion as well. We focus on inter-industry contagion effects in this paper because the vast majority of the extant literature about contagion has neglected its important potential cost to shareholders. Most of the studies on contagion attempts to differentiate between a "pure" contagion effect and a signaling or information-based contagion effect. An example of a pure contagion effect would be the negative effects of a bank failure spilling over to other banks regardless of the cause of the bank failure. And, an example of a signaling contagion effect would be if a bank failure is caused by problems whose revelation is correlated across banks, and the correlated banks are impacted negatively. We conduct our investigation of contagion by examining three separate announcements involving adverse information about commercial real estate portfolios. The first announcement is by a large commercial bank (the Bank of New England), the second announcement consists of a series of events--from several large banking organizations and a regulatory agency (the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency), and the third announcement is by a large life insurance company (Travelers). There are two reasons we chose these particular events. First, the events seemed to be very unusual and very significant indicators of future (and present) financial distress. Second, the events shared a common theme of financial distress caused by problems with commercial real estate portfolios. We first establish that the commercial bank announcements negatively impact the equity values of life insurance companies (and vice versa). Next, we demonstrate that the bank regulatory agency announcement negatively impacts the equity values of life insurance companies as well as commercial banks. We then explicitly test if the shareholder wealth effects are linked to a set of specific firm characteristics. Consistent with previous contagion studies, our results provide strong evidence of "intra-industry" contagion related wealth effects. We also find that these contagion effects, to a significant degree, can be explained by firm specific variables. This implies that the intra-industry spillover effects associated with our three events are not of the totally "pure" contagion variety, but have an informational component as well. We also find very strong evidence of significant "inter-industry" contagion-based shareholder wealth effects. Again, these contagion-based wealth effects do not appear to be purely contagion-based. Wealth effects can also be explained by such factors as geographic proximity, asset composition, liability composition, leverage, size, and regulatory expectations.Insurance ; Bank failures ; Stocks

Three methods of presenting flight vector information in a head-up display during simulated STOL approaches

A simulator study was conducted to determine the usefulness of adding flight path vector symbology to a head-up display designed to improve glide-slope tracking performance during steep 7.5 deg visual approaches in STOL aircraft. All displays included a fixed attitude symbol, a pitch- and roll-stabilized horizon bar, and a glide-slope reference bar parallel to and 7.5 deg below the horizon bar. The displays differed with respect to the flight-path marker (FPM) symbol: display 1 had no FPM symbol; display 2 had an air-referenced FPM, and display 3 had a ground-referenced FPM. No differences between displays 1 and 2 were found on any of the performance measures. Display 3 was found to decrease height error in the early part of the approach and to reduce descent rate variation over the entire approach. Two measures of workload did not indicate any differences between the displays

X-ray Binaries and Globular Clusters in Elliptical Galaxies

The X-ray emission from normal elliptical galaxies has two major components: soft emission from diffuse gas and harder emission from populations of accreting (low-mass) stellar X-ray binaries (LMXB). If LMXB populations are tied to the field stellar populations in galaxies, their total X-ray luminosities should be proportional to the optical luminosities of galaxies. However, recent ASCA and Chandra X-ray observations show that the global luminosities of LMXB components in ellipticals exhibit significant scatter at a given optical luminosity. This scatter may reflect a range of evolutionary stages among LMXB populations in ellipticals of different ages. If so, the ratio of the global LMXB X-ray luminosity to the galactic optical luminosity, L_LMXB/L_opt, may be used to determine when the bulk of stars were formed in individual ellipticals. To test this, we compare variations in L_LMXB/L_opt for LMXB populations in ellipticals to optically-derived estimates of stellar ages in the same galaxies. We find no correlation, implying that L_LMXB/L_opt variations are not good age indicators for ellipticals. Alternatively, LMXBs may be formed primarily in globular clusters (through stellar tidal interactions), rather than in the stellar fields of galaxies. Since elliptical galaxies exhibit a wide range of globular cluster populations for a given galaxian luminosity, this may induce a dispersion in the LMXB populations of ellipticals with similar optical luminosities. Indeed, we find that L_LMXB/L_opt ratios for LMXB populations are strongly correlated with the specific globular cluster frequencies in elliptical galaxies. This suggests that most LMXBs were formed in globular clusters.Comment: 5 pages, emulateapj5 style, 2 embedded EPS figures, to appear in ApJ Letter

THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF TAKING A SPORTS FRANCHISE BY EMINENT DOMAIN AND THE NEED FOR FEDERAL LEGISLATION TO RESTRICT FRANCHISE RELOCATION

In 1985, two cities were in proceedings to each take over a sports franchises located within their respective cities. However, a number of constitutional limitations may prevent a city from taking sports franchises. This Note examines the constitutional public use, just compensation,right to travel and commerce clause limitations as applied to the taking of sports franchises by eminent domain. This Note concludes that eminent domain is an improper method of protecting cities\u27 interests in preventing the relocation of sports franchises. Consequently, it suggests that only carefully drawn federal legislation can protect a city\u27s interest in keeping its sports franchises without subjecting franchises to nonuniform and discriminatory treatment

Corporate governance structure and mergers

Few transactions have the potential to generate revelations about the market value of corporate assets and liabilities as mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Corporate governance and control mechanisms such as independent directors, independent blockholders, and managerial share ownership are usually important predictors of the size and distribution of the incremental wealth generated by M&A transactions. The authors add to this literature by investigating these relationships using a sample of banking organization M&A transactions over the period 1990-2004. Unlike research on nonfinancial firms, the impact of independent directors, share ownership of the top five managers, and independent block holders on bank merger purchase premiums in this environment is likely to be measured more consistently because of industry operating standards and regulations. It is also the case that research on banks in this area has not received adequate attention. The authors model controls for risk characteristics of the target banks, the deal characteristics, and the economic environment. Their results are robust. They support the hypothesis that independent directors may provide an important internal governance mechanism for protecting shareholders' interests, especially in large-scale transactions such as mergers and takeovers. The authors also find the results to be consistent with the hypothesis that independent blockholders play an important role in the market for corporate control as does managerial share ownership. But these effects dampen the impact of independent directors on target shareholders' merger prices. Their overall findings would support policies that promote independent outside directors on the board of banking firms in order to provide protection for shareholders and investors at large.Corporate governance ; Bank mergers