37,707 research outputs found
Entry Deterrence in Durable-Goods Monopoly
Some industries support Schumpeter's notion of creative destruction through innovative entrants. Others exhibit a single, persistent technological leadership. This paper explores a durable-goods monopolist threatened by entry via a new generation of the durable good. It is shown that the durability of the good either acts as an entry barrier itself or creates an opportunity for the incumbent firm to deter entry by limit pricing. As a consequence, the industry tends to remain monopolized, with successive generations of the durable good being introduced by the incumbent monopolist. We show that entry deterrence by limit pricing can lead to underinvestment in innovation.
The actors that shape the knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of Maltese youth
Not much is known about the environmental knowledge, attitudes and actions of young people in the
Maltese islands. The main actors that are responsible for the acquisition and development of
environmental perspectives in young people in Malta are also not well known. There is as yet, little
understanding of the extent to which these actors are fostering a sense of environmental responsibility
and a greater commitment towards sustainable development.
A mixed method research methodology was employed to address this knowledge gap that included an
extended questionnaire distributed to students in the post secondary age range and a number of focus
groups to provide a more in-depth study of some of the issues arising from the questionnaire
analyses. The focus groups allowed young people to frame their responses in their own words. This
paper focuses on the results of the quantitative study.
The data from the quantitative analyses indicates that students are more knowledgeable about the
Global Environment than about the Local Environment, and that students receive most information
from School, Television and the Internet. The sources of environmental information which were
perceived by young people as being the most reliable included School, Books and the Internet. The
overall attitude of students towards the environment appears to be strongly positive, however students
seem to perform little positive actions towards the environment. Year group, Age and Gender were
found to have a statistically significant effect on knowledge; Father’s work was found to have a
statistically significant effect on attitude and Age was found to have a significant effect on behavior.peer-reviewe
Conformally equivariant quantization: Existence and uniqueness
We prove the existence and the uniqueness of a conformally equivariant symbol
calculus and quantization on any conformally flat pseudo-Riemannian manifold
(M,\rg). In other words, we establish a canonical isomorphism between the
spaces of polynomials on and of differential operators on tensor
densities over , both viewed as modules over the Lie algebra \so(p+1,q+1)
where . This quantization exists for generic values of the weights
of the tensor densities and compute the critical values of the weights yielding
obstructions to the existence of such an isomorphism. In the particular case of
half-densities, we obtain a conformally invariant star-product.Comment: LaTeX document, 32 pages; improved versio
Genera of curves on a very general surface in
In this paper we consider the question of determining the geometric genera of
irreducible curves lying on a very general surface of degree at least 5
in (the cases are well known).
We introduce the set of all non-negative integers which are not
realized as geometric genera of irreducible curves on . We prove that
is finite and, in particular, that . The set
is the union of finitely many disjoint and separated integer
intervals. The first of them, according to a theorem of Xu, is . We show that the next one is for all .Comment: 16 page
GOES-next navigation operations
The next generation of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, GOES-I through -M (hereafter referred to as GOES-Next), begins a new era in the operation of weather satellites by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). With a new spacecraft design, three-axis attitude stabilization, new ground support equipment, and improved methods of image navigation and registration that use on board compensation techniques to correct images for satellite motion, NOAA expects improved performance over the current series of dual-spin spacecraft. To meet these expectations, planning is currently underway for providing the complex and intensive operational environment that will meet the challenge of operating the GOES-Next spacecraft. This paper describes that operational environment
Fourth annual Science in the House exhibition at the new parliament building
Members of Parliament, the House of Representatives
and researchers were in attendance at the 4th annual
Science in the House exhibition in the New Parliament
Building in Valletta at noon of Thursday 24th September
2015. The event was inaugurated under the auspices of
the Off ce of the Speaker by Ray Scicluna. Following
comments by Prof. Alex Felice, speeches were presented
by MPs Deborah Schembri and Claudio Grech. A few
comments were made on behalf of the Faculty of Science
by Prof. Emmanuel Sinagra to commemorate the 100th
anniversary of the founding of the Faculty of Science at
the University of Malta. The formal opening of the event
concluded with enlightening words from the University
Rector, Prof. Juanito Camilleri.
The exhibition consisted of 12 posters representative of various research
projects at the University of Malta from the Faculties
of Science, Medicine and Surgery, Dental Surgery and
Health Sciences. A commemorative poster was also dis
played by the Faculty of Science to celebrate its 100th
anniversary, which coincides with the centennial of Einstein's theory of relativity.
Science in the House is organised by the Malta Chamber of Scientists, the University Research Trust (RIDT)
and the Science in the City, European Researchers'
Night consortium. Science in the City, European Researchers Night is mainly funded by the EU Marie
Sklodowska-Curie Action of the Horizon 2020 (H2020)
Programme. It is recognised by Europe for Festivals,
Festivals for Europe (EFFE).peer-reviewe
A population study of type II bursts in the Rapid Burster
Type II bursts are thought to arise from instabilities in the accretion flow
onto a neutron star in an X-ray binary. Despite having been known for almost 40
years, no model can yet satisfactorily account for all their properties. To
shed light on the nature of this phenomenon and provide a reference for future
theoretical work, we study the entire sample of Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer
data of type II bursts from the Rapid Burster (MXB 1730-335). We find that type
II bursts are Eddington-limited in flux, that a larger amount of energy goes in
the bursts than in the persistent emission, that type II bursts can be as short
as 0.130 s, and that the distribution of recurrence times drops abruptly below
15-18 s. We highlight the complicated feedback between type II bursts and the
NS surface thermonuclear explosions known as type I bursts, and between type II
bursts and the persistent emission. We review a number of models for type II
bursts. While no model can reproduce all the observed burst properties and
explain the source uniqueness, models involving a gating role for the magnetic
field come closest to matching the properties of our sample. The uniqueness of
the source may be explained by a special combination of magnetic field
strength, stellar spin period and alignment between the magnetic field and the
spin axis.Comment: Accepted 2015 February 12. Received 2015 February 10; in original
form 2014 December 1
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