Ethical aspects of e-commerce: data subjects and content

This paper reflects on the ethical challenges posed by Internet commerce, with special emphasis on those involving the content and the users of the information. The paper discusses the main ethical issues in e-commerce, including security, privacy, identity and nonrefutability of transactions. It proposes measures which both governments and the private sector could adopt to address those issues on different levels. Finally, the paper reflects on the creation of value by leveraging trust and proposes two universal principles to be upheld in Internet commerce: online-offline consistency and technological neutrality.Security; privacy; identity; nonrefutability; e-commerce ethics;

Ground-state 12CO emission and a resolved jet at 115 GHz (rest-frame) in the radio loud quasar 3C318

An analysis of 44 GHz VLA observations of the z = 1.574 radio-loud quasar 3C318 has revealed emission from the redshifted J = 1 - 0 transition of the CO molecule and spatially resolved the 6.3 kpc radio jet associated with the quasar at 115 GHz rest-frame. The continuum-subtracted line emitter is spatially offset from the quasar nucleus by 0.33" (2.82 kpc in projection). This spatial offset has a significance of >8-sigma and, together with a previously published -400 km/s velocity offset measured in the J = 2 - 1 CO line relative to the systemic redshift of the quasar, rules out a circumnuclear starburst or molecular gas ring and suggests that the quasar host galaxy is either undergoing a major merger with a gas-rich galaxy or is otherwise a highly disrupted system. If the merger scenario is correct then the event may be in its early stages, acting as the trigger for both the young radio jets in the quasar and a starburst in the merging galaxy. The total molecular gas mass in the spatially offset line emitter as measured from the ground-state CO line M_H2 = 3.7 (+/-0.4) x 10^10 (alpha_CO/0.8) M_solar. Assuming that the line-emitter can be modelled as a rotating disk, an inclination-dependent upper limit is derived for its dynamical mass M_dyn sin^2(i) < 3.2 x 10^9 M_solar, suggesting that for M_H2 to remain less than M_dyn the inclination angle must be i < 16 degrees. The far infrared and CO luminosities of 246 extragalactic systems are collated from the literature for comparison. The high molecular gas content of 3C318 is consistent with that of the general population of high redshift quasars and sub-millimetre galaxies.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables (additional table to appear online as supplementary material), accepted for publication in MNRA

On the nonlinear stability of mKdV breathers

A mathematical proof for the stability of mKdV breathers is announced. This proof involves the existence of a nonlinear equation satisfied by all breather profiles, and a new Lyapunov functional which controls the dynamics of small perturbations and instability modes. In order to construct such a functional, we work in a subspace of the energy one. However, our proof introduces new ideas in order to attack the corresponding stability problem in the energy space. Some remarks about the sine-Gordon case are also considered.Comment: 7 p

Collective Coordinates Theory for Discrete Soliton Ratchets in the sine-Gordon Model

A collective coordinate theory is develop for soliton ratchets in the damped discrete sine-Gordon model driven by a biharmonic force. An ansatz with two collective coordinates, namely the center and the width of the soliton, is assumed as an approximated solution of the discrete non-linear equation. The evolution of these two collective coordinates, obtained by means of the Generalized Travelling Wave Method, explains the mechanism underlying the soliton ratchet and captures qualitatively all the main features of this phenomenon. The theory accounts for the existence of a non-zero depinning threshold, the non-sinusoidal behaviour of the average velocity as a function of the difference phase between the harmonics of the driver, the non-monotonic dependence of the average velocity on the damping and the existence of non-transporting regimes beyond the depinning threshold. In particular it provides a good description of the intriguing and complex pattern of subspaces corresponding to different dynamical regimes in parameter space

Orbital stability of the black soliton for the quintic Gross-Pitaevskii equation

In this work, a rigorous proof of the orbital stability of the black soliton solution of the quintic Gross-Pitaevskii equation in one spatial dimension is obtained. We first build and show explicitly black and dark soliton solutions and we prove that the corresponding Ginzburg-Landau energy is coercive around them by using some orthogonality conditions related to perturbations of the black and dark solitons. The existence of suitable perturbations around black and dark solitons satisfying the required orthogonality conditions is deduced from an Implicit Function Theorem. In fact, these perturbations involve dark solitons with sufficiently small speeds and some proportionality factors arising from the explicit expression of their spatial derivative. We are also able to control the evolution of the modulation parameters along the quintic Gross-Pitaevskii flow by estimating their growth in time. Finally by using a low order conservation law (momentum), we prove that the speed of the perturbation is bounded and use that control to finish the proof of the orbital stability of black solitons. As a direct consequence, we also prove the orbital stability of the dark soliton in a small speed interval.Comment: 46 pages, 3 figures. Introduction extende

Hacia una teoría de la empresa basada en el bien común

Las consideraciones habituales sobre la naturaleza de la empresa dependen en gran medida de las explicaciones de Coase, junto con las aportaciones procedentes de la teoría de la agencia y la teoría de los accionistas. A pesar de las exigencias de objetividad y neutralidad, ha sido difícil proporcionar un lugar a un tipo de ética empresarial que reconozca la naturalezaz personal del ser humano y la contribución de las empresas al bien común según esas premisas. Este artículo empieza presentando las suposiciones de Coase que están implícitas en la teoría de las agencia y después expone su crítica a la luz de los postulados personalistas y del bien común. Pretende mostrar cómo los principios del personalismo y del bien común crean un marco que no sólo se acomoda mejor a la ética empresarial, sino que también permite una comprensión más convincente de la empresa como un todo