Binding conditions for atomic N-electron systems in non-relativistic QED

We examine the binding conditions for atoms in non-relativistic QED, and prove that removing one electron from an atom requires a positive energy. As an application, we establish the existence of a ground state for the Helium atom.Comment: LaTeX, uses AMS packag

On the ground state energy of the translation invariant Pauli-Fierz model

In this note, we determine the ground state energy of the translation invariant Pauli-Fierz model to subleading order $O(\alpha^3)$ with respect to powers of the finestructure constant $\alpha$, and prove rigorous error bounds of order $O(\alpha^{4})$. A main objective of our argument is its brevity.Comment: AMS Latex, 8 page

Social and Environmental Attributes of Food Products in an Emerging Mass Market : Challenges of Signaling and Consumer Perception, With European Illustrations

This paper focuses on the environmental and ethical attributes of food products and their production processes. These two aspects have been recently recognized and are becoming increasingly important, in terms of signaling and of consumer perception. There are two thematic domains: environmental and social. Within each domain there are two movements. Hence the paper first presents the four movements that have brought to the fore new aspects of food product quality, to wit: (1) aspects of environmental ethics (organic agriculture and integrated agriculture) and (2)social ethics (fair trade and ethical trade). Then it describes how the actors in the movements producers, retailers, NGOs, and governments) are organized and how consumers perceive each of the movements. From the perspective of the actors in the movements themselves, the movements are grouped into two 'actors' philosophies' : a “radical” philosophy (the organic production and fair trade movements that arose in radical opposition to conventional agriculture or unfair trade relations) and a “reformist” philosophy (the integrated agriculture and ethical trade movements that arose as efforts to modify but not radically change conventional agriculture). From the point of view of consumers, the classification of the movements is based on perceptions of the 'domain' of the movements. That is, consumers tend to perceive as a grouping the organic production movement and the integrated agricultural movement, as they both deal with the environment. By contrast, consumers tend to group the fair trade movement and the ethical trade movement, as they both deal essentially with social ethics. Recently, key players such as large retailers and agribusinesses have adopted as part of their overall quality assurance programs both the environmental and the ethical attributes. Their involvement in and adoption of the goals of the movements have, however, generated tensions and conflicts, in particular within the radical movements, because of concerns of cooptation. The paper identifies challenges for those promoting food products with environmental and social/ethical attributes to communicate coherent signals to consumers at this crucial moment of an emerging mass market for these products.Consumer perception, Ethical trade, Fair trade, Integrated agriculture, Organic agriculture, Organization, Quality signals

QUALITY AND QUALITY ASSURANCE IN THE FRESH PRODUCE SECTOR: A CASE STUDY OF EUROPEAN RETAILERS

Quality and quality assurance are among the most critical issues facing the fresh produce industry. This paper shows that while quality is widely noted to be an important concept, it is not clearly defined in the literature. Several definitions of quality are presented. The terminology associated with quality assurance is analyzed. An array of quality assurance systems used in the European fresh product sector are presented. Conclusions are drawn that while fresh produce quality will always be a factor retailers use to compete for consumers, there is evidence of industry consensus on some quality attributes, particularly, safety, environmental, and social attributes.Marketing,

STRATEGIC CHOICES IN PRODUCE MARKETING: ISSUES OF COMPATIBLE USE AND EXCLUSION COSTS

Fresh produce suppliers in Europe and the United States use a mix of price and non-price marketing strategies. This paper shows that these strategies create, using Mancur Olson's terms, two collective goods: overall consumer confidence in the market's ability to deliver credence attributes, and overall consumer satisfaction with the experience attributes of fresh produce. The characteristics of these two collective goods, i.e., their compatible use and high costs of exclusion, influence the costs, effectiveness, and nature of the marketing strategies of firms. This paper presents examples from the fresh produce industries of Europe and the U.S. to show how compatible-use and high-exclusion costs influence firm strategies. It concludes that there are unavoidable interdependencies that create a need for collective action -- a need that will increase as consumer and retailer demand for quality attributes in fresh produce increases.Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing,

Structure-based analysis of the ultraspiracle protein and docking studies of putative ligands

The ultraspiracle protein (USP) is the insect ortholog of the mammalian retinoid X receptor (RXR). Fundamental questions concern the functional role of USP as the heterodimerization partner of insect nuclear receptors such as the ecdysone receptor. The crystallographic structures of the ligand binding domain of USPs of Heliothis virescens and Drosophila melanogaster solved recently show that helix 12 is locked in an antagonist conformation raising the question whether USPs could adopt an agonist conformation as observed in RXRα. In order to investigate this hypothesis, a homology model for USP is proposed that allows a structural analysis of the agonist conformation of helix 12 based on the sequence comparison with RXR. For USP, one of the main issues concerns its function and in particular whether its activity is ligand independent or not. The x-ray structures strongly suggest that USP can bind ligands. Putative ligands have therefore been docked in the USP homology model. Juvenile hormones and juvenile hormone analogs were chosen as target ligands for the docking study. The interaction between the ligand and the receptor are examined in terms of the pocket shape as well as in terms of the chemical nature of the residues lining the ligand binding cavity

Systemes de numeration et fonctions fractales relatifs aux substitutions

AbstractLet A be a finite alphabet, σ a substitution over A, (un)n ϵ N a fixed point for σ, and for each a ϵ A, ƒ(a) a real number. We establish, under some assumptions, an asymptotic formula concerning the sum Sƒ (N) = Σi ⩽ N ƒ(ui), N ϵ N. This result generalizes some previous results from Coquet or Brillhart, Erdös, and Morton. Moreover, relations with self-affine functions (in a sense which generalizes a definition from Kamae) are proved. The calculi leave over systems of representation of integers and real numbers

The Complexity of Subgame Perfect Equilibria in Quantitative Reachability Games

We study multiplayer quantitative reachability games played on a finite directed graph, where the objective of each player is to reach his target set of vertices as quickly as possible. Instead of the well-known notion of Nash equilibrium (NE), we focus on the notion of subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE), a refinement of NE well-suited in the framework of games played on graphs. It is known that there always exists an SPE in quantitative reachability games and that the constrained existence problem is decidable. We here prove that this problem is PSPACE-complete. To obtain this result, we propose a new algorithm that iteratively builds a set of constraints characterizing the set of SPE outcomes in quantitative reachability games. This set of constraints is obtained by iterating an operator that reinforces the constraints up to obtaining a fixpoint. With this fixpoint, the set of SPE outcomes can be represented by a finite graph of size at most exponential. A careful inspection of the computation allows us to establish PSPACE membership

Simulation-Based Finite-Sample Tests for Heteroskedasticity and ARCH Effects

A wide range of tests for heteroskedasticity have been proposed in the econometric and statistics literature. Although a few exact homoskedasticity tests are available, the commonly employed procedures are quite generally based on asymptotic approximations which may not provide good size control in finite samples. There has been a number of recent studies that seek to improve the reliability of common heteroskedasticity tests using Edgeworth, Bartlett, jackknife and bootstrap methods. Yet the latter remain approximate. In this paper, we describe a solution to the problem of controlling the size of homoskedasticity tests in linear regression contexts. We study procedures based on the standard test statistics [e.g., the Goldfeld-Quandt, Glejser, Bartlett, Cochran, Hartley, Breusch-Pagan-Godfrey, White and Szroeter criteria] as well as tests for autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH-type models). We also suggest several extensions of the existing procedures (sup-type of combined test statistics) to allow for unknown breakpoints in the error variance. We exploit the technique of Monte Carlo tests to obtain provably exact p-values, for both the standard and the new tests suggested. We show that the MC test procedure conveniently solves the intractable null distribution problem, in particular those raised by the sup-type and combined test statistics as well as (when relevant) unidentified nuisance parameter problems under the null hypothesis. The method proposed works in exactly the same way with both Gaussian and non-Gaussian disturbance distributions [such as heavy-tailed or stable distributions]. The performance of the procedures is examined by simulation. The Monte Carlo experiments conducted focus on : (1) ARCH, GARCH, and ARCH-in-mean alternatives; (2) the case where the variance increases monotonically with : (i) one exogenous variable, and (ii) the mean of the dependent variable; (3) grouped heteroskedasticity; (4) breaks in variance at unknown points. We find that the proposed tests achieve perfect size control and have good power.Un grand éventail de tests d'hétéroscédasticité a été proposé en économétrie et en statistique. Bien qu'il existe quelques tests d'homoscédasticité exacts, les procédures couramment utilisées sont généralement fondées sur des approximations asymptotiques qui ne procurent pas un bon contrôle du niveau dans les échantillons finis. Plusieurs études récentes ont tenté d'améliorer la fiabilité des tests d'hétéroscédasticité usuels, sur base de méthodes de type Edgeworth, Bartlett, jackknife et bootstrap. Cependant, ces méthodes demeurent approximatives. Dans cet article, nous décrivons une solution au problème de contrôle du niveau des tests d'homoscédasticité dans les modèles de régression linéaire. Nous étudions des procédures basées sur les critères de test standard [e.g., les critères de Goldfeld-Quandt, Glejser, Bartlett, Cochran, Hartley, Breusch-Pagan-Godfrey, White et Szroeter], de même que des tests pour l'hétéroscédasticité autorégressive conditionnelle (les modèles de type ARCH). Nous suggérons plusieurs extensions des procédures usuelles (les statistiques de type-sup ou combinées) pour tenir compte de points de ruptures inconnus dans la variance des erreurs. Nous appliquons la technique des tests de Monte Carlo (MC) de façon à obtenir des seuils de signification marginaux (les valeurs-p) exacts pour les tests usuels et les nouveaux tests que nous proposons. Nous démontrons que la procédure de MC permet de résoudre les problèmes des distributions compliquées sous l'hypothèse nulle, en particulier ceux associés aux statistiques de type-sup, aux statistiques combinées et aux paramètres de nuisance non-identifiés sous l'hypothèse nulle. La méthode proposée fonctionne exactement de la même manière en présence de lois Gaussiennes et non Gaussiennes [comme par exemple les lois aux queues épaisses ou les lois stables]. Nous évaluons la performance des procédures proposées par simulation. Les expériences de Monte Carlo que nous effectuons portent sur : (1) les alternatives de type ARCH, GARCH et ARCH-en-moyenne; (2) le cas où la variance augmente de manière monotone en fonction : (i) d'une variable exogène, et (ii) de la moyenne de la variable dépendante; (3) l'hétéroscédasticité groupée; (4) les ruptures en variance à des points inconnus. Nos résultats montrent que les tests proposés permettent de contrôler parfaitement le niveau et ont une bonne puissance