Mission-Market Tensions and Nonprofit Pricing

Private not-for-profit organizations combine characteristics of a public sector agency with those of a private, proprietary firm. In particular, nonprofits are required to address designated social missions while breaking even financially. This structure underlies the difficulty that nonprofit organizations face in making decisions with important resource implications. Specifically, choices that would achieve maximal mission impact may differ from choices that reward the organization in purely financial terms. As a result, nonprofit managers face a variety of trade-offs between mission responsive and financially rewarding actions. This paper considers some of these tradeoffs in the context of pricing decisions by nonprofit organizations. In particular, the paper draws on alternative theories of nonprofit pricing from the literature. In one theory, nonprofits are viewed as revenue maximizers, pricing their services to garner as much net revenue as possible to support their organizations. In an alternative theory, nonprofits are conceived as mission maximizers, pricing their services to achieve maximum mission impact within the constraint of financial solvency. The efficacy of these theories is explored through five case studies of organizations offering a variety of services within the context of a local social services federation. Evidence from these cases suggests that the forgoing theories apply in some combination for any given nonprofit organization. Several different behavioral patterns are found, including nonprofits seeking to balance financial and mission impacts in the pricing policies for each of their service offerings and others pursuing a strategic mix of pricing policies for profitable and mission-impacting services. It is clear from all cases observed that nonprofit managers struggle with mission-market tensions as they relate to pricing and that they can benefit from metrics to help them sort through these decisions in ways that resolve these tensions. Working Paper 08-0

The Diffractive Interactions Working Group Summary

Diffractive interactions represent a lively domain of investigations, as confirmed by the progresses reported during the conference. We summarize the diffractive interactions session and put the new experimental data (section 1), developments in modeling diffraction (section 2) and the theoretical relations with Quantum Chromodynamics (section 3) in perspective.Comment: Summary report at DIS200

Transistorized Marx bank pulse circuit provides voltage multiplication with nanosecond rise-time

Base-triggered avalanche transistor circuit used in a Marx bank pulser configuration provides voltage multiplication with nanosecond rise-time. The avalanche-mode transistors replace conventional spark gaps in the Marx bank. The delay time from an input signal to the output signal to the output is typically 6 nanoseconds

Quantum conductance of homogeneous and inhomogeneous interacting electron systems

We obtain the conductance of a system of electrons connected to leads, within time-dependent density-functional theory, using a direct relation between the conductance and the density response function. Corrections to the non-interacting conductance appear as a consequence of the functional form of the exchange-correlation kernel at small frequencies and wavevectors. The simple adiabatic local-density approximation and non-local density-terms in the kernel both give rise to significant corrections in general. In the homogeneous electron gas, the former correction remains significant, and leads to a failure of linear-response theory for densities below a critical value.Comment: for resolution of the here published results see Phys. Rev. B 76, 125433 (2007

Wrong-Higgs Interactions without Flavor Problems and their Effects on Physical Observables

We consider the wrong-Higgs interactions such as type-III two Higgs doublet models. Generally, such interactions cause flavor problems. However, if new Yukawa interactions have the same flavor structure as that of the standard model(SM), we do not have any flavor problems. In this work we propose a microscopic model for the wrong-Higgs interactions aligned with SM ones in the context of supersymmetry(SUSY) and show their phenomenological implications. Low energy contraints from muon g-2 and rare B decays can be relieved and it can be viable to have low mass superparticle spectra with light dark matter which is preferred by recent experiments such as DAMA/LIBRA, CDMS-II and CoGeNT. We also briefly discuss modification of Higgs decay in colliders.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure

Comment on "Dynamical corrections to the DFT-LDA electron conductance in nanoscale systems"

In a recent paper Sai et al. [1] identified a correction R^{dyn}$to the DC conductance of nanoscale junctions arising from dynamical exchange-correlation (XC) effects within time-dependent density functional theory. This quantity contributes to the total resistance through$R=R_{s}+R^{dyn}$where$R_{s}$is the resistance evaluated in the absence of dynamical$XC$effects. In this Comment we show that the numerical estimation of$R^{dyn}$ in example systems of the type they considered should be considerably reduced, once a more appropriate form for the shear electron viscosity ¿ is used

Assessment of density-functional approximations: Long-range correlations and self-interaction effects

The complex nature of electron-electron correlations is made manifest in the very simple but nontrivial problem of two electrons confined within a sphere. The description of highly nonlocal correlation and self-interaction effects by widely used local and semilocal exchange-correlation energy density functionals is shown to be unsatisfactory in most cases. Even the best such functionals exhibit significant errors in the Kohn-Sham potentials and density profiles

Mass Spectrum Dependence of Higgs-mediated mu-e Transition in the MSSM

In this paper, we study non-decoupling $\mu$ - $e$ transition effects by Higgs-mediated contribution in the MSSM, when some SUSY mass parameters are much greater than TeV. In order to treat CP-odd Higgs mass $m_{A^{0}}$ as a free parameter, we consider the non-universal Higgs mass model (NUHM), and assume the only left- or right-handed sleptons had flavor-mixing mass terms. If both Higgs-mediated and ordinary SUSY contribution are significant, the ratio of branching ratios \BR(\meg) / \BR(\maleal) becomes sensitive to SUSY mass parameters. We investigated these mass-sensitive regions and the behavior of the ratio \BR(\meg) / \BR(\maleal) in some mass spectrum of the NUHM, and found that this ratio drastically depends on the mass spectrum structure and chirality of flavor violation. Log factor from two split mass scale influences the way of interference between gaugino- and Higgs-mediated contributions significantly.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures, it will appear in PR

Temperature and light requirements for growth of two diatom species (Bacillariophyceae) isolated from an Arctic macroalga

In the present study, two abundant epiphyticdiatom taxa were isolated from the assimilation hairs ofthe brown macroalga Chordaria flagelliformis collected inthe Arctic Kongsfjorden (Spitsbergen, Norway), establishedas unialgal cultures and their growth rates determinedunder controlled photon fluence rate andtemperature conditions. Using morphological (light andscanning electron microscopy) and SSU rRNA gene databoth isolates (ROS D99 and ROS D125) were identifiedas members of a FragilariaSynedropsis clade. Themolecular data of ROS D99 and ROS D125 were notidentical to any other published sequence. While ROSD99 has been identified as Fragilaria barbararum mainlydue to the SEM characteristics, ROS D125 could not bedefinitely identified although morphological data speakfor Fragilaria striatula. Both diatom species showedsimilar growth rates at all temperatures and photon fluencerates tested. They grew well between 0 and 15Cwithoptimum temperatures of 1214C, but did not survive20C. Therefore, compared to Antarctic diatoms bothtaxa from Kongsfjorden can be characterised as eurythermalorganisms. Increasing photon fluence rates between2 and 15 lmol m2 s1 were accompanied with analmost twofold increase in growth rates, but photon fluencerates >15 lmol m2 s1 did not further enhancegrowth pointing to low light requirements. From thesedata optimum, minimum and maximum photon fluencerates and temperatures for growth can be assessed indicatingthat both diatoms are well acclimated to the fluctuatingenvironmental conditions in the Arctic habitat