What do broadband consumers want? Design and execution of a questionnaire on demand for bundled services on the Portuguese telecomunications market

The report addresses the question of what are the preferences of broadband consumers on the Portuguese telecommunication market. A triple play bundle is being investigated. The discrete choice analysis, adopted in the study, base on 110 responses, mainly from NOVA students. The data for the analysis was collected via manually designed on-line survey. The results show that the price attribute is relatively the most important one while the television attribute is being overlooked in the decision making process. Main effects examined in the research are robust. In addition, "extras" components are being tested in terms of users' preferences

Judicial Legitimacy and the Dearth of State Supreme Court Knowledge

As western democracies face challenges unseen since the Cold War ended, understanding the correlates of legitimacy for democratic institutions has grown in importance. While scholars have well-developed theories and empirical evidence of Supreme Court support, we know far less about state supreme court legitimacy. This is despite the fact that these courts hand down 100,000 legal decisions annually. Relying on an original survey conducted with participants in 46 states, I develop and test a theory that respondents rely on the Supreme Court as a cue when deciding whether they should extend legitimacy to state supreme courts they know next to nothing about. With this foundation, I examine several questions: First, how little do respondents know about state supreme courts and how does this ignorance influence the likelihood that they will extend legitimacy to these important institutions? Second, does the United States Supreme Court act as a heuristic for respondents who know little about their state supreme court when they are asked to decide whether they should extend legitimacy to state high courts? Third, does the recency of a state supreme court election alter any reliance on the Supreme Court as a heuristic informing state supreme court legitimacy among those with low knowledge of state high courts

Labour Relations Practices of Nonprofits Acting as For-Profits: An Explainable Dissonance

This article seeks to connect two seemingly distinct phenomena. Labour disputes in the nonprofit sector and the pressure nonprofits have undergone to become more economically and operationally efficient. The article describes the antics of some nonprofits in Ontario, and equates them with similar tactics that are employed by mega corporations that are notorious for their mistreatment of employees. The article endeavors to find a correlation between the mistreatment of employees by nonprofits and the ever-growing pressure, nonprofits have had to endure in recent years, to become more efficient. The author argues that the ethics of efficiency and corporate-like models of operation bring along other characteristics of for-profit businesses that may explain actions taken by nonprofits that are otherwise in direct contrast with everything they stand for

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN PROSOCIAL AND SELF-EXPRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR WITH FRIENDS AND UNFAMILIAR PEERS

The purpose of the present study was to examine, in Chinese and Canadian children, how the context (friend, non-friends vs. mixed playmates) interacts with culture to shape the exhibition of prosocial and self-expressive behaviour in children’s peer interactions. Specifically, the three main objectives of this study were to examine (1) whether there were cultural differences in the levels of prosocial and self-expressive behaviour during free play peer interactions, (2) whether the context of peers affected the specific behaviours displayed and (3) whether gender differences existed in prosocial and self-expressive behaviour demonstrated to friends, non-friends and mixed playmates in Chinese and Canadian children. Same-gender quartets of children at 11- years of age from London, Canada and Beijing, China were observed in laboratory free-play settings. The results revealed a series of main effect and interactions involving gender, culture and context. In general, regarding cultural differences, Chinese children (mainly boys in interactions with mixed playmates and girls in interactions with friend) displayed more prosocial behaviour than Canadian children. Canadian children displayed more self- expressive behaviours than Chinese children, but mainly in interactions with mixed playmates. Regarding gender differences, girls displayed more prosocial and self- expressive behaviour than boys in interactions with friend, whereas boys displayed more prosocial scores than girls in interactions with mixed playmates. The results indicate that multiple contextual and personal factors may be involved in determining individual social behaviour in peer interaction

H-T Phase Diagram of Rare-Earth -- Transition Metal Alloy in the Vicinity of the Compensation Point

Anomalous hysteresis loops of ferrimagnetic amorphous alloys in high magnetic field and in the vicinity of the compensation temperature have so far been explained by sample inhomogeneities. We obtain H-T magnetic phase diagram for ferrimagnetic GdFeCo alloy using a two-sublattice model in the paramagnetic rare-earth ion approximation and taking into account rare-earth (Gd) magnetic anisotropy. It is shown that if the magnetic anisotropy of the $f$-sublattice is larger than that of the $d$-sublattice, the tricritical point can be at higher temperature than the compensation point. The obtained phase diagram explains the observed anomalous hysteresis loops as a result of high-field magnetic phase transition, the order of which changes with temperature. It also implies that in the vicinity of the magnetic compensation point the shape of magnetic hysteresis loop is strongly temperature dependent.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Charge orderings in the atomic limit of the extended Hubbard model

The extended Hubbard model in the atomic limit (AL-EHM) on a square lattice with periodic boundary conditions is studied with use of the Monte Carlo (MC) method. Within the grand canonical ensemble the phase and order-order boundaries for charge orderings are obtained. The phase diagrams include three types of charge ordered phases and the nonordered phase. The system exhibits very rich structure and shows unusual multicritical behavior. In the limiting case of tij = 0, the EHM is equivalent to the pseudospin model with single-ion anisotropy 1/2U, exchange interaction W in an effective magnetic field (mu-1/2U-zW). This classical spin model is analyzed using the MC method for the canonical ensemble. The phase diagram is compared with the known results for the Blume-Capel model.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure

Supervised learning of an opto-magnetic neural network with ultrashort laser pulses

The explosive growth of data and its related energy consumption is pushing the need to develop energy-efficient brain-inspired schemes and materials for data processing and storage. Here, we demonstrate experimentally that Co/Pt films can be used as artificial synapses by manipulating their magnetization state using circularly-polarized ultrashort optical pulses at room temperature. We also show an efficient implementation of supervised perceptron learning on an opto-magnetic neural network, built from such magnetic synapses. Importantly, we demonstrate that the optimization of synaptic weights can be achieved using a global feedback mechanism, such that the learning does not rely on external storage or additional optimization schemes. These results suggest there is high potential for realizing artificial neural networks using optically-controlled magnetization in technologically relevant materials, that can learn not only fast but also energy-efficient.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Laser induced THz emission from femtosecond photocurrents in Co/ZnO/Pt and Co/Cu/Pt multilayers

The ultrashort laser excitation of Co/Pt magnetic heterostructures can effectively generate spin and charge currents at the interfaces between magnetic and nonmagnetic layers. The direction of these photocurrents can be controlled by the helicity of the circularly polarized laser light and an external magnetic field. Here, we employ THz time-domain spectroscopy to investigate further the role of interfaces in these photo-galvanic phenomena. In particular, the effects of either Cu or ZnO interlayers on the photocurrents in Co/X/Pt (X = Cu, ZnO) have been studied by varying the thickness of the interlayers up to 5 nm. The results are discussed in terms of spin-diffusion phenomena and interfacial spin-orbit torque.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, 2 table