Referring to Somebody:Generic Person Reference as an Interactional Resource

A growing body of research, examining a wide spectrum of reference forms across diverse languages, cultures, and identities, has shown how references to persons can be selected for context-specific interactional outcomes. This report describes how even such simple forms of person reference as somebody (along with someone and a/the person) can be selected on the basis of their relevance for the specific interactional context in which they are employed. We consider how the particular circumstances of some person reference occasions can make these generic person reference forms specially relevant (even when other, more elaborated forms of reference, either recognitional or non-recognitional, were evidently available to the speaker), and we demonstrate how even these barest forms of person reference can be called on to perform delicate, context-sensitive interactional work. Specifically, we show that speakers can select these generic reference forms for non-recognitional references that a) contribute to the formation of the action of a turn, and, when used in a story, b) contribute to the story’s telling. Finally, we show how a generic person reference can be selected in place of a recognitional reference, thereby openly concealing a referent’s identity

What Drives Venture Capital Fundraising?

We examine the determinants of venture capital fundraising in the U.S. over the past twenty-five years. We study industry aggregate, state-level, and firm-specific fundraising to determine if macroeconomic, regulatory, or performance factors affect venture capital activity. We find that shifts in demand for venture capital appear to have a positive and important impact on commitments to new venture capital funds. Commitments by taxable and tax-exempt investors seem equally sensitive to changes in capital gains tax rates that decreases in capital gains tax rates increase the demand for venture capital as more workers are incented to become entrepreneurs. Aggregate and state level venture fundraising are positively affected by easing of pension investment restrictions as well as industrial and academic R&D expenditures. Fund performance and reputation also lead to greater fundraising by venture organizations.

The Really Long-Run Performance of Initial Public Offerings: The Pre-NASDAQ Evidence

Financial economists in recent years have closely examined and intensely debated the performance of initial public offerings using data after the formation of NASDAQ. The paper seeks to shed light on this controversy by undertaking a large, out-of-sample study: we examine the performance for up to five years after listing of nearly 3,661 initial public offerings in the United States from 1935 to 1972. The sample displays some evidence of underperformance when event-time buy-and-hold abnormal returns are used. The underperformance disappears, however, when cumulative abnormal returns are utilized. A calendar-time analysis also shows that over the entire sample period i.e., from 1935 to 1976 IPOs return as much as the market. Finally, the intercepts in CAPM and Fama-French three-factor regressions are insignificantly different from zero suggesting no abnormal performance.

Superfluidity of "dirty" indirect excitons and magnetoexcitons in two-dimensional trap

The superfluid phase transition of bosons in a two-dimensional (2D) system with disorder and an external parabolic potential is studied. The theory is applied to experiments on indirect excitons in coupled quantum wells. The random field is allowed to be large compared to the dipole-dipole repulsion between excitons. The slope of the external parabolic trap is assumed to change slowly enough to apply the local density approximation (LDA) for the superfluid density, which allows us to calculate the Kosterlitz-Thouless temperature $T_{c}(n(r))$ at each local point $r$ of the trap. The superfluid phase occurs around the center of the trap ($\mathbf{r}=0$) with the normal phase outside this area. As temperature increases, the superfluid area shrinks and disappears at temperature $T_{c}(n(r=0))$. Disorder acts to deplete the condensate; the minimal total number of excitons for which superfluidity exists increases with disorder at fixed temperature. If the disorder is large enough, it can destroy the superfluid entirely. The effect of magnetic field is also calculated for the case of indirect excitons. In a strong magnetic field $H$, the superfluid component decreases, primarily due to the change of the exciton effective mass.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Athermal Nonlinear Elastic Constants of Amorphous Solids

We derive expressions for the lowest nonlinear elastic constants of amorphous solids in athermal conditions (up to third order), in terms of the interaction potential between the constituent particles. The effect of these constants cannot be disregarded when amorphous solids undergo instabilities like plastic flow or fracture in the athermal limit; in such situations the elastic response increases enormously, bringing the system much beyond the linear regime. We demonstrate that the existing theory of thermal nonlinear elastic constants converges to our expressions in the limit of zero temperature. We motivate the calculation by discussing two examples in which these nonlinear elastic constants play a crucial role in the context of elasto-plasticity of amorphous solids. The first example is the plasticity-induced memory that is typical to amorphous solids (giving rise to the Bauschinger effect). The second example is how to predict the next plastic event from knowledge of the nonlinear elastic constants. Using the results of this paper we derive a simple differential equation for the lowest eigenvalue of the Hessian matrix in the external strain near mechanical instabilities; this equation predicts how the eigenvalue vanishes at the mechanical instability and the value of the strain where the mechanical instability takes place.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures

Fluctuation spectroscopy of granularity in superconducting structures

We suggest to use `fluctuation spectroscopy' as a method to detect granularity in a disordered metal close to a superconducting transition. We show that with lowering temperature $T$ the resistance $R(T)$ of a system of relatively large grains initially grows due to the fluctuation suppression of the one-electron tunneling but decreases with further lowering $T$ due to the coherent charge transfer of the fluctuation Cooper pairs. Under certain conditions, such a maximum in $R(T)$ turns out to be sensitive to weak magnetic fields due to a novel Maki -- Thompson type mechanism.Comment: A final version, as published; the introduction and summary are considerably revise