Profits and balance sheet developments at U.S. commercial banks in 1998

The performance of the U.S. commercial banking industry remained strong in 1998, but slipped a bit from the remarkable results of recent years. Both the return on assets and the return on equity edged down last year, although they remained high by historical standards. While supported by growth in fee income, profitability was damped by a large decline in the rates banks earned on their interest-bearing assets relative to the rates they paid on their liabilities, and also by higher noninterest costs, especially merger and restructuring expenses. Profitability was uneven last year across bank sizes: Whereas the largest and the smallest banks posted lower earnings, the profits of medium-sized banks--which account for almost two-thirds of industry assets--improved once again in 1998. Nevertheless, though these figures attest to the profitability of most banks, the share of bank assets at unprofitable institutions increased 2 percentage points, to 2.6 percent, the highest since 1994.Banks and banking ; Bank profits ; Bank assets

The changing tide: Federal support of civilian-sector R and D

The involvement of the Federal government in civilian sector research and development is discussed. Relevant policies are put in an historical perspective. The roles played by industrial research and public funding are reveiwed. Government support of basic an generic research, clientele-oriented applied research, and research with commercial ends is studied. Procurement, anti-trust, and patent policies, all of which affect the climate for private research and development, are examined

Nonequivalent Seiberg-Witten maps for noncommutative massive U(N) gauge theory

Massive vector fields can be described in a gauge invariant way with the introduction of compensating fields. In the unitary gauge one recovers the original formulation. Although this gauging mechanism can be extended to noncommutative spaces in a straightforward way, non trivial aspects show up when we consider the Seiberg-Witten map. As we show here, only a particular class of its solutions leads to an action that admits the unitary gauge fixing.Comment: General solutions for the map and important reference included, 6 pages, no figure

Static strings in Randall-Sundrum scenarios and the quark anti-quark potential

We calculate the energy of a static string in an AdS slice between two D3-branes with orbifold condition. The energy for configurations with endpoints on a brane grows linearly for large separation between these points. The derivative of the energy has a discontinuity at some critical separation. Choosing a particular position for one of the branes we find configurations with smooth energy. In the limit where the other brane goes to infinity the energy has a Coulombian behaviour for short separations and can be identified with the Cornell potential for a quark anti-quark pair. This identification leads to effective values for the AdS radius, the string tension and the position of the infrared brane. These results suggest an approximate duality between static strings in an AdS slice and a heavy quark anti-quark configuration in a confining gauge theory.Comment: More clarifications added, typos corrected. Results unchange

Non-Hermitian Delocalization and Eigenfunctions

Recent literature on delocalization in non-Hermitian systems has stressed criteria based on sensitivity of eigenvalues to boundary conditions and the existence of a non-zero current. We emphasize here that delocalization also shows up clearly in eigenfunctions, provided one studies the product of left- and right-eigenfunctions, as required on physical grounds, and not simply the squared modulii of the eigenfunctions themselves. We also discuss the right- and left-eigenfunctions of the ground state in the delocalized regime and suggest that the behavior of these functions, when considered separately, may be viewed as ``intermediate'' between localized and delocalized.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figures include

Defect-Mediated Emulsification in Two Dimensions

We consider two dimensional dispersions of droplets of isotropic phase in a liquid with an XY-like order parameter, tilt, nematic, and hexatic symmetries being included. Strong anchoring boundary conditions are assumed. Textures for a single droplet and a pair of droplets are calculated and a universal droplet-droplet pair potential is obtained. The interaction of dispersed droplets via the ordered phase is attractive at large distances and repulsive at short distances, which results in a well defined preferred separation for two droplets and topological stabilization of the emulsion. This interaction also drives self-assembly into chains. Preferred separations and energy barriers to coalescence are calculated, and effects of thermal fluctuations and film thickness are discussed.Comment: revtex4, 13 pages, 12 figure

Differential Light Shift Cancellation in a Magnetic-Field-Insensitive Transition of 87^{87}Rb

We demonstrate near-complete cancellation of the differential light shift of a two-photon magnetic-field-insensitive microwave hyperfine (clock) transition in $^{87}$Rb atoms trapped in an optical lattice. Up to $95(2)$ of the differential light shift is canceled while maintaining magnetic-field insensitivity. This technique should have applications in quantum information and frequency metrology.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Boundary effects on the scaling of the superfluid density

We study numerically the influence of the substrate (boundary conditions) on the finite--size scaling properties of the superfluid density $\rho_s$ in superfluid films of thickness $H$ within the XY model employing the Monte Carlo method. Our results suggest that the jump $\rho_s H/T_c$ at the Kosterlitz--Thouless transition temperature $T_c$ depends on the boundary conditions.Comment: 2 pages, 1 Latex file, 1 postscript figure, 2 style file