Minor League Baseball Is All About Being Entertained

When attending Minor League baseball games many fans are not as interested in the baseball game as they are to the entertainment experience associated with the game.  They are attending the baseball game to be entertained.   Many fans don’t actually watch and completely understand the baseball game; they come for the whole entertainment experience.  They attend to watch the people, eat good food, drink, be around friends, feel a sense of belonging, and to watch the sports contest.  The fans expect to enjoy themselves in a fun, clean, and hassle free environment.  At the end of the game many fans don’t really care who won the game as long as it was fun.  Seventy-six percent of the fans surveyed at the ballpark said they attended the game to be entertained, but do not attend often.  Minor League baseball teams play a 150 game season with 75 home games.  Fifty-nine percent of the fans attend less than five games a season or seven percent of the games of the home games.  Seventy-nine percent of the fans attend less than thirteen percent of the home games.  The fans are not returning to the ballpark often, why?  They may not be having enough fun compared with all the other entertainment choices available.  There is also a limited amount of true baseball fans with only five percent of the fans attending more than half of the home games.  It’s time to start focusing on all those fans of entertainment, providing them opportunity to be entertained at a Minor League baseball game.&nbsp

Integrated Learning Through Experience: Sports Marketing Education Is All About The Little Things

The fun and exciting business of sports entertainment is continuing to grow with sales revenue in the billions.  Sports entertainment is serious business with increasing demand for knowledgeable marketers willing to work hard in a very fun but stressful environment.   After working and experiencing the stadium, the fans, and the related business activities, the students realized that their projects were real and could have important impacts.  With the integration of this knowledge and experience, the students started building mini-marketing plans that were feasible project ideas that could be implemented with management sponsorship.  Another important result was the student realization that the managers and employees who were required to implement the project ideas had no extra time or extra resources.  The project had to gain the support of the managers and employees at the expense of other projects and in addition to their regular business assignment

Manufactured Housing: A Misunderstood Real Estate Market

Manufactured Housing started as mobile homes for traveling workers and their families.  The mobile homes provided the ability for work crews and their families to easily move from one job site to the next.  Today many of the manufactured homes are luxurious homes on permanent foundations that can withstand nature’s elements equally or better than stick built homes.  The market for manufactured homes will continue to grow as the need for affordable housing continues to grow and the perception continues to improve.   Manufactured homes were previously sold by manufactured home dealers. Today real estate agents and investors are moving into the manufactured housing market. Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Investment Company has recently invested billions in the manufactured housing market.  Buffet’s presence in the manufactured housing industry changes the perception.  This paper looks at some of the benefits and misunderstandings of utilizing manufactured homes in real estate investments.&nbsp

The Clarens web services architecture

Clarens is a uniquely flexible web services infrastructure providing a unified access protocol to a diverse set of functions useful to the HEP community. It uses the standard HTTP protocol combined with application layer, certificate based authentication to provide single sign-on to individuals, organizations and hosts, with fine-grained access control to services, files and virtual organization (VO) management. This contribution describes the server functionality, while client applications are described in a subsequent talk.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 6 pages, LaTeX, 4 figures, PSN MONT00

Clarens Client and Server Applications

Several applications have been implemented with access via the Clarens web service infrastructure, including virtual organization management, JetMET physics data analysis using relational databases, and Storage Resource Broker (SRB) access. This functionality is accessible transparently from Python scripts, the Root analysis framework and from Java applications and browser applets.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 4 pages, LaTeX, no figures, PSN TUCT00

The Density Profiles of Massive, Relaxed Galaxy Clusters. I. The Total Density Over Three Decades in Radius

Clusters of galaxies are excellent locations to probe the distribution of baryons and dark matter (DM) over a wide range of scales. We study a sample of seven massive, relaxed galaxy clusters with centrally-located brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) at z=0.2-0.3. Using the observational tools of strong and weak gravitational lensing, combined with resolved stellar kinematics within the BCG, we measure the total radial density profile, comprising both dark and baryonic matter, over scales of ~3-3000 kpc. Lensing-derived mass profiles typically agree with independent X-ray estimates within ~15%, suggesting that departures from hydrostatic equilibrium are small and that the clusters in our sample (except A383) are not strongly elongated along the line of sight. The inner logarithmic slope gamma_tot of the total density profile measured over r/r200=0.003-0.03, where rho_tot ~ r^(-gamma_tot), is found to be nearly universal, with a mean = 1.16 +- 0.05 (random) +0.05-0.07 (systematic) and an intrinsic scatter of < 0.13 (68% confidence). This is further supported by the very homogeneous shape of the observed velocity dispersion profiles, obtained via Keck spectroscopy, which are mutually consistent after a simple scaling. Remarkably, this slope agrees closely with numerical simulations that contain only dark matter, despite the significant contribution of stellar mass on the scales we probe. The Navarro-Frenk-White profile characteristic of collisionless cold dark matter is a better description of the total mass density at radii >~ 5-10 kpc than that of dark matter alone. Hydrodynamical simulations that include baryons, cooling, and feedback currently provide a poorer match. We discuss the significance of our findings for understanding the assembly of BCGs and cluster cores, particularly the influence of baryons on the inner DM halo. [abridged]Comment: Updated to matched the published version in Ap

De Novo Fibrillary Glomerulonephritis (FGN) in a Renal Transplant with Chronic Hepatitis C.

Chronic hepatitis C viremia (HepC) has been associated with numerous renal manifestations both in native kidneys and in the setting of renal transplantation. Glomerulonephritis (GN) of the renal allograft in the setting of HepC most commonly manifests as type 1 membranoproliferative GN (MPGN), either representing recurrence of the original disease or arising de novo. Other GNs were reported after transplantation in the patient with HepC including membranous nephropathy and thrombotic microangiopathy, as well as an enhanced susceptibility to transplant glomerulopathy. We describe the first case of de novo fibrillary GN in a renal transplant patient with HepC where the primary renal disease was biopsy proven type 1 MPGN. We discuss this relationship in detail