Revenue Sharing and Player Salaries in Major League Baseball

This article analyzes how changes made to the revenue sharing agreement in the 2007 Major League Baseball collective bargaining agreement influenced the salaries of position players and pitchers. The tax rates associated with revenue sharing decreased following ratification of the 2007 agreement. Theoretically, these changes should increase players’ marginal revenue product and, therefore, salaries. Results indicate that position players experienced an increase in salary following the 2007 agreement. Pitchers’ salaries also increased, but by a smaller amount. The effect of the 2007 agreement was different throughout the salary distribution for position players, but uniform throughout the distribution for pitchers

Dynamical Symmetry Breaking And Electroweak Processes

The on-mass-shell renormalization prescription of electroweak theory is extended to account for shifts in the mass-shell. These shifts arise from dynamical contributions generated by the nonperturbative content of the vacuum to the quark self-energies. Upper limits for the value of the dimension-3 fermion-antifermion condensate are found by considering its contribution to the u-d mass difference and the strangeness-changing nonleptonic decays of the kaon. Dynamical generation of fermion masses under chiral gauge interactions is also examined by considering the coupling of light fermions to a heavy fermion-antifermion condensate

The Link Between Protecting Natural Resources and the Issue of Environmental Justice

Communities frequently raise environmental justice issues when decisions are made without taking into consideration how people, including people living in low-income and minority communities, are linked to their surrounding environment. Different communities use and relate to their environment in different ways and face different levels of environmental harms and risks. Thus, to avoid disproportionate impacts, it is critical that each community’s environmental needs and vulnerabilities be understood and considered before decisions are made. Existing statutory authority provides ample opportunity for decisionmakers to involve communities in the decisionmaking process and to consider how they use and relate to their environment and the natural resources services that their environment provides. This article analyzes the integration of environmental justice concerns into the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s decisionmaking process with special attention given to permits issued under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. In addition, through case study analysis, the article examines how environmental justice issues have been addressed by: EPA in the establishment of water quality criteria under the Clean Water Act; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s and the Department of the Interior’s application of the National Environmental Policy Act; and the Army Corps of Engineers’ decisionmaking process under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act

Mode-switching: a new technique for electronically varying the agglomeration position in an acoustic particle manipulator

Acoustic radiation forces offer a means of manipulating particles within a fluid. Much interest in recent years has focussed on the use of radiation forces in microfluidic (or “lab on a chip”) devices. Such devices are well matched to the use of ultrasonic standing waves in which the resonant dimensions of the chamber are smaller than the ultrasonic wavelength in use. However, such devices have typically been limited to moving particles to one or two predetermined planes, whose positions are determined by acoustic pressure nodes/anti-nodes set up in the ultrasonic standing wave. In most cases devices have been designed to move particles to either the centre or (more recently) the side of a flow channel using ultrasonic frequencies that produce a half or quarter wavelength over the channel, respectively.It is demonstrated here that by rapidly switching back and forth between half and quarter wavelength frequencies – mode-switching – a new agglomeration position is established that permits beads to be brought to any arbitrary point between the half and quarter-wave nodes. This new agglomeration position is effectively a position of stable equilibrium. This has many potential applications, particularly in cell sorting and manipulation. It should also enable precise control of agglomeration position to be maintained regardless of manufacturing tolerances, temperature variations, fluid medium characteristics and particle concentration

Consensual Qualitative Research: An Update

The authors reviewed the application of consensual qualitative research (CQR) in 27 studies published since the method’s introduction to the field in 1997 by C. E. Hill, B. J. Thompson, and E. N. Williams (1997). After first describing the core components and the philosophical underpinnings of CQR, the authors examined how it has been applied in terms of the consensus process, biases, research teams, data collection, data analysis, and writing up the results and discussion sections of articles. On the basis of problems that have arisen in each of these areas, the authors made recommendations for modifications of the method. The authors concluded that CQR is a viable qualitative method and suggest several ideas for research on the method itself

Emission Line Galaxies in the STIS Parallel Survey II: Star Formation Density

We present the luminosity function of [OII]-emitting galaxies at a median redshift of z=0.9, as measured in the deep spectroscopic data in the STIS Parallel Survey (SPS). The luminosity function shows strong evolution from the local value, as expected. By using random lines of sight, the SPS measurement complements previous deep single field studies. We calculate the density of inferred star formation at this redshift by converting from [OII] to H-alpha line flux as a function of absolute magnitude and find rho_dot=0.043 +/- 0.014 Msun/yr/Mpc^3 at a median redshift z~0.9 within the range 0.46<z<1.415 (H_0 = 70 km/s/Mpc, Omega_M=0.3, Omega_Lambda=0.7. This density is consistent with a (1+z)^4 evolution in global star formation since z~1. To reconcile the density with similar measurements made by surveys targeting H-alpha may require substantial extinction correction.Comment: 16 preprint pages including 5 figures; accepted for publication in Ap