The Impact of Motivational Factors on Daily Fantasy Sports Participation

Since the passing of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act (UIGEA) in 2006, the fantasy sports world has had a tumultuous decade. Shortly after the passing of UIGEA, daily fantasy sports became marketable, and saw several years of tremendous growth. However, recent legal issues have clouded the industry, and lawmakers have questioned whether daily fantasy sports indeed fall under the exception granted by UIGEA as a “game of skill”, or whether the games are illegal gambling. This study is meant to look at what motivates fantasy sports participants, especially through this time of turmoil in the industry. It specifically looks at how players’ competitive, knowledge-seeking, or social tendencies affect their participation habits. Additionally, this thesis explores the effect that marketing messaging that portrays a daily fantasy sports website as a perfect place to satisfy these individual traits has on player participation. Finally, this study investigates the role that a sense of fairness plays in shaping players’ perceptions of these websites. To study these things, we began by looking at previous studies that focus on competition, knowledge, and social factors, both in the fantasy sports field and elsewhere, and creating a literature review. Following the literature review, an experiment was created, which tested these three scales as well as the perception of fairness, using a fictitious fantasy sports site, Fantasyland. The results obtained from this experiment indicate that those with competitive or social dispositions are the most likely to try fantasy sports. Additionally, it was found that those who are socially motivated are more likely to recommend a fantasy sports site to friends or strangers. Lastly, the perception of fairness did not have a direct effect of participants, although in one case, it did positively impact an individual’s willingness to try a daily sports website. These results and their implications as well as future research directions are outlined in the concluding discussion section

Plastic Deformation of Steel Plates under High Impact Loading

UNLV Two-stage Light Gas Gun Experimental Measurements Physical Results of Impact on Target Plates Research Objectives Computational Analysis Methods Material Models used in Computational Analysis Simulation Comparison: Crater and Deformation Simulation Comparison: Free Surface Velocity High Speed Video of Experiments Microscopy of Failure Surface: Is Phase Change an Issue? Electron Back Scatter Diffraction (EBSD) of Failure Surfaces On-going Plans and Future Wor

Što je normalna demokracija?

The author argues there is no such thing as a "normal democracy", and that the decision made by the European Court of Human Rights in Sejdić-Finci case does not pay enough respect to consociational democracy as one of the legitimate forms of democracy. As human rights have to be balanced against one another, they also have to be balanced against other values, including peace and stability. As the practical solution in the election of the three-person collective Presidency in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the author suggests three separate electoral colleges in the three territorial districts that would settle the tension between the politically viable power-sharing arrangements and the demand to respect human rights. The author concludes that more moral modesty is in place when foreign political advice in democratic constitutional design is issued for the divided societies.Autor tvrdi da ne postoji tako nešto poput "normalne demokracije" te da odluka Europskog suda za ljudska prava u slučaju Sejdić-Finci ne uvažava dovoljno konsocijacijsku demokraciju kao jedan od legitimnih oblika demokracije. Kao što se ljudska prava moraju uravnotežiti jedna s drugima, tako se moraju uravnotežiti i s drugim vrijednostima, uključujući mir i stabilnost. Kao praktično rješenje u izborima tročlanoga kolektivnog predsjedništva u Bosni i Hercegovini, autor predlaže tri odvojena izbornička kolegija u trima teritorijalnim okruzima, što bi riješilo napetost između politički održivih aranžmana za podjelu vlasti i zahtjeva za poštivanjem ljudskih prava. Autor zaključuje kako je potrebno više moralne skromnosti kada se podijeljenim društvima daju inozemni politički savjeti o demokratskom ustavnom dizajnu

Literature Review

Write a literature review on a topic of your choice – must relate to Economic Strategy. Guidelines: 4,000 words, 10 pre-approved articles under different headings are given as a starting point. Accounts for 40% of a 5 ECTS module

Conference Presentation: The Power of Words in Tension: Enterprise/Strategy as a Dilemma in Neoliberalism’s Persistence.

We address how enterprise is related to, another important discourse, strategy. From a discourse analysis of the talk of small firm owner-managers, emerges a view of strategy and enterprise as a single, integrated entity, bound together by some commonalities but more importantly by paired opposites reminiscent of ideological dilemmas (Billig, Condor, Edwards, Gane, Middleton & Radley, 1988). This dilemmatic nature of enterprise/strategy discourse adds to explanations for the persistence of the neoliberal form of enterprise, with the entrepreneur as the heroic saviour of all, based on the entrepreneur as an empty signifier (Jones & Spicer, 2009; Kenny & Scriver, 2012) or as a spectre (Marttila, 2012)

Sport, Twitter Hashtags and the Public Sphere

Sport and social media researchers have been challenged to go beyond simply analyzing the content of public social media posts, and to incorporate different critical frameworks to seek more meaningful findings about these relatively new online phenomena. This three-paper format dissertation attempts to frame interactions through sport-themed Twitter hashtags sociologically by incorporating a critical theory rarely deployed in the study of sport—the public sphere. In paper one, the study introduces a theoretical model which suggests sport consumption patterns and the unique architecture of Twitter can promote public sphere-like discourse in hashtags connected to sport. The model suggests amplifiers and barriers which promote or inhibit the creation of an online space for pro-democratic, rational-critical discourse. The second and third papers are empirical tests of the theoretical model—a qualitative case study examination of Twitter hashtag discussions, and they impact they have on participants, following the firing of former Major League pitcher Curt Schilling by ESPN; and a quantitative survey of users of three different types of sport-themed hashtags to assess the generation of social capital as a byproduct of public sphere-like interactions. Together, the three studies comprise the first comprehensive analysis of the public sphere as a way to explain online discussions on Twitter. Given the prevalence of the social media site, and its strong pull among sport fans, better understanding of the motivations for online behaviors—whether reflective of the public sphere or not—can help inform a wide range of issues connected to sport

Colliding Wind Binaries with Orbital Motion: Line Wind Formulation

Stars lose mass in the form of supersonic winds. In a binary star system, these winds collide to produce shockwaves. Such stellar wind collisions are observed in many binary star systems. Due to the orbital motion of the system, a trailing spiral structure is produced. We present a solution method in the co- rotating frame of the stars, which allow us to consider steady state solutions. This requires the inclusion of Coriolis and centrifugal forces, including their effects on the pre-shock winds, for which we were restricted to orbital speed slower than wind speeds. We assume efficient post-shock cooling, which al- lows us to consider a geometrically thin shell. A set of four ordinary differential equations (ODEs) ensure the conservation of mass and momentum within the shell. It was necessary to develop Taylor series expansions to find self- consistent values that allow for integration of the equations out of the initial singularity. Numerical integration of the equations yields the shell shape. The solution generalizes the analytic solution of Canto, Raga & Wilkin (1996) to include orbital motion. We further generalize our solution for systems with unequal wind speeds. Systems with unequal wind speeds, but equal wind momentum, produce an asymmetry in the shell that is non-existent for equal wind speeds

Depth Sensing Planar Structures: Detection of Office Furniture Configurations

Handheld devices with depth sensors have the potential to aid low-vision users in performing tasks that are difficult with traditional modes of assistance. Heuristic studies have revealed that tables have a key functional role in indoor scene descriptions. The research question addressed in this thesis is: how can we robustly and efficiently detect tables in indoor office environments? This thesis presents a solution that utilizes a functional approach to robustly detect rectangular tables in depth images generated from a Kinect sensor. Perhaps the most significant function of a table is to provide its users with a supporting plane. This demands that the table’s surface is orthogonal to the scene’s gravity vector. In order to fully take advantage of this functional property in the detection process, the scene must be properly oriented. A planar model fitting procedure is used to detect the scene’s floor, which is utilized to properly orient the scene. The scene is then sliced at average table height, using a small buffer. The height component is removed from the 3-dimensional slice by projecting it into a two-dimensional plane. Next, an iterative labeling procedure is used to separate the image into independent blobs, allowing for 2-dimensional shape detection. Sufficiently large blobs are then subjected to a cleaning process in order to remove any extraneous features. Several features of the cleaned blobs are calculated and used in a supervised classification process. The coordinates of blobs that are classified as tables are translated back to 3-dimensions, allowing for the segmentation of all detected tables in the scene