Spontaneous symmetry breaking by double lithium adsorption in polyacenes

We show that adsorption of one lithium atom to a polyacenes, i.e. chains of linearly fused benzene rings, will cause this chain to be slightly deformed. If we adsorb a second identical atom on the opposite side of the same ring, this deformation is dramatically enhanced despite of the fact, that a symmetric configuration seems possible. We argue, that this may be due to an instability of the Jahn-Teller type possibly indeed to a Peierls instability.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure

Lending to Small Businesses: The Role of Loan Maturity in Adressing Information Problems

We investigate what determines the maturity of loans to small, informationally opaque businesses.We find that longer maturities are associated with collateral pledges, better financial condition, good credit history, and less informational opacity of the borrower.However, we do not find a positive association between stronger firm-creditor relationships (which can attenuate these information asymmetries) and longer maturities.The evidence suggests that creditors use shorter maturities to induce more frequent renegotiation of contract terms, thus enforcing closer monitoring of more informationally opaque and risky borrowers.Overall, our results are consistent with shorter loan maturities mitigating the consequences of borrower-lender informational asymmetries.small business;bank lending;loans;information

TARGET: Rapid Capture of Process Knowledge

TARGET (Task Analysis/Rule Generation Tool) represents a new breed of tool that blends graphical process flow modeling capabilities with the function of a top-down reporting facility. Since NASA personnel frequently perform tasks that are primarily procedural in nature, TARGET models mission or task procedures and generates hierarchical reports as part of the process capture and analysis effort. Historically, capturing knowledge has proven to be one of the greatest barriers to the development of intelligent systems. Current practice generally requires lengthy interactions between the expert whose knowledge is to be captured and the knowledge engineer whose responsibility is to acquire and represent the expert's knowledge in a useful form. Although much research has been devoted to the development of methodologies and computer software to aid in the capture and representation of some types of knowledge, procedural knowledge has received relatively little attention. In essence, TARGET is one of the first tools of its kind, commercial or institutional, that is designed to support this type of knowledge capture undertaking. This paper will describe the design and development of TARGET for the acquisition and representation of procedural knowledge. The strategies employed by TARGET to support use by knowledge engineers, subject matter experts, programmers and managers will be discussed. This discussion includes the method by which the tool employs its graphical user interface to generate a task hierarchy report. Next, the approach to generate production rules for incorporation in and development of a CLIPS based expert system will be elaborated. TARGET also permits experts to visually describe procedural tasks as a common medium for knowledge refinement by the expert community and knowledge engineer making knowledge consensus possible. The paper briefly touches on the verification and validation issues facing the CLIPS rule generation aspects of TARGET. A description of efforts to support TARGET's interoperability issues on PCs, Macintoshes and UNIX workstations concludes the paper

Integrable two-channel p_x+ip_y-wave superfluid model

We present a new two-channel integrable model describing a system of spinless fermions interacting through a p-wave Feshbach resonance. Unlike the BCS-BEC crossover of the s-wave case, the p-wave model has a third order quantum phase transition. The critical point coincides with the deconfinement of a single molecule within a BEC of bound dipolar molecules. The exact many-body wavefunction provides a unique perspective of the quantum critical region suggesting that the size of the condensate wavefunction, that diverges logarithmically with the chemical potential, could be used as an experimental indicator of the phase transition.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure