Median price changes: an alternative approach to measuring current monetary inflation

An analysis concluding that inflation measures based on median price changes are a better indicator than measures based on mean price changes.Inflation (Finance) ; Consumer price indexes

Cybergossip or Securities Fraud? Some First Amendment Guidance in Drawing the Line.

Fifteen-year-old Jonathan Lebed, the youngest person ever pursued by the SEC in an enforcement action, made over $800,000 in six months by promoting stocks on Internet message boards. Using several fictitious screen names, Jonathan posted hundreds of messages on Yahoo! Finance, hyping selected over-the-counter stocks and then promptly selling his pre-purchased shares as soon as the stock prices rose. Publicly, the SEC painted a picture-perfect case of securities fraud. Yet, the SEC forced disgorgement of only$285,000 of Jonathan\u27s profits, leaving many observers to wonder why the resolution of this supposedly clear-cut case left its teenaged perpetrator with over $500,000. The skepticism heightened when Michael Lewis, in an influential article in The New York Times, suggested that the SEC\u27s pursuit of Lebed was partially motivated by a desire to keep a “little jerk” (to quote one SEC investigator) from outsmarting federal regulators. The Lewis article further portrayed a regulatory agency fundamentally unable to adapt to the challenges of regulating fraud on the Internet

Oil, the economy, and monetary policy

An examination of the theoretical impact of an oil shortage on the U.S. economy and the problems that such shortages present for monetary policy.Power resources - Prices ; Monetary policy

Shingles Immunity and Health Functioning in the Elderly: Tai Chi Chih as a Behavioral Treatment

Both the incidence and severity of herpes zoster (HZ) or shingles increase markedly with increasing age in association with a decline in varicella zoster virus (VZV)-specific immunity. Considerable evidence shows that behavioral stressors, prevalent in older adults, correlate with impairments of cellular immunity. Moreover, the presence of depressive symptoms in older adults is associated with declines in VZV-responder cell frequency (VZV-RCF), an immunological marker of shingles risk. In this review, we discuss recent findings that administration of a relaxation response-based intervention, tai chi chih (TCC), results in improvements in health functioning and immunity to VZV in older adults as compared with a control group. TCC is a slow moving meditation consisting of 20 separate standardized movements which can be readily used in elderly and medically compromised individuals. TCC offers standardized training and practice schedules, lending an important advantage over prior relaxation response-based therapies. Focus on older adults at increased risk for HZ and assay of VZV-specific immunity have implications for understanding the impact of behavioral factors and a behavioral intervention on a clinically relevant end-point and on the response of the immune system to infectious pathogens

Magnetostatic interactions in a natural magnetite-ulvospinel system

[ 1] Magnetostatic interactions have been investigated in anintergrown material consisting of similar to 200-nm magnetite blocksseparated by similar to 30-nm-wide ulvospinel lamellae. First-orderreversal curve (FORC) measurements provide a direct measure of theinteraction fields, giving a value for the full width at half maximu

Just in Time Mathematics Review for Accounting Students

This paper describes the Just-in-Time Review developed for an undergraduate accounting course. The review materials cover five topics in algebra. Students take an online assessment, and online materials are made available to help students catch up in those areas where some review is recommended. This paper is a case study of the development and implementation of the Just-in-Time Review for an accounting course at Saint Louis University

Cosmological Parameters from the Comparison of the 2MASS Gravity Field with Peculiar Velocity Surveys

We compare the peculiar velocity field within 65 $h^{-1}$ Mpc predicted from 2MASS photometry and public redshift data to three independent peculiar velocity surveys based on type Ia supernovae, surface brightness fluctuations in ellipticals, and Tully-Fisher distances to spirals. The three peculiar velocity samples are each in good agreement with the predicted velocities and produce consistent results for \beta_{K}=\Omega\sbr{m}^{0.6}/b_{K}. Taken together the best fit $\beta_{K} = 0.49 \pm 0.04$. We explore the effects of morphology on the determination of $\beta$ by splitting the 2MASS sample into E+S0 and S+Irr density fields and find both samples are equally good tracers of the underlying dark matter distribution, but that early-types are more clustered by a relative factor b\sbr{E}/b\sbr{S} \sim 1.6. The density fluctuations of 2MASS galaxies in $8 h^{-1}$ Mpc spheres in the local volume is found to be \sigma\sbr{8,K} = 0.9. From this result and our value of $\beta_{K}$, we find \sigma_8 (\Omega\sbr{m}/0.3)^{0.6} = 0.91\pm0.12. This is in excellent agreement with results from the IRAS redshift surveys, as well as other cosmological probes. Combining the 2MASS and IRAS peculiar velocity results yields \sigma_8 (\Omega\sbr{m}^/0.3)^{0.6} = 0.85\pm0.05.Comment: 11 pages, ApJ accepte

Housing at Pearse Square, Dublin 2

Pearse Square, Dublin, Republic of Ireland. Includes: Text, photos, plans, ill, sections, elevs.Deposited by bulk impor

Time Critical Lumigraph Rendering

It was illustrated in 1996 that the light leaving the convex hull of an object (or entering a convex region of empty space) can be fully characterized by a 4D function over the space of rays crossing a surface surrounding the object (or surrounding the empty space). Methods to represent this function and quickly render individual images from this representation given an arbitrary cameras were also described. This paper extends the work outlined by (Gortler et al) by demonstrating a taxonomy of methods to accelerate the rendering process by trading off quality for time. Given the specific limitation of a given hardware configuration, we discuss methods to tailor a critical time rendering strategy using these methods.Engineering and Applied Science

TRIPPy: Trailed Image Photometry in Python

Photometry of moving sources typically suffers from reduced signal-to-noise (SNR) or flux measurements biased to incorrect low values through the use of circular apertures. To address this issue we present the software package, TRIPPy: TRailed Image Photometry in Python. TRIPPy introduces the pill aperture, which is the natural extension of the circular aperture appropriate for linearly trailed sources. The pill shape is a rectangle with two semicircular end-caps, and is described by three parameters, the trail length and angle, and the radius. The TRIPPy software package also includes a new technique to generate accurate model point-spread functions (PSF) and trailed point-spread functions (TSF) from stationary background sources in sidereally tracked images. The TSF is merely the convolution of the model PSF, which consists of a moffat profile, and super sampled lookup table. From the TSF, accurate pill aperture corrections can be estimated as a function of pill radius with a accuracy of 10 millimags for highly trailed sources. Analogous to the use of small circular apertures and associated aperture corrections, small radius pill apertures can be used to preserve signal-to-noise of low flux sources, with appropriate aperture correction applied to provide an accurate, unbiased flux measurement at all SNR.Comment: 8 Figures, 11 Pages, Accepted to the Astronomical Journa