Three states, one common past: chance or malediction? The role of history and historiography in the formation of collective identities and mutual relations in Belarus, Lithuania and Poland

Common experiences and a common past offer a special possibility for good relations. But having a common past also can create disharmony. If one has to share traditions with others, it becomes more difficult to find specific elements to call one’s ‘own’. So especially in a situation of intensive search for identity a common past may be harmful to the formation of one’s own identity and to mutual relations as well. In the case of Belarus, Lithuania and Poland after 1989, both generalisations hold true. While Polish-Lithuanian relations are excellent, Lithuanian-Belarusian relations are rather complicated. The reasons for this are not only political or economic, but mainly a consequence of the important role history and historiography play in the process of collective identity formation. The present article will examine the structure of this process

The Future of the New Issues Market

Every MBA program that I have taught in has some Asian students, and in some Asian societies, such as Korea, it is common for a student to give a gift to a teacher at the end of the year. Some Korean students continue this practice when they are students in the U.S., and over the years I have received a number of gifts from students. Most of these gifts fall into the category of trinkets and knick-knacks, and I would guess that the average value of these gifts has been about twenty dollars. I typically accept these gifts when offered, and sometimes I even remember the student’s name. I don’t think that many people would consider my acceptance of these gifts after the end of a semester as unethical behavior. I haven’t been faced with the decision, but what would I do if I was offered a gift of a work of art, a gift worth $200? And what if I could sell this gift (I would wait until after the student graduated and left town, of course), and pocket the$200? Would accepting this gift be unethical? Would it change my behavior? What if the work of art was worth $10,000, but the Korean student let me know in advance of the final exam that he or she only gave gifts to professors in classes where an ‘A’ was received? Would this affect my decisions on what grade to give this student, especially if it turned out the student was right on the borderline between an A and a B when I was making up the grade distribution? What if the student didn’t tell me this in advance, but I had learned from experience that I would receive much more valuable gifts from Korean students if they received high grades? Would it be OK for me to accept significant gifts from students who received high grades if other professors were doing so? In other words, if it was “standard industry practice?” Because this article is about the new issues market, I will not discuss further the ethical problems associated with professors who give high grades to students and receive gifts in return. This article will focus mainly on the initial public offerings (IPOs) of equity securities. I will focus on equity IPOs mainly because this is where almost all of the controversy lies. In particular, there are controversies associated with underwriters who allocate hot IPOs to hedge funds and receive commission business in return. After presenting some statistics concerning IPOs and discussing controversies, the article ends with some policy recommendations.

Post-IPO Employment and Revenue Growth for U.S. IPOs, June 1996-2010

Analyzes employment and revenue growth, survival rate, sector, location, and venture capital involvement of U.S. companies that held initial public offerings on American markets from June 1996 through 2010, with a focus on firms younger than thirty years

Theoretical and experimental investigation of particle detection and particle detectors to improve effectiveness, accuracy, and discrimination Status report no. 5, period ending Nov. 30, 1965

Manufacturing techniques, testing, and fabrication of lithium-drifted germanium particle detector

Cygnus X-2, super-Eddington mass transfer, and pulsar binaries

We consider the unusual evolutionary state of the secondary star in Cygnus X-2. Spectroscopic data give a low mass (M_2 \simeq 0.5 - 0.7\msun) and yet a large radius (R_2 \simeq 7\rsun) and high luminosity (L_2 \simeq 150\lsun). We show that this star closely resembles a remnant of early massive Case B evolution, during which the neutron star ejected most of the \sim 3\msun transferred from the donor (initial mass M_{\rm 2i}\sim 3.6\msun) on its thermal time-scale $\sim 10^6$ yr. As the system is far too wide to result from common-envelope evolution, this strongly supports the idea that a neutron star efficiently ejects the excess inflow during super--Eddington mass transfer. Cygnus X-2 is unusual in having had an initial mass ratio $q_{\rm i} = M_{\rm 2i}/M_1$ in a narrow critical range near $q_{\rm i}\simeq 2.6$. Smaller $q_{\rm i}$ lead to long-period systems with the former donor near the Hayashi line, and larger $q_{\rm i}$ to pulsar binaries with shorter periods and relatively massive white dwarf companions. The latter naturally explain the surprisingly large companion masses in several millisecond pulsar binaries. Systems like Cygnus X-2 may thus be an important channel for forming pulsar binaries.Comment: 9 pages, 4 encapsulated figures, LaTeX, revised version with a few typos corrected and an appendix added, accepted by MNRA

Asymptotic Level Density of the Elastic Net Self-Organizing Feature Map

Whileas the Kohonen Self Organizing Map shows an asymptotic level density following a power law with a magnification exponent 2/3, it would be desired to have an exponent 1 in order to provide optimal mapping in the sense of information theory. In this paper, we study analytically and numerically the magnification behaviour of the Elastic Net algorithm as a model for self-organizing feature maps. In contrast to the Kohonen map the Elastic Net shows no power law, but for onedimensional maps nevertheless the density follows an universal magnification law, i.e. depends on the local stimulus density only and is independent on position and decouples from the stimulus density at other positions.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures. Link to publisher under http://link.springer.de/link/service/series/0558/bibs/2415/24150939.ht

STS-40 orbital acceleration research experiment flight results during a typical sleep period

The Orbital Acceleration Research Experiment (OARE), an electrostatic accelerometer package with complete on-orbit calibration capabilities, was flown for the first time aboard the Space Shuttle on STS-40. This is also the first time an accelerometer package with nano-g sensitivity and a calibration facility has flown aboard the Space Shuttle. The instrument is designed to measure and record the Space Shuttle aerodynamic acceleration environment from the free molecule flow regime through the rarified flow transition into the hypersonic continuum regime. Because of its sensitivity, the OARE instrument defects aerodynamic behavior of the Space Shuttle while in low-earth orbit. A 2-hour orbital time period on day seven of the mission, when the crew was asleep and other spacecraft activities were at a minimum, was examined. During the flight, a 'trimmed-mean' filter was used to produce high quality, low frequency data which was successfully stored aboard the Space Shuttle in the OARE data storage system. Initial review of the data indicated that, although the expected precision was achieved, some equipment problems occurred resulting in uncertain accuracy. An acceleration model which includes aerodynamic, gravity-gradient, and rotational effects was constructed and compared with flight data. Examination of the model with the flight data shows the instrument to be sensitive to all major expected low frequency acceleration phenomena; however, some erratic instrument bias behavior persists in two axes. In these axes, the OARE data can be made to match a comprehensive atmospheric-aerodynamic model by making bias adjustments and slight linear corrections for drift. The other axis does not exhibit these difficulties and gives good agreement with the acceleration model

The Common Core Debate

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have ignited a passionate national debate about the standards that guide the education of our nation’s and state’s students. The purpose of this Arkansas Education Report is to add some clarity to the Common Core debate as well as offer a perspective that is specific to the Natural State

The use of entropy for analysis and control of cognitive models

Measures of entropy are useful for explaining the behaviour of cognitive models. We demonstrate that entropy can not only help to analyse the performance of the model, but it can be used to control model pararmeters and improve the match between the model and data. We present a cognitive model that uses local computations of entropy to moderate its own behaviour and matches the data fairly well

Short Interest and Stock Returns

Using a longer time period and both NYSE-Amex and Nasdaq stocks, this paper examines short interest and stock returns in more detail than any previous study and finds that many documented patterns are not robust. While equally weighted high short interest portfolios generally underperform, value weighted portfolios do not. In addition, there is a negative correlation between market returns and short interest over our whole period. Finally, inferences from short time periods, such as 1988-1994 when the underperformance of high short interest stocks was exceptional or 1995-2002, when high short interest Nasdaq stocks did not underperform, are misleading.