An econometric analysis of borrowing constraints and household debt

Consumer credit

Borrowing constraints, household debt, and racial discrimination in loan markets

Housing - Finance ; Discrimination in mortgage loans

Employee Participation in Pollution Reduction: Preliminary Analysis of the Toxics Release Inventory

Can the amount of toxic waste released into the environment by manufacturing facilities be reduced by formally involving employees in pollution prevention? Pursuant to the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began requiring that manufacturers report human resource management strategies related to source reduction (reduction of waste at the source), as part of the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). These strategies often involve employee participation in some form. Here we report the preliminary findings of an ongoing study of the effect of employee participation on source reduction, based on the 1991-1992 TRI database. We find, for example, that manufacturers using a certain combination of three formal employee participation practices had triple the reduction in emissions of manufacturers using none of these practices. We also discuss competing predictors of source reduction, and future research directions

Validating maps from single particle electron cryomicroscopy

Progress in single particle cryo-EM, most recently due to the introduction of direct detector devices, has made the high-resolution structure determination of biological assemblies smaller than 500kDa more routine, but has also increased attention on the need for tools to demonstrate the validity of single particle maps. Although map validation is a continuing subject of research, some consensus has been reached on procedures that reduce model bias and over-fitting during map refinement as well as specific tests that demonstrate map validity. Tilt-pair analysis may be used as a method for demonstrating the consistency at low resolution of a map with image data. For higher-resolution maps, new procedures for more robust resolution assessment and for validating the refinement of atomic coordinate models into single particle maps have been developed

A Response to Professor Menell: A Remix Compulsory License Is Not Justified

At the recent Columbia Law School Kernochan Center Symposium Creation Is Not Its Own Reward: Making Copyright Work for Authors and Performers, a diverse group of creators, academics, lobbyists and practicing attorneys presented their views on how copyright law succeeds or fails in providing the creators of copyrighted works with appropriate rights and protections in the ever-changing digital copyright ecosystem. Speakers disagreed not only on whether or not the copyright system was working in favor of or against the interests of creators, but also on fundamental copyright principles. This is not surprising; while most academics and practitioners seem to accept, to one extent or another, that creators are not treated well in the digital age, there is no consensus on the 200-year-old constitutional threshold question: should copyright be viewed as a property interest or an economic theory? If a property interest, then copyright might actually work better for authors and performers in the future. But if an economic theory, the chance for authors and performers to thrive and prosper in the digital era decreases dramatically

A Flattened Protostellar Envelope in Absorption around L1157

Deep Spitzer IRAC images of L1157 reveal many of the details of the outflow and the circumstellar environment of this Class 0 protostar. In IRAC band 4, 8 microns, there is a flattened structure seen in absorption against the background emission. The structure is perpendicular to the outflow and is extended to a diameter of 2 arcminutes. This structure is the first clear detection of a flattened circumstellar envelope or pseudo-disk around a Class 0 protostar. Such a flattened morphology is an expected outcome for many collapse theories that include magnetic fields or rotation. We construct an extinction model for a power-law density profile, but we do not constrain the density power-law index.Comment: ApJL accepte