Towards structured, block-based PDF

The Portable Document Format (PDF), defined by Adobe Systems Inc. as the basis of its Acrobat product range, is discussed in some detail. Particular emphasis is given to its flexible object-oriented structure, which has yet to be fully exploited. It is currently used to represent not logical structure but simply a series of pages and associated resources. A definition of an Encapsulated PDF (EPDF) is presented, in which EPDF blocks carry with them their own resource requirements, together with geometrical and logical information. A block formatter called Juggler is described which can lay out EPDF blocks from various sources onto new pages. Future revisions of PDF supporting uniquely-named EPDF blocks tagged with semantic information would assist in composite-pagemakeup and could even lead to fully revisable PDF

Global integration in the banking industry

Lowered regulatory barriers and advances in technology have reduced the cost of supplying banking services across borders. At the same time, growth in activity by multinational corporations has increased the demand for international financial services. As a result, many observers believe that global integration is under way in the banking industry, that banks are expanding their reach across borders, and that many banking markets will therefore develop large foreign components. The authors report on a study conducted by them, along with Qinglei Dai and Steven Ongena, that examined the nationality and international reach of banks that provide short-term financial services across Europe to affiliates of multinational corporations. The present article also looks at time-series data that provide a more recent look at the progress of integration in Europe. Based on a 1996 survey of more than 2,000 affiliates, the study found that an affiliate is most likely to choose a bank headquartered in the nation in which it is operating (a host-nation bank) rather than a bank headquartered in the home country of the affiliate or in a third nation. The affiliate is also more likely to select a bank limited to local or regional operations rather than one with global reach. The findings are consistent with the proposition that affiliates most value a bank that understands the culture, business practices, and regulatory conditions of the country in which the affiliate operates, and that host-nation banks possess a competitive advantage over other banks in this regard. The time-series data--on syndicated loans, foreign bank claims, and the dispersion of consumer goods prices across Europe--are also consistent with the picture drawn from the 1996 survey. The article concludes that banking markets evidently need not become more integrated even as economic activity otherwise becomes increasingly global.Banks and banking ; International finance

The development of an integrated modelling system to support decisions on organic farms

This paper was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference of the Colloquium of Organic Researchers (COR). An Integrated Decision Support System (IDSS) is developed which synthesises current understanding of organic farming by means of a multiple objective framework incorporating GIS, biophysical models and socio-economic models of the farming goals. The IDSS uses a multitiered concept of a farming system as a collection of micro-enterprises at the field level, with individual resource endowments, objectives and activities. Farm-level decision drivers trickle down to affect the micro-level field enterprise selection. Biophysical models describe typical forage, cereal, root and legume output and a user-friendly interfaces permits easy access and output display via a GIS. A prototype of the IDSS framework, being developed as a part of the SAC organic research programme is presented

Little Higgs Review

Recently there has been renewed interest in the possibility that the Higgs particle of the Standard Model is a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson. This development was spurred by the observation that if certain global symmetries are broken only by the interplay between two or more coupling constants, then the Higgs mass-squared is free from quadratic divergences at one loop. This "collective symmetry" breaking is the essential ingredient in little Higgs theories, which are weakly coupled extensions of the Standard Model with little or no fine tuning, describing physics up to an energy scale ~10 TeV. Here we give a pedagogical introduction to little Higgs theories. We review their structure and phenomenology, focusing mainly on the SU(3) theory, the Minimal Moose, and the Littlest Higgs as concrete examples.Comment: To appear in Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science; contains TASI'05 Little Higgs lecture notes, 44 page

Collectivism and the Intellectuals: Svend Ranulf, Emile Durkheim, Fascism, and Resistance

Ideals of collective solidarity and community are often affirmed by authoritar-ians as well as by democrats. That double fact has seemed paradoxical to many thinkers, some of whom conclude, or suspect, that the pursuit of collective initiatives and solidarities is reactionary in principle. The fact that Nazi Germany sought to revive the Volksgemeinschaft (folk community) has fueled this suspicion. One con-sequence has been that thinkers whose views are regarded as collectivist have often been charged with setting the stage for fascism. Accusing fingers are often pointed at philosophers (Hegel, Schopenhauer) and sociologists (Weber, Durkheim). Lately, a subterranean current of accusations against Émile Durkheim in particular has gained renewed attention. Charges by Svend Ranulf and Marcel Déat in the prewar era have been resuscitated. But closely examined, the views of Ranulf, Déat, and their latter-day successors reveal deep confusion about democracy, solidarity, community, fascism, and resistance to fascism

Existence of Large Solutions to Semilinear Elliptic Equations with Multiple Terms

We consider the semilinear elliptic equation Δu = p(x)uα + q(x)uβ on a domain Ω ⊆ Rn, n ≥ 3, where p and q are nonnegative continuous functions with the property that each of their zeroes is contained in a bounded domain Ωp or Ωq, respectively in Ω such that p is positive on the boundary of Ωp and q is positive on the boundary of Ωq. For Ω bounded, we show that there exists a nonnegative solution u such that u(x) → ∞ as x → ∂Ω if 0 \u3c α ≤ β, β \u3e 1, and that such a solution does not exist if 0 \u3c α ≤ β ≤ 1. For Ω = Rn, we established conditions on p and q to guarantee the existence of a nonnegative solution u satisfying u(x) → ∞ as the |x| → ∞ for 0 \u3c α ≤ β, β \u3e 1, and for 0 \u3c α is ≤ β ≤ 1. For Ω=Rn and 0 \u3c α ≤ β \u3c 1, we also establish conditions on p and q for the existence and nonexistence of a solution of u where u is bounded on Rn