Open Doors, Trap Doors, and the Law

Accordingly, the term open door will be used to refer to situations in which an individual can exercise, ex post, a right to rescind or withdraw from (and thus reverse) an ex ante commitment or decision. More specifically, within the realm of contract theory, this article focuses on implications for contract formation interpretation and the design of contractual default rules

The Hotelling's Rule Revisited in a Dynamic General Equilibrium Model

The validity of the Hotelling’s rule, the fundamental theorem of nonrenewable resource economics, is limited by its partial equilibrium nature. One symptom of this limitation may be the disagreement between the empirical evidence, showing stable or declining resource prices, and the rule, predicting exponentially increasing prices. In this paper, we study the optimal depletion of a nonrenewable resource in a dynamic general equilibrium framework. We show that in, the long run, the price of a nonrenewable (i) is constant when the nonrenewable is essential in production, and (ii) it increases only if the rate of return of capital is larger than the capital depreciation rate and if the non-renewable is an inessential input in production. We believe that our model offers a theoretical explanation to non-growing nonrenewable prices and hence at least partially solves the paradox between the Hotelling’s rule and the empirical regularities. We also show that two factors play a crucial role in determining the long run behavior of non-renewable prices, namely the elasticity of substitution between input factors, and the long run behavior of the real interest rate. Another major achievement of this study is the full analytical solution of the model under a Cobb-Douglas technology.Nonrenewable resources; One-sector growth model, Hotelling’s Rule, Sustainability

Glass production at an Early Islamic workshop in Tel Aviv

A refuse deposit at HaGolan Street, Khirbet al-Ḥadra, northeastern Tel Aviv, is rich in debris deriving from an Islamic period glass workshop, dating to the 7th–8th centuries. Twenty-four samples of glass vessels, chunks and moils were analysed by electron microprobe. Glass used in the workshop derives from three primary sources: Egypt II, somewhere in inland Egypt, Beth Eli'ezer, near Hadera, Israel and a third group which appears to represent a previously unknown Levantine primary production centre. Glass corresponding to at least twelve production events has been identified. While vessels made of Beth Eli'ezer and Egypt II glass have previously been reported from the same context, this is the first time that they have been related to the products of a single workshop. It appears that glass from both primary production centres was available in the later 8th century, and that the glass workers at HaGolan St were obliged to balance the high working and fuel costs of the stiff low-soda Levantine glass against the better working properties but higher raw material costs of the high-soda glass from Egypt

Electron-vibration interaction in single-molecule junctions: from contact to tunneling regime

Point contact spectroscopy on a H2O molecule bridging Pt electrodes reveals a clear crossover between enhancement and reduction of the conductance due to electron-vibration interaction. As single channel models predict such a crossover at transmission probability of t=0.5, we used shot noise measurements to analyze the transmission and observed at least two channels across the junction where the dominant channel has t=0.51+/-0.01 transmission probability at the crossover conductance, which is consistent with the predictions for single-channel models.Comment: 4 pages, 1 table, 4 figure

E-Contract Doctrine 2.0: Standard Form Contracting in the Age of Online User Participation

The growing popularity of e-commerce transactions revives the perennial question of consumer contract law: should non-salient provisions of consumer standard form contracts be enforced? With the focus presently on an ex-ante analysis, scholars debate whether consumers can and should read standardized terms at the time of contracting. In today\u27s information age, such a focus might be misguided. The online realm furnishes various tools, so-called Web 2.0 applications, which encourage the flow of information from experienced to prospective consumers. This Article, therefore, reframes the analysis of online consumer contracts while taking into account this new flow of information. In doing so, we draw out several typical ways in which such information flows in the online realm, while addressing the role of search engines, blogs, message boards and social networks. The Article also accounts for the major challenges to the success of such information flow: the motivations of both information providers and receivers, and the accreditation of the data which might be compromised both unintentionally and maliciously. After applying the key law and economics and behavioral law and economics insights pertaining to consumer contracts to the new dynamic created by the online environment, we conclude that this online information flow will strengthen market forces\u27 ability to generate a fair and balanced contractual equilibrium. We accordingly provide new policy recommendations that are better tailored to deal with online consumer contracts and thus limit the need for legal intervention in the market for consumer contract terms

K-space interpretation of image-scanning-microscopy

In recent years, image-scanning microscopy (ISM, also termed pixel-reassignment microscopy) has emerged as a technique that improves the resolution and signal-to-noise compared to confocal and widefield microscopy by employing a detector array at the image plane of a confocal laser scanning microscope. Here, we present a k-space analysis of coherent ISM, showing that ISM is equivalent to spotlight synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) and analogous to oblique-illumination microscopy. This insight indicates that ISM can be performed with a single detector placed in the k-space of the sample, which we numerically demonstrate

Efficient Quantum Polar Coding

Polar coding, introduced 2008 by Arikan, is the first (very) efficiently encodable and decodable coding scheme whose information transmission rate provably achieves the Shannon bound for classical discrete memoryless channels in the asymptotic limit of large block sizes. Here we study the use of polar codes for the transmission of quantum information. Focusing on the case of qubit Pauli channels and qubit erasure channels, we use classical polar codes to construct a coding scheme which, using some pre-shared entanglement, asymptotically achieves a net transmission rate equal to the coherent information using efficient encoding and decoding operations and code construction. Furthermore, for channels with sufficiently low noise level, we demonstrate that the rate of preshared entanglement required is zero.Comment: v1: 15 pages, 4 figures. v2: 5+3 pages, 3 figures; argumentation simplified and improve

A machine learning resource allocation solution to improve video quality in remote education

The current global pandemic crisis has unquestionably disrupted the higher education sector, forcing educational institutions to rapidly embrace technology-enhanced learning. However, the COVID-19 containment measures that forced people to work or stay at home, have determined a significant increase in the Internet traffic that puts tremendous pressure on the underlying network infrastructure. This affects negatively content delivery and consequently user perceived quality, especially for video-based services. Focusing on this problem, this paper proposes a machine learning-based resource allocation solution that improves the quality of video services for increased number of viewers. The solution is deployed and tested in an educational context, demonstrating its benefit in terms of major quality of service parameters for various video content, in comparison with existing state of the art. Moreover, a discussion on how the technology is helping to mitigate the effects of massively increasing internet traffic on the video quality in an educational context is also presented