A response to fake news as a response to Citizens United

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Cases of Lyme Disease Appear to Follow Periodic Cycles Linked to Geography

We are studying the spread of Lyme disease through Wisconsin. It is important because the number of people diagnosed with Lyme Disease in the US is around 300,000, annually (CDC 2017). The CDC has collected data of reported Lyme Disease cases since 2001. When looking at the data we noticed that the trends of cases of Lyme disease followed a cyclical pattern. The cycles varied widely. We hypothesized that environmental and geographical factors could affect the main vector of Lyme Disease, Ixodes scapularis (the black-legged tick). After analyzing Lyme Disease data from the CDC and using a map making software (Paint Maps 2018), we found that geographical distribution had a marked effect on the rate at which counties cycled between up and down trends in infection rates. These findings are important because they give us more insight into possible control methods to keep the black-legged tick, and therefore Lyme Disease, at a manageable level

The Evolution of Dental Materials over the Past Century: Silver and Gold to Tooth Color and Beyond.

The field of dental materials has undergone more of a revolution than an evolution over the past 100 y. The development of new products, especially in the past half century, has occurred at a staggering pace, and their introduction to the market has been equally impressive. The movement has mostly come in the area of improved esthetics, marked by the gradual replacement of dental amalgam with dental composite and all-metal and porcelain-fused-to-metal indirect restorations with reinforced dental ceramics, all made possible by the rapid improvements in dental adhesive materials. This article covers the time course of dental materials development over the past century in which the Journal of Dental Research has been published. While there have been advances in nearly all materials used in the field, this article focuses on several areas, including dental amalgam, dental composites and light curing, dental adhesives and dental cements, ceramics, and new functional repair materials. A few short statements on future advances will be included at the end

Six Challenges in Platform Licensing and Open Innovation

This article describes six common challenges of design, incentives, and governance that arise in establishing platform businesses. It also proposes solutions. It considers, for example, how to open a platform to decentralized innovation yet still earn a return; how to incorporate best-of-breed innovations from different sources while avoiding problems of multi-party hold-up; and how to encourage sources of good ideas to contribute those ideas despite the risk of losing them to owners of indispensible complements. We express these issues and solutions as a reduced set of tradeoffs useful for managing information and technology property.licensing, open source, free software, dual licensing, platform, intellectual property.

Information Complements, Substitutes, and Strategic Product Design

Competitive maneuvering in the information economy has raised a pressing question: how can firms raise profits by giving away products for free? This paper provides a possible answer and articulates a strategy space for information product design. Free strategic complements can raise a firm's own profits while free strategic substitutes can lower profits for competitors. We introduce a formal model of cross-market externalities based in textbook economics -- a mix of Katz & Shapiro network effects, price discrimination, and product differention -- that leads to novel strategies such as an eagerness to enter into Bertrand price competition. This combination helps to explain many recent firm strategies such as those of Microsoft, Netscape (AOL), Sun, Adobe, and ID. We also introduce the concept of a ''content-creator'' who adds value for end-consumers but may not be paid directly. Similar to the case of product dumping, this research implies that both firms and policy makers need to consider complex market interactions to grasp information product design and profit maximization. The model presented here argues for three simple and intuitive results. First, a firm can rationally invest in a product it intends to give away into perpetuity even in the absence of competition. The reason is that increased demand in a complementary goods market more than covers the cost of investment in the free goods market. Second, we identify distinct markets for content-providers and end-consumers and show that either can be a candidate for the free good. The decision on which market to charge rests on the relative elasticities as governed by their network externality effects. If the externality effect is sufficiently great, the market with the higher elasticity is the market to subsidize with the free good. It is also possible to charge both markets but to keep one price artificially low. Importantly, the modeling contribution is distinct from tying in the sense that consumers need never purchase both goods -- unlike razors and blades, the products are stand-alone goods. It also differs from multi-market price discrimination in the sense that the firm may extract no consumer surplus from one of the two market segments, implying that this market would have previously gone un-served. Third, a firm can use strategic product design to penetrate a market that becomes competitive post-entry. The threat of entry is credible even in cases where it never recovers its sunk costs directly. The model therefore helps to explain several interesting market behaviors such as free goods, upgrade paths, split versioning, and strategic information substitutes.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39683/3/wp299.pd

Information Complements, Substitutes, and Strategic Product Design

Competitive maneuvering in the information economy has raised a pressing question: how can firms raise profits by giving away products for free? This paper provides a possible answer and articulates a strategy space for information product design. Free strategic complements can raise a firm's own profits while free strategic substitutes can lower profits for competitors. We introduce a formal model of cross-market externalities based in textbook economics -- a mix of Katz & Shapiro network effects, price discrimination, and product differention -- that leads to novel strategies such as an eagerness to enter into Bertrand price competition. This combination helps to explain many recent firm strategies such as those of Microsoft, Netscape (AOL), Sun, Adobe, and ID. We also introduce the concept of a ''content-creator'' who adds value for end-consumers but may not be paid directly. Similar to the case of product dumping, this research implies that both firms and policy makers need to consider complex market interactions to grasp information product design and profit maximization. The model presented here argues for three simple and intuitive results. First, a firm can rationally invest in a product it intends to give away into perpetuity even in the absence of competition. The reason is that increased demand in a complementary goods market more than covers the cost of investment in the free goods market. Second, we identify distinct markets for content-providers and end-consumers and show that either can be a candidate for the free good. The decision on which market to charge rests on the relative elasticities as governed by their network externality effects. If the externality effect is sufficiently great, the market with the higher elasticity is the market to subsidize with the free good. It is also possible to charge both markets but to keep one price artificially low. Importantly, the modeling contribution is distinct from tying in the sense that consumers need never purchase both goods -- unlike razors and blades, the products are stand-alone goods. It also differs from multi-market price discrimination in the sense that the firm may extract no consumer surplus from one of the two market segments, implying that this market would have previously gone un-served. Third, a firm can use strategic product design to penetrate a market that becomes competitive post-entry. The threat of entry is credible even in cases where it never recovers its sunk costs directly. The model therefore helps to explain several interesting market behaviors such as free goods, upgrade paths, split versioning, and strategic information substitutes.

Tools of Empire? Vietnamese Catholics in South Vietnam

This article examines the social and political activities of Vietnamese Roman Catholics in South Vietnam in the period from the 1950s to the 1970s. The Catholics’ participation in the public sphere, ranging from joining humanitarian organizations to organizing street protests, suggests that they were highly organized and proactive in trying to change their social and political environment. While Catholics held some political views and goals in common with the South Vietnamese and the United States governments, they pursued their own objectives, engaged in local and national politics, critiqued government policy, and maintained an important degree of independence from state power and influence.Cet article porte sur les activités politiques et sociales des catholiques romains vietnamiens dans le sud du Vietnam au cours de la période allant des années 1950 aux années 1970. Leur présence dans la sphère publique, que ce soit au sein d’organismes humanitaires ou par l’organisation de protestations dans la rue, laisse supposer qu’ils étaient très organisés et proactifs dans leurs efforts de réforme du milieu social et politique. Ces catholiques partageaient certes des opinions et des ambitions politiques avec les gouvernements sud-vietnamien et américain, mais ils s’intéressaient en fait à leurs propres objectifs, participaient à la politique locale et nationale, critiquaient les politiques gouvernementales et conservaient une indépendance certaine par rapport à l’influence de l’État

The superwind mass-loss rate of the metal-poor carbon star LI-LMC 1813 in the LMC cluster KMHK 1603

LI-LMC 1813 is a dust-enshrouded Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) star, located in the small open cluster KMHK 1603 near the rim of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Optical and infrared photometry between 0.5 and 60 micron is obtained to constrain the spectral energy distribution of LI-LMC 1813. Near-infrared spectra unambiguously show it to be a carbon star. Modelling with the radiation transfer code Dusty yields accurate values for the bolometric luminosity, L=1.5 x 10^4 Lsun, and mass-loss rate, Mdot=3.7(+/-1.2) x 10^-5 Msun/yr. On the basis of colour-magnitude diagrams, the age of the cluster KMHK 1603 is estimated to be t=0.9-1.0 Gyr, which implies a Zero-Age Main Sequence mass for LI-LMC 1813 of M(ZAMS)=2.2+/-0.1 Msun. This makes LI-LMC 1813 arguably the object with the most accurately and reliably determined (circum)stellar parameters amongst all carbon stars in the superwind phase.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS (better quality figure 1 on request from jacco