Testing device for verifying the performance of digital recorders

Test device, consisting of a pulse generator section and a manual program section, checks and calibrates digital recorder-printers. It is adaptable to other recorder configurations

Seasonal and Vertical Distributions of Planthoppers (Homoptera: Fulgoroidea) Within a Black Walnut Plantation

Information on the seasonal and vertical distributions of 34 species (eight families) of planthoppers was obtained from window trap collections in a North Carolina black walnut plantation in 15 and 1978. The most commonly collected species were Acanalonia conica (Acanaloniidael. Liburniella ornata (Delphacidae), Oliarus ecologus (Cixiidae), and O. quinquelineatus

Blackspot Location and Recommendation to Reduce Number and Severity of Accidents on Purbaleunyi Toll Road

Toll roads, as land transportation infrastructure, have an important role in Indonesia. With a high number of road crashes in Indonesia, with about 40,000 people die on the road each year, the determination of blackspot locations is crucial. The aim of this study is to analyze blackspot location on a toll road in Indonesia and, furthermore, to provide recommendations in order to reduce number and severity of accident. A case study is carried out on a toll road, named Purbaleunyi Toll Road, in West Java. Accident rate value and UCL method are used in this study to determine blackspot locations. The results indicated that there are many blackspot locations along the toll road and recommended solutions provided are adherence to traffic regulation, adherence to vehicle worthiness,dissemination of road safety importance to road users, and the implementation of blackspot treatments continuously

Why do banks disappear? The determinants of U.S. bank failures and acquisitions

This paper examines the determinants of individual bank failures and acquisitions in the United States during 1984-1993. We use bank-specific information suggested by examiner CAMEL-rating categories to estimate competing-risks hazard models with time-varying covariates. We focus especially on the role of management quality, as reflected in alternative measures of x-efficiency and find the inefficiency increases the risk of failure, while reducing the probability of a bank's being acquired. Finally, we show that the closer to insolvency a bank is, as reflected by a low equity-to-assets ratio, the more likely its acquisition.Bank failures

New evidence on returns to scale and product mix among U.S. commercial banks

Numerous studies have found that banks exhaust scale economies at low levels of output, but most are based on the estimation of parametric cost functions which misrepresent bank cost. Here we avoid specification error by using nonparametric kernal regression techniques. We modify measures of scale and product mix economies introduced by Berger et al. (1987) to accommodate the nonparametric estimation approach, and estimate robust confidence intervals to assess the statistical significance of returns to scale. We find that banks experience increasing returns to scale up to approximately $500 million of assets, and essentially constant returns thereafter. We also find that minimum efficient scale has increased since 1985.Banks and banking ; Banks and banking - Costs ; Economies of scale

Evaluating the efficiency of commercial banks: does our view of what banks do matter?

Bank management

Nucleon and heavy-ion total and absorption cross section for selected nuclei

Approximate solutions of the coupled-channel equations for high-energy composite particle scattering are obtained and are applied to the nuclear scattering problem. Relationships between several approximation procedures are established and discussed. The eikonal formalism is used with a small-angle approximation to calculate the coherent elastic scattered amplitude from which total and absorption cross sections are derived. Detailed comparisons with nucleon-nucleus experiments show agreement within 5 percent except at lower energies where the eikonal approximation is of questionable accuracy. Even at these lower energies, agreement is within 15 percent. Tables of cross sections required for cosmic heavy-ion transport and shielding studies are presented

Explaining bank failures: deposit insurance, regulation, and efficiency

This paper uses micro-level historical data to examine the causes of bank failure. For state charactered Kansas banks during 19 10-28, time-to-failure is explicitly modeled using a proportional hazards framework. In addition to standard financial ratios, this study includes membership in the voluntary state deposit insurance system and measures of technical efficiency to explain bank failure. The results indicate that deposit insurance system membership increased theprobability of failure and banks which were technically inefficient were more likely to fail than technically efficient banks.Bank failures

On-demand microwave generator of shaped single photons

We demonstrate the full functionality of a circuit that generates single microwave photons on demand, with a wave packet that can be modulated with a near-arbitrary shape. We achieve such a high tunability by coupling a superconducting qubit near the end of a semi-infinite transmission line. A dc superconducting quantum interference device shunts the line to ground and is employed to modify the spatial dependence of the electromagnetic mode structure in the transmission line. This control allows us to couple and decouple the qubit from the line, shaping its emission rate on fast time scales. Our decoupling scheme is applicable to all types of superconducting qubits and other solid-state systems and can be generalized to multiple qubits as well as to resonators.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures. Published versio

The CZCS geolocation algorithms

The Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) on board the Nimbus 7 satellite was designed to measure surface radiance upwelled from the ocean in 6 spectral bands. The CZCS spectrometer obtains its information from a rotating mirror and is timed to collect data when the mirror views the Earth surface between ca. 40 degrees to the left and right of the subsatellite track. Each scan is divided into 1968 picture elements, pixels, of 0.04 degrees scan each. In order to avoid direct reflected Sun glint, the rotating mirror shaft can be tilted so that scans across the subsatellite track up to 20 degrees forward or aft of the point directed beneath the satellite. The CZCS is the first satellite borne instrument to have this tilted scan capability and therefore poses some new problems in locating the Earth surface position of viewed pixels