Macht Geld glücklich? Verbraucherpolitische Überlegungen zum fiskalischen Ziel der staatlichen Glücksspielregulierung

Seit Dezember 2006 liegt der Glücksspielstaatsvertrag der Länder unterschriftsreif vor. Er bleibt aber umstritten. Eine neue Regulierung des Glücksspielwesens in Deutschland war erforderlich geworden, nachdem das Bundesverfassungsgericht Teile des bayerischen Staatslotteriegesetzes für verfassungswidrig erklärt hatte. Ist die verbraucherpolitische Begründung für die Regulierung tragfähig? Welche Interessen haben die Nutznießer der Glücksspieleinnahmen? --

Polar confinement of the Sun's interior magnetic field by laminar magnetostrophic flow

The global-scale interior magnetic field needed to account for the Sun's observed differential rotation can be effective only if confined below the convection zone in all latitudes, including the polar caps. Axisymmetric nonlinear MHD solutions are obtained showing that such confinement can be brought about by a very weak downwelling flow U~10^{-5}cm/s over each pole. Such downwelling is consistent with the helioseismic evidence. All three components of the magnetic field decay exponentially with altitude across a thin "magnetic confinement layer" located at the bottom of the tachocline. With realistic parameter values, the thickness of the confinement layer ~10^{-3} of the Sun's radius. Alongside baroclinic effects and stable thermal stratification, the solutions take into account the stable compositional stratification of the helium settling layer, if present as in today's Sun, and the small diffusivity of helium through hydrogen, chi. The small value of chi relative to magnetic diffusivity produces a double boundary-layer structure in which a "helium sublayer" of smaller vertical scale is sandwiched between the top of the helium settling layer and the rest of the confinement layer. Solutions are obtained using both semi-analytical and purely numerical, finite-difference techniques. The confinement-layer flows are magnetostrophic to excellent approximation. More precisely, the principal force balances are between Lorentz, Coriolis, pressure-gradient and buoyancy forces, with relative accelerations and viscous forces negligible. This is despite the kinematic viscosity being somewhat greater than chi. We discuss how the confinement layers at each pole might fit into a global dynamical picture of the solar tachocline. That picture, in turn, suggests a new insight into the early Sun and into the longstanding enigma of solar lithium depletion.Comment: Accepted by JFM. 36 pages, 10 figure

Squares with three digits

We consider integers whose squares have just three decimal digits. Examples are e.g. given by $2108436491907081488939581538^2 = 4445504440405440505004450045555054500055550554550445444$ and $10100000000010401000000000101^2 = 102010000000210100200000110221001000002101002000000010201$. The aim of this paper is to summarize the current knowledge on squares with three digits, scattered around webpages and newsgroup postings, and to add a few new insights. While we will mostly focus on the base $B=10$, several results are presented for general values of $B$. The used mathematical tools are completely elementary. However, we give complete proofs of all statements or explicitly state them as conjectures.Comment: 42 pages, 6 tables; typos correcte

Scientific Computing Meets Big Data Technology: An Astronomy Use Case

Scientific analyses commonly compose multiple single-process programs into a dataflow. An end-to-end dataflow of single-process programs is known as a many-task application. Typically, tools from the HPC software stack are used to parallelize these analyses. In this work, we investigate an alternate approach that uses Apache Spark -- a modern big data platform -- to parallelize many-task applications. We present Kira, a flexible and distributed astronomy image processing toolkit using Apache Spark. We then use the Kira toolkit to implement a Source Extractor application for astronomy images, called Kira SE. With Kira SE as the use case, we study the programming flexibility, dataflow richness, scheduling capacity and performance of Apache Spark running on the EC2 cloud. By exploiting data locality, Kira SE achieves a 2.5x speedup over an equivalent C program when analyzing a 1TB dataset using 512 cores on the Amazon EC2 cloud. Furthermore, we show that by leveraging software originally designed for big data infrastructure, Kira SE achieves competitive performance to the C implementation running on the NERSC Edison supercomputer. Our experience with Kira indicates that emerging Big Data platforms such as Apache Spark are a performant alternative for many-task scientific applications

Asset Accumulation in Low-Resource Households: Evidence from Individual Development Accounts

To escape from poverty requires assets, be they human, physical, social, or financial. Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) are designed to help the poor to build assets. Withdrawals from IDAs are matched if used for home purchase, post-secondary education, or self- employment. Participants also receive financial education and support from IDA staff. This paper discusses evidence from the American Dream Demonstration (ADD) on a series of questions. Can the poor save in IDAs? Low-resource people did save and build assets in IDAs in ADD: --Average monthly net deposits per participant were $25.42. --The average participant used two-thirds of match-eligibility. --The average participant made a deposit in 7 of 12 months. --With an average match rate of 2:1, participants accumulated about$900 per year in IDAs. How do IDAs work? Key links between savings and institutional characteristics in ADD were: --Savings increased—up to a point—with more hours of financial education. --Higher match rates were linked with fewer unmatched withdrawals, less risk of exit, but not higher savings. --Higher match caps were associated with better savings outcomes. -- Where do IDA deposits come from? Participants used both new savings and reshuffled assets. Who saves in IDAs? ADD did not necessarily cream only the most-able: --Income was not linked to savings, and the very poor saved a higher rate than the less-poor. --The receipt of public assistance, all else constant, was not associated with savings. --Asian Americans saved about $10 more per month than Hispanics or Caucasians and about$20 more per month than African Americans or Native Americans. What do IDAs cost? So far in ADD, program costs were about $2.70 per dollar deposited. Costs seem to have fallen through time.savings incentives, asset accumulation, Individual Development Accounts

Inhibiting the inhibition

The precedence effect describes the phenomenon whereby echoes are spatially fused to the location of an initial sound by selectively suppressing the directional information of lagging sounds (echo suppression). Echo suppression is a prerequisite for faithful sound localization in natural environments but can break down depending on the behavioral context. To date, the neural mechanisms that suppress echo directional information without suppressing the perception of echoes themselves are not understood. We performed in vivo recordings in Mongolian gerbils of neurons of the dorsal nucleus of the lateral lemniscus (DNLL), a GABAergic brainstem nucleus that targets the auditory midbrain, and show that these DNLL neurons exhibit inhibition that persists tens of milliseconds beyond the stimulus offset, so-called persistent inhibition (PI). Using in vitro recordings, we demonstrate that PI stems from GABAergic projections from the opposite DNLL. Furthermore, these recordings show that PI is attributable to intrinsic features of this GABAergic innervation. Implementation of these physiological findings into a neuronal model of the auditory brainstem demonstrates that, on a circuit level, PI creates an enhancement of responsiveness to lagging sounds in auditory midbrain cells. Moreover, the model revealed that such response enhancement is a sufficient cue for an ideal observer to identify echoes and to exhibit echo suppression, which agrees closely with the percepts of human subjects

Versagt die Verbraucherpolitik?

Der Dioxin-Skandal bei Futtermitteln, aber auch die fehlerhafte und interessengeleitete Beratung beim Kauf von Finanzdienstleistungen hat die Verbraucherpolitik in Misskredit gebracht. In der öffentlichen Debatte werden zunehmend rigidere Vorschriften für die Anbieter gefordert, aber auch mehr Informationen für den mündigen Kunden - was aus ordnungspolitischer Sicht richtig wäre. Die Verbraucherforschung hält aber das Leitbild des rationalen Verbrauchers für nicht realistisch

Wohnungswirtschaft im Wandel: Möglichkeiten und Grenzen öffentlicher Finanzierung in der Wohnraumversorgung

Die Wohnungswirtschaft steht vor großen Herausforderungen, die insbesondere durch den stattfindenden sozio-demografischen Wandel sowie durch Anforderungen im Rahmen des Klimaschutzes verursacht werden. Um die Zukunftsfähigkeit der Wohnungswirtschaft und ihrer Wohnungsbestände sicherzustellen sind Maßnahmen und Investitionen in größerem Umfang erforderlich. Aufgrund stark angespannter öffentlicher Haushalte stellt sich die Frage, woher das notwendige Kapital zur Sicherstellung eines quantitativ und qualitativ angemessenen Wohnungsbestands zukünftig kommen soll. Mit dem vorliegenden Arbeitspapier soll ein Beitrag zur Versachlichung der politischen Debatte um die Einbindung privater Ressourcen in die Wohnraumversorgung geleistet werden. Es wird ein systematischer Überblick über die investiven und finanziellen Herausforderungen für die deutsche Wohnungswirtschaft allgemein und der staatlichen Wohnraumversorgung im Besonderen gegeben. Basierend auf bisherigen Entwicklungen werden Ziele und Rahmenbedingungen für die zukünftige Einbindung privaten Kapitals in die Wohnraumversorgung dargestellt. Grundkonzeptionen, wie private Ressourcen in die Aufgaben der Wohnraumversorgung eingebunden werden können, werden vorgestellt und können als Diskussionsgrundlage für die Weiterentwicklung zukunftsfähiger Privatisierungsmodelle dienen. Abschließend werden Erfolgsfaktoren für ökonomisch nachhaltige Privatisierungskonstruktionen abgeleitet. Das Arbeitspapier wurde in Kooperation mit der Deutsche Wohnen AG erstellt.