Smooth Operators: Recent Collective Bargaining in Major League Baseball

In late 2011, at a time when other leagues such as the National Football League and the National Basketball Association had engaged in work stoppages, Major League Baseball owners and the MLB Players Association harmoniously agreed on a new five-year collective bargaining agreement. This article focuses on the reasons why MLB as an industry has maintained labor peace after decades of work stoppages. The primary aspects of the new MLB CBA, such as changes to the revenue sharing system, competitive balance tax, salary arbitration, and the amateur draft are addressed. The manner in which these economic mechanisms affect areas such as competitive balance will be analyzed. Lastly, a comparison was undertaken of the collective bargaining environment in MLB versus other professional sports leagues and other non-sports industries

Scanning Electron Microscopy of the Lateral Ventricle of the Pigeon Brain

Adult pigeons of both sexes were used for this study. Depending upon the distribution of various surface profiles, for example cilia, microvilli and blebs, ependymal areas with differing surface patterns were distinguished in the lateral ventricle. The topographical locations of these areas with respect to the underlying forebrain nuclei were determined in accord with the atlas of Karten and Hodos (1967). The medial surface (A) of the ventricle was much more densely ciliated than the lateral surface (B). There did not appear to be any correlation between a given surface pattern and a specific type of underlying nervous tissue. Comparison of the cell patterns seen in the pigeon brain with those seen in the analogous areas of the rat brain showed that it is not feasible to extrapolate from one zoological group to another. With the exception of the Kolmer cells populating the choroid plexus, there were remarkably few supraependymal cells in the pigeon lateral ventricle. Supraependymal nerve fibers were also extremely rare. Particular attention was given to the ependyma associated with the nucleus stria terminalis, to that of the lateral septal organ and to the choroid plexus. The possible classification of these areas into the group of the circumventricular organs is considered

Variable Ticket Pricing in Major League Baseball

Sport teams historically have been reluctant to change ticket prices during the season. Recently, however, numerous sport organizations have implemented variable ticket pricing in an effort to maximize revenues. In Major League Baseball variable pricing results in ticket price increases or decreases depending on factors such as quality of the opponent, day of the week, month of the year, and for special events such as opening day, Memorial Day, and Independence Day. Using censored regression and elasticity analysis, this article demonstrates that variable pricing would have yielded approximately $590,000 per year in additional ticket revenue for each major league team in 1996, ceteris paribus. Accounting for capacity constraints, this amounts to only about a 2.8$1.4 million in revenue. The largest percentage revenue gain would have been the San Francisco Giants. The Giants would have seen an estimated 6.7% increase in revenue had they used optimal variable pricing

The Effects of Roster Turnover on Demand in the National Basketball Association

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of roster turnover on demand in the National Basketball Association (NBA) over a five-year period (2000–2005) and compare these results to previous research on turnover in Major League Baseball (MLB). A censored regression equation was developed to examine the relationship between roster turnover and season attendance, while controlling for other potentially confounding variables in the model. The censored regression model was used to account for the capacity constraints by forecasting the level of demand beyond capacity using information from the uncensored observations. The regression model was found to be significant with a log-likelihood statistic of 113.631. Previous attendance, current winning percentage, previous winning percentage, number of all-star players, local major sport competition, and team history were found to be significant predictors of attendance. However, the variables measuring the effects of roster turnover were not found to be significant. There were substantial differences in the effect of roster turnover on attendance in the NBA compared with MLB. In addition, these findings provide evidence for using censored regression when dealing with constrained variables. Sellouts in the NBA appear to have an effect on all of the variables in the demand model. Future research will need to be conducted to help sport managers understand the role of roster turnover in specific professional leagues and to better understand the importance of using a censored regression model

Analysis of tool-mass-acceleration effects onto sub-aperture computer controlled polishing (CCP)

Although computer controlled polishing (CCP) of aspheres and freeforms is one of the best understood state-of-the-art fab processes today, there are yet some unsolved issues: e.g. compared to bonnet polishing, fluid jet polishing is taking less iteration steps reaching the same form accuracy and ion beam figuring eventually is reaching much higher shape accuracies. This paper is a first move into solving this matter by introducing a novel footprint recording approach for CCP. To that aim, a new method for measuring the impact of a single tool mass acceleration value onto footprint shape is presented, the second derivative footprint recording (SECondo) method. First experimental evidence of the SECondo effect is presented, demonstrating that for bonnet polishing, acceleration of tool mass significantly alters the pressure distribution within the footprint and consequently affects its cross sectio

ON THE DERIVATION OF CROP HEIGHTS FROM MULTITEMPORAL UAV BASED IMAGERY

In this paper, we investigate the usage of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to assess the crop geometry with special focus on the crop height extraction. Crop height is classified as a reliable trait in crop phenotyping and recognized as a good indicator for biomass, expected yield, lodging or crop stress. The current industrial standard for crop height measurement is a manual procedure using a ruler, but this method is considered as time consuming, labour intensive and subjective. This study investigates methods for reliable and rapid deriving of the crop height from high spatial, spectral and time resolution UAV data considering the influences of the reference surface and the selected crop height generation method to the final calculation. To do this, we performed UAV missions during two winter wheat growing seasons and generate point clouds from areal images using photogrammetric methods. For the accuracy assessment we compare UAV based crop height with ruler based crop height as current industrial standard and terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) based crop height as a reliable validation method. The high correlation between UAV based and ruler based crop height and especially the correlation with TLS data shows that the UAV based crop height extraction method can provide reliable winter wheat height information in a non-invasive and rapid way. Along with crop height as a single value per area of interest, 3D UAV crop data should provide some additional information like lodging area, which can also be of interest in the plant breeding community

Winegrowers’ decision-making: A pan-European perspective on pesticide use and inter-row management

European viticultural landscapes not only support a significant share of rural livelihoods and cultural traditions, but also conserve biodiversity and sustain various ecosystem services. Winegrowers' practices of inter-row management (including whether to have vegetation in the inter-rows, type of vegetation, duration of vegetation cover, and soil tillage) and pesticide use (including herbicides in the inter-rows, fungicides, insecticides, and pheromone dispensers as an alternative) can affect these services. This study aims to understand winegrowers' decision-making driven by their personal characteristics, attitudes and beliefs towards viticultural practices, physical properties of vineyards, and farm management characteristics in five European winegrowing regions. These include Palatinate in Germany, Leithaberg in Austria, Tarnave in Romania, Bordeaux in France, and Montilla-Moriles in Spain. Based on a questionnaire survey, we constructed decision trees for each behaviour per case study as well as in a generic European model. We found factors that best explain how winegrowers manage their inter-rows and use pesticides. Results showed that not only do behaviours of winegrowers vary drastically across the case studies, but also the factors that explain most behaviours: farmers' attitudes and beliefs and farm management characteristics. This implies the importance of attitudes and beliefs – which are under-researched as compared to other factors – in understanding farmers’ behaviour. With the driving factors found to vary per case study, our results also imply the need for locally-adapted policies. Furthermore, our results suggest that the effects of climate change on European viticultural landscapes concern not only shifting production regions and changes in yields, but also changing pressure of pests and diseases. Any long-term behavioural change requires efforts from many stakeholders.This research was funded by the research project SECBIVIT which was funded through the 2017–2018 Belmont Forum and BiodivERsA joint call for research proposals, under the BiodivScen ERA-Net COFUND programme, with the funding organisations: Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Ministerio de ciencia e innovación/Spain), Austrian Science Fund (FWF) (grant number I 4025-B32), Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF/Germany) through VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbH, DLR Projektträger, French National Research Agency (ANR), Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), National Science Foundation (Grant #1850943) and Romanian Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI). We would like to thank all winegrowers who participated in the focus groups, online questionnaires and personal interviews and the extension services who distributed our online questionnaire through their e-mail distribution list (DLR-Rheinpfalz)