Observations of Dispersion Cancellation of Entangled Photon Pairs

An experimental study of the dispersion cancellation occurring in frequency-entangled photon pairs is presented. The approach uses time-resolved up conversion of the pairs, which has temporal resolution at the fs level, and group-delay dispersion sensitivity of $\approx \ 20 \, \mathrm{fs}^2$ under experimental conditions. The cancellation is demonstrated with dispersion stronger than $\pm 10^3 \, \mathrm{fs}^2$ in the signal $(-)$ and idler $(+)$ modes. The observations represent the generation, compression, and characterization of ultrashort biphotons with correlation width as small as 6.8 times the degenerate optical period.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Customer Reactions in Out-of-Stock Situations – Do promotion-induced phantom positions alleviate the similarity substitution hypothesis?

Out-of-Stock (OOS) is a prevalent problem customers face at the POS. In this paper, we demonstrate both theoretically and empirically how OOS-induced substitution patterns can be explained and predicted by means of context and phantom theory. We further analyze the relevance of promotions, for which OOS is most pronounced, as essential driver of differences in customers’ OOS reactions. The results of an online experiment demonstrate that customers substitute unavailable items in accordance to a negative similarity effect which is reduced, however, for OOS items on promotion. The empirical findings further suggest that customers’ OOS responses differ for promoted vs. non-promoted items. We find that customers being affected by a stock-out of promotional products significantly more often postpone purchases and tend to avoid substitution resulting in severe losses for the retailer. However, for non-promoted items, customers easily switch to alternative brands. That way, manufacturers lose profit and possibly loyal customers.Out-of-Stock, Context Effects, Phantoms, Promotion, Consumer Decision Making

The role of cattle manure in enhancing on-farm productivity, macro- and micro-nutrient uptake, and profitability of maize in the Guinea savanna

An on-farm trial was conducted in the northern Guinea savanna of Nigeria, over a period of five years, with the objectives of quantifying the effects on maize of applying cattle manure in combination with synthetic fertilizer with regard to soil characteristics, yield, plant nutrition and profitability. Maize grain yield was significantly increased by the annual application of cattle manure, compared to maize receiving an equal amount of N through synthetic fertilizer, but only from the third year of the experiment. The application of manure resulted in higher soil Kjel N, Bray-I P and exchangeable K values, and an increased N utilization efficiency by maize, suggesting that yield-limiting factors other than N deficiencies were of lesser importance than in the treatment receiving sole inorganic fertilizer. Nutrients other than N applied via the manure, particularly P, K and/or B, may have contributed to the higher grain yields in treatments receiving manure. A partial budgeting analysis revealed that, over a 5-year period, investments in the application of manure, in combination with synthetic fertilizer, resulted in higher margins than the application of fertilizer alone. However, analyses of marginal rates of return of changes from low urea N to high urea N or additional manure applications suggested that it was more profitable to invest in additional urea than in organic manure in the first two years of the experiment. The results suggested that manure applications, even when applied at relatively high rates, did not serve as a quick fix to on-farm soil fertility problems, but over a longer period, manure applied in combination with synthetic fertilizers did provide a significant and profitable contribution to enhanced cereal production

Moral Development in Pilot Populations

Ethical issues are becoming more commonplace in society today and while most industries are taking steps to improve poor ethical decisions through ethics education, aviation is lagging behind in both understanding of ethical issues inherent to the industry and ethics education. In this study three groups of pilots (students, instructors, and faculty) at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University are examined in an effort to determine moral development level in terms of P score on the Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT2) and two domain specific additional questions. It was hypothesized that differences would be found between the groups and that the moral development score would increase from students, through instructor pilots to faculty. This was found to be the case, with significance shown (p\u3c0.10) with the Student and Faculty groups. The Instructor pilots scored marginally lower than expected in the DIT2 questions and this may be due to the lack of formal ethics training and/or the more technical/regulatory focus in aviation. The Instructor pilots scored higher than expected in the additional questions and this may be due to the dilemmas being directed towards topics directly related to their jobs