Late Conversion: The Impact of Professionalism on European Rugby Union

Rugby union only went professional in 1995, much later than other major team sports. League structures and arrangements regarding revenue sharing and salary caps differ between the three main European leagues. We consider the impact of these differences on competitive balance. In addition, unlike soccer, rugby does not require leagues to be organised along national lines, which has enabled the smaller rugby playing countries to establish a joint league. This has prevented a migration of all the best players to larger country leagues as has happened in soccer and resulted in a greater degree of competitive balance in European rugby competitions.Rugby, Economics

iGlobe Interactive Visualization and Analysis of Spatial Data

iGlobe is open-source software built on NASA World Wind virtual globe technology. iGlobe provides a growing set of tools for weather science, climate research, and agricultural analysis. Up until now, these types of sophisticated tools have been developed in isolation by national agencies, academic institutions, and research organizations. By providing an open-source solution to analyze and visualize weather, climate, and agricultural data, the scientific and research communities can more readily advance solutions needed to understand better the dynamics of our home planet, Eart

NASA World Wind: Infrastructure for Spatial Data

The world has great need for analysis of Earth observation data, be it climate change, carbon monitoring, disaster response, national defense or simply local resource management. To best provide for spatial and time-dependent information analysis, the world benefits from an open standards and open source infrastructure for spatial data. In the spirit of NASA's motto "for the benefit of all" NASA invites the world community to collaboratively advance this core technology. The World Wind infrastructure for spatial data both unites and challenges the world for innovative solutions analyzing spatial data while also allowing absolute command and control over any respective information exchange medium

E-Business: Customer Acceptance

Numerous business-to-consumer (B2C) Internet enterprises have failed over the past few years. Many reasons have been proposed for the failures of these ebusinesses. This empirical study examines one possible reason for lack of success of B2C, the extent to which this online shopping opportunity actually alters the traditional purchasing behavior of the retail consumer. Based on accepted marketing theory, the findings indicate more retail shoppers use the Internet for information gathering than for actual purchasing. Clearly, Internet buyers have choices in their purchasing decisions

Carribean Dedalus

In the end, most went down to the ships. Some we name. Others drowned in the straits, or were abandoned at the early ports of call, pronounced anathema for an unhealing wound; some sought oblivion themselves, forgot after long pain, the final dream that would have made mere Purgatory of Inferno. First, there was the petrifying gaze and the crowd of faces pale as woodlice

Kashmir Pending: Narrative and Ideology in a Graphic Novel

Kashmir Pending (2007) is the graphic novel of a man who joined the militant insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir, but who eventually became disillusioned with the revolutionaries. It is valuable in portraying some aspects of the situation in Kashmir that are largely absent from mainstream treatments of the conflict. Nonetheless, it is problematic in a number of ways, ranging from its somewhat unrepresentative apportioning of the violence in Kashmir to its use of a childhood model of militants in its emplotment of the insurgency. In consequence, the novel arguably reinforces a liberal colonialist ideology regarding Indian control of Kashmir