Will online bill payment spell the demise of paper checks?

Over the past several years, the emergence and adoption of electronic payment instruments have acutely affected check usage. This transition has been especially evident at the point of sale as debit and credit cards have become pervasive. Today, the rapid growth of online bill payment looks to threaten checks’ last redoubt. However, bill payment technology is still in its adolescence; the interplay of many stakeholders in the industry, including technology firms, banks, billers, payment cards, and customers, has led to rapid, unscripted innovation in just a few years. This paper quantifies some of the trends in the industry while addressing the interests and impact of the market’s prime movers in an effort to determine to what extent the displacement of checks will continue.Electronic funds transfers ; Checks ; Internet banking

The cost effectiveness of stored-value products for unbanked customers

On March 30, 2005, the Payment Cards Center hosted a workshop led by Sherrie L.W. Rhine and Sabrina Su of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Office of Regional and Community Affairs to discuss the relevance of stored-value cards to “unbanked” or underserved consumers. The authors framed the issue by first examining the characteristics of the unbanked before describing the particular card products that may be the most relevant for providing financial services to such consumers. While limitations remain, including an unsettled legal and regulatory landscape and the challenges associated with providing credit reporting and asset building features, the authors concluded that these products can offer a cost-effective means for unbanked customers to access financial services outside of a traditional banking relationship.Unbanked ; Stored-value cards

Micropayments: the final frontier for electronic consumer payments

Small payments of less than $5 have resisted the wave of electronification that has swept consumer payments in recent years. However, a number of innovations — both new technologies and new ways of doing business — have done much to make such electronic “micropayments” less expensive and more convenient. Now, having proven themselves in several online markets, micropayments are poised to make inroads at the physical point of sale. This paper looks at some of the success stories (and failures), both in the U.S. and abroad, to identify possible conditions for success and to gauge the outlook for the future. It finds that industry structure, the coordination of standards, and customer preferences and experiences have all influenced the development of these products. While different markets around the world have supported different types of solutions, the successful products have delivered clear utility to the consumer, along with compelling economics for the different parties in the value chain. With critical mass in sight, the future looks promising.Electronic funds transfers

Information security, data breaches, and protecting cardholder information: facing up to the challenges

On September 13 and 14, 2006, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and the Electronic Funds Transfer Association (EFTA) hosted a conference entitled “Information Security, Data Breaches, and Protecting Cardholder Information: Facing Up to the Challenges.” The two-day event was designed to bring together a diverse set of stakeholders from the U.S. payments industry to discuss a framework to guide industry practices and inform public policy. This paper summarizes key highlights from this event. Conference participants emphasized that the industry must address two fundamental issues: (1) increasingly dangerous threats to sensitive consumer information and (2) public perception and understanding of the risks from data breaches. These challenges are related but need different solutions. A consensus emerged that while the situation is not yet dire, it is serious, and warrants attention from all payments stakeholders.Data protection ; Payment systems ; Computer security

Graphical programming and the use of simulation for space-based manipulators

Robotic manipulators are difficult to program even without the special requirements of a zero-gravity environment. While attention should be paid to investigating the usefulness of industrial application programming methods to space manipulators, new methods with potential application to both environments need to be invented. These methods should allow various levels of autonomy and human-in-the-loop interaction and simple, rapid switching among them. For all methods simulation must be integrated to provide reliability and safety. Graphical programming of manipulators is a candidate for an effective robot programming method despite current limitations in input devices and displays. A research project in task-level robot programming has built an innovative interface to a state-of-the-art commercial simulation and robot programming platform. The prototype demonstrates simple augmented methods for graphical programming and simulation which may be of particular interest to those concerned with Space Station applications; its development has also raised important issues for the development of more sophisticated robot programming tools. Both aspects of the project are discussed

TEM tomography of pores with application to computational nanoscale flows in nanoporous silicon nitride (NPN)

Silicon nanomembrane technologies (NPN, pnc-Si, and others) have been used commercially as electron microscopy (EM) substrates, and as filters with nanometer-resolution size cut-offs. Combined with EM, these materials provide a platform for catching or suspending nanoscale-size structures for analysis. Usefully, the nanomembrane itself can be manufactured to achieve a variety of nanopore topographies. The size, shapes, and surfaces of nanopores will influence transport, fouling, sieving, and electrical behavior. Electron tomography (ET) techniques used to recreate nanoscale-sized structures would provide an excellent way to capture this variation. Therefore, we modified a sample holder to accept our standardized 5.4 mm × 5.4 mm silicon nanomembrane chips and imaged NPN nanomembranes (50–100 nm thick, 10–100 nm nanopore diameters) using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). After imaging and ET reconstruction using a series of freely available tools (ImageJ, TomoJ, SEG3D2, Meshlab), we used COMSOL Multiphysics™ to simulate fluid flow inside a reconstructed nanopore. The results show flow profiles with significantly more complexity than a simple cylindrical model would predict, with regions of stagnation inside the nanopores. We expect that such tomographic reconstructions of ultrathin nanopores will be valuable in elucidating the physics that underlie the many applications of silicon nanomembranes

Replication and exploratory analysis of 24 candidate risk polymorphisms for neural tube defects.

BackgroundNeural tube defects (NTDs), which are among the most common congenital malformations, are influenced by environmental and genetic factors. Low maternal folate is the strongest known contributing factor, making variants in genes in the folate metabolic pathway attractive candidates for NTD risk. Multiple studies have identified nominally significant allelic associations with NTDs. We tested whether associations detected in a large Irish cohort could be replicated in an independent population.MethodsReplication tests of 24 nominally significant NTD associations were performed in racially/ethnically matched populations. Family-based tests of fifteen nominally significant single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were repeated in a cohort of NTD trios (530 cases and their parents) from the United Kingdom, and case-control tests of nine nominally significant SNPs were repeated in a cohort (190 cases, 941 controls) from New York State (NYS). Secondary hypotheses involved evaluating the latter set of nine SNPs for NTD association using alternate case-control models and NTD groupings in white, African American and Hispanic cohorts from NYS.ResultsOf the 24 SNPs tested for replication, ADA rs452159 and MTR rs10925260 were significantly associated with isolated NTDs. Of the secondary tests performed, ARID1A rs11247593 was associated with NTDs in whites, and ALDH1A2 rs7169289 was associated with isolated NTDs in African Americans.ConclusionsWe report a number of associations between SNP genotypes and neural tube defects. These associations were nominally significant before correction for multiple hypothesis testing. These corrections are highly conservative for association studies of untested hypotheses, and may be too conservative for replication studies. We therefore believe the true effect of these four nominally significant SNPs on NTD risk will be more definitively determined by further study in other populations, and eventual meta-analysis

Globally Universal Fractal Pattern of Human Settlements in River Networks

River networks play a key role in the spatial organization of human settlements. Both river networks and human settlements have been found to exhibit regular self-similar patterns, but little is known about the generalized spatial patterns of human settlements embedded within river networks. Here based on night light data, we find a universal fractal structure at the global scale, with both robust Hortonian scaling relationships with the extent of human settlements and statistically significant power law scaling of the power spectra of human area functions. Globally, we find consistent patterns of power law preferential downstream clustering of human settlements across all six populated continents, typically up to 40% of the maximum flow length. This downstream clustering suggests an optimum distribution of humans in large river basins for trade, transport, and natural resource utilization but with attendant implications for human impacts on rivers. Recognition of such spatial patterns helps generalize assessments of human impacts on rivers, with direct implications for management of water quality and biological diversity in river networks