Motivations of Americans to be Fans of Non-U.S. Sports Teams

This research was conducted to gain a better understanding of why American sports fans chose to follow international teams and how they consumed the international sports product. The results provided can assist sports marketers learn about the various ways to expand their business internationally and the key factors that most influence non-domestic fans. By understanding fan motivations in an international context, marketers can more effectively execute their business plans when trying to sell in foreign markets. Previous information was gathered regarding fan motivations and behavior, but little was known about fandom abroad. The data were measured through a 13 question survey and randomly sent out to a sample of 1500 students at a northeastern college in the United States. The 29 complete responses were statistically analyzed and used to develop results. From the analyses, the top three most influential factors motivating Americans to follow international sports were: influence of a star player or coach, the location of the team and the league in which they play in. These three factors were the primary reasons why individuals chose to become fans of certain teams and should be utilized in international sports sales/marketing strategies

Thermodynamics and concentration

We show that the thermal subadditivity of entropy provides a common basis to derive a strong form of the bounded difference inequality and related results as well as more recent inequalities applicable to convex Lipschitz functions, random symmetric matrices, shortest travelling salesmen paths and weakly self-bounding functions. We also give two new concentration inequalities.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.3150/10-BEJ341 the Bernoulli (http://isi.cbs.nl/bernoulli/) by the International Statistical Institute/Bernoulli Society (http://isi.cbs.nl/BS/bshome.htm

Communication and language in Niklas Luhmann's systems theory

This article investigates the function and reality of language in Niklas Luhmann's systems theory. How can one interpret the systems-theoretical assumption that language is based on communication? Luhmann describes language as a dynamic media/form relationship, which is able to couple the social and psychological system. This structural coupling, which constructs consciousness and language as two autonomous systems, raises problems if one defines language from a cognitive point of view. This article discusses these problems and aims to develop assumptions and questions within the systems-theoretical approach.O presente artigo investiga a função e realidade da linguagem na teoria dos sistemas de Niklas Luhmann. Como se pode interpretar a suposição sistêmico-teórica de que a linguagem é baseada na comunicação? Luhmann descreve a linguagem como uma relação dinâmica entre meio e forma, a qual é capaz de ligar o sistema social e psicológico. Essa conexão estrutural, que constroi a consciência e a linguagem como dois sistemas autônomos, gera problemas quando se define a linguagem do ponto de vista cognitivo. Este artigo discute tais problemas e pretende desenvolver suposições e questões a partir da própria abordagem sistêmico-teórica

Poultry: Ethical Problems and Breeding Goals

Poultry lines are highly specialized and used either for egg or meat production