Small Business Fintech Lending: The Need for Comprehensive Regulation

The 28.7 million small businesses in the United States—99% of all American businesses—are the backbone of the American economy. Historically, small businesses relied on community banks for their credit needs. Over the last decade, however, small businesses increasingly have turned to “fintech” lenders—nonbank lenders that are largely unregulated. Nonbank consumer lending is governed by consumer protection statutes, but nonbank small business lending is outside of any clear regulatory framework that would protect borrowers from potentially predatory practices. This Article argues that the optimal regulatory regime is a combination of both state authority over fintech lenders and inclusion of small business borrowers in federal consumer protection statutes

Heidegger Today: On Jeff Kochan's Science as Social Existence

Book review of: Jeff Kochan (2017), Science as Social Existence: Heidegger and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (Cambridge UK: Open Book Publishers)

The flavor composition of astrophysical neutrinos after 8 years of IceCube: an indication of neutron decay scenario?

In this work we present an updated study of the flavor composition suggested by astrophysical neutrinos observed by IceCube. The main novelties compared to previous studies are the following: 1) we use the most recent measurements, namely 8 years of throughgoing muons and 7.5 years of High Energy Starting Events (HESE); 2) we consider a broken power law spectrum, in order to be consistent with the observations between 30 TeV and few PeV; 3) we use the throughgoing muon flux to predict the number of astrophysical HESE tracks. We show that accounting for the three previous elements, the result favors surprisingly the hypothesis of neutrinos produced by neutron decay, disfavoring the standard picture of neutrinos from pion decay at 2.0$\sigma$ and the damped muons regime at $2.6 \sigma$, once the atmospheric background is considered. Although the conventional scenario is not yet completely ruled out in the statistically and alternative interpretations are also plausible, such as an energy spectrum characterized by a non trivial shape, this intriguing result may suggest new directions for both theoretical interpretation and experimental search strategies.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. Published on EPJ

Dietary adherence to whole grain and refined grain rich diets in a randomized controlled trial

Dietary adherence is the degree to which participants follow prescribed dietary protocol. Without measuring adherence, it is not possible to validly measure the effect of the intervention. Assessing adherence allows the investigator to better determine whether the results are due to the diet itself. The overall goal of the analyses presented in this thesis was to assess if dietary adherence was higher on a whole grain versus refined grain provided food protocol with specific prescription for calorie consumption. Eighty-two men and women between the ages of 40-65 were assigned to either a refined or whole grain feeding protocol, using a 3-day rotating menu for 6 weeks. Daily food logs were used to assess adherence to the prescribed diets and calculate total energy consumed and macronutrient content. The first objective was to determine the caloric and macronutrient content of the assigned diets, and to compare whether the reported nutrient content was the same as the provided nutrient content. Overall, the median whole grain group consumption was 45.0 kcal per day more than they were assigned to, and the median refined grain group consumption was 10.5 kcal per day less than assignment. The refined grain diet's macronutrient composition was 52.1% carbohydrate, 19.9% protein, and 28.1% fat, whereas the whole grain group's macronutrient composition was 54.4% carbohydrate, 18.0% protein, and 27.6% fat. Both diets were within the average daily macronutrient recommendations of 50-55% carbohydrate, 15-20% protein, and 25-30% fat. There was a statistically significant difference in the percentage of carbohydrate and protein between groups. The second objective was to determine if two different diets had any effect on deviation from the protocol. Overall, there was an 8.9 kcal/day difference in deviation between the two groups throughout the study. When stratifying by diet level, there was no consistent pattern of deviations from the assigned protocol. On the 2000 kcal diet, those in the refined grain group consumed 184.5 kcals/day more than those in the whole grain group. In contrast on the 2500 kcal diet, the whole grain group consumed 105.0 kcal/day more than the refined grain group, while on the 3000 kcal/day diet, those in the refined grain group consumed slightly more kcals/day on average (12.5kcal/day) than the whole grain group. The study found no consistent difference in caloric consumption between the whole and refined grain groups, as well as no consistent difference in deviations from the assigned diet protocol. These results imply that dietary adherence can be achieved in a provided food whole grains study

The Politics of Death:On Life after the ‘End of History'.

In this paper, the most recent writings by Giorgio Agamben and Bruno Latour are brought into dialog by examining what light they shed on contemporary debates concerning “end of life” decisions. More specifically, the paper focuses on the debates sparked by Diane Pretty's request for a grant of immunity against legal prosecution if her husband were to assist her to commit suicide and so terminate her increasingly unbearable suffering from motor neurone disease. The aim of this exercise is to articulate the presuppositions informing two influential and radically opposed views on the contemporary reconfiguration of relationships between humans, animals and other non-humans

Skilled Hands, Strong Spirits: A Century of Building Trades History

Skilled Hands, Strong Spirits follows the history of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department from the emergence of building trades councils in the age of the skyscraper; through treacherous fights over jurisdiction as new building materials and methods of work evolved; and through numerous Department campaigns to improve safety standards, work with contractors to promote unionized construction, and forge a sense of industrial unity among its fifteen (and at times nineteen) autonomous and highly diverse affiliates. Arranged chronologically, Skilled Hands, Strong Spirits is based on archival research in Department, AFL-CIO, and U.S. government records as well as numerous union journals, the local and national press, and interviews with former Department officers

A multi-component model for the IceCube neutrino events

The IceCube neutrino telescope has observed for the first time a diffuse flux of high energy neutrinos, with a possible astrophysical origin. Up to now there are no evidence of sources and many hypothesis are still plausible in order to explain the measured flux. In this proceeding we analyze an alternative way to interpret the IceCube neutrinos, in terms of sum of contributions from different sources.Comment: Prepared for the proceeding of the conference IFAE 201

Caveat Emptor:On Time, Death and History in Late Modernity

This article focuses on 'revivalism' and 'resurrectionism'. While the former is a sociological label for contemporary rituals of dying and death, the latter is a label for contemporary practices of historiographical representation. By exploring the formal and substantive similarities between 'revivalism' and 'resurrectionism', this study offers a speculative reflection on the relationship between time, death and history in late modernity