127,280 research outputs found
A short character of his ex[cellency] T[homas] E[arl] of W[harton], L[ord] L[ieutenant] of I[reland]
No full textA short character of his ex[cellency] T[homas] E[arl] of W[harton], L[ord] L[ieutenant] of I[reland]
No full textA short character of his ex[cellency] T[homas] E[arl] of W[harton], L[ord] L[ieutenant] of I[reland]
No full textThe Swift satellite and redshifts of long gamma-ray bursts
No full textUntil 6 October 2005 sixteen redshifts had been measured of long gamma-ray bursts discovered by the Swift satellite. Further 45 redshifts have been measured of the long gamma- ray bursts discovered by other satellites. Here we perform five statistical tests comparing the redshift distributions of these two samples assuming as the null hypothesis an identical distribution for the two samples. Three tests (Student's t-test, Mann-Whitney test, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test) reject the null hypothesis at significance levels between 97.19 and 98.55%. Two different comparisons of the medians show extreme (99.78 - 99.99994)% significance levels of rejection. This means that the redshifts of the Swift sample and the redshifts of the non-Swift sample are distributed differently - in the Swift sample the redshifts are on average larger. This statistical result suggests that the long GRBs should on average be at the higher redshifts of the Swift sample
The bionomics of swift moths I The ghost swift moth, Hepialus humuli (L.)
No full textThe larvae of two species of swift moths, Hepialus humuli (L.) and H. lupulinus (L.), live in the soil and are common under grass in the British Isles, but do not usually have any obvious effect upon the grass. The larvae of H. humuli are polyphagous and when they occur under agricultural or horticultural crops they may cause damage by feeding on the roots. Lettuce, strawberry and chrysanthemum are most frequently damaged.The adults, which are described, fly at dusk, the female seeking the male. The female lays between 200 and 1,600 eggs, with a mean of about 600, over a period of four days. Sweep-net catches showed the ratio of the sexes to be approximately equal, and mercury-vapour light-trap catches showed that the flight period in southern England is principally in June.In the laboratory, never less than 80 per cent, of eggs hatched, even in dry air, and the shortest incubation period, between 11 and 24 (mean 18) days, was at 20°C. At 5°C. they did not hatch, but remained viable for at least six months.The larvae were reared in small cells drilled in blocks of plaster of Paris, which were stood in a tray of water, or in vials containing a layer of moist plaster of Paris, and were fed on pieces of carrot.The growth of the larval head capsules was geometric and allowed 12 instars to be distinguished at 15°C.; at higher temperatures there may be more.The growth curve of the larvae was S-shaped with a very distinct fall in weight in each instar for several days before moulting. The daily intake of food was weighed, and the conversion rate shown to be small, ranging from 0·00058 to 0·04, as compared with 0·205 to 0·49 recorded for other Lepidopterous larvae.At 5°C., larvae did not develop beyond the second instar, nor beyond the fourth at 10°C. The optimum temperature for their development (mean period 224 days) was 15°C., although mortality was high. They developed at 20°C. more rapidly (mean 197 days) but more died. Larvae kept in a container sunk in the soil outdoors developed more slowly than those at 15°C. and had only reached the eighth instar by February (239 days after hatching). This evidence, together with that from an artificially infested plot in the field and general field observations, suggests that the usual life-cycle lasts two years
Tom Swift and His Electric Regression Analysis Machine: 1973
No full textTom Swift, who began his career with factor analysis (1967) , is pleased to announce that the “1973 Tom Swift Award for Data Abuse” has been won by LeRoy Stone and James Brosseau. They originally (Stone, et al., 1973) used 115 variables in a stepwise regression analysis to explain differences among 19 observations. They then claimed (Stone & Brosseau, 197 3) to have tested the predictive validity of this model. This was done by regressing the 14 variables from the model on data from 18 new subjects. This “cross-validation” yielded a final model with six variables and an R2 of 0.76.Tom Swift, regression, statistics
Swift-LSST Synergies
No full textInvited talk at the "Time Domain Astrophysics with Swift III" meeting in Clemson SC, Oct 2-3 2018.</p
The Impact of the Diffusion of a Financial Innovation on Company Performance: An Analysis of SWIFT Adoption
No full textHow does a major financial network innovation influence firm performance? Despite much speculation we have little hard quantitative evidence about the impact of technology diffusion in financial services. In this paper we use the entire adoption history for SWIFT (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication - standards provider and messaging carrier) matched to bank-level panel data for the US, Canada and 27 European countries. Our dataset covers almost 7,000 banks (including 1,689 SWIFT adopters) between 1998 and 2005. We find that adoption appears to have large effects on profitability, but it takes several years before any positive return is discernible, consistent with the idea of significant complementarities between new technologies and firm organization. The profitability effect operates by both raising sales and decreasing operating costs and is greater for smaller firms than larger firms. Although the long-run effects are similar, US and UK banks appear to reap the benefits from adoption more quickly than their Continental European counterparts. This is consistent with the idea that the impact of information and communication technologies is stronger in the US than Europe due to lower adjustment costs.Diffusion, profitability, banks, SWIFT
Reading Swift and Ireland, 1720-1729 : constituences, contexts and constructions of identity in Jonathan Swift's occasional writings of the 1720s
No full textThe 1720s was a decade of crisis in Ireland. Jonathan Swift's occasional writings from these years extend the country's political and economic crises into
dramas of personal and national identity. Part One of this thesis investigates the material conditions of the relationship between Swift, his Irish audience, and the
underlying problems of identity that such an audience simultaneously poses and occludes. Part Two is an anatomy of the literary modes through which that relationship is figured.
The first chapter offers the 1720 Declaratory Act as an important subtext for Swift's 'inaugural' work of the decade, the 1720 Proposalfor the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture. Challenging retrospective constructions of the author's textual and political authority, the chapter examines how Swift the 'Hibernian patriot' was largely an invention of the crisis surrounding the act. Chapter Two
argues that The Drapier's Letters reconfigure the language that had been used in the past to depict the Catholic threat to Protestant Ireland, and use it to depict the
threat emerging from England.
Part Two moves to the question of identity, which Chapter Three designates a kind of 'style', both a mode of expression and a trend in polite society. The writing of history and the social signification of language are the
main concerns of this chapter, which investigates how Irish historiography becomes the focus for a range of concerns in the 1720s. Chapter Four nominates the pastoral genre as an alternative vehicle for the reading and writing of history
in Swift's Ireland. It identifies a Virgilian dialectic of expropriation and protection by a patron as an important method of 'reading' oneself into history and identity. Looking at various manifestations of crisis in Ireland in 1729 - famine, fuel shortages and emigration, the final chapter argues that A Modest Proposal uses techniques of allegory to produce a crisis of interpretation. By
promoting and perpetuating misreading, it mirrors the pervasive climate of error that produced this text.
As a whole the thesis documents three transitions. It traces the emergence of a parodic method of literary and political representation which eventually overwhelms any claims Swift's writing might once have made to positive
advocacy. Once considered the dominant and definitive voice of 1720s Ireland, Swift is re-appraised as one writer among many, and his writing as a product of his society rather than an authoritative comment on it. Finally, the Presbyterians of Ireland are shown to emerge by the end of the decade as the primary focus for the anxieties and aggressions that animate Swift's occasional writings
Managing the effects of tax expenditures on the national budget
No full textTax expenditures, in the form of tax provisions, are government expenditures. They are conceptually and functionally distinct from those tax provisions whose purpose is to raise revenue. Tax expenditure programs are comparable to entitlement programs. Therefore, tax expenditures must be analyzed in spending terms and integrated into the budgetary process to ensure fiscal accountability. In addition, tax expenditures must be audited for performance and the information must be published (with comprehensive analysis) to ensure fiscal transparency. The author analyzes the concept and definition, size, and effects of tax expenditures, as well as the fiscal accountability and transparency of tax expenditure spending. In short, tax expenditures affect (1) the budget balance,(2) budget prioritization in allocation, (3) the effectiveness and efficiency of fiscal resources, and (4) the scope for abuse by taxpayers, government officials and legislators. While reviewing the current practices in tax expenditures against the requirements of fiscal accountability and transparency, she finds that this fiscal area must be strengthened. The author sketches four building blocks to strengthen tax expenditures toward fiscal accountability and transparency, based on the literature developed by Surry and McDaniel, the practices from industrial and developing countries, the Campos and Pradhan fiscal accountability model, and the International Monetary Fund's fiscal transparency code. The author argues that normative/benchmark tax structure, a revenue-raising component of the tax system, should be formalized. The normative/benchmark tax structure should be legally defined in the tax law and should be transparent. The tax receipts from this normative/benchmark tax structure should be quantified and published. Presently, many countries could publish imputed tax revenue from normative/benchmark tax structures because such data is available. Only if imputed tax revenue is published in the same way as the other budget components-tax revenue received, tax expenditures, direct expenditures, and fiscal balance-will a budget system be truly transparent in terms of revenue-raising activities and expenditure activities. In addition, when the tax revenue-raising activity is formalized, the inherent spending nature of tax expenditures is further exposed. Therefore, tax expenditures should be added to direct expenditures forming total government expenditures. Furthermore, the conventional concept of the size of government should be remedied by including both direct expenditures and tax expenditures.Public Sector Economics&Finance,Tax Law,Fiscal Adjustment,Public Sector Fiscal Adjustment,Economic Theory&Research
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