The Effect of Luxury Taxes on Competitive Balance, Club Profits, and Social Welfare in Sports Leagues

This paper provides a game-theoretic model of a professional sports league and analyzes the effect of luxury taxes on competitive balance, club profits and social welfare. We show that a luxury tax increases aggregate salary payments in the league as well as produces a more balanced league. Moreover, a higher tax rate increases the profits of large-market clubs, whereas the profits of small-market clubs only increase if the tax rate is not set inadequately high. Finally, we show that social welfare increases with a luxury tax.Sports League, Luxury Tax, Social Welfare, Competitive Balance

AHNAK and inflammatory markers predict poor survival in laryngeal carcinoma.

AHNAK/Desmoyokin is a giant protein which has been recently linked to reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton, cellular migration and invasion. Here, we investigated the role of AHNAK in the pathophysiology of larynx carcinoma-one of the major subtypes of head and neck cancer. To this end, we analysed AHNAK expression in tumor tissues from 83 larynx carcinoma patients in relation to overall survival. We found that tumoral AHNAK overexpression significantly associated with poor survival of these patients both in univariate and multivariate analysis. In further studies, we combined the prognostic value of AHNAK with selected markers of inflammation, such as macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) and tumor-infiltrating neutrophils (CD66b-positive cells). Both MIF and neutrophils have been linked to enhanced tumoral migration and poor clinical outcome in patients with orohypopharynx carcinoma-another major subtype of head and neck cancer. Interestingly, we found that synchronous high levels of AHNAK and MIF or AHNAK and neutrophils, respectively, were stronger predictors of poor survival than AHNAK alone. Synchronous high levels of all three markers were the strongest predictors of poor survival in our patient cohort. Taken together, our findings propose novel strategies for an accurate prognosis in larynx carcinoma and suggest potential mechanisms of inflammation-mediated tumor progression

Social Welfare in Sports Leagues with Profit-Maximizing and/or Win-Maximizing Clubs

This paper develops a contest model to compare social welfare in homogeneous leagues in which all clubs maximize identical objective functions with mixed leagues in which clubs maximize different objective functions. We show that homogeneous leagues in which all clubs are profit-maximizers dominate all other leagues whereas mixed leagues in which small-market clubs are profit- and large-market clubs are win-maximizers (type-I mixed leagues) are dominated by all other leagues. In addition, we show that, from a welfare perspective, large-market clubs win too often in (purely) win-maximizing and type-I mixed leagues whereas small-market clubs win too many games in (purely) profit-maximizing leagues and in mixed leagues in which large-market clubs are profit- and small-market clubs are win-maximizers (type-II mixed leagues). These results have important policy implications: Social welfare will increase if clubs are reorganized from non-profit members associations to profit-maximizing corporations. Moreover, it is socially desirable to reorganize large-market clubs first because, in mixed leagues, it is better if large-market clubs maximize profits instead of small-market clubs. Finally, we show that the invariance proposition does not hold in any league. In mixed (homogeneous) leagues, revenue sharing decreases (increases) social welfare. Given these results, homogeneous leagues should introduce revenue sharing; mixed leagues should not.Social welfare, team sports leagues, objective functions, mixed leagues, competitive balance

Bayesian structured additive distributional regression for multivariate responses

In this paper, we propose a unified Bayesian approach for multivariate structured additive distributional regression analysis where inference is applicable to a huge class of multivariate response distributions, comprising continuous, discrete and latent models, and where each parameter of these potentially complex distributions is modelled by a structured additive predictor. The latter is an additive composition of different types of covariate effects e.g. nonlinear effects of continuous variables, random effects, spatial variations, or interaction effects. Inference is realised by a generic, efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm based on iteratively weighted least squares approximations and with multivariate Gaussian priors to enforce specific properties of functional effects. Examples will be given by illustrations on analysing the joint model of risk factors for chronic and acute childhood malnutrition in India and on ecological regression for German election results

Influence of electron-phonon interaction on superexchange

We investigate the influence of electron-phonon coupling on the superexchange interaction of magnetic insulators. Both the Holstein-Hubbard model where the phonons couple to the electron density, as well as an extended Su, Schrieffer, Heeger model where the coupling arises from modulation of the overlap integral are studied using exact diagonalization and perturbative methods. In all cases for both the adiabatic (but non-zero frequency) and anti-adiabatic parameter regions the electron-phonon coupling is found to enhance the superexchange.Comment: 14 pages+4 postscript figure

Validation of Geant4-based Radioactive Decay Simulation

Radioactive decays are of concern in a wide variety of applications using Monte-Carlo simulations. In order to properly estimate the quality of such simulations, knowledge of the accuracy of the decay simulation is required. We present a validation of the original Geant4 Radioactive Decay Module, which uses a per-decay sampling approach, and of an extended package for Geant4-based simulation of radioactive decays, which, in addition to being able to use a refactored per-decay sampling, is capable of using a statistical sampling approach. The validation is based on measurements of calibration isotope sources using a high purity Germanium (HPGe) detector; no calibration of the simulation is performed. For the considered validation experiment equivalent simulation accuracy can be achieved with per-decay and statistical sampling

Interference during the implicit learning of two different motor sequences

It has been demonstrated that learning a second motor task after having learned a first task may interfere with the long-term consolidation of the first task. However, little is known about immediate changes in the representation of the motor memory in the early acquisition phase within the first minutes of the learning process. Therefore, we investigated such early interference effects with an implicit serial reaction time task in 55 healthy subjects. Each subject performed either a sequence learning task involving two different sequences, or a random control task. The results showed that learning the first sequence led to only a slight, short-lived interference effect in the early acquisition phase of the second sequence. Overall, learning of neither sequence was impaired. Furthermore, the two processes, sequence-unrelated task learning (i.e. general motor training) and the sequence learning itself did not appear to interfere with each other. In conclusion, although the long-term consolidation of a motor memory has been shown to be sensitive to other interfering memories, the present study suggests that the brain is initially able to acquire more than one new motor sequence within a short space of time without significant interferenc

Lattice strain accompanying the colossal magnetoresistance effect in EuB6_6

The coupling of magnetic and electronic degrees of freedom to the crystal lattice in the ferromagnetic semimetal EuB$_6$, which exhibits a complex ferromagnetic order and a colossal magnetoresistance (CMR) effect, %, very likely involving magnetic polarons, is studied by high-resolution thermal expansion and magnetostriction experiments. EuB$_6$ may be viewed as a model system, where pure magnetism-tuned transport and the response of the crystal lattice can be studied in a comparatively simple environment,i.e., not influenced by strong crystal-electric field effects and Jahn-Teller distortions. We find a very large lattice response, quantified by (i) the magnetic Gr\"uneisen parameter, (ii) the spontaneous strain when entering the ferromagnetic region and (iii) the magnetostriction in the paramagnetic temperature regime. Our analysis reveals that a significant part of the lattice effects originates in the magnetically-driven delocalization of charge carriers, consistent with the scenario of percolating magnetic polarons. A strong effect of the formation and dynamics of local magnetic clusters on the lattice parameters is suggested to be a general feature of CMR materials.Comment: 5 pages and 3 figure

Background Simulations of the Wide Field Imager of the ATHENA X-Ray Observatory

The ATHENA X-ray Observatory-IXO is a planned multinational orbiting X-ray observatory with a focal length of 11.5m. ATHENA aims to perform pointed observations in an energy range from 0.1 keV to 15 keV with high sensitivity. For high spatial and timing resolution imaging and spectroscopic observations the 640x640 pixel^2 large DePFET-technology based Wide field Imager (WFI) focal plane detector, providing a field of view of 18 arcsec will be the main detector. Based on the actual mechanics, thermal and shielding design we present estimates for the WFI cosmic ray induced background obtained by the use of Monte-Carlo simulations and possible background reduction measures.Comment: IEEE NSS MIC Conference 2011, Valencia, Spai

The Expected Perimeter in Eden and Related Growth Processes

Following Richardson and using results of Kesten on First-passage percolation, we obtain an upper bound on the expected perimeter in an Eden Growth Process. Using results of the author from a problem in Statistical Mechanics, we show that the average perimeter of the lattice animals resulting from a very natural family of "growth histories" does not obey a similar bound.Comment: 11 page