International Comparisons of Real Estate E-nformation on the Internet

How much information should brokers supply on a website? The Internet allows brokers to reduce the cost of providing information to potential buyers. However, brokers may risk disintermediation if they provide too much information. This paper presents a model of a broker’s choice of how much information to provide on a website. The model considers buyers’ tradeoffs between hiring a broker and gathering information on their own. It then investigates why real estate brokers in different countries provide different amounts of information on websites. Tests reveal that information provided on broker websites depends on the search cost of prospective buyers.

Seller versus Broker: Timing of Promotion

Sellers and brokers may differ in preferred timing of costly promotion. Sellers with holding costs are anxious to sell. Sellers with showing costs want a slower approach. We find a standard listing contract where the broker chooses promotion timing can be efficient if sellers have no significant holding or showing costs. We then delineate the efficient listing contract provisions for duration and fee structure for sellers who have holding and/or showing costs.

Nationalism, Law, Gender and Sexuality: An Anthropological Study of U.S. Military Culture Among Veterans

This study looks at the ways that sexual and gender identities are constructed through the translation of military experience into the veteran culture of a VA hospital, taking into account the influences of US nationalism in both military and civilian culture. Through life-history interviews, formal vocabulary association exercises, and informal participant observation carried out over the course of three months in 2006, questions about how the VA culture encourages or discourages certain displays of gender and sexual identity through its policies as well as its unofficial customs and traditions are identified and explored. The emergence of a new, unofficial “uniform” for veterans at the VA hospital, the reinforcement of cultural boundaries against outsiders, the institutional structuring of the hospital, and the common use of language that reaffirms minority statuses and builds brotherhood all function to privilege nationalist ideologies, with implications for the gender and sexual identities of veterans and all civilians. These features persist from the culture of active duty military servicemembers into the culture of veterans, in spite of changes in law that have affected military policies regarding the integration of gays and lesbians. In order to advance from policy changes to actual cultural change, new tools should be borrowed from other activist movements, like Critical Race Theory, a method of legal analysis that can expose interest convergence and essentialism of identities as they occur in developments in the U.S. legal system. If these tools are utilized in combination with anthropological analysis of culture, then the discussions and actions of scholars and activists in queer movements in the U.S. can be enhanced, initiating a shift from demanding rights legally or culturally denied to certain identities to broader discussions of social and cultural responsibilities

A Coffee Shop Attributes\u27 Impact on Work Behavior: Perceptions of Regular Working Patrons

Coffee shops are a global phenomenon. They need to be understood as multifunctional spaces and complex social environments. A single coffee shop can serve diverse customers while offering socio-physical attributes that encourage remarkable ranges of parallel activities such as social gatherings, focused intellectual work, and creative endeavors. Coffee has reportedly been perceived as fueling the creative processes of many young professionals, creative entrepreneurs, and students (Attaianese, 2018). Fast-evolving communication technologies and the recent pandemic have accelerated existing questions and changed conventional conceptions about where one can do focused work, what qualifies as a place of work, and how workspaces should look and feel to help professionals and students be productive. Next to coworking spaces that have recently become prominent alternatives to traditional office environments, coffee shops started to house more working individuals than ever before (Yang et al., 2019). This case study was designed to understand which aspects of a coffee shop environment in a U.S. Midwest college town were important to patrons’ decisions to regularly spend extended time working there. My engagement as the participant observer was prolonged. I spent thirty-three hours over six weeks creating behavioral maps, tracing patrons’ locations and activities, and writing fieldnotes before conducting semi-structured interviews (Leech, 2002) with eight purposefully chosen ‘campers’ (Waxman, 2006). In a two-phase coding process, the data were coded for aspects that emerged from the data and concepts retrieved from the existing Dinescape (Ryu, 2005), Place Attachment (Waxman, 2006), and Servicescape models (Bitner, 1992) before studying prominent code co-occurrences to determine the overlapping patterns. The emerging themes were (1) working patrons preferred the atmosphere’s warm and familiar nature in comparison to the atmosphere their offices offered. (2) Working patrons enjoyed the lively acoustic environment as they believed it fueled their productivity. Campers reported appreciating (3) the combination of daylight and artificial diffused overhead lighting and (4) the casual and comfortable seating options. Perhaps most importantly (5) patrons, who primarily worked at the coffee shop, valued existing opportunities to socialize with fellow patrons and baristas as a secondary activity. Office spaces designed to mimic the described desirable aspects of the coffee shop work environment at the core of this study might help raise the recently considerably diminished interest of office employees attending their place of work in person. In conclusion, the researcher argues that the prominent aspects of coffee shop environments can and should inform current and future workspace design. To further grow our understanding of the popularity of coffee shops as spaces to work future research could address questions such as: What social affordances do coffee shops offer to their regular patrons that their spaces of work do not? Do coffee shops promote a sense of belonging in their working patrons and if so, how may this differ from patrons not there to work? Should coffee shops be designed around campers (Waxman, 2006) needs, or is the diverse range of users\u27 and patrons’ behaviors present an important part of the appeal to working patrons

Theoretical Evaluations of the Fission Cross Section of the 77 eV Isomer of 235-U

We have developed models of the fission barrier (barrier heights and transition state spectra) that reproduce reasonably well the measured fission cross section of $^{235}$U from neutron energy of 1 keV to 2 MeV. From these models we have calculated the fission cross section of the 77 eV isomer of $^{235}$U over the same energy range. We find that the ratio of the isomer cross section to that of the ground state lies between about 0.45 and 0.55 at low neutron energies. The cross sections become approximately equal above 1 MeV. The ratio of the neutron capture cross section to the fission cross section for the isomer is predicted to be about a factor of 3 larger for the isomer than for the ground state of $^{235}$U at keV neutron energies. We have also calculated the cross section for the population of the isomer by inelastic neutron scattering form the $^{235}$U ground state. We find that the isomer is strongly populated, and for $E_n = 1 MeV$ the $(n,n'\gamma)$ cross section leading to the population of the isomer is of the order of 0.5 barn. Thus, neutron reaction network calculations involving the uranium isotopes in a high neutron fluence are likely to be affected by the 77 eV isomer of $^{235}$U. With these same models the fission cross sections of $^{233}$U and $^{237}$U can be reproduced approximately using only minor adjustments to the barrier heights. With the significant lowering of the outer barrier that is expected for the outer barrier the general behavior of the fission cross section of $^{239}$Pu can also be reproduced.Comment: 17 pages including 8 figure

Cognitive loading affects motor awareness and movement kinematics but not locomotor trajectories during goal-directed walking in a virtual reality environment.

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of cognitive loading on movement kinematics and trajectory formation during goal-directed walking in a virtual reality (VR) environment. The secondary objective was to measure how participants corrected their trajectories for perturbed feedback and how participants' awareness of such perturbations changed under cognitive loading. We asked 14 healthy young adults to walk towards four different target locations in a VR environment while their movements were tracked and played back in real-time on a large projection screen. In 75% of all trials we introduced angular deviations of ±5° to ±30° between the veridical walking trajectory and the visual feedback. Participants performed a second experimental block under cognitive load (serial-7 subtraction, counter-balanced across participants). We measured walking kinematics (joint-angles, velocity profiles) and motor performance (end-point-compensation, trajectory-deviations). Motor awareness was determined by asking participants to rate the veracity of the feedback after every trial. In-line with previous findings in natural settings, participants displayed stereotypical walking trajectories in a VR environment. Our results extend these findings as they demonstrate that taxing cognitive resources did not affect trajectory formation and deviations although it interfered with the participants' movement kinematics, in particular walking velocity. Additionally, we report that motor awareness was selectively impaired by the secondary task in trials with high perceptual uncertainty. Compared with data on eye and arm movements our findings lend support to the hypothesis that the central nervous system (CNS) uses common mechanisms to govern goal-directed movements, including locomotion. We discuss our results with respect to the use of VR methods in gait control and rehabilitation

The Smartphone Brain Scanner: A Portable Real-Time Neuroimaging System

Combining low cost wireless EEG sensors with smartphones offers novel opportunities for mobile brain imaging in an everyday context. We present a framework for building multi-platform, portable EEG applications with real-time 3D source reconstruction. The system - Smartphone Brain Scanner - combines an off-the-shelf neuroheadset or EEG cap with a smartphone or tablet, and as such represents the first fully mobile system for real-time 3D EEG imaging. We discuss the benefits and challenges of a fully portable system, including technical limitations as well as real-time reconstruction of 3D images of brain activity. We present examples of the brain activity captured in a simple experiment involving imagined finger tapping, showing that the acquired signal in a relevant brain region is similar to that obtained with standard EEG lab equipment. Although the quality of the signal in a mobile solution using a off-the-shelf consumer neuroheadset is lower compared to that obtained using high density standard EEG equipment, we propose that mobile application development may offset the disadvantages and provide completely new opportunities for neuroimaging in natural settings