This article examines consumer spending as a function of payment mode both when the modes differ in terms of payment coupling (association between purchase decision and actual parting of money) and physical form as well as when the modes differ only in terms of form. Study 1 demonstrates that consumers are willing to spend more when a credit card logo is present versus absent. Study 2 shows tha...

Consumers in the United States make billions of transactions each year using cash, checks, debit cards, and credit cards. Bank and credit card accounts provide consumers with liquidity to clear and settle these transactions. In return, consumers pay a variety of fees, and both explicit and implicit interest charges. The importance of retail banking and credit markets to economic activity drives...

A random n-permutation may be generated by sequentially removing random cards C1, ..., Cn from an n card deck D = {1, ..., n}. The permutation σ is simply the sequence of cards in the order they are removed. This permutation is itself uniformly random, as long as each random card Ct is drawn uniformly from the remaining set at time t. We consider, here, a variant of this simple procedure in whi...

The memory game, or concentration, as it is sometimes called, is a popular card game played by children and adults around the world. Good memory is one of the qualities required in order to succeed in it. This however is not enough. When it is assumed that the players have perfect memory, the memory game can be seen as a game of strategy. The game is analysed under this assumption and the optim...

We have identified and characterized ARC, apoptosis repressor with caspase recruitment domain (CARD). Sequence analysis revealed that ARC contains an N-terminal CARD fused to a C-terminal region rich in proline/glutamic acid residues. The CARD domain of ARC exhibited significant homology to the prodomains of apical caspases and the CARDs present in the cell death regulators Apaf-1 and RAIDD. Im...

In May 2005, hackers broke into Stanford University’s Career Development Center, gaining access to Social Security numbers, résumés, financial data, credit card information, and government information for 10,000 students and recruiters. In the same month, 380,000 students, alumni, faculty, employees, and applicants of San Diego State University were affected when hackers broke into four of the ...

In this paper we describe a reformulation strategy for solving multidimensional Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs). This strategy operates by iteratively considering, in isolation, each one of the uni-dimensional constraints in the problem, and exploits the approximate symmetries induced by the selected constraint on the domains in order to enforce this constraint on the simplified problem...

This paper introduces a new credit card payment scheme called No Number Credit Card that can significantly reduce the possibility of credit card fraud. The proposed payment system is loosely based on Kerberos, a cryptographic framework that has stood the test of time. In No Number Credit Card, instead of card numbers, only payment tokens are exchanged between the customers and merchants. The to...

INTRODUCTION Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease, causing various physical disabilities and deformities. Even today, stigma leads to late detection of new cases. Household contacts are considered a primary focus for the spread of infection. AIM AND OBJECTIVE To find new cases among household contacts of leprosy patients by providing a family motivation card (FMC) to each leprosy patient, ...