The authors argue that group threat is a key driver of the adoption of new and controversial policies. Conceptualizing threat in spatial terms, they argue that group threat is activated through the joint occurrence of (1) proximity to threatening groups and (2) the population density of threatened groups. By analyzing the adoption of county and state "dry laws" banning alcohol from 1890 to 1919...

Most research and policy on protecting innovation focus on patents. Yet, almost all technology managers report secrecy to be more important than patents. Here, I show theoretically that stronger secrecy laws could increase or reduce R&D. By reducing spillovers, secrecy laws might reduce or raise the return to R&D, depending on whether spillover and own R&D are complements or substitutes. By str...

This papei describes experiments in which the Laws' approach to texture analysis is augmented by artificial neural network classifiers followed by mode filters. Analysis of image classification data confirmed that averaging filters should be carefully chosen to obtain the best balance between remanent texture noise and blurring of class boundaries, smaller mask sizes being required for segmenta...

As a scientist and one of the members of STURP who went to Turin in 1978, I found The Resurrection of the Shroud by Mark Antonacci (M. Evans and Co., Inc. New York, NY, 2000) to be one of the most remarkable books I have read on the subject. I should state that my perspective is primarily that of a scientist, and I will not review some aspects of studies on the Shroud that are mentioned in the ...