Commercial Dealers Research Articles

Illuminating an uncatalogued micropalaeontological collection at the Lapworth Museum of Geology, University of Birmingham

The Lapworth Museum of Geology (LMoG) at the University of Birmingham (UoB) holds >300,000 specimens, including a sizable micropalaeontology collection. However, ~50% of the total LMoG collection is not digitised (e.g., there is no digital record) and thus inaccessible to external audiences. We contributed to the LMoG’s ongoing digitisation efforts by assessing the curation, historic and scientific significance of an uncatalogued assortment of “large” micropalaeontological specimens. We digitised and curated 219 specimens (comprising 307 parts) made up of hand specimens, containers and vials of loose fossils and sediment, and thin sections. The collection contained organisms from ten different phyla but was dominated by Larger Benthic Foraminifera (LBF). This dominance is reflected in the predominantly low-mid latitude geographic distribution of the collection, reflecting LBFs subtropical ecological preferences. The completeness of specimen metadata varied considerably with generally good geographic, chronostratigraphic, and taxonomic information at higher levels but poorer information with increasing detail and in relation to acquisition. Despite these limitations, we find that the studied collection was primarily assimilated for teaching purposes with donations from UoB staff and other specialist museums, and purchase from commercial dealers. There is little evidence for research on these specimens to date. Future work at the LMoG will digitise the collections and contribute to the ongoing efforts of international bodies to create large, open-access natural history datasets.

The Provisions of the Option of the Condition in Jurisprudence and its Impact on Dealers

This research aims to clarify the choice of condition provisions in order to show the extent of using those jurisprudential provisions acheived the commercial dealers satisfaction. The researcher used inductive approach, and jurisprudential comparative approach between jurists' doctrines. This research gives an imprtant result that the condition of choice is the most important condition between dealer, because it acheives the complete satisfaction sharia has recommended in commercial dealings in order to gain blessing in commerce, and unfortunately, by looking at dealing between people nowadays, the researcher notice that this condition is not common, which means jurists should study provosions of choice condition and focus on such condition in commercial dealings.
 

“You only do it with people you know”: A case study of acquisition strategies by cannabis engagers in Riga, Latvia

This paper explores the cannabis market dynamics in a country that is not known for generating its own novel evidence-base or policies, using 27 in-depth semistructured interviews with primary cannabis engagers in Riga, Latvia. Primary cannabis engagers are defined as those with first-hand cannabis experience (e.g. use, production or distribution). Recent studies from other nations demonstrate the importance of information and communication technology (ICT) in unregulated substance markets. While darknet marketplaces or social media applications are increasingly positioned as alternatives to the offline market, this study finds that digital tools are seldom used for purchasing cannabis in Riga’s sample. Offline social networks and social supply play a vital role in the acquisition of cannabis and mediate access to commercial dealers. Both ICT and social networks are, however, used for learning about strategies for cannabis harm reduction.

Demand dynamics across secondary German Book markets: an information aggregation and synthetization approach

This paper focuses on the increasing competition between resale opportunities for heterogeneous items with limited demand, i.e. long-tail products. This paper examines if commercial dealers offer higher purchase prices than purchase prices fixed in public auctions. To analyze this issue, we review options for customers to resell their belongings online after use. We use a proprietary software system to download, validate, and join item data across 14 data sources, like Amazon, eBay, and twelve commercial dealers in Germany for 1673 textbooks. We analyze the question which option to resell belongings online maximizes profit of the seller, while controlling for item, demand, supply, and auction specific characteristics. Besides a detailed analysis of the price spread, we exploit listing decisions among those resale options by non-commercial dealers and execute an arbitrage trading strategy using a purely deterministic model. We find that commercial dealers offer a higher purchase price than public auctions. We argue that commercial dealers offer these higher prices as they can shift item demand over time. In addition, prices in public auctions could be depressed because on consumer-to-consumer online auction markets a strategy called “sniping” is widespread, which might hamper the price mechanism. Our results are relevant for end-consumers who are willing to dispose of items in their belonging and for commercial dealers who want to optimize their sourcing. These results can be devolved on market microstructures of other standardized products like, for example, financial products.

Exposing Textual Corruption: Community as a Stabilizing Aspect in the Circulation of the New Testament Writings during the Greco-Roman Era

Because few manuscripts of the NT writings are preserved from the first three centuries of the Christian era, scholars have debated the extent that modern critical editions of the NT reflect the text in circulation during these early centuries. In order to answer this question, this article will set out the evidence for ancient publication through community transmission. It will consider examples from Cicero, Martial, Quintilian, Pliny the Younger and Galen. These authors reveal that they preferred social networks rather than commercial dealers to circulate their writings. These same communities that copied and distributed an author’s works inadvertently created an environment in which significant alterations and plagiarizing of these same writings became known. Matthew D.C. Larsen, who has recently approached the same problem addressed in this article by examining ancient publication conventions, is engaged with throughout. The conclusions drawn here press hard against Larsen’s assertions.

A Willful Choice: The Ineffective and Incompassionate Application of Wisconsin’s Criminal Laws in Combating the Opioid Crisis

Wisconsin’s drug-induced homicide law, known as the Len Bias law, was intended to prosecute for-profit drug dealers and was rarely charged for several decades after it was enacted in 1986. In recent years, prosecutors have brought hundreds of Len Bias charges in response to opioid deaths. Often, these charges are brought against overdose victims’ friends and family members — people who are also mired in addiction and who shared or helped obtain the fatal drug. In contrast, Wisconsin’s Good Samaritan overdose law (GSOL), enacted in 2014, focuses on harm reduction. If a person calls for help when another person is overdosing, the law provides both people with some insulation from prosecution of a range of drug-related charges. These laws approach the problem of overdose death from very different angles: The Len Bias law punishes addicts for their role in overdose deaths, while the GSOL offers addicts protection from prosecution in order to encourage calls for medical intervention in overdose situations. Unfortunately, the current implementation of the Len Bias law diminishes the potential of GSOL to save lives because addicts are faced the possibility of a homicide charge when they summon help for an overdose victim. With the rise of lethal synthetic opioids in Wisconsin, the criminal justice system must adjust its current laws and practices in order to reduce overdose deaths. The criminalization of addiction represented by the Len Bias law thwarts rehabilitation efforts, miring addicts in a cycle of incarceration and drug use that ends with death in too many cases. This Comment proposes a solution: separating addicts from for-profit drug dealers in the eyes of the law by implementing a joint-user defense in Len Bias cases. Addicts are more likely to use opioids with other addicts than alone. By removing the possibility of a homicide conviction, addicts will more readily utilize the GSOL and call for medical intervention when a fellow addict is overdosing. Additionally, separating addicts from dealers allows the Len Bias law to be charged in accordance with its intended purpose, while freeing up investigatory and prosecutorial resources for the more complex task of investigating commercial drug dealers and disrupting the drug trade. This proposed solution would begin to align Wisconsin’s criminal laws with the state’s rehabilitation-focused public health efforts at combating opioid addiction in communities and reducing overdose deaths.

Burgeoning of Commercial Ornamental Plant Nurseries in Dar es Salaam City: Challenge and Future Prosperity

Commercial ornamental nurseries are popping up everywhere in the city of Dar es Salaam. However, as the city urbanizes, the commercial ornamental nurseries are confronted by several challenges of which are inadequately explored and documented. This research examines challenges, problems and explains the future prospects of commercial ornamental nurseries in the city of Dar es Salaam. The study adopted the case study design where the method for data collection relied on in-depth interviews and observation. Results revealed that ornamental plant dealers face several challenges such as; unsecured land tenure, which threaten the prosperity of the commercial ornamentalnursery practices. Problems encountered are those related to plant pests, diseases management and inaccessibility of water for irrigation. On the other hand, commercial ornamental dealers get little support from the responsible city authorities in access land and management of pest and diseases. The study recommends that success of commercial ornamental nursery industry needs more support from different actors and policies together with capacity building among the commercial ornamental dealers.

Who Holds Positions in Agricultural Futures Markets

We use non-public data regarding all trader-level futures positions, reported to the U.S. grain and oilseed derivatives market regulator (the CFTC), in order to describe the nature of market participants, the maturity structure of their holdings, and the aggregate position patterns for nine different categories of traders that we separate based on their main lines of business. We provide novel evidence about the overall extent of calendar spreading and about the contribution of commercial traders to total spreading activity. Our sample’s 3,854 traders account for 86 to 93 percent of the total futures open interest at the end of an average day in 2015–2018. Well over 90 percent of their positions have maturities of less than a year. Among our nine trader categories, just three (hedge funds and commercial dealers/merchants, plus commodity index traders on the long side) account for about four fifths of all reported trader positions. In fact, fewer than 200 “permanent” large traders (overwhelmingly from these three categories) make up the bulk of the daily open interest in the four largest agricultural futures markets. In the aggregate, the positions of commercial dealers and hedge funds (including commodity pool operators, commodity trading advisors, managed money traders, and associated persons) are highly negatively correlated. This correlation is strikingly strong for short positions: as a result, the sum total of commercial dealers’ and hedge funds’ respective shares of the short open interest fluctuates relatively little over time. We show, for the first time, that calendar spreads account for more than a third of all large trader positions; that much of the intra-year variation in the total futures open interest can be tied to changes in the extent of calendar spreading; that about half of all spread positions involve contracts expiring in 4 to 12 months (either spreading with shorter-dated contracts, or involving only maturities of 4 to 12 months); and that commercial traders who are not swap dealers (dealers and merchants, mostly) make up from a quarter to two fifths of all calendar spread positions. Again, commercial dealers’ and hedge funds’ shares of the spread open interest are negatively correlated. None of these patterns can be inferred from public data, as the CFTC’s Commitments of Traders Reports (COT) do not break out spreads for “traditional” commercial traders in general and commercial dealers and merchants in particular.

Sourcing illegal drugs as a hidden older user: the ideal of ‘social supply’

Aims: At a time of growing awareness regarding the non-commercial supply of illegal drugs between friends, this article explores the significance of so-called ‘social supply’ for a group of ‘hidden’ users of illegal drugs aged 40 and over.Methodology: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 users of illegal drugs aged 40 and over who were not in contact with the criminal justice system or treatment agencies regarding their use. Participants were recruited using snowball sampling.Findings: Accessing drugs through the commercial market was considered as a less attractive proposition than social supply by the participants. The majority used only socially supplied drugs, with some engaging commercial dealers when socially supplied product was unavailable. A handful sourced drugs exclusively through the commercial market. Some were home growers of cannabis, and a small number had drifted into social supply themselves.Conclusions: Social supply was seen in a far more favourable light than commercial transactions by our participants, and acted as an ideal against which all other acts of sourcing were compared. Moreover, social supply was often an integral facet of the drug using experience and served to validate and enhance that experience. The relatively benign, non-predatory nature of the social supply engaged in by the participants lends support to calls for some reform of the offence of supply in UK law.

Reprint of: Thawing frozen capital markets and backdoor bailouts: Evidence from the Fed's liquidity programs

Abstract During the subprime crisis, the Federal Reserve introduced several emergency liquidity programs as supplements to the discount window (DW): TAF, PDCF, and TSLF. Using data on loans to large commercial banks and primary dealers, we find that the programs were used by relatively few institutions and thus provided limited relief to banks that relied on short-term debt markets. Although usage increased after Lehman's bankruptcy, most commercial banks avoided the DW and TAF. We also find that the programs were more often used by failed European banks than by healthy US banks, likely because these loans are expensive relative to private market funds. Our results also show that usage of PDCF and TSLF programs, while higher, was more often used by primary dealers in weaker financial position.

PROTOCOL: Access to Electricity for Improving Health, Education and Welfare in Low‐ and Middle‐Income Countries: A Systematic Review

PROTOCOL: Access to Electricity for Improving Health, Education and Welfare in Low‐ and Middle‐Income Countries: A Systematic Review

Thawing Frozen Capital Markets and Backdoor Bailouts: Evidence from the Fed's Liquidity Programs

During the subprime crisis, the Federal Reserve introduced several emergency liquidity programs as supplements to the discount window: TAF, PDCF, and TSLF. Using data on loans to large commercial banks and primary dealers, we find that the programs were used by relatively few institutions and had modest effects on the liquidity of short-term debt markets. Instead, our evidence suggests that the decision to borrow and to prepay loans was more closely related to each firm’s financial health. Our results suggest that healthy banks found the terms of the loans expensive relative to private market funds, while banks closer to insolvency generally did not.

Tourist Treasures: Plunder and Collection on the Grand Tour

Tourist Treasures: Plunder and Collection on the Grand Tour Paul Stock The English Prize. The Capture of the Westmorland: An Episode of the Grand Tour. An exhibition held at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, 17 May-27 August 2012; and the Yale Center for British Art, 4 October 2012-13 January 2013. Accompanying volume edited by Maria Dolores Sánchez-Jáuregui and Scott Wilcox (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012). Pp. xiv + 378. $75.00. The English Prize, an exhibition held at the Ashmolean Museum and the Yale Center for British Art, is a marvelous achievement; rarely have I seen an exhibit which so successfully combines accessibility with scholarly rigor and import. Its focus is the Westmorland, a vessel loaded with objects acquired by British Grand Tourists and captured as war booty by the French in 1779. The cargo—which included books, antiquities, paintings, and prints, as well as olive oil, fish, silk, and medicinal drugs—was then purchased by the Compañia de Lonjistas de Madrid, an organization of Spanish commercial agents. The perishable merchandise was sold quickly, but the crates of art objects languished until 1783 before being sent to the Real Academia de Belles Artes de San Fernando in Madrid for examination. A few objects were purchased by the Spanish king, but the majority were not recovered by the Compañia and were thus absorbed into the Academia's collections. The foundation of the exhibition is a carefully contextualized assembly of the Westmorland's contents based upon painstaking archival work in Spain, Italy, France, and Britain. Crucially, though, it uses the objects as a launching pad for wider discussion about the Grand Tour: the practicalities of travel; the identities of tourists and collectors; the mechanics and aesthetics of the art trade; and the social roles of tutors, artists, and agents. The accompanying volume describes the exhibition as a "time capsule" or "snapshot" of the late eighteenth century, but these are slightly unhelpful phrases that imply unmediated access to a pristine past (ix, 81). In fact, the exhibition does something far more interesting and subtle. It presents a number of interlocking narratives about the interpretation and uses of the past, from the Grand Tourists' preoccupation with supposed classical aesthetics [End Page 323] and values, to the exhibit's own story of archival detection and display. In this respect The English Prize is a meditation on how people use objects to define and interpret both their own culture and the cultures of the past. The exhibition's most important theme is the business of tourism in the eighteenth century. It provides a wealth of detail about the commercial life and consumer culture intrinsic to Grand Tourism; articles in the volume explore, among other things, the complexities of the art trade in Rome and the challenges of trading and transportation routes, as well as the convoluted provenance of the Westmorland's cargo. This attentiveness to the circulation of goods and individuals allows us to appreciate the dynamic internationalism of eighteenth-century elite culture, and complicates over-familiar clichés about the emerging "nationalism" or disembodied "cosmopolitanism" of the period. To take one example, a decorative stone tabletop, inlaid with marbles from ancient quarries in Europe, Asia, and Africa (cat. 124), symbolizes not only the economic networks crucial to production and sale, but also the close relationship between antiquarian curiosity and decorative modernity in eighteenth-century thought. Importantly, too, the exhibition shows how the commercial realities of the art market affected aesthetic priorities. For instance, the relative scarcity of available Old Masters, as well as newly restrictive Roman export laws, stoked greater interest in reproductions and off-the-shelf souvenir prints designed for the tourist market. In their article, Jonathan Yarker and Clare Hornsby stress a crucial and underexplored topic: the role of commercial dealers in shaping the artistic interests of patrons and collectors (63-87). This analysis places market forces and business imperatives at the very center of eighteenth-century taste, challenging more conventional interpretations founded solely on aesthetic or moral sensibility. The volume and exhibition focus on the "sociability" of the Grand Tour: that is, the importance of socializing, performance, and public commemoration. In her...

Ramsay’s Regime: the Australian Museum and the Procurement of Aboriginal Bodies, c. 1874–1900

The Australian Museum during 1880s and 1890s encouraged the collection and trade of Aboriginal remains paying freelance collectors for skulls, skeletons and whole bodies. The Australian Museum's curator Edward Pierson Ramsay Ramsey would occasionally turn to a worldwide network of commercial dealers in natural science when he was unable to get specimens.

Fossil Dealers Launch Research Journal

SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHINGLast week, a trade association of commercial fossil dealers launched an online journal to publish findings from the holdings of private collectors who promise to meet academic standards for access to and documentation of their fossils. Predictably, the announcement has sent ripples through the academic community. ([Read more][1].) [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/315/5810/313

Collecting history of the hummingbird genera Chaetocercus Gray, 1855 and Lophornis Lesson, 1829

We examined the Chaetocercus and Lophornis holdings of 21 European, US and South American avian collections. Only skin specimens with exact (to the year) collecting dates and reliable locality data on their labels, which could be checked personally, were analysed. We located 466 Chaetocercus and 373 Lophornis specimens collected between the years 1859 and 1999. The vast majority of these records are old ones, dated between 1880 and 1960: 93% of the Chaetocercus and 82% of the Lophornis study skins. Less than 1% of all specimens was obtained after 1990. Potential explanations for our findings, such as declining population levels of these hummingbird genera, historically changing collecting activities regarding commercial dealers and collecting techniques, and legal collecting restrictions are discussed. Our findings reflect a general trend of decreasing collecting activities worldwide.

Frontiers to science: free trade and museum ethics

There is nothing inherently wrong about museums purchasing specimens from commercial dealers who act honestly and in good faith. Indeed, a significant amount of the taxonomically important material in the UK's great public collections has been acquired in this way. Doing business with the trade does, however, carry risks, and there are many ways in which the unwary curator can be ripped off by an unscrupulous dealer. Apart from fakes and forgeries, the most pernicious and damaging aspect of the trade is in illicit material. Museums should respect the laws of countries which seek to protect fossils as part of their cultural patrimony. This ethic is enshrined in international convention and in the ethical codes that apply to UK museums both at an individual and institutional level, through the UK's Registration scheme. The UK is about to become signatory to the 1970 UNESCO Convention, which outlaws the international illicit trade in cultural property, and will create a new law to criminalise such activity. This paper argues the case for accepting UNESCO's inclusion of fossils in the definition of cultural property. The more relaxed ethic of some academic palaeontologists compared with the ethical standards of mainstream geological curators in the UK should be addressed by drafting a protocol, whose standards should be developed in consultation between curators, academics, and reputable representatives of the trade and third world countries from which most illicitly traded fossils originate.

Experience with solar home systems in developing countries: a review

AbstractSolar energy is widely perceived as a promising technology for electricity generation in remote locations in developing countries. It is estimated that 1.3 million solar home systems had been installed by early 2000. An estimated one‐third of installed systems were backed by foreign donor support in government programmes and two‐thirds supplied by commercial dealers. The estimated growth in the deployment of solar lanterns is less than for SHS. One out of every 100 households that gain access to electricity in developing countries uses solar power. In spite of these successes, doubts have arisen about the effectiveness and suitability of small PV systems for rural development. Many organisational, financial and technical problems appear to present difficulties. A literature survey has been conducted to make an inventory of experience with solar PV applications for households in developing countries. The main finding is that an adequate service infrastructure is required to make projects viable. Household choice in system sizes is often too restricted in donor‐funded projects. Smaller systems sold for cash can be a good alternative to credit systems by offering to increased affordability. Gaps in existing knowledge have been identified, which could be overcome by field monitoring programmes. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The range of life in amber: significance and implications in DNA studies.

A survey of the major fossiliferous amber deposits is provided, including ages and various categories of life forms reported from each. The frequency of occurrence of the major groups of plants and animals in these amber deposits is also given. Thus far, DNA from four insect and one plant species has been extracted from amber fossils. In the case of the stingless bee in Dominican amber, evidence of reproducibility is provided, since two independent laboratories isolated DNA from six or more different specimens of the same insect. Amber sources for DNA studies are listed together with their advantages and disadvantages. The important points are the availability of desired pieces, the proper identification of the fossil, verification of the amber deposit, the cost involved, and the feasibility of causing damage to the specimen. The availability of several types of amber (Mexican, Dominican, Baltic, Chinese, Canadian, Siberian and Lebanese) at four major sources (academic collections, commercial dealers, private collections and amber mines) is discussed. The scientific implications of obtaining DNA from amber inclusions are presented.

Experimental pond grow-out of red drum, Sciaenops ocellatus, in South Carolina

This study assessed the production potential of red drum, Sciaenops ocellatus, in intensive pond culture. Six 0.1-ha saltwater ponds at the Waddell Mariculture Center were stocked in April 1986 with juvenile red drum (1.7 – 4.3 g) produced from captive South Carolina brood stock. Stocking densities of 7500, 15 000 and 22 500 fingerlings/ha were compared in duplicate ponds. The fish were fed a 38% protein commercial trout diet (Zeigler Bros.). Salinity averaged 28±3 ppt, and mean water exchange rates were 16.4%, 17.5% and 27.4% per day for the 7500, 15 000 and 22 500 fish/ha densities, respectively, during the 18-month study. A 0.75-hp fountain-type aerator was utilized in the two high density ponds during warm weather in year 1 (1986), and 1-hp paddlewheel aerators were used on a near continuous basis in all ponds during year 2 (1987). An infestation of the parasitic dinoflagellate, Amyloodinium, caused complete mortality of fish reared in one of the highest density ponds on day 146, and a dissolved oxygen depletion resulted in an estimated 35% loss in one medium density pond on day 432. At harvest (28 September–5 October 1987), mean fish weights were 1.3, 1.0, and 1.2 kg, respectively, at the three densities. Harvested biomass averaged 8997.5 kg/ha at the 7500 fish/ha density, with a mean survival of 88.7%. Survival, mean fish weight and crop size at harvest for the medium density (15 000 fish/ha) pond affected by low dissolved oxygen levels were 54.7%, 0.9 kg, and 7251.3 kg/ha, respectively. In contrast, fish in the other medium density pond exhibited 94.9% survival, 1.1 kg mean fish weight and 15 011.3 kg/ha at harvest. The single remaining high density (22 500 fish/ha) pond produced 24 082.5 kg/ha of 1.2 kg fish with 90.6% survival. Food conversion averaged 2.43 (range 2.15 – 2.60). The fish were sold whole at pond bank to commercial dealers for $1.65 – 2.75/kg.