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We present a theoretical study of the exciton binding energy for anisotropic two-dimensional crystals. We obtain analytical expressions from variational wave functions in different limits of the screening length to exciton size ratio and compare them with numerical solutions, both variational and exact. As an example, we apply these results to phosphorene, a monolayer of black phosphorous. Aided by density-functional-theory calculations for the evaluation of the two-dimensional polarizability, our analytical solution for the exciton binding energy gives a result which compares well with numerical ones and, in turn, with experimental values, as recently reported ; This work was supported by MINECO under Grants No. FIS2013-47328 and No. FIS2012-37549, by European Union structural funds and the Comunidad de Madrid Programs S2013/MIT-3007 and P2013/MIT-2850, and by Generalitat Valenciana under Grant No. PROMETEO/2012/011. E.P. also acknowledges the Ramón y Cajal Program

This study examines the process of policy change, drawing on the theory of the social construction of target populations to explore South Korea???s limited Internet user self-identification policy. In the early 2000s, the government directly imposed on netizens and service providers by establishing regulations that resulted in netizens being categorized as deviants. Then, as personal data spillage became a problem and the market environment changed, netizens and Internet service providers were transformed into the advantaged group needing protection. Consequently, the government relaxed its regulations and allowed Internet users to self-regulate instead. This study verifies that the process of change in the way target populations are viewed is caused by an interaction between a structure and its actors. Furthermore, positive political and economic events and social movements can rapidly transform actors, Internet users and service providers in this case, into an advantaged group.

This case study of a national civil aviation authority focuses on how global and European regimes for aviation safety regulation impact the administrative behaviour of national-level agency officials when they apply aviation legislation. The organizational differences between the International Civil Aviation Organization and the European Union are reflected in the behaviour of national officials. Formally, the European Union enforces application of law through binding regulations and inspections, but enforcement is also informal. Although the International Civil Aviation Organization lacks the capacity to follow up in the same way, it also participates in and hosts many relevant activities. Using an organizational perspective, this article ascribes these differences to factors such as capacity, specialization, and demography. At the same time, empirical findings show similarities in contact patterns among important stakeholders when officials apply law. Institutional theory relates similarities in contact patterns to national authorities' institutional heritage.

The Former Soviet Republics and the Baltic states are a primary source destination for sex traffickers. Drawing on framing theory and the gendered mediation thesis, this study uses a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative textual analysis to analyse how four English-language newspapers in the Former Soviet Republics and the Baltic states report on the issue of sex trafficking over a period of 11 years. Findings suggest that there is little coverage of sex trafficking in English-language newspapers in the region, existing coverage lacks a clear definition regarding what sex trafficking is and the issue appears to only be deemed newsworthy when tied to policy changes. This article argues that given the severity of the issue, it is important that it is brought to the public and policy makers' attention. News media have the ability to serve that function, but are not currently doing so.

Ross argues that oil wealth reduces women's economic and political power, but critics maintain that accounting for a community's attitudes toward gender equality makes the gendered resource curse disappear. This article disentangles the two perspectives by studying the effects of resource wealth on women's economic and political status in the U.S. states, where resource wealth varies significantly while cultural differences are comparatively small. Data between 1997 and 2012 reveal evidence of a gendered resource curse, consistent with Ross. I also update the theory of the gendered resource curse by showing, via a culture-augmented labor–leisure model of workforce participation, that far from being irrelevant when accounting for varying attitudes toward gender roles, resource wealth and those patriarchal attitudes combine to suppress even more women's economic and political influence. Data from the U.S. states support this expectation as well.

This study examines whether a Salvadoran alternative newspaper maintained its critical, independent, and alternative position after the country's first leftist president was elected and the newspaper no longer was in opposition to the government. Via a content analysis and in-depth interviews that drove the content analysis, this study improves our understanding of 'alternativeness' in a non-US context. Using a theoretical lens founded on alternative media scholarship and sociology's displacement theory to examine the newspaper's radical purpose, the study found that once the left came into power after decades of rightist and authoritarian rule, the newspaper's alternative mission and goals were displaced, becoming less radical and more propagandistic. Pro-government coverage increased and coverage of social movements, civil society, and other traditionally 'alternative' topics decreased. Journalists at the newspaper acknowledged the shift in goals and lessening of radical purpose, but clung to the newspaper's 'alternativeness'.

We use a standard metric from international finance, the currency risk premium, to assess the credibility of fixed exchange rates during the classical gold standard era. Theory suggests that a completely credible and permanent commitment to join the gold standard would have zero currency risk or no expectation of devaluation. We find that, even five years after a typical emerging-market country joined the gold standard, the currency risk premium averaged at least 220 basis points. Fixed-effects, panel-regression estimates that control for a variety of borrower-specific factors also show large and positive currency risk premia. In contrast to core gold standard countries, such as France and Germany, the persistence of large premia, long after gold standard adoption, suggest that financial markets did not view the pegs in emerging markets as credible and expected that they devaluation.

Replication efforts involving large samples are recommended in helping to determine the reliability of an effect. This approach was taken for a study from Meier, Robinson, and Clore (2004) , one of the first papers in social cognition guided by conceptual metaphor theory, which reported that evaluations were faster when word valence metaphorically matched (e.g., a word with a negative meaning in black) rather than mismatched (e.g., a word with a negative meaning in white) font color. The present investigation was a direct large-scale replication attempt involving 980 participants who completed an experiment using web-based software and were diverse in terms of race, age, and geographical location. Words with a positive meaning were evaluated faster when font color was white rather than black and words with a negative meaning were evaluated faster when font color was black rather than white, replicating the main results of Meier et al. (2004) .

I present a theoretical account of the politics of privatization that predicts left-wing support for the policy is conditional on the proportionality of the electoral system. In contrast to accounts that see privatization as an inherently right-wing policy, I argue that, like trade policy, it has the feature of creating distributed benefits and concentrated costs. Less proportional electoral systems create incentives for the Left to be responsive to those who face the concentrated costs, and thus for them to oppose privatization more strongly. More proportional systems reduce these incentives and increase the extent to which distributed benefits are internalized by elected representatives. Hypotheses are derived from this theory at both the individual and macro-policy level, and then tested separately. Quantitative evidence on public opinion from the 1990s and privatization revenues from Western European countries over the period 1980–2005 supports the argument.

Many real‐world planning and decision problems are far too uncertain, too variable, and too complicated to support realistic mathematical models. Nonetheless, we explain the usefulness, in these situations, of qualitative insights from mathematical decision theory. We demonstrate the integration of info‐gap robustness in decision problems in which surprise and ignorance are predominant and where personal and collective psychological factors are critical. We present practical guidelines for employing adaptable‐choice strategies as a proxy for robustness against uncertainty. These guidelines include being prepared for more surprises than we intuitively expect, retaining sufficiently many options to avoid premature closure and conflicts among preferences, and prioritizing outcomes that are steerable, whose consequences are observable, and that do not entail sunk costs, resource depletion, or high transition costs. We illustrate these concepts and guidelines with the example of the medical management of the 2003 SARS outbreak in Vietnam.

BackgroundPeople with severe and profound intellectual disability typically demonstrate a limited ability to communicate effectively. Most of their communications are non‐verbal, often idiosyncratic and ambiguous. This article aims to identify the process that regulates communications of this group of people with others and to describe the methodological approach that was used to achieve this.Materials and MethodsIn this qualitative study, two dyads consisting of a person with severe or profound intellectual and multiple disability and a teacher or carer were filmed as they engaged in school‐based activities. Two 1‐hour videotapes were transcribed and analysed using grounded theory.ResultsAttuning was identified within the theory proposed here as a central process that calibrates and regulates communication.ConclusionAttuning is conceptualized as a bidirectional, dyadic communication process. Understanding this process may support more effective communication between people with severe or profound intellectual and multiple disability and their interaction partners.

AbstractOn November 21, 2013, U.S. Senate Democrats utilized the long threatened "nuclear option," thereby allowing a simple-majority of the chamber to end debate on lower federal court judicial nominations. Formal theory predicts that this change should permit the president to nominate more ideologically extreme nominees. By comparing President Obama's nominees before and after the Senate's change to the confirmation process, we are able to provide the first comprehensive examination of how the nuclear option is likely to impact the ideological makeup of the lower federal courts. We additionally examine the impact of the nuclear option on time to confirmation and nominee success. Our results indicate, while post-nuclear option nominees are not significantly more liberal, they are being confirmed more often and more quickly, allowing Obama and Senate Democrats to more efficiently fill the federal judiciary with Democratic-leaning judges.

The attempt to reveal the explaining potential for interpretation the political science as a play is made in the article. The theory (culturаlogical approach to play) of a famous Dutch scientist J. Huizinga (Homo lu­dens (1938)) is used. Many facts of the institutional life of this kind are considered as an integral part of political science's play nature. ; В статье предпринимается попытка выявить объяснительный потенциал интерпрета­ции политической науки как игры, для чего используется концепция, предложенная известным голландским исследователем Й. Хёйзингом в монографии «Homo lu­dens» (1938). Многие факты институциональной жизни политологии оказываются рассмотренными в качест­ве естественных последствий игровой сущности политической науки. ; У статті здійснюється спроба з'ясувати пояснювальний потенціал інтерпретації полі­тичної науки як гри, для чого використовується концепція, що була запропонована видатним голландським дослідником Й. Гейзінгом в монографії «Homo lu­dens» (1938). Багато фактів з інституційного життя політичної науки розглянуто в ролі природних наслідків ігрової суті політичної науки.

Game theory and its quantum extension apply in numerous fields that affect people's social, political, and economical life. Physical limits imposed by the current technology used in computing architectures (e.g., circuit size) give rise to the need for novel mechanisms, such as quantum inspired computation. Elements from quantum computation and mechanics combined with game-theoretic aspects of computing could open new pathways towards the future technological era. This paper associates dominant strategies of repeated quantum games with quantum automata that recognize infinite periodic inputs. As a reference, we used the PQ-PENNY quantum game where the quantum strategy outplays the choice of pure or mixed strategy with probability 1 and therefore the associated quantum automaton accepts with probability 1. We also propose a novel game played on the evolution of an automaton, where players' actions and strategies are also associated with periodic quantum automata.

Nuclear energy continues to be a major component of South Korean energy policy, despite the nuclear accident in Fukushima and several incidents in domestic nuclear power plants in 2011. There is growing unease among the Korean public regarding the safety of nuclear energy, but these grievances do not translate into demands for policy changes. This article introduces how different actors and their preferences affected the public agenda related to nuclear energy, comparing the protests against a nuclear waste storage facility in Buan County in 2003 and 2004 with the reactions to the Fukushima accident and domestic incidents in more recent years. Using agenda‐setting theory, this article aims to shed light on the dynamics of these events on actors, the decision‐making processes and the reasons for the lack of concerted effort by citizens and civic groups to demand changes in the country's energy policies.