A small but growing trend in video game development uses the “obsolete” graphics and sound of 1980s-era, 8-bit microcomputers to create “fake 8-bit” games on today’s hardware platforms. This paper explores the trend by looking at a specific case study, the platform-adventure game La-Mulana, which was inspired by the Japanese MSX computer platform. Discussion includes the specific aesthetic traits the game adopts (as well as ignores), and the 8-bit technological structures that caused them in their original 1980s MSX incarnation. The role of technology in shaping aesthetics, and the persistence of such effects beyond the lifetime of the originating technologies, is considered as a more general “retro media” phenomenon.

Motor vehicles contribute significantly to air pollution problems; accurate motor vehicle emission inventories are therefore essential to air quality planning. Current travel-based inventory models use emission factors measured from potentially biased vehicle samples and predict fleet-average emissions which are often inconsistent with on-road measurements. This thesis presents a fuel-based inventory approach which uses emissions factors derived from remote sensing or tunnel-based measurements of on-road vehicles. Vehicle activity is quantified by statewide monthly fuel sales data resolved to the air basin level.

Development of the fuel-based approach includes (1) a method for estimating cold start emissions factors, (2) an analysis showing that fuel-normalized emission factors are consistent over a range of positive vehicle loads and that most fuel use occurs during loaded-mode driving, (3) scaling factors relating infrared hydrocarbon measurements to total exhaust volatile organic compound (VOC) concentrations, and (4) an analysis showing that economic factors should be considered when selecting on-road sampling sites.

The fuel-based approach was applied to estimate carbon monoxide (CO) emissions from warmed-up vehicles in the Los Angeles area in 1991, and CO and VOC exhaust emissions for Los Angeles in 1997. The fuel-based CO estimate for 1991 was higher by a factor of 2.3+/-0.5 than emissions predicted by California's MVEI 7F model. Fuel-based inventory estimates for 1997 were higher than those of California's updated MVEI 7G model by factors of 2.4+/-0.2 for CO and 3.5+/-0.6 for VOC. Fuel-based estimates indicate a 20% decrease in the mass of CO emitted, despite an 8% increase in fuel use between 1991 and 1997; official inventory models predict a 50% decrease in CO mass emissions during the same period. Cold start CO and VOC emission factors derived from parking garage measurements were lower than those predicted by the MVEI 7G model. Current inventories in California appear to understate total exhaust CO and VOC emissions, while overstating the importance of cold start emissions. The fuel-based approach yields robust, independent and accurate estimates of on-road vehicle emissions. Fuel-based estimates should be used to validate or adjust official vehicle emission inventories before society embarks on new, more costly air pollution control programs.

The conditions under which stockholders will be unanimous in the choice of their firm's plan for the production of goods are well-known: no technological externalities, a competitive market in the production of goods, and spanning of the marginal returns of the production process by existing securities in the marketplace. However, not well-known are the conditions which give stockholder unanimity over the amount of information that the firm should produce. It is shown here that even if the conditions giving unanimity in the production of goods are satisfied, the additional conditions of homogenous beliefs and risk neutral behavior are necessary to achieve unanimity in the production of information.

Over the past several years many researchers have empirically examined the issue of whether or not managerial earnings forecasts are more accurate than those prepared by security analysts. One result commonly found is that managerial forecasts which are released prior to analyst forecasts are at least as, if not more accurate than the posterior analyst forecasts. On the surface this seems paradoxical since analysts who release their forecasts after managerial forecast announcements are made have just as much, if not more, information with which to make a forecast than does the manager. The purpose of this paper is to provide one possible explanation for this paradox. As shown in the analysis here, analysts may be reluctant to revise their forecasts upon the receipt of new information because of the negative signal such a revision provides concerning the accuracy of their prior information. As a result, the amount of information held by analysts relative to that held by management will not be fully reflected in measures of forecast accuracy.

There have recently been studies which have shown that corporate managers may have incentives to release private information. A common thread through these studies is that the release of private information may also entail costs by providing competitors with valuable information. However, as is shown here, the release of private information may in many cases reduce, rather than enhance, competitive pressures, by lowering competitors’ expected output and thereby increasing the expected price of industry output. The reduction in competition alone, then, may be an additional motivation for disclosing private information. An implication of this is that a firm with private information may be willing to join an industry trade association even if it expects to gain little, if any, new information from the association. It also implies that such a firm will not necessarily oppose the mandatory release of additional proprietary information in its financial statements, such as line of business data or earnings forecasts.

Cosmogonies of Late Period and Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt are founded upon those of the earlier “classic” ages, incorporating old texts and themes but elaborating them to form new compositions, synthesizing elements of the major Heliopolitan, Memphite, and Hermopolitan theologies with texts and rituals more specific to the deities of local cult centers, as well as newly developed theological concepts.

This paper analyzes the case of an entrepreneur who is the sole initial owner of a firm and who has private information as to the firm's true value. It is shown here that it is possible for the entrepreneur's chosen level of capital expenditures for the firm's production process to perfectly signal his private information, with the market's assessment of his firm's value positive function of the expenditure level. The assessment is also demonstrated to be affected by the number of shares that the entrepreneur retains in the firm. In this sense it can be said that the investment and entrepreneurial shareholding level jointly signal the value of the firm, with investment serving as the "true" signal. Among other results it is shown, in contrast to a conclusion of a study by Leland and Pyle, that in this equilibrium, with shareholdings and investment jointly serving as signals, the number of shares retained by the entrepreneur need not be positively correlated with the favorableness of his information.