cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Compact Part-Based Image Representations: Extremal Competition and Overgeneralization.

Learning compact and interpretable representations is a very natural task, which has not been solved satisfactorily even for simple binary datasets. In this paper, we review various ways of composing experts for binary data and argue that competitive forms of interaction are best suited to learn low-dimensional representations. We propose a new composition rule that discourages experts from focusing on similar structures and that penalizes opposing votes strongly so that abstaining from voting becomes more attractive. We also introduce a novel sequential initialization procedure, which is based on a process of oversimplification and correction. Experiments show that with our approach very intuitive models can be learned.
Effective theories for Dark Matter interactions and the neutrino portal paradigm

In this article we discuss a general effective-theory description of a multicomponent dark sector with an unspecified non-trivial symmetry and its interactions with the Standard Model generated by the exchange of heavy mediators. We then categorize the relevant effective operators given the current experimental sensistivity where the underlying theory is weakly coupled and renormalizable, with neutral mediators: either scalars or fermions. An interesting scenario resulting from this categorization is the neutrino portal, where only fermion mediators are present, and where the dark sector consists of fermions and scalars such that the lightest dark particle is a fermion, this scenario is characterized by having naturally suppressed couplings of the DM to all SM particles except the neutrinos and has received little attention in the literature. We find that there is a wide region in parameter space allowed by the current experimental constraints (relic abundance, direct and indirect detection limits); the cleanest signature of this paradigm is the presence of monochromatic neutrino lines with energy equal to that of the DM mass, but experimental sensitivity would have to be improved significantly before this can be probed.
Hydrothermal crystal growth, piezoelectricity, and triboluminescence of KNaNbOF5

Abstract Single crystals of the noncentrosymmetric KNaNbOF5 polymorph were grown for piezoelectric and triboluminescent measurements. Piezoelectric measurements yielded a d33 value of ±6.3 pCN−1 and an effective electromechanical coupling coefficient of up to 0.1565 in the frequency range 1960–2080 kHz. Crystals of KNaNbOF5 were found to exhibit a strong triboluminscence effect visible to the naked eye as blue sparks when crystals are crushed. This triboluminescence effect is uncommon in that it is likely independent from both the piezoelectric effect and atmospheric electrical discharge. Instead, triboluminescence may originate from crystal defects or be related to an electroluminescence effect.
Relative divergence of finitely generated groups

We generalize the concept of divergence of finitely generated groups by introducing the upper and lower relative divergence of a finitely generated group with respect to a subgroup. Upper relative divergence generalizes Gersten’s notion of divergence, and lower relative divergence generalizes a definition of Cooper and Mihalik. While the lower divergence of Alonso, Brady, Cooper, Ferlini, Lustig, Mihalik, Shapiro and Short can only be linear or exponential, relative lower divergence can be any polynomial or exponential function. In this paper, we examine the relative divergence (both upper and lower) of a group with respect to a normal subgroup or a cyclic subgroup. We also explore relative divergence of CAT.0/ groups and relatively hyperbolic groups with respect to various subgroups to better understand geometric properties of these groups. 20F67; 20F65
Government Intervention and Trends in the Indian Oilseeds Sector: An Analysis of Alternative Policy Scenarios

Although the overall agricultural sector in India is characterized by significant taxes on producers and subsidies to consumers, the patterns in the case of oilseed crops and products are mixed. This paper analyzes some important trends in the Indian oilseeds sector, and employs the concepts of Producer Subsidy Equivalents (PSE) and Consumer Subsidy Equivalents (CSE) to measure the level of government intervention. The author also analyzes the impact of several policy scenarios on India's soybean import demand.
Learning models for following natural language directions in unknown environments

Natural language offers an intuitive and flexible means for humans to communicate with the robots that we will increasingly work alongside in our homes and workplaces. Recent advancements have given rise to robots that are able to interpret natural language manipulation and navigation commands, but these methods require a prior map of the robot's environment. In this paper, we propose a novel learning framework that enables robots to successfully follow natural language route directions without any previous knowledge of the environment. The algorithm utilizes spatial and semantic information that the human conveys through the command to learn a distribution over the metric and semantic properties of spatially extended environments. Our method uses this distribution in place of the latent world model and interprets the natural language instruction as a distribution over the intended behavior. A novel belief space planner reasons directly over the map and behavior distributions to solve for a policy using imitation learning. We evaluate our framework on a voice-commandable wheelchair. The results demonstrate that by learning and performing inference over a latent environment model, the algorithm is able to successfully follow natural language route directions within novel, extended environments.
Does Technology in Schools Affect Repetition, Dropout and Enrollment? Evidence from Peru

Many developing countries are allocating significant resources to expanding technology access in schools. Whether these investments will translate into measurable educational improvements remains an open question because of the limited evidence available. This paper contributes to filling that gap by exploiting a large-scale public program that increased computer and Internet access in secondary public schools in Peru. Rich longitudinal school-level data from 2001 to 2006 are used to implement a differences-in-differences framework. Results indicate no statistically significant effects of increasing technology access in schools on repetition, dropout and initial enrollment. Large sample sizes allow ruling out even modest effects.
Lung Cancer Stigma as a Barrier to Medical Help-Seeking Behavior: Practice Implications

AbstractPurpose:The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of perceived lung cancer stigma and timing of medical help-seeking behavior in symptomatic individuals.Data sources:A convenience sample was recruited from an academic thoracic oncology clinic and community hospital-based outp
Antinomies of Ideologies and Situationality of Education Language Politics in Multilingual Contexts.

Widespread scholarly and political attention to language-related inequities in the 20th century precipitated a spate of orientations to language planning in multilingual societies. While various orientations indicate a shift from earlier deficit to affirmative views of multilingualism, vigorous debates persist about the logical and pragmatic merits of each orientation. The resulting advocacy for language and multilingualism has yet to result in widespread mother-language-based multilingual education policies and practices. This article reviews a strand of these debates (language as right or resource) and argues that these debates deploy stringent criteria of rationality and social justice that are discontinuous with empirical realities of multilingualism and plurilingualism. It uses ethnographic evidence from India and Nigeria to demonstrate that, instead of the fixities of such criteria, actual language decision making in complex multilingual societies demands an integrative approach to theory, policy, a...
Scale-dependent Ocean Wave Turbulence

Wave turbulence is a common feature of nonlinear wave motions observed when external forcing acts during a long period of time, resulting in developed spectral cascades of energy, momentum and, possibly, other conserved integrals. In the ocean, wave turbulence occurs on scales from capillary ripples and to those of baroclinic inertia-gravity and Rossby waves. In general, oceanic wave motions are characterized by rather complicated dispersion laws containing characteristic scales such as, for instance, the Rossby radius of deformation. The resulting absence of scale invariance makes many problems of wave turbulence intractable by standard, small-perturbation-based techniques. As a result, present theoretical understanding has been limited to short- and long-wave asymptotic regimes (Zakharov et al., 1992). Another, more fundamental limitation of the small perturbation theories is the assumption that the wave amplitude be small in relation to the wavelength. Thus, rare (and highly intermittent) events of appearance of the strongly nonlinear wavelets are disregarded at the outset. A number of laboratory and field measurements reveal rather peculiar wave spectra which cannot be explained by scale-invariant and/or weak-turbulence theories. The peculiarities include multiple breaks of power laws and saturation of the otherwise monotonous dependence of wave spectra on external forcing (Jahne and Riemer, 1990; Hwang et al, 1993; Hara et al., 1994; LeTraon et al., 1990).
Joint source channel matching for a wireless communications link

Summary form only given. With the rapid growth of wireless communications systems there is an increasing demand for efficient image and video transmission. Significant performance gains can be obtained from joint source channel matching where system resources are assigned based on the tradeoff between data and redundancy. We develop a more general approach for joint source channel matching based on a parametric distortion model that incorporates the flexibility and constraints of both the source and the channel. We use parametric models describing source and channel. We use parametric models describing source and channel characteristics that can be accurately applied to most classes of source and channel coders. To show the generality of our approach, we applied it to the familiar Said-Pearlman progressive image coder with two types of channel coders, a coder with orthogonal symbols of different power, and fixed-rate BPSK modulation overlaid with Reed Solomon codes.
Seeing the World through an Expert's Eyes: Context-Aware Display as a Training Companion

Responsive Adaptive Display Anticipates Requests (RADAR) is a domain general system that learns to highlight an individual's preferred information displays, given the current context. Previous studies with human subjects in a video game environment demonstrate that RADAR is an effective cognitive aid. RADAR increases situation awareness and reduces cognitive load by anticipating and providing task relevant information. Additionally, because RADAR's fit to a user's behavior encapsulates the user's situation-driven information preferences, RADAR also excels as a descriptive and predictive assessment tool. Here, we focus RADAR as a training aid. We test the hypothesis that novices can benefit from training under a RADAR model derived from an expert's behavioral patterns. The results indicate that novices exposed to an expert's information preferences through RADAR rapidly learn to conform to the expert's preferences.
Nonpoint source solute transport normal to aquifer bedding in heterogeneous, Markov chain random fields

[1] Facies-based geostatistical models have become important tools for analyzing flow and mass transport processes in heterogeneous aquifers. Yet little is known about the relationship between these latter processes and the parameters of facies-based geostatistical models. In this study, we examine the transport of a nonpoint source solute normal (perpendicular) to the major bedding plane of an alluvial aquifer medium that contains multiple geologic facies, including interconnected, high-conductivity (coarse textured) facies. We also evaluate the dependence of the transport behavior on the parameters of the constitutive facies model. A facies-based Markov chain geostatistical model is used to quantify the spatial variability of the aquifer system's hydrostratigraphy. It is integrated with a groundwater flow model and a random walk particle transport model to estimate the solute traveltime probability density function (pdf) for solute flux from the water table to the bottom boundary (the production horizon) of the aquifer. The cases examined include two-, three-, and four-facies models, with mean length anisotropy ratios for horizontal to vertical facies, ek, from 25:1 to 300:1 and with a wide range of facies volume proportions (e.g., from 5 to 95% coarse-textured facies). Predictions of traveltime pdfs are found to be significantly affected by the number of hydrostratigraphic facies identified in the aquifer. Those predictions of traveltime pdfs also are affected by the proportions of coarse-textured sediments, the mean length of the facies (particularly the ratio of length to thickness of coarse materials), and, to a lesser degree, the juxtapositional preference among the hydrostratigraphic facies. In transport normal to the sedimentary bedding plane, traveltime is not lognormally distributed as is often assumed. Also, macrodispersive behavior (variance of the traveltime) is found not to be a unique function of the conductivity variance. For the parameter range examined, the third moment of the traveltime pdf varies from negatively skewed to strongly positively skewed. We also show that the Markov chain approach may give significantly different traveltime distributions when compared to the more commonly used Gaussian random field approach, even when the first- and second-order moments in the geostatistical distribution of the lnK field are identical. The choice of the appropriate geostatistical model is therefore critical in the assessment of nonpoint source transport, and uncertainty about that choice must be considered in evaluating the results.
New Types of Solutions of Non-linear Fractional Differential Equations

Using the Riemann-Liouville and Caputo Fractional Standard Maps (FSM) and the Fractional Dissipative Standard Map (FDSM) as examples, we investigate types of solutions of non-linear fractional differential equations. They include periodic sinks, attracting slow diverging trajectories (ASDT), attracting accelerator mode trajectories (AMT), chaotic attractors, and cascade of bifurcations type trajectories (CBTT). New features discovered include attractors which overlap, trajectories which intersect, and CBTTs.
HEAVY FLAVOR PHYSICS

This is the written version of the lectures I gave at the 1992 Summer School on Quantitative Particle Physics at Cargese, Corsica. Since this material had to be submitted for the proceedings before the lectures were given, it may not correspond exactly to what I said. Also, since the lectures were to be mainly pedagogical, there is no attempt to make this a definitive review of the latest data. I have not made a systematic survey of the references. The experimental results that are quoted are incomplete and in some cases outdated. They are included only for illustration. The lectures divide into three topics: (1) measurement of the CKM matrix, (2) CP violation in B decays, and (3) prospects for a CESR B Factory upgrade.
Demand and Supply Factors in the Feed Grain Market: Effects on Corn Producers

Corn is the major grain produced in the U.S. wheat and feed grains sectors. In 2003, U.S. corn production equaled 10.114 billion bushels, or about 76 percent of domestic wheat and feed grain production. Corn is also the leading cash crop, constituting about 71 percent of the $34.7 billion production value of wheat and feed grains in 2003. About 56 percent of corn production was used for feeding in the cattle, hog, lamb, and poultry sectors (USDA Agricultural Statistics 2004). Wheat for feed use was about 10 percent of wheat production in 2003. The other feed grains of oats, barley, and sorghum had about 45 percent (on average) of their production allocated to feed use in 2003.
AN EFFICIENCY ANALYSIS OF CATTLE BACKGROUNDING IN KANSAS

Efficiency measures can be used to generate inferences about the future direction of the industry and determine factors that may influence the structure. This study evaluated relative efficiencies of Kansas backgrounding operations. Farms that engaged in the backgrounding of cattle were very inefficient. Significant improvement is needed in technology adoption and input usage.
Access nets: modeling access to physical spaces

Electronic, software-managed mechanisms using, for example, radio-frequency identification (RFID) cards, enable great flexibility in specifying access control policies to physical spaces. For example, access rights may vary based on time of day or could differ in normal versus emergency situations. With such fine-grained control, understanding and reasoning about what a policy permits becomes surprisingly difficult requiring knowledge of permission levels, spatial layout, and time. In this paper, we present a formal modeling framework, called ACCESS NETS, suitable for describing a combination of access permissions, physical spaces, and temporal constraints. Furthermore, we provide evidence that model checking techniques are effective in reasoning about physical access control policies. We describe our results from a tool that uses reachability analysis to validate security policies.
Effect of Mo Loading and Support Type on Hydrocarbons and Oxygenates Produced Over Fe-Mo-Cu-K Catalysts Supported on Activated Carbons

Abstract The effects of Mo loading and type of activated-carbon (AC) support on activity, stability, and selectivities to hydrocarbons and alcohols during Fischer-Tropsch synthesis over Fe-Mo-Cu-K/AC catalysts are studied under the conditions of 310–320 o C, 2.2 MPa, 3 Nl-gcat/h and H 2 /CO = 0.9 in a fixed-bed reactor. Mo loadings of 0, 6 and 12 weight percent were used to determine the effect of Mo loading, while four different carbon supports, i.e. peat, generic wood, pecan-shell and walnut-shell derived ACs, were used to determine the effect of carbon support. Addition of Mo promoter to the Fe-Cu-K catalyst supported on peat AC leads to improved catalyst stability and improved selectivities to methane and oxygenates. The 6% Mo catalyst is more active and produces more hydrocarbons and oxygenates than the 12% Mo catalyst. Carbon-support type affects both catalyst activity and selectivity. Catalysts supported on pecan and peat ACs are the most active and produce the largest amount of hydrocarbons; the catalyst supported on pecan AC also shows the best C 5+ selectivity. The catalyst supported on walnut-shell AC shows high C 5+ selectivity too, but it is not as active. The catalyst using a wood AC support is the least active, with the smallest C 5+ hydrocarbon selectivity (least chain-growth probability) but the highest oxygenate selectivity. In all cases, hydrocarbons upto ~C 34 and alcohols upto ~C 5 , are detected, and total oxygenates make up less than 6 wt% of total products. It is hypothesized that the Mo promoter prevents active sites from agglomeration, and that textural properties, such as BET and pore volume of carbon supports, might be similarly related to catalytic performance.
Factoring Groups Efficiently

We give a polynomial time algorithm that computes a decomposition of a finite group G given in the form of its multiplication table. That is, given G , the algorithm outputs two subgroups A and B of G such that G is the direct product of A and B , if such a decomposition exists.
Interpreting Permanent and Transitory Shocks to Output When Aggregate Demand May Not Be Neutral in the Long-run

I examine the statistical model of permanent and transitory shocks to output under the following structural assumptions: An aggregate supply shock that raises output will cause the price level to fall and an aggregate demand shock that initially raises output will cause the price level to rise. No assumption is made about the long-run effect of aggregate demand on output. Based on these assumptions I obtain three primary results. First, if a permanent increase in output is associated with an increase in the price level, then aggregate demand shocks have a positive long-run effect on output. Second, the output variance explained by permanent shocks exceeds the variance attributable to aggregate supply when aggregate demand shocks have a positive effect on output in the long run. Third, permanent and transitory shocks will affect price and output in qualitatively the same way as aggregate supply and aggregate demand shocks, respectively, from textbook macro theory over a range of values for the structural parameter describing the long-run effect of aggregate demand on output. These results are used to explain and interpret empirical findings from the literature and to motivate directions for future research
Structural and Functional Correlation in Sickle Cell Retinopathy Using Spectral- Domain Optical Coherence Tomography and Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope Microperimetry

Purpose To correlate macular structural changes by spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) with functional changes by scanning laser ophthalmoscope (SLO) microperimetry testing in patients with sickle cell hemoglobinopathies. Design Prospective, investigational study. Methods Patients with electrophoretic confirmation of sickle cell hemoglobinopathies and normal subjects underwent SD-OCT and microperimetry testing with the OPKO Spectral OCT/SLO instrument. Based on SD-OCT findings, patients were grouped into those with focal macular thinning (Group A) and those without (Group B). Main outcome measure were mean retinal sensitivities measured by microperimetry and mean macular thicknesses in the 9 Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS)-like subfields. Results Thirty-seven eyes of 19 patients with sickle cell hemoglobinopathies (SS, SC, and S-thalassemia) and 34 eyes of 34 age-similar normal controls were included. Mean age and mean logMAR best-corrected visual acuity between Groups A and B were not statistically different (39.7 years vs 36.5 years, P = .64 and 0.015 vs 0.016, P = .93, respectively). Group A had significantly thinner retinas compared to Group B in the parafoveal superior ( P = .019), parafoveal temporal ( P P = .003), perifoveal superior ( P = .04), perifoveal temporal ( P = .0005), and perifoveal inferior ( P = .045) subfields. The overall mean microperimetry retinal sensitivities of Group A were significantly less than those of Group B (14.2 dB vs 16.5 dB, P = .00005). However, there was no statistical difference between Group B and controls (16.5 dB vs 16.7 dB, P = .63). Conclusion Sickle cell patients with focal macular thinning present on SD-OCT have significantly decreased retinal sensitivities compared to those without focal thinning or normal controls based on mean microperimetry sensitivities, despite similar age and visual acuity. Microperimetry is a sensitive measurement of macular function in patients with sickle cell hemoglobinopathies.
FOUNDATIONS OF VOCABULARY SELECTION FOR THE TEACHING OF HEBREW IN AMERICA

(1959). FOUNDATIONS OF VOCABULARY SELECTION FOR THE TEACHING OF HEBREW IN AMERICA. Jewish Education: Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 6-15.
Small sample inference for generalization error in classification using the CUD bound

Confidence measures for the generalization error are crucial when small training samples are used to construct classifiers. A common approach is to estimate the generalization error by resampling and then assume the re-sampled estimator follows a known distribution to form a confidence set [Kohavi 1995, Martin 1996, Yang 2006]. Alternatively, one might bootstrap the resampled estimator of the generalization error to form a confidence set. Unfortunately, these methods do not reliably provide sets of the desired confidence. The poor performance appears to be due to the lack of smoothness of the generalization error as a function of the learned classifier. This results in a non-normal distribution of the estimated generalization error. We construct a confidence set for the generalization error by use of a smooth upper bound on the deviation between the resampled estimate and generalization error. The confidence set is formed by bootstrapping this upper bound. In cases in which the approximation class for the classifier can be represented as a parametric additive model, we provide a computationally efficient algorithm. This method exhibits superior performance across a series of test and simulated data sets.
Household Responses to Pricing Garbage by the Bag

This paper estimates household reaction to the implementation of unit-pricing for the collection of residential garbage. We gather original data on weight and volume of weekly garbage and recycling of 75 households in Charlottesville, Virginia, both before and after the start of a program that requires an eighty-cent sticker on each bag of garbage. This data set is the first of its kind. We estimate household demands for the collection of garbage and recyclable material, the effect on density of household garbage, and the amount of illegal dumping by households. We also estimate the probability that a household chooses each method available to reduce its garbage. In response to the implementation of this unit-pricing program, we find that households (1) reduced the weight of their garbage by 14%, (2) reduced the volume of garbage by 37% and (3) increased the weight of their recyclable materials by 16%. We estimate that additional illegal -- or at least suspicious -- disposal accounts for 0.42 pounds per person per week, or 28% of the reduction in garbage observed at the curb.
X-Ray Observations of the Hot Intergalactic Medium

A definite prediction from recent N-body/hydro simulations of the structure formation of the universe is the presence of a diffuse hot intergalactic medium (HIGM; e.g., Ostriker & Cen 1996). The filamentary structure of the today’s universe, as seen in various galaxies surveys, is thought to be a result of the gravitational collapse of materials from a more-or-less uniform and isotropic early universe. During the collapse, shock-heating can. naturally raise gas temperature to a range of 105 – 107 K. Feedbacks from stars may also be an important heating source and may chemically enrich the HIGM. The understanding of the heating and chemical enrichment of the IGM is critical for studying the structure and evolution of clusters of galaxies, which are nearly virialized systems (e.g., Kaiser 1991; David, Jones,& Forman 1996). Most importantly, the HIGM may explain much of the missing baryon content required by the Big Bang nucleosynthesis theories (e.g., Copi, Schramm, & Turner 1995); the total visible mass in galaxies and in the hot intracluster medium together is known to account for ≲ 10% of the baryon content (e.g., Persic & Salucci 1992).
Stochastic Output Feedback Control of Quasi-Weakly Coupled Linear Discrete Systems

The static output feedback control problem for discrete linear quasi-weakly coupled stochastic systems is studied A parallel reduced-order algorithm is developed which is very efficient, since the algorithm decomposes a high order system into a low order system. The low order system is represented by six Lyapunov equations which may be solved in parallel to reduce computational time. The required solution can be easily obtained up to an arbitrary order of accuracy, O(?2k) where ? is a small weak coupling parameter and k represents the number of iterations. The efficiency of the proposed method is demonstrated on two real aircraft examples which possess the quasi-weakly coupled structure under the assumption of the prescribed degree of stability.
On Generic Constructions of Designated Confirmer Signatures

Designated Confirmer signatures were introduced to limit the verification property inherent to digital signatures. In fact, the verification in these signatures is replaced by a confirmation/denial protocol between the designated confirmer and some verifier. An intuitive way to obtain such signatures consists in first generating a digital signature on the message to be signed, then encrypting the result using a suitable encryption scheme. This approach, referred to as the "encryption of a signature" paradigm, requires the constituents (encryption and signature schemes) to meet the highest security notions in order to achieve secure constructions. In this paper, we revisit this method and establish the necessary and sufficient assumptions on the building blocks in order to attain secure confirmer signatures. Our study concludes that the paradigm, used in its basic form, cannot allow a class of encryption schemes, which is vital for the efficiency of the confirmation/denial protocols. Next, we consider a slight variation of the paradigm, proposed in the context of undeniable signatures; we recast it in the confirmer signature framework along with changes that yield more flexibility, and we demonstrate its efficiency by explicitly describing its confirmation/denial protocols when instantiated with building blocks from a large class of signature/encryption schemes. Interestingly, the class of signatures we consider is very popular and has been for instance used to build efficient designated verifier signatures.
Time-Scoped Searching of Encrypted Audit Logs

In this paper we explore restricted delegation of searches on encrypted audit logs. We show how to limit the exposure of private information stored in the log during such a search and provide a technique to delegate searches on the log to an investigator. These delegated searches are limited to authorized keywords that pertain to specific time periods, and provide guarantees of completeness to the investigator. Moreover, we show that investigators can efficiently find all relevant records, and can authenticate retrieved records without interacting with the owner of the log. In addition, we provide an empirical evaluation of our techniques using encrypted logs consisting of approximately 27,000 records of IDS alerts collected over a span of a few months.
Binary space partition for orthogonal fat rectangles

We generate a binary space partition (BSP) of size O(n log8 n) and depth O(n log4 n) for n orthogonal fat rectangles in three-space, improving earlier bounds of Agarwal et al. We also give a lower bound construction showing that the size of an orthogonal BSP for these objects is Ω(n log n) in the worst case.
Can quantum cryptography imply quantum mechanics

It has been suggested that the ability of quantum mechanics to allow secure distributionof secret key together with its inability to allow bit commitment or communicate superluminallymight be sufficient to imply the rest of quantum mechanics. I argue using atoy theory as a counterexample that this is not the case. I further discuss whether anadditional axiom (key storage) brings back the quantum nature of the theory.
Robustness of Standard Tests

Conventional hypothesis-testing methods such as student's t, the ANOVA F test, and methods based on the ordinary least squares regression estimator, are not robust to violations of assumptions. In fact, there are general conditions under which these methods can provide poor control over the probability of a type I error and inaccurate confidence intervals, no matter how large the sample sizes might be. Relatively poor power is yet another concern. Keywords: heteroscedasticity; skewness; outliers; power; type I errors
Analysis of epitaxial drift field N on P silicon solar cells

The performance of epitaxial drift field silicon solar cell structures having a variety of impurity profiles was calculated. These structures consist of a uniformly doped P-type substrate layer, and a P-type epitaxial drift field layer with a variety of field strengths. Several N-layer structures were modeled. A four layer solar cell model was used to calculate efficiency, open circuit voltage and short circuit current. The effect on performance of layer thickness, doping level, and diffusion length was determined. The results show that peak initial efficiency of 18.1% occurs for a drift field thickness of about 30 micron with the doping rising from 10 to the 17th power atoms/cu cm at the edge of the depletion region to 10 to the 18th power atoms/cu cm in the substrate. Stronger drift fields (narrow field regions) allowed very high performance (17% efficiency) even after irradiation to 3x10 to the 14th power 1 MeV electrons/sq cm.
Transforming Mean and Osculating Elements Using Numerical Methods

Mean element propagation of perturbed two body orbits has as its mathematical basis the averaging theory of nonlinear dynamical systems. Mean elements define an orbit’s long-term evolution characteristics consisting of both secular and long-period effects. Using averaging theory, a near-identity transformation can be found that transforms between the mean elements and their osculating counterparts that augment the mean elements with short period effects. The ability to perform the conversion is necessary so that orbit design conducted in either mean elements or osculating can be effectively converted between each element type. In the present work, the near-identity transformation is found using the Fast Fourier Transform. An efficient method is found that is capable of recovering the mean or osculating elements to first-order.
A micro-analysis of land use and travel in five neighborhoods in the San Francisco Bay Area

This study examined the effects of land use and attitudinal characteristics on travel behavior for five diverse San Francisco Bay Area neighborhoods. First, socio-economic and neighborhood characteristics were regressed against number and proportion of trips by various modes. The best models for each measure of travel behavior confirmed that neighborhood characteristics add significant explanatory power when socio-economic differences are controlled for. Specifically, measures of residential density, public transit accessibility, mixed land use, and the presence of sidewalks are significantly associated with trip generation by mode and modal split. Second, 39 attitude statements relating to urban life were factor analyzed into eight factors: pro-environment, pro-transit, suburbanite, automotive mobility, time pressure, urban villager, TCM, and workaholic. Scores on these factors were introduced into the six best models discussed above. The relative contributions of the socio-economic, neighborhood, and attitudinal blocks of variables were assessed. While each block of variables offers some significant explanatory power to the models, the attitudinal variables explained the highest proportion of the variation in the data. The finding that attitudes are more strongly associated with travel than are land use characteristics suggests that land use policies promoting higher densities and mixtures may not alter travel demand materially unless residents' attitudes are also changed.
Strong Stationary Duality for Diffusion Processes

We develop the theory of strong stationary duality for diffusion processes on compact intervals. We analytically derive the generator and boundary behavior of the dual process and recover a central tenet of the classical Markov chain theory in the diffusion setting by linking the separation distance in the primal diffusion to the absorption time in the dual diffusion. We also exhibit our strong stationary dual as the natural limiting process of the strong stationary dual sequence of a well-chosen sequence of approximating birth-and-death Markov chains, allowing for simultaneous numerical simulations of our primal and dual diffusion processes. Lastly, we show how our new definition of diffusion duality allows the spectral theory of cutoff phenomena to extend naturally from birth-and-death Markov chains to the present diffusion context.
The energy-critical quantum harmonic oscillator

ABSTRACTWe consider the energy critical nonlinear Schrodinger equation in dimensions 3 and above with a harmonic oscillator potential. In the defocusing situation, we prove global wellposedness for all initial data in the energy space Σ. This extends a result of Killip-Visan-Zhang, who treated the radial case. For the focusing nonlinearity, we obtain wellposedness for data in Σ satisfying an analogue of the usual size restriction in terms of the ground state W. We implement the concentration compactness variant of the induction on energy paradigm and, in particular, develop profile decompositions adapted to the harmonic oscillator.
The Three-Dimensional Structure of the Solar Wind over the Solar Cycle

Throughout declining and minimum phases of the solar cycle the solar wind displays a simple global structure with fast, tenuous flows emanating from large polar coronal holes filling the interplanetary medium at mid and high latitudes, and slower, denser, and much more variable flows at low latitudes. Approaching solar maximum a complicated mixture of flows from streamers, small coronal holes, and coronal mass ejections extends to higher and higher heliolatitudes, ultimately covering even the poles as the polar coronal holes shrink, fragment, and disappear. The most recent observations have continued through solar cycle 23 maximum with the formation of a mid‐sized, circumpolar coronal hole in the northern hemisphere. By April of 2002, Ulysses had again moved back down to ∼45° N, however, this hole has not yet grown to nearly the size of those observed in the previous orbit nor pushed fast solar wind down to mid‐latitudes. Rather, a complex mixture of solar wind flows is observed below ∼70° N in these recent observations. This interval also provided a unique geometry where Ulysses skimmed along, nearly parallel to the boundary of the polar coronal hole over several solar rotations. These times contain substantial intermediate speed solar wind, supporting the previous findings of McComas et al. [2002a] of thin boundary layers (CHBLs) flanking coronal holes.
Antineutrino monitoring of thorium reactors

Various groups have demonstrated that antineutrino monitoring can be successful in assessing the plutonium content in water-cooled nuclear reactors for nonproliferation applications. New reactor designs and concepts incorporate nontraditional fuel types and chemistry. Understanding how these properties affect the antineutrino emission from a reactor can extend the applicability of antineutrino monitoring. Thorium molten salt reactors breed 233U, that if diverted constitute a direct use material as defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The antineutrino spectrum from the fission of 233U has been estimated for the first time, and the feasibility of detecting the diversion of 8 kg of 233U, within a 30 day timeliness goal has been evaluated. The antineutrino emission from a thorium reactor operating under normal conditions is compared to a diversion scenario by evaluating the daily antineutrino count rate and the energy spectrum of the detected antineutrinos at a 25 m standoff. It was found...
Learning with group invariant features: a kernel perspective

We analyze in this paper a random feature map based on a theory of invariance (I-theory) introduced in [1]. More specifically, a group invariant signal signature is obtained through cumulative distributions of group-transformed random projections. Our analysis bridges invariant feature learning with kernel methods, as we show that this feature map defines an expected Haar-integration kernel that is invariant to the specified group action. We show how this non-linear random feature map approximates this group invariant kernel uniformly on a set of N points. Moreover, we show that it defines a function space that is dense in the equivalent Invariant Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space. Finally, we quantify error rates of the convergence of the empirical risk minimization, as well as the reduction in the sample complexity of a learning algorithm using such an invariant representation for signal classification, in a classical supervised learning setting.
Palladium‐ or Nickel‐Catalyzed Cross‐Coupling Reactions with Organozincs and Related Organometals

1 Introduction 2 Overview of the Pd- or Ni-Catalyzed Cross-Coupling of Organozincs 3 Recent Advances in the Pd- or Ni-Catalyzed Cross-Coupling with Organometals Containing Zn, Mg, Al and Zr 4 Acknowledgment Keywords: palladium- or nickel-catalyzed cross-coupling; Pd-catalyzed cross-coupling; Pd-catalyzed alkenylation; hydrozincation; alkenyl–alkenyl coupling; benzylzincs - excellent cross-coupling partners; Pd- or Ni-catalyzed alkylation
Denial, Rationalization, and the Administered Price Thesis

This paper analyzes neoclassical reactions to Gardiner Means's administered price thesis during 1980-2000. It shows that his original idea has been continuously denied by mainstream economists. At the same time, it has been transformed through a multiplicity of rationalization processes into one or another bastardized form. However, their attempts to deny and/or rationalize the thesis are unsuccessful as their sanitized versions of Means’s theory turn out to be self-contradictory in the neoclassical framework.
Dramatic enhancement of supercontinuum generation in elliptically-polarized laser filaments

Broadband laser sources based on supercontinuum generation in femtosecond laser filamentation have enabled applications from stand-off sensing and spectroscopy to the generation and self-compression of high-energy few-cycle pulses. Filamentation relies on the dynamic balance between self-focusing and plasma defocusing - mediated by the Kerr nonlinearity and multiphoton or tunnel ionization, respectively. The filament properties, including the supercontinuum generation, are therefore highly sensitive to the properties of both the laser source and the propagation medium. Here, we report the anomalous spectral broadening of the supercontinuum for filamentation in molecular gases, which is observed for specific elliptical polarization states of the input laser pulse. The resulting spectrum is accompanied by a modification of the supercontinuum polarization state and a lengthening of the filament plasma column. Our experimental results and accompanying simulations suggest that rotational dynamics of diatomic molecules play an essential role in filamentation-induced supercontinuum generation, which can be controlled with polarization ellipticity.
Living with Hogs in Iowa: The Impact of Livestock Facilities on Rural Residential Property Values

We estimated a hedonic model to explain variations in residential sales price with standard house attributes, such as number of bedrooms and square feet of living space, as well as the effects of distance and density of livestock feeding operations. We find that livestock operations have an overall statistically significant effect on property values. Predicted negative effects are largest for properties that are downwind and close to livestock operations. In addition, feeding operations that are moderate in size have more impact than do largescale operations, most likely reflecting age, type, and management practices of the moderate-sized operations.
Frontal neurons modulate memory retrieval across widely varying temporal scales

Once a memory has formed, it is thought to undergo a gradual transition within the brain from short- to long-term storage. This putative process, however, also poses a unique problem to the memory system in that the same learned items must also be retrieved across broadly varying time scales. Here, we find that neurons in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) of monkeys, an area interconnected with both temporal and frontal associative neocortical regions, signaled the need to alter between retrieval of memories formed at different times. These signals were most closely related to the time interval between initial learning and later retrieval, and did not correlate with task switch demands, novelty, or behavioral response. Consistent with these physiological findings, focal inactivation of the VLPFC led to a marked degradation in retrieval performance. These findings suggest that the VLPFC plays a necessary regulatory role in retrieving memories over different temporal scales.
Stable Non-Fermi Liquid Phase of Itinerant Spin-Orbit Coupled Ferromagnets

Direct (nongradient) coupling between a gapless bosonic field and a Fermi surface results in the destruction of Landau quasiparticles and a breakdown of Fermi liquid theory. Such a non-Fermi-liquid phase arises in spin-orbit coupled ferromagnets with spontaneously broken continuous symmetries due to strong coupling between rotational Goldstone modes and itinerant electrons. These systems provide an experimentally accessible context for studying non-Fermi-liquid physics. Possible examples include low-density Rashba coupled electron gases, which have a natural tendency towards spontaneous ferromagnetism, or topological insulator surface states with proximity-induced ferromagnetism. Crucially, unlike the related case of a spontaneous nematic distortion of the Fermi surface, for which controlled field theory calculations predict that the non-Fermi-liquid regime will be masked by a superconducting dome, we show that the non-Fermi-liquid phase in spin-orbit coupled ferromagnets is stable.
The Technological Origins of the High School Movement

This paper argues that the emergence of knowledge hierarchies in the modern U.S. firms since the late 19th century, expedited by huge progress in communication technology, played a significant role in the expansion of mass secondary education called the high school movement in the U.S. in the early 20th century. To analyze the causal connections among these historical events, the paper presents a dynamic model in which the complementarity between individual skills is crucial to production. Middle-skilled individuals could help increase the payoff to the high-skilled by supervising low-skilled production workers as middle managers in firms, and so some of potential top managers with high skill actively supported the expansion of mass education to the secondary level some time after a sophisticated form of production organizations had started to emerge. This theoretical explanation is consistent with the existing historical evidence in the literature.
The Meaning of Visual Thinking Strategies for Nursing Students

Nurse educators are called upon to provide innovative experiences for students to prepare them to work in complex healthcare settings. As part of this preparation, developing observational and communication skills is critical for nurses and can directly affect patient outcomes. Visual thinking strategies (VTS) is a teaching method that has been studied in primary education to develop communication and observational skills. VTS has potential to improve these same skills in nursing yet only one study has been done including nursing students and none have researched what meaning VTS has for them. This research study sought to answer the following questions: What meaning does VTS have for nursing students? How do nursing students use it in caring for patients? Students at a large Midwestern university in a Bachelor of Science program were recruited for participation. Students who voluntarily participated in a previous VTS experience were invited to participate in a second one, followed by an interview. Interpretive phenomenology was used to analyze the interviews and the following themes were identified: Feeling safe in learning and seeing and thinking differently. A literature review was performed to further expand these themes. Analysis of the findings and implications for future research are discussed.