cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Insurance Pricing for Windstorm-Susceptible Developments: Bootstrapping Approach

AbstractNatural disasters have resulted in record losses for the last 50 years. Decision makers are rightly concerned about the vulnerability of their economies for which they have to make, under uncertainty, complex investment and policy choices. The challenge with estimating losses of extreme weather events (e.g., windstorms) is that it may take thousands of years to capture statistically meaningful events. Thus, stochastic simulation is usually incorporated in insurance pricing models. This paper proposes a risk management model to price insurance premiums for windstorm-susceptible developments. The model is applied within the regional context of Mississippi where the total windstorm events recorded between June 30, 1950 and June 30, 2010 was 1,988 and resulted in $1.875 billion losses. Mississippi was divided into three regions pursuant to the wind speed contours developed by the International Building Code. The historic data set was bootstrapped through imposing correlation to generate a data set of ...
Synthetic two-way contingency tables that preserve conditional frequencies

Abstract In the area of statistical limitation, releasing synthetic data sets has become a popular method for limiting the risks of disclosure of sensitive information and at the same time maintaining analytic utility of data. However, less work has been done on how to create synthetic contingency tables that preserve some summary statistics of the original table. Studies in this area have primarily focused on generating replacement tables that preserve the margins of the original table since the latter support statistical inferences for a large set of parametric tests and models. Yet, not all synthetic tables that preserve a set of margins yield consistent results. In this paper, we propose alternative synthetic table releases. We describe how to generate complete two-way contingency tables that have the same set of observed conditional frequencies by using tools from computational algebra. We study both the disclosure risk and the data utility associated with such synthetic tabular data releases, and compare them to the traditionally released synthetic tables.
Pressure Consolidation of Fiber‐Reinforced Oxide Matrix Composites: Experiments and Simulations

Uniaxial consolidation experiments conducted on porous Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} specimens with fine particle size have allowed the constitutive law to be determined. These experiments involved simultaneous measurements of load and strain, coupled with grain size determinations. The data over a wide range of stress and temperature are consistent with a power law, grain-boundary-climb mechanism of consolidation, at relative densities up to at least 0.9. Consolidation experiments on composite specimens have identified a spatial variation in matrix density near either a reinforcement or a hole. A finite element calculation performed using the matrix constitutive law compares well with a density map of the matrix made using image analysis.
Specificity and randomness in the visual cortex

Research on the functional anatomy of visual cortical circuits has recently zoomed in from the macroscopic level to the microscopic. High-resolution functional imaging has revealed that the functional architecture of orientation maps in higher mammals is built with single-cell precision. By contrast, orientation selectivity in rodents is dispersed on visual cortex in a salt-and-pepper fashion, despite highly tuned visual responses. Recent studies of synaptic physiology indicate that there are disjoint subnetworks of interconnected cells in the rodent visual cortex. These intermingled subnetworks, described in vitro, may relate to the intermingled ensembles of cells tuned to different orientations, described in vivo. This hypothesis may soon be tested with new anatomic techniques that promise to reveal the detailed wiring diagram of cortical circuits.
Autism, eye-tracking, entropy

Using eye-tracking, we examine the scanning patterns of 2 year old and 4 year old toddlers with and without autism spectrum disorder as they view static images of faces. We use several measures, such as the entropy of scanning patterns, in order to characterize the differences in attention towards faces by these children. We find a differential pattern of both fine attention (towards specific regions of the face) as well as gross attention (looking at the faces at all) which seem to suggest different developmental trajectories for the two groups of children. We discuss the implications of these trends and the development of simple, effective, and robust measures and methodology for evaluating scanning patterns.
Aggressors or Victims: Gender and Race in Music Video Violence

Objective. To examine portrayals of violence in popular music videos for patterns of aggression and victimization by gender and race. Design and Setting. Content analysis of 518 music videos broadcast over national music television networks, Black Entertainment Television (BET), Country Music Television (CMT), Music Television (MTV), and Video Hits-1 (VH-1) during a 4-week period at randomly selected times of high adolescent viewership. Main Outcome Measures. Differences in the genders and races portrayed as aggressors and victims in acts of violence. Results. Seventy-six (14.7%) of the analyzed music videos contained portrayals of individuals engaging in overt interpersonal violence, with a mean of 6.1 violent acts per violence-containing video. Among the 462 acts of violence, the music video9s main character was clearly the aggressor in 80.1% and the victim in 17.7%. In 391 (84.6%) of the violence portrayals, the gender of the aggressor or victim could be determined. Male gender was significantly associated with aggression; aggressors were 78.1% male, whereas victims were 46.3% female. This relationship was influenced by race. Among whites, 72.0% of the aggressors were male and 78.3% of the victims were female. Although blacks represent 12% of the United States population, they were aggressors in 25.0% and victims in 41.0% of music video violence. Controlling for gender, racial differences were significant among males; 29.0% of aggressors and 75.0% of victims were black. A logistic regression model did not find direct effects for gender and race, but revealed a significant interaction effect, indicating that the differences between blacks and whites were not the same for both genders. Black males were more likely than all others to be portrayed as victims of violence (adjusted odds ratio = 28.16, 95% confidence interval = 8.19, 84.94). Conclusions. Attractive role models were aggressors in more than 80% of music video violence. Males and females were victims with equivalent frequency, but males were more than three times as likely to be aggressors. Compared with United States demographics, blacks were overrepresented as aggressors and victims, whereas whites were underrepresented. White females were most frequently victims. Music videos may be reinforcing false stereotypes of aggressive black males and victimized white females. These observations raise concern for the effect of music videos on adolescents9 normative expectations about conflict resolution, race, and male-female relationships.
Immune Responses following Neonatal DNA Vaccination Are Long-Lived, Abundant, and Qualitatively Similar to Those Induced by Conventional Immunization

Virus infections are devastating to neonates, and the induction of active antiviral immunity in this age group is an important goal. Here, we show that a single neonatal DNA vaccination induces cellular and humoral immune responses which are maintained for a significant part of the animal's life span. We employ a sensitive technique which permits the first demonstration and quantitation, directly ex vivo, of virus-specific CD8+ T cells induced by DNA immunization. One year postvaccination, antigen-specific CD8+ T cells were readily detectable and constituted 0.5 to 1% of all CD8+ T cells. By several criteria—including cytokine production, perforin content, development of lytic ability, and protective capacity—DNA vaccine-induced CD8+ memory T cells were indistinguishable from memory cells induced by immunization with a conventional (live-virus) vaccine. Analyses of long-term humoral immune responses revealed that, in contrast to the strong immunoglobulin G2a (IgG2a) skewing of the humoral response seen after conventional vaccination, IgG1 and IgG2a levels were similar in DNA-vaccinated neonatal and adult animals, indicating a balanced T helper response. Collectively, these results show that a single DNA vaccination within hours or days of birth can induce long-lasting CD8+ T- and B-cell responses; there is no need for secondary immunization (boosting). Furthermore, the observed immune responses induced in neonates and in adults are indistinguishable by several criteria, including protection against virus challenge.
Twin Crises in Emerging Markets: The Role of Liability Dollarization and Imperfect Competition in Banking

Currency crises in emerging markets have been accompanied by banking crises, with concentration in the market for bank credit increasing after large devaluations. This paper examines how the presence of imperfect competition and liability dollarization in banking shapes the real effects of the just mentioned twin crises. An important gap in the theoretical literature is filled, by being the first paper to provide a model of twin crises in the presence of imperfect competition in banking, and the changes in market structure that occur in the aftermath of crises. Doing so, the analysis is able to reveal that currency devaluations generate more severe twin crises in economies with less competitive banking sectors. This result is consistent with the empirical evidence on the concentration-fragility view, and it unveils the importance of prudential regulation that focuses on the market structure in banking.
Quantum Error Correction.

A quantum system can never be seen as being completely isolated from its environment, thereby permanently causing disturbance to the state of the system. The resulting noise problem threatens quantum computers and their great promise, namely, to provide a computational advantage over classical computers for certain problems (see also the cross-references in the section “Cross-References”). Quantum noise is usually modeled by the notion of a quantum channel which generalizes the classical case and, in particular, includes scenarios for communication (space) and storage (time) of quantum information. For more information about quantum channels and quantum information in general, see [19]. A basic channel is the quantum mechanical analog of the classical binary symmetric channel [17]. This quantum channel is called the depolarizing channel and depends on a real parameter p 2 Œ0; 1 . Its effect is to randomly apply one of the Pauli spin matrices X , Y , and Z to the state of the system, mapping a quantum state i of one qubit to .1 p/iC p=3.XiX C Y iY C ZiZ/. It should be noted that it is always possible to map any quantum channel to a depolarizing channel by twirling operations. The basic problem of quantum error correction is to devise a mechanism that allows to recover quantum information that has been sent through a quantum channel, in particular the depolarizing channel.
Influence of Local Material Properties on the Nonlinear Dynamic Behavior of an Atomic Force Microscope Probe

In this paper, a study of the characteristics of period-doubling bifurcations in the dynamic behavior of an atomic force microscope probe for off-resonance excitation is presented. Using a three-mode approximation and excitation at two-and-a-half times the fundamental frequency, the relationship between the characteristics of the period-doubling bifurcation and the material properties is studied by using numerical simulations. Simulations are first used to successfully reproduce nonlinear response data collected experimentally by using a commercial atomic force microscope system and then to conduct a parametric study in order to examine the influence of variations in other system parameters on the relationship. These parameters are the excitation magnitude, the damping level, the cantilever stiffness, and the characteristics of the force model. Based upon the results of the parametric study, a new operation mode for obtaining localized material properties through an efficient scanning process is proposed. A preliminary scan simulation demonstrates the successful implementation of the relationship and its potential for providing localized material property information with nanoscale resolution.
Human control of multiple unmanned vehicles: effects of interface type on execution and task switching times

The number and type of unmanned vehicles sought in military operations continues to grow. A critical consideration in designing these systems is identifying interface types or interaction schemes that enhance an operator's ability to supervise multiple unmanned vehicles. Past research has explored how interface types impact overall performance measures (e.g. mission execution time), but has not extensively examined other human performance factors that might influence human-robot interaction. Within a dynamic military environment, it is particularly important to assess how interfaces impact an operator's ability to quickly adapt and alter the unmanned vehicle's tasking. To assess an operator's ability to confront this changing environment, we explored the impact of interface type on task switching. Research has shown performance costs (i.e. increased time response) when individuals switch between different tasks. Results from this study suggest that this task switching effect is also seen when participants controlling multiple unmanned vehicles switch between different strategies. Results also indicate that when utilizing a flexible delegation interface, participants did not incur as large a switch cost effect as they did when using an interface that allowed only the use of fixed automated control of the unmanned vehicles.
Tropical Cyclone Frequency and Barrier Island Erosion Rates, Cedar Island, Virginia

ABSTRACT Nebel, S. H.; Trembanis, A.C., and Barber, D.C., 2013. Storm frequency and barrier island erosion rates, Cedar Island, Virginia. Shoreline surveys, high-resolution satellite imagery, aerial photography, and topographic maps were compiled using GIS and analyzed with the Digital Shoreline Analysis System to examine event- and decadal-scale patterns of shoreline movement related to tropical cyclone impacts on south Cedar Island, Virginia. Global Positioning System (GPS) shoreline surveys conducted on southern Cedar Island 1.5 months before and 3 weeks after Tropical Storm Ernesto in 2006 recorded shoreline movement that resulted from the storm. On average (arithmetic mean), the southern section of Cedar Island retreated 25.4 ± 1 m as a result of the storm. The most severe erosion was documented to the south of an ephemeral inlet where the shoreline retreated 54.8 m. Shoreline recovery in the study area was determined from a February 2007 aerial photoset and a June 2007 GPS shoreline survey. Between ...
Mindful Evaluation: Cultivating Our Ability to Be Reflexive and Self-Aware

Background: Mindfulness, giving our full attention to what we are doing in the present moment, is perhaps best understood as training for the brain. When we are mindful, we are actively engaged with our thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Purpose: The purpose of this article is to introduce the concept of “mindful evaluation” as a way to cultivate our reflexivity and self-awareness to improve our evaluation practice. Mindful evaluation is an invitation to be more intentional and reflexive about our ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions in general as well as for each evaluation we undertake. Setting: Mindfulness has been gaining popularity both with the general public and a variety of professional disciplines thanks in large part to the growing body of research on its efficacy. As disciplines such as healthcare, economics, and education are incorporating the benefits of mindfulness in their work, we explore how we too might use the principles of mindfulness in evaluation and evaluation practice. Intervention: This article did not require an intervention. Research Design: Not applicable Data Collection and Analysis: Not applicable Findings: We present simple steps for incorporating the principles of mindfulness to how we approach evaluation. Keywords: mindfulness; reflective practice; evaluator competence.
An organizational exchange model: theory and implementation

Organizational decision support systems (ODSSs) provide the organization with a powerful vehicle to represent to its members the circumstance of the organization through the models embedded in the ODSS. The paper proposes an organizational exchange modeling (OEM) paradigm. The paper discusses the importance of exchange to organizational processes, provides a graphical model to represent exchange features and relates the proposed model to several other models and frameworks.
Fault-tolerant quantum computers

The discovery of quantum error correction has greatly improved the long-term prospects for quantum computing technology. Encoded quantum information can be protected from errors that arise due to uncontrolled interactions with the environment, or due to imperfect implementations of quantum logical operations. Recovery from errors can work effectively even if occasional mistakes occur during the recovery procedure. Furthermore, encoded quantum information can be processed without serious propagation of errors. In principle, an arbitrarily long quantum computation can be performed reliably, provided that the average probability of error per quantum gate is less than a certain critical value, the accuracy threshold. It may be possible to incorporate intrinsic fault tolerance into the design of quantum computing hardware, perhaps by invoking topological Aharonov-Bohm interactions to process quantum information.
Gender Equality: Equality: Still Illusive After All These Years

This essay will be a chapter in Social Citizenship and Gender, edited by Joanna Grossman and Linda McClain (Cambridge University Press 2009). It addresses the anomaly that after four decades of using the ideal of equality to confront gender-skewed distributions of power we, still we find a politics of gender subordination and domination embedded in society and its ideological and structural institutions, including law. Why is it that the realization of gender equality - even after all these years of theorizing, arguing, and strategizing - remains strangely illusive? Part of the answer is found in the fact that in our ongoing struggle for gender equality we have been constrained by philosophical and jurisprudential concepts shaped and handed down to us by our forefathers. This chapter proposes that one way to render equality less illusive is to move beyond gender and build a more comprehensive framework on the concept of universal human vulnerability. This new theoretical investigation will focus on privilege, as well as discrimination, and reflects on the benefits allocated through the organization of society and its institutional structures. Such an approach could move us closer to securing substantive equality and social rights in the United States.
The art of doing nothing.

There are times when a knee injury requires not an MRI and specialized orthopedic care but simply rest. Our understanding of such facts and our appreciation of the wisdom and experience of our physicians sometimes seem to be relics of a past era.
Polyandry in the American Jaçana (Jacana spinosa)

LITTLE is known about the biology of any of the Jacanidae, a circum- tropical family of shorebirds that inhabit freshwater swamps and marshes. The lack of knowledge reflects the limited field research done on tropical aquatic birds in general (Birkenholz and Jenni, 1964; Lack, 1968; Orians and Paulsen, 1969). The reversal of roles of the sexes in the American Jaana (Yacana spinosa), in which males incubate eggs and rear young without help from the females has long been known (Miller, 1931). The same reversal of sex roles occurs in the Pheasant-tailed Jaana (Hydro- phasianus chirurgus) (Hoffmann, 1949, 1950.), in the Bronze-winged Ja- ana (Meto'pidius indicus) (Mathew, 1964; Collier, pers. obs.), and prob- ably in the African Greater Jagana (Actophilornis a/ricana) (Miller, 1951). Furthermore, both Hoffmann and Mathew studied small breeding popula- tions consisting of one female and two or three males. Although they inves- tigated very small, unmarked populations, and almost all of Hoffmann's excellent data were gathered in Peking at the northernmost distributional limits of the Pheasant-tailed Jaana, there is little doubt that these two species are polyandrous. Polyandry is a rare form of social organization in birds (Lack, 1968; Orians, 1969). It is known or postulated to occur in some Tinamiformes, Charadriiformes (Rostratulidae, Jacanidae), Gruiformes (Turnicidae, Pedi- onomidae, Mesitornithidae, and one Rallidae). Polyandry has been sug- gested, but not substantiated, in a number of other orders. Although the Phalaropidae have been considered polyandrous, HShn (1965, 1967) and Johns (1969) have recently shown that Wilson's Phalarope (Steganopus tricolor) is probably monogamous though it may be promiscuous. After reviewing the literature on the other two phalaropes, HShn (1967) con- cludes that no real evidence of their polyandry exists. True polyandry, defined here as one female being mated simultaneously or having simultaneous pair bonds with more than one male, is difficult to distinguish from promiscuity and successive polyandry. When polyandry is suspected, it must be verified in the field with individually marked birds. The purpose of this paper is to document polyandry and certain related phenomena in the American Jaana.. To our knowledge there are no previ- ous accounts of polyandry based on the study o.f a marked population of birds. Both authors are currently working on other aspects of the biology of the American Jagana (population dynamics and food habits, Collier; and behavior and social organization, Jenni).
A Sub-Surface Model of Solar Power for Distributed Marine Sensor Systems

The capabilities of distributed sensor systems, such as wildlife telemetry tags, could be significantly enhanced through the application of energy harvesting. For animal telemetry systems, supplemental energy would allow for longer tag deployments, wherein more data could be collected, enhancing our temporal and spatial comprehension of the hosts activities and/or environments. There are various transduction methods that could be employed for energy harvesting in aquatic environments. Photovoltaic elements have not been widely deployed in the subsurface marine environments despite a significant potential. In addition to wildlife telemetry systems, photovoltaic energy harvesting systems could also serve as a means of energy supply for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), as well as submersible buoys for oceanographic data collection. Until now, the use of photovoltaic cells for underwater energy harvesting has generally been disregarded as a viable energy source in this arena, with only one company currently offering solar modules integrated with marine telemetry tags. In this article, we develop a model of power available from photovoltaic cells deployed in a sub-surface marine environment. We cover the methods and tools used to estimate solar energy at depth, including the effects of: latitude and longitude, reflected solar energy off of the oceans surface, solar irradiance lost due to the absorption and turbidity of the sea water, cloud cover, etc. We present the availability of this solar energy source in the context of the energy requirements of some of these sensor systems, such as marine bio-loggers. Additionally, we apply our model to simulate the energy harvested on specific marine species in which high fidelity depth information is known. We also apply our model to simulate solar cells at certain depths under the ocean to gain a general understanding of the solar energy available at these depths.Copyright © 2015 by ASME
Anticipated and Actual Implementation of Case-Based Learning by Dental Faculty Members During and After Training

The aims of this study were to describe the processes used to train dental faculty members in case-based learning (CBL) and to determine their beliefs about the anticipated implementation of CBL and perceptions of actual implementation following use of the CBL approach. Participants were dental faculty members at the University of Florida who received a four-day intensive training course in the use of CBL. Two focus groups were conducted. The first occurred during training to assess how the participants anticipated using CBL. The second was conducted during the faculty members' implementation of CBL. All 19 trainees participated in focus group 1 (100%). During the course of the study, two faculty members left the school; of the remaining 17, 12 participated in focus group 2 (participation rate of 71%). The findings showed that initially the faculty members were hesitant and uncertain about using CBL. Following implementation, those issues dissipated, as the participants began to consider how to optimize the effectiveness of CBL as a legitimate method for fostering student ownership of learning and active participation. Understanding what CBL means for individual educators at varying stages of change will likely allow the dental education community to better anticipate and address tensions and challenges that faculty members are likely to experience.
Open-Circuit Voltage Losses in Selenium-Substituted Organic Photovoltaic Devices from Increased Density of Charge-Transfer States

Using an analysis based on Marcus theory, we characterize losses in open-circuit voltage (VOC) due to changes in charge-transfer state energy, electronic coupling, and spatial density of charge-transfer states in a series of polymer/fullerene solar cells. We use a series of indacenodithiophene polymers and their selenium-substituted analogs as electron donor materials and fullerenes as the acceptors. By combining device measurements and spectroscopic studies (including subgap photocurrent, electroluminescence, and, importantly, time-resolved photoluminescence of the charge-transfer state) we are able to isolate the values for electronic coupling and the density of charge-transfer states (NCT), rather than the more commonly measured product of these values. We find values for NCT that are surprisingly large (∼4.5 × 1021–6.2 × 1022 cm–3), and we find that a significant increase in NCT upon selenium substitution in donor polymers correlates with lower VOC for bulk heterojunction photovoltaic devices. The inc...
Calculation of the Ion Flow Field in the DC Corona Cage

DC Corona cage is one of the most important test equipments to study the related electromagnetic environment problems of the ultra high voltage DC(UHVDC) transmission lines.In order to improve the analysis of DC corona cage which could contribute more in the construction of the UHVDC programs,it is necessary to simulate the space charge,electric field,and ion flow in the DC corona cage.On the basis of the Kaptzov's assumption,we combined the charge simulation method with the upstream finite element method and simulated the DC ion flow field of the DC corona cage.By the comparison of the calculated results and the experimental results in previous literatures,the validaty of the algorithm was verified.The calculated results of the typical monopolar and bipolar DC corona cages were given out.The simulation result showed that the space charge distributions in the monopolar and bipolar DC corona cages were different,and the equivalence of the tests of these two types of corona cages needed to be further studied.This algorithm runs fast,stably,and accurately,which has certain reference value in the analysis of the DC corona cage tests.
Interplay between Metabolism and Epigenetics: A Nuclear Adaptation to Environmental Changes

The physiological identity of every cell is maintained by highly specific transcriptional networks that establish a coherent molecular program that is in tune with nutritional conditions. The regulation of cell-specific transcriptional networks is accomplished by an epigenetic program via chromatin-modifying enzymes, whose activity is directly dependent on metabolites such as acetyl-coenzyme A, S-adenosylmethionine, and NAD+, among others. Therefore, these nuclear activities are directly influenced by the nutritional status of the cell. In addition to nutritional availability, this highly collaborative program between epigenetic dynamics and metabolism is further interconnected with other environmental cues provided by the day-night cycles imposed by circadian rhythms. Herein, we review molecular pathways and their metabolites associated with epigenetic adaptations modulated by histone- and DNA-modifying enzymes and their responsiveness to the environment in the context of health and disease.
How Do Cysts Know When to Hatch? The Role of Ecological Communication in Awakening Latent Life

When environmental conditions deteriorate, many ciliates enter a state of suspended animation known as a resting cyst. The cyst is a survival strategy: protected within a thick cell wall, the organism can survive harsh conditions and emerge once conditions improve. A significant literature describes the formation of cysts in the laboratory but surprisingly little is known about the signals that reawaken the dormant organisms. In this review, we discuss signals that awaken cysts in the context of their environment and ecology, and integrate these findings into a conceptual framework. We also discuss the role of cysts (and their awakening signals) in the pathogenicity of human parasitic protozoan diseases: Giardia, Plasmodium, Toxoplasma, Cryptosporidium, Balantidium, and Entamoeba.
Indications for Treatment of Waldenström’s Macroglobulinemia

Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia (WM) is characterized by the presence of a monoclonal IgM protein in the serum and >10 % lymphoplasmacytic plasma cells in the bone marrow. WM must be differentiated from its precursor conditions: IgM monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (IgM MGUS) and smoldering Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia (SWM) both of which have indolent clinical courses. The former condition is defined as the presence of a monoclonal M protein in the serum <3.0 g/dL and <10 % lymphoplasmacytic cells in the bone marrow without any clinical symptoms. Patients may progress to SWM which is defined as the presence of a serum IgM monoclonal protein ≥3 g/dL and/or ≥10 % bone marrow lymphoplasmacytic infiltration but without constitutional symptoms, symptomatic lymphadenopathy, or hepatosplenomegaly attributable to uncontrolled lymphoplasmacytic proliferation. There are specific indications for instituting therapy for patients with WM. These include the presence of constitutional symptoms such as fever, night sweats, fatigue and weight loss, symptomatic lymphadenopathy or hepatosplenomegaly, or symptomatic anemia, hyperviscosity, or significant thrombocytopenia. Patients with IgM MGUS or SWM should not be treated and should be followed in a “watch and wait” fashion as therapies are toxic, and delaying therapeutic intervention until the development of symptoms in SWM does not adversely impact outcome.
Maximum Likelihood Covariance Estimation with a Condition Number Constraint

In many signal processing applications, we want to estimate the covariance matrix of a multivariate Gaussian distribution. We often require the estimate to be not only invertible but also well-conditioned. We consider the maximum likelihood estimation of the covariance matrix with a constraint on the condition number. We show that this estimation problem can be reformulated as a convex univariate minimization problem, which admits an analytic solution. This estimation method requires no special assumption on the structure of the true covariance matrix. We demonstrate its good performance in comparison with commonly used estimators, especially when the sample size is small.
An Enhanced Optical Flow Technique for Radar Nowcasting of Precipitation and Winds

AbstractThe atmospheric state evolution is an inherently highly complex three-dimensional problem that numerical weather prediction (NWP) models attempt to solve. Although NWP models are being successfully employed for medium- and long-range forecast, their short-duration forecast (or nowcast) capabilities are still limited because of model initialization challenges. On the lower end of the complexity scale, nowcasting by extrapolation of two-dimensional weather radar images has long been the most effective tool for nowcasting precipitation. Attempts are being made to take advantage of both approaches by blending extrapolation and numerical model forecasts. In this work a different approach is presented, relying on the additional Doppler radar wind information and a simplified modeling of basic physical processes. Instead of mixing the outputs of different forecasts as in blended approaches, the idea behind this study is to combine extrapolation and precipitation modeling in a new technique with a higher ...
The State-Dependent Resource Allocation Hypothesis: Implications for the Foraging Ecology and Life History of Migratory Ungulates in the GYE

Understanding the behavioral and physiological responses of animals to environmental stressors is vital to our comprehension of their ecology and life history. The life-history strategy of ungulates is for females to prioritize survival over reproductive effort to maximize life-long fitness (Stearns 1992, Eberhardt 2002, BA¥rdsen et al. 2008). Consequently, an individualâs reproductive decisions are expected to be dependent on nutritional state (BA¥rdsen et al. 2008). Researchers have long assumed that individuals reduce their metabolism and energy expenditure to conserve nutritional reserves (i.e., fat and protein) during winter because winter has been demonstrated to be a period of energetic loss for temperate ungulates. Recent research, however, has shown that mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) in a poor nutritional state are capable of increasing their nutritional reserves over winter (Monteith et al. 2013), and hormone analysis of moose (Alces alces; Jesmer et al. in review) indicates that animals with low nutritional reserves have high energy expenditure and energy intake. Therefore, regulation of nutritional state through plasticity in foraging behavior may allow animals to cope with resource shortages. We refer to this notion, wherein animals alter their energy intake and expenditure via foraging behavior as the State-Dependent Resource Allocation Hypothesis (Figure 1). In 2014 we proposed to apply state-of-the-art nutritional, isotopic, and hormone analyses to test the State-Dependent Resource Allocation Hypothesis (SRAH) in migratory mule deer within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Number and Randomness: Algorithmic Information Theory — New Results on the Foundations of Mathematics

It is a great pleasure for me to be speaking today here in Vienna. It’s a particularly great pleasure for me to be here because Vienna is where the great work of Godel and Boltzmann was done, and their work is a necessary prerequisite for my own ideas. Of course the connection with Godel was explained in Prof. Reichel’s beautiful lecture.1 What may be a bit of a surprise is the name of Boltzmann. So let me talk a little bit about Boltzmann and the connection with my own work on randomness in mathematics.
Geology of Jamaica and the Nicaragua Rise

Topographic features of submerged oceanic areas have received less attention from geographers than have inhabited islands or economically important fishing banks, with the result that geographic names are slow to become established and some areas may have several designations. This has been the case in the western Caribbean where the suboceanic ridge extending eastward from Central America to Jamaica and beyond—the Nicaragua Rise—is called by different names on recently published maps. Current practice seems to favor the direct use of a nearby land name for the oceanic feature without an adjective modification. Examples are Colombia Basin, Barbados Ridge, Grenada Trough, and Puerto Rico Trench. Where a name has not already become firmly established, this practice will be followed here.
Digital Footprints: Your Unique Identity

In the digital age where Human Computer Interaction is creating large and entirely unique digital footprints, online accounts and activities can prove to be a valuable source of information that may contribute to verification that an asserted identity is genuine. Online social contextual data – or ‘Digital identities’ -- pertaining to real people are built over time and bolstered by associated accounts, relationships and attributes. This data is difficult to fake and therefore may have the capacity to provide proof of a ‘real’ identity. This paper outlines the design and initial development of a solution that utilizes data sourced from an individual’s digital footprint to assess the likelihood that it pertains to a ‘real’ identity. This is achieved through application of machine learning and Bayesian probabilistic modelling techniques.
Systematics: The Cohesive Nature of Bacterial Species Taxa.

Summary A survey of bacterial genomes suggests that the diversity within recognized species is constrained by a force of cohesion. However, recognized bacterial species do not adhere to another species-like property—that of being the newest lineages that can coexist indefinitely.
ION EXCHANGE PROCEDURES. II. SEPARATION OF ZIRCONIUM, NEPTUNIUM AND NIOBIUM.

Abstract An anion exchange procedure for separating trace amounts of neptunium and iobium from each other and from macro-amounts of zirconium is described.
PhyMDAN: Physics-informed knowledge transfer between buildings for seismic damage diagnosis through adversarial learning

Abstract Automated structural damage diagnosis after earthquakes is important for improving efficiency of disaster response and city rehabilitation. In conventional data-driven frameworks which use machine learning or statistical models, structural damage diagnosis models are often constructed using supervised learning. Supervised learning requires historical structural response data and corresponding damage states (i.e., labels) for each building to learn the building-specific damage diagnosis model. However, in post-earthquake scenarios, historical data with labels are often not available for many buildings in the affected area. This makes it difficult to construct a damage diagnosis model. Further, directly using the historical data from other buildings to construct a damage diagnosis model for the target building would lead to inaccurate results. This is because each building has unique physical properties and thus unique data distribution. To this end, we introduce a new framework, Physics-Informed Multi-source Domain Adversarial Networks (PhyMDAN), to transfer the model learned from other buildings to diagnose structural damage states in the target building without any labels. This framework is based on an adversarial domain adaptation approach that extracts domain-invariant feature representations of data from different buildings. The feature extraction function is trained in an adversarial way, which ensures that extracted feature distributions are robust to variations of structural properties. The feature extraction function is simultaneously jointly trained with damage prediction function to ensure extracted features being predictive for structural damage states. With extracted domain-invariant feature representations, data distributions become consistent across different buildings. We evaluate our framework on both numerical simulation and field data collected from multiple building structures. The results show up to 90.13 % damage detection accuracy and 84.47 % damage quantification accuracy on simulation data, and up to 100 % damage detection accuracy and 69.93 % 5-class damage quantification accuracy when transferring from numerical simulation data to real-world experimental data, which outperforms the state-of-the-art benchmark methods.
Carotid Endarterectomy for Symptomatic Radiation Induced Carotid Stenosis

Left carotid endarterectomy was performed for symptomatic postradiation left carotid stenosis with a high plaque. In the postoperative period, the patient developed neck hematoma which was drained. His symptoms of worsening dysphagia eventually resolved following drainage of the hematoma and administration of parenteral nutrition.
Triangulating Social Networks and Experiences of Early Childhood Educators in Emergent Professional Cultures

Professional culture is a key element for successful implementation and change in schools. The purpose of this paper is to triangulate collaboration networks and experiences of educators to describe the emergent professional cultures in three newly-opened pre-kindergarten schools. This paper uses an exploratory mixed-methods case study approach. The professional cultures of three pre-kindergarten schools were explored using descriptive social network analysis of 75 educators’ collaboration within their schools and semi-structured interviews of 20 selected participants. Findings indicate distinct cultures at each of the three schools. Variations in network cohesion, in the alignment between formal and informal networks, and personnel stability combined into different types of professional culture. Interview statements and examples provide evidence and point to the importance of staff turnover in the development of professional culture among early childhood educators. The key limitation is that this study explores networks at the end of their second year of operation. Given that networks evolve as personnel and structures shift, the findings represent only a moment in time. This study supports the local nature of teaching and suggests that districts and leaders should consider the professional culture, and the specific role of the staff turnover, in that work. This study provides the rare opportunity to explore professional culture within brand-new school sites. It extends the existing literature by comparing three early childhood sites with different daily experiences of the same focused work.
Vertebral osteomyelitis in an adolescent girl.

We present a case of a 13-year-old girl with vertebral osteomyelitis. She had been experiencing lower back pain for 5 weeks, initially thought to be due to muscular causes. The blood culture showed...
Climate Change Is Likely to Alter Future Wolf – Moose – Forest Interactions at Isle Royale National Park, United States

We evaluated how climate change and variable rates of moose browsing intensity, as they relate to wolf predation, might impact the forests of Isle Royale National Park, MI USA by conducting a simulation modelling experiment. The experiment consisted of contrasting three different scenarios of wolf management and with a static (current conditions) and changing climate (high emissions). Our results suggest that the interactive effects of wolf predation and climate change are likely to be temporally variable and dependent on biogeographic and forest successional processes. During the first 50 years of simulations, when the effects of climate change were minor, higher simulated rates of predation by wolves reduced moose population densities, resulting in greater forest biomass and higher carrying capacities for moose. However, over the longer term, early successional and highly palatable aspen and birch forests transitioned to late successional spruce and fir forests, regardless of climate or predation intensity. After 50 years, the effects of climate change and predation were driven by effects on balsam fir, a late successional species that is highly palatable to moose. High-intensity predation of moose allowed balsam fir to persist over the long term but only under the current climate scenario. Climate change caused a reduction in balsam fir and the other boreal species that moose currently feed on, and the few temperate species found on this isolated island were unable to compensate for such reductions, causing strong declines in total forest biomass. The direct effects of moose population management via reintroduction of wolves may become increasingly ineffective as the climate continues to warm because the productivity of boreal plant species may not be sufficient to support a moose population at all, and the isolation of the island from mainland temperate tree species may reduce the likelihood of compensatory species migrations.
Coexistence of Wi-Fi 6E and 5G NR-U: Can We Do Better in the 6 GHz Bands?

Regulators in the US and Europe have stepped up their efforts to open the 6 GHz bands for unlicensed access. The two unlicensed technologies likely to operate and coexist in these bands are Wi-Fi 6E and 5G New Radio Unlicensed (NR-U). The greenfield 6 GHz bands allow us to take a fresh look at the coexistence between Wi-Fi and 3GPP-based unlicensed technologies. In this paper, using tools from stochastic geometry, we study the impact of Multi User Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access, i.e., MU OFDMA—a feature introduced in 802.11ax—on this coexistence issue. Our results reveal that by disabling the use of the legacy contention mechanism (and allowing only MU OFDMA) for uplink access in Wi-Fi 6E, the performance of both NR-U networks and uplink Wi-Fi 6E can be improved. This is indeed feasible in the 6 GHz bands, where there are no operational Wi-Fi or NR-U users. In so doing, we also highlight the importance of accurate channel sensing at the entity that schedules uplink transmissions in Wi-Fi 6E and NR-U. If the channel is incorrectly detected as idle, factors that improve the uplink performance of one technology contribute negatively to the performance of the other technology.
ICU mobility and improved outcomes: still searching for the Holy Grail.

A growing number of patients are surviving critical illness, many of whom will experience long-term impairments in cognition and physical function. These enduring effects represent a significant burden for patients, their families and society. Unfortunately, interventions aimed at preventing the development of functional or cognitive disability due to critical illness are limited. Strategies to minimise sedation and initiate early physical rehabilitation have been associated with reductions in physical impairment and delirium, but the results of studies have been mixed and the impact on long-term outcomes has not been well established.1 The implementation of rehabilitation with mobilisation within 72 hours of mechanical ventilation has the most promising results, but occurs in less than 10% eligible patients, with barriers, including the availability of trained physiotherapists and the ability of a patient to participate in rehabilitation sessions.2 3 Therefore, there is intense interest in novel rehabilitation strategies to overcome these barriers. Functional electrical stimulation-assisted cycle ergometry (FES-cycling) combines neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) with in-bed cycling. FES-cycling offers theoretical advantages as it is feasible to integrate early in the course of critical illness, including in non-volitional patients, and mimics typical exercise by coupling the peripheral neuromuscular systems. Prior studies examining the effects of cycling and NMES delivered separately on functional outcomes have been mixed.4 …