cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Estimation of soil moisture for vegetated surfaces using multi-temporal L-band SAR measurements

This paper demonstrates the technique to estimate ground surface and vegetation scattering components, based on the backscattering model and the radar decomposition theory, under configuration of multi-temporal L-band polarimetric SAR measurement. This technique can be used to estimate soil moisture of vegetated surfaces.
Two-dimensional convolution on a pyramid computer

An algorithm for convolving a k*k window of weighting coefficients with an n*n image matrix on a pyramid computer of O(n/sup 2/) processors in time O(logn+k/sup 2/), excluding the time to load the image matrix, is presented. If k= Omega ( square root log n), which is typical in practice, the algorithm has a processor-time product O(n/sup 2/ k/sup 2/) which is optimal with respect to the usual sequential algorithm. A feature of the algorithm is that the mechanism for controlling the transmission and distribution of data in each processor is finite state, independent of the values of n and k. Thus, for convolving two (0, 1)-valued matrices using Boolean operations rather than the typical sum and product operations, the processors of the pyramid computer are finite-state. >
The Structure and Electrochemical Behavior of Nitrogen-Containing Nanocrystalline Diamond Films Deposited from CH4/N2/Ar Mixtures

Electrically conductive nanocrystalline diamond films (approximately 750 to 1000 nm thick) were deposited on conducting Si and W substrates from CH{sub 4}/N{sub 2}/Ar gas mixtures using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. Such films are continuous over the surface and nanometer smooth. The grain size is 3 to 10 nm, and the grain boundaries are 0.2 to 0.5 nm wide (two carbon atoms). Nitrogen appears to substitutionally insert into the grain boundaries and the film concentration ({approx}10{sup 20} atom/cm{sup 3}) scales with the N{sub 2} added to the source gas mixture up to about the 5% level. The nitrogen-incorporated films are void of pinholes and cracks, and electrically conducting due in part to the high concentration of nitrogen impurities and or the nitrogen-related defects (sp{sup 2} bonding). The films possess semimetallic electronic properties over a potential range from at least -1.5 to 1.0 V vs. SCE. The electrodes, like boron-doped microcrystalline diamond, exhibit a wide working potential window, a low background current, and high degree of electrochemical activity for redox systems such as Fe(CN)6{sup -3/-4}, Ru(NH{sub 3}6{sup +3/+2}), IrCl6{sup -2/-3}, and methyl viologen (MV{sup +2/+}). More sluggish electrode kinetics are observed for 4-methylcatechol, presumably due to weak adsorption on the surface. Apparentmore » heterogeneous electron transfer rate constants of 10{sup -2} to 10{sup -1} cm/s are observed for Fe(CN)6{sup -3/-4}, Ru(NH{sub 3})6{sup +3/+2}, IrCl6{sup -2/-3}, and MV {sup +2/+} at films without any pretreatment.« less
An Examination of Mutual Fund Timing Ability Using Monthly Holdings Data

In this paper, the authors use monthly holdings to study timing ability. These data differ from holdings data used in previous studies in that the authors data have a higher frequency and include a full range of securities, not just traded equities. Using a one-index model, the authors find, as do two recent studies, that management appears to have positive and statistically significant timing ability. When a multiindex model is used, the authors show that timing decisions do not result in an increase in performance, whether timing is measured using conditional or unconditional sensitivities. The authors show that sector rotation decisions with respect to high-tech stocks are a major contribution to negative timing.
Organizational Economics Research in the U.S. Agricultural Sector and the Contracting and Organizations Research Institute

Organizational and contract economics have achieved an increasingly important role in analyses of the food, agribusiness, and agricultural sectors. In particular, formal theoretical models of contract design and firm integration have begun to appear in the leading agricultural economics journals. Although the introduction of organizational economic theory has allowed scholars to begin addressing the changing nature of the food, agribusiness, and agricultural sectors, empirical research in these sectors is less well developed. What empirical research does exist tends to focus on specific contracts or transactions in isolation of the surrounding economic and institutional environments, or to be based on limited samples of unique contract types. Despite recent advances, much work remains. We believe this future work will be characterized by three features: a continued accumulation of empirical studies of contract design and organizational structure, an increasing focus on the interdependencies between organizational and contract structures linking the overall value chain, and an increasing integration of theories from a variety of social science disciplines. This suggests a need for an accessible collection of contracts as data for these studies, a more holistic theory of economic sectors as systems rather than series of discrete blocks, and a forum for interdisciplinary interaction whereby the cross-fertilization of ideas across disciplines might occur more rapidly. In this paper, we argue the importance and value of these features to advance both theory and empirical research, and illustrate how they are being addressed and incorporated in current research programs at the Contracting and Organizations Research Institute.
ANFIS approach for SSSC controller design for the improvement of transient stability performance

Abstract In this paper, an Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) method based on the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is applied to design a Static Synchronous Series Compensator (SSSC)-based controller for the improvement of transient stability. The proposed ANFIS controller combines the advantages of a fuzzy controller as well as the quick response and adaptability nature of an ANN. The ANFIS structures were trained using the generated database by the fuzzy controller of the SSSC. It is observed that the proposed SSSC controller improves greatly the voltage profile of the system under severe disturbances. The results prove that the proposed SSSC-based ANFIS controller is found to be robust to fault location and changes in operating conditions. Further, the simulation results obtained are compared with the conventional lead-lag controller under various disturbances, namely three-phase unbalanced faults and other unbalanced faults to show the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed approach for SSSC.
Financial Intermediary Development and Growth Volatility : Do Intermediaries Dampen or Magnify Shocks?

The authors extend the recent literature on the link between financial development and economic volatility by focusing on the channels through which the development of financial intermediaries affects economic volatility. Their theoretical model predicts that well-developed financial intermediaries dampen the effect of real sector shocks on the volatility of growth while magnifying the effect of monetary shocks-suggesting that, overall, financial intermediaries have no unambiguous effect on growth volatility. The authors test these predictions in a panel data set covering 63 countries over the period 1960-97, using the volatility of terms of trade to proxy for real volatility, and the volatility of inflation to proxy for monetary volatility. They find no robust relationship between the development of financial intermediaries and growth volatility, weak evidence that financial intermediaries dampen the effect of terms of trade volatility, and evidence that financial intermediaries magnify the impact of inflation volatility in low- and middle-income countries.
Model selection and velocity estimation using novel priors for motion patterns

Psychophysical experiments show that humans are better at perceiving rotation and expansion than translation. These findings are inconsistent with standard models of motion integration which predict best performance for translation [6]. To explain this discrepancy, our theory formulates motion perception at two levels of inference: we first perform model selection between the competing models (e.g. translation, rotation, and expansion) and then estimate the velocity using the selected model. We define novel prior models for smooth rotation and expansion using techniques similar to those in the slow-and-smooth model [17] (e.g. Green functions of differential operators). The theory gives good agreement with the trends observed in human experiments.
The pyridyl group in ligand design for selective metal ion complexation and sensing

Factors in polypyridyl ligands that control their thermodynamic metal ion selectivity in aqueous solution, and their use in selective fluorescent sensing, are examined. Preorganization of polypyridyl ligands ranging from bidentate to tetradentate by bridging benzo groups, as are present in 1,10-phenanthroline (phen) compared to 2,2′-bipyridyl (bpy), is discussed. The role of solvation is considered in relation to the relative affinity of ligands containing pyridyl groups for divalent and trivalent metal ions in aqueous solution. The effects of steric clashes between H atoms on polypyridyl ligands in decreasing complex stability are evaluated, as well as the effect of chelate ring size on metal ion selectivity. Phen ligands with other donor groups present at the 2 and 9 positions, such as alcohols, amides, carboxylates, and oximes are discussed. The design of pyridyl-based ligands for the separation of Am(III) from lanthanide(III) ions is considered, as well as ligands for the removal of metal ions such as Cu(II) or Zn(II) in neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The design of pyridyl-based fluorescent sensors for selective sensing of metal ions is examined in terms of the role of spin–orbit coupling constants (ζ), paramagnetism, and steric effects in the development of selective fluorescent sensors that operate via chelation enhanced fluorescence (CHEF). It is concluded that for lighter metal ions with smaller ζ values such as Zn(II) and Ca(II), and to a lesser extent Cd(II), that the CHEF effect can be achieved with pyridyl-containing fluorophores that coordinate directly to the metal ion. The way in which steric effects can be used to decrease the CHEF effect in Zn(II) relative to Cd(II) to enable selective sensing of the latter is analyzed. For heavier metal ions such as Hg(II) and Pb(II), because of their large ζ values which quench fluorescence, it is concluded that the fluorophore should be tethered to the metal-binding part of the sensor, and prevented from binding to the metal ion by steric and electronic factors. How Hg(II) can quench the CHEF effect by π-contact with fluorophores such as the anthracenyl group, which at first sight might not seem able to bond with metal ions, is examined.
Predictors and Consequences of Global DNA Methylation in Cord Blood and at Three Years

DNA methylation changes have been implicated in many common chronic diseases leading to the hypothesis that environmental and age-related DNA methylation changes within individuals are involved in disease etiology. Few studies have examined DNA methylation changes within an individual over time and all of these studies have been conducted in adults. Here, we aim to characterize how global DNA methylation changes from birth to age three within a longitudinal birth cohort study and to determine whether there are consistent predictors of DNA methylation levels measured three years apart. We measured global DNA methylation in the same children at birth (cord blood) and again at three years of age among 165 children, using an immunoassay. We found that on average, DNA methylation was significantly higher in blood at age 3-years than in cord blood (p<0.01). However, for any individual child, the difference was less than would be expected by chance. We found that pre-pregnancy BMI was negatively predictive of both cord and three-year DNA methylation, even after statistical adjustment to account for the correlation between cord blood and three-year DNA methylation. The biologic implications of small changes in global DNA methylation are unknown. However, the observation that global DNA methylation levels persist within an individual from birth to age three supports the belief that factors that influence global DNA methylation, including pre-pregnancy BMI, may confer long-term effects.
Effects of congenital hearing loss and cochlear implantation on audiovisual speech perception in infants and children

Purpose: Cochlear implantation has recently become available as an intervention strategy for young children with profound hearing impairment. In fact, infants as young as 6 months are now receiving cochlear implants (CIs), and even younger infants are being fitted with hearing aids (HAs). Because early audiovisual experience may be important for normal development of speech perception, it is important to investigate the effects of a period of auditory deprivation and amplification type on multimodal perceptual processes of infants and children. The purpose of this study was to investigate audiovisual perception skills in normal-hearing (NH) infants and children and deaf infants and children with CIs and HAs of similar chronological ages. Methods: We used an Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm to present the same woman's face articulating two words ("judge" and "back") in temporal synchrony on two sides of a TV monitor, along with an auditory presentation of one of the words. Results: The results showed that NH infants and children spontaneously matched auditory and visual information in spoken words; deaf infants and children with HAs did not integrate the audiovisual information; and deaf infants and children with CIs initially did not initially integrate the audiovisual information but gradually matched the auditory and visual information in spoken words. Conclusions: These results suggest that a period of auditory deprivation affects multimodal perceptual processes that may begin to develop normally after several months of auditory experience.
Au-Catalyzed Cyclization of Monopropargylic Triols: An Expedient Synthesis of Monounsaturated Spiroketals

The gold-catalyzed cyclization of monopropargylic triols to form olefin-containing spiroketals is reported. The reactions are rapid and high yielding when 2 mol % of the catalyst generated in situ from Au[P(t-Bu)2(o-biphenyl)]Cl and AgOTf is employed in THF at 0 °C. A range of differentially substituted triols leading to substituted 5- and 6-membered ring spiroketals were prepared and function well in the reaction.
ARE POLITICS LOCAL? An Analysis of Voting Patterns in 23 Democracies

This article measures, compares, and analyzes the degree to which local factors, be they candidate qualities or district characteristics, affect electoral politics. It applies Morgenstern and Potthoff’s components-of-variance model to 56 parties or coalitions to measure the “local vote” and shows that only in some cases do local factors manifest themselves in voting patterns. To explain this finding, the authors argue that the type of executive system, ideological cohesion, and a country’s ethnic heterogeneity combined with federalism are all strongly tied to the local vote patterns. Statistical tests also show that in spite of the large literature on the incentives that electoral systems can offer to candidates to pursue a personal vote, the electoral system does not have a clear impact on the local vote.
Detection of Neutron Sources in Cargo Containers

We investigate the problem of detecting the presence of clandestine neutron sources, such as would be produced by nuclear weapons containing plutonium, within cargo containers. Small, simple, and economical semiconductor photodiode detectors affixed to the outsides of containers are capable of producing statistically robust detections of unshielded sources when their output is integrated over the durations of ocean voyages. It is possible to shield such sources with thick layers of neutron-absorbing material, and to minimize the effects of such absorbers on ambient or artificial external neutron fluxes by surrounding them with neutron-reflective material.
Some observations on mental models

One function of this chapter is to belabor the obvious; people’s views of the world, of themselves, of their own capabilities, and of the tasks that they are asked to perform, or topics they are asked to learn, depend heavily on the conceptualizations that they bring to the task. In interacting with the environ­ ment, with others, and with the artifacts of technology, people form internal, mental models of themselves and of the things with which they are interacting. These models provide predictive and explanatory power for understanding the interaction. These statements hardly need be said, for they are consistent with all that we have learned about cognitive processes and, within this book, represent the major underlying conceptual theme. Nonetheless, it does not hurt to repeat them and amplify them, for the scope of the implications of this view is larger than one might think.
Measuring praise and criticism: Inference of semantic orientation from association

The evaluative character of a word is called its semantic orientation. Positive semantic orientation indicates praise (e.g., "honest", "intrepid") and negative semantic orientation indicates criticism (e.g., "disturbing", "superfluous"). Semantic orientation varies in both direction (positive or negative) and degree (mild to strong). An automated system for measuring semantic orientation would have application in text classification, text filtering, tracking opinions in online discussions, analysis of survey responses, and automated chat systems (chatbots). This article introduces a method for inferring the semantic orientation of a word from its statistical association with a set of positive and negative paradigm words. Two instances of this approach are evaluated, based on two different statistical measures of word association: pointwise mutual information (PMI) and latent semantic analysis (LSA). The method is experimentally tested with 3,596 words (including adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs) that have been manually labeled positive (1,614 words) and negative (1,982 words). The method attains an accuracy of 82.8p on the full test set, but the accuracy rises above 95p when the algorithm is allowed to abstain from classifying mild words.
Sequences of take-it-or-leave-it offers: near-optimal auctions without full valuation revelation

We introduce take-it-or-leave-it auctions (TLAs) as an allocation mechanism that allows buyers to retain much of their private valuation information, yet generates close-to-optimal expected utility for the seller. We show that if each buyer receives at most one offer, each buyer's dominant strategy is to act truthfully. In more general TLAs, the buyers' optimal strategies are more intricate, and we derive the perfect Bayesian equilibrium for the game. We develop algorithms for finding the equilibrium and also for optimizing the offers so as to maximize the seller's expected utility. In several example settings we show that the seller's expected utility already is close to optimal for a small number of offers. As the number of buyers increases, the seller's expected utility increases, and becomes increasingly (but not monotonically) more competitive with Myerson's expected utility maximizing auction.
Parameter correlation of impulse shapes using two-port synthesis

The authors derive equations for determining the time constants of the double exponential impulse from the commonly used parameters for several standard test impulses. They then proceed to synthesize a resistor-capacitor (RC) prototype circuit that will produce the desired impulse. The prototype network is realized through a computer-aided design (CAD) procedure using Cauer's RC ladder two-port synthesis method. Descriptions of prototype circuits and test data comparing the theoretical and experimental impulse shapes are also included. The results are a simplified method for determining time constants of a double exponential function from given impulse parameters and a method for deriving the component values for prototype circuits. >
Phospholemman, a Single-Span Membrane Protein, Is an Accessory Protein of Na,K-ATPase in Cerebellum and Choroid Plexus

Phospholemman (FXYD1) is a homolog of the Na,K-ATPase γ subunit (FXYD2), a small accessory protein that modulates ATPase activity. Here we show that phospholemman is highly expressed in selected structures in the CNS. It is most abundant in cerebellum, where it was detected in the molecular layer, in Purkinje neurons, and in axons traversing the granule cell layer. Phospholemman was particularly enriched in choroid plexus, the organ that secretes CSF in the ventricles, where it colocalized with Na,K-ATPase in the apical membrane. It was also enriched, with Na,K-ATPase, in certain tanycytes or ependymal cells of the ventricle wall. Two different experimental approaches demonstrated that phospholemman physically associated with the Na,K-ATPase in cerebellum and choroid plexus: the proteins copurified after detergent treatment and co-immunoprecipitated from solubilized crude membranes using either anti-phospholemman or anti-Na,K-ATPase antibodies. Phospholemman antibodies precipitated all three Na,K-ATPase α subunit isoforms (α1–α3) from cerebellum, indicating that the interaction is not specific to a particular α isoform and consistent with the presence of phospholemman in both neurons and glia. Antibodies against the C-terminal domain of phospholemman reduced Na,K-ATPase activityin vitro without effect on Na+affinity. At least two other FXYD family members have been detected in the CNS, suggesting that additional complexity of sodium pump regulation will be found.
Fuzzy Model Reference Learning Control

A learning system possesses the capability to improve its performance over time by interaction with its environment. A learning control system is designed so that its learning controller has the ability to improve the performance of the closed-loop system by generating command inputs to the plant and utilizing feedback information from the plant. In this brief article, we introduce a learning controller that is developed by synthesizing several basic ideas from fuzzy set and control theory, self-organizing control, and conventional adaptive control. We utilize a learning mechanism that observes the plant outputs and adjusts the membership functions of the rules in a direct fuzzy controller so that the overall system behaves like reference model. The effectiveness of this fuzzy model reference learning controller is illustrated by showing that it can achieve high performance learning control for a nonlinear time-varying rocket velocity control problem and a multi-input multi-output two-degree-of-freedom robot manipulator.
Charge of Dust on Surfaces in Plasma

Experimental investigations are reported on the charging of dust particles resting on conducting and insulating surfaces beneath plasma. The experiment is configured to give insight into the behavior of dust on planetary surfaces exposed to solar wind plasma. In the experiments, the surfaces are agitated so that the particles drop through a small hole into a Faraday cup that measures the charge on each dust particle. Both conducting (Ni) and insulating dusts (SiO2, Al2 O3 and JSC-1 lunar regolith simulant) are investigated. The conducting surface is given a bias voltage above the floating potential to create conditions in which the electron flux is dominant or a bias voltage below the floating potential for which the ion flux is dominant. The dust charges more positively in ion-flux-dominant conditions and more negatively in electron-flux-dominant conditions. The insulating dusts retain the charge for a long period of time ( > 1 h) after the plasma is turned off. The charge decays more quickly if the surface is agitated, causing the dust to roll around, or if there is ultraviolet illumination. The conducting dust often has a lower level of charge than the insulating dust because the charge is conducted from the dust particle into the conducting surface. Conducting and insulating dusts on an insulating surface have approximately the same level of charge
Semicontinuity of the Automorphism Groups of Domains with Rough Boundary

Based on some ideas of Greene and Krantz, we study the semicontinuity of automorphism groups of domains in one and several complex variables. We show that semicontinuity fails for domains in , , with Lipschitz boundary, but it holds for domains in with Lipschitz boundary. Using the same ideas, we develop some other concepts related to mappings of Lipschitz domains. These include Bergman curvature, stability properties for the Bergman kernel, and also some ideas about equivariant embeddings.
Price of anarchy for auction revenue

This paper develops tools for welfare and revenue analyses of Bayes-Nash equilibria in asymmetric auctions with single-dimensional agents. We employ these tools to derive price of anarchy results for social welfare and revenue. Our approach separates the standard smoothness framework [e.g., Syrgkanis and Tardos 2013] into two distinct parts. The first part, value covering, employs best-response analysis to individually relate each agent's expected price for allocation and welfare in any Bayes-Nash equilibrium. The second part, revenue covering, uses properties of an auction's rules and feasibility constraints to relate the revenue of the auction to the agents' expected prices for allocation (not necessarily in equilibrium). Because value covering holds for any equilibrium, proving an auction is revenue covered is a sufficient condition for approximating optimal welfare, and under the right conditions, the optimal revenue. In mechanisms with reserve prices, our welfare results show approximation with respect to the optimal mechanism with the same reserves. As a center-piece result, we analyze the single-item first-price auction with individual monopoly reserves (the price that a monopolist would post to sell to that agent alone, these reserves are generally distinct for agents with values drawn from distinct distributions). When each distribution satisfies the regularity condition of Myerson [1981] the auction's revenue is at least a 2eovere-1 ≈ 3.16 approximation to the revenue of the optimal auction revenue. We also give bounds for matroid auctions with first price or all-pay semantics, and the generalized first price position auction. Finally, we give an extension theorem for simultaneous composition, i.e., when multiple auctions are run simultaneously, with single-valued and unit demand agents.
Perceptual color spaces for computer graphics

Perceptually uniform color spaces can be a useful tool for solving computer graphics color selection problems. However, before they can be used effectively some basic principles of tristimulus colorimetry must be understood and the color reproduction device on which they are to be used must be properly adjusted. The Munsell Book of Color and the Optical Society of America (OSA) Uniform Color Scale are two uniform color spaces which provide a useful way of organizing the colors of a digitally controlled color television monitor. The perceptual uniformity of these color spaces can be used to select color scales to encode the variations of parameters such as temperature or stress.
Asymmetric indium-mediated synthesis of homopropargylic alcohols

Abstract A method for the enantioselective synthesis of homopropargylic alcohols using indium under Barbier-like conditions is reported herein. Both aromatic and aliphatic aldehydes were successfully converted to the corresponding homopropargylic alcohols in good yield and high enantiomeric excesses using propargyl bromide, indium, and (1 S ,2 R )-(+)-2-amino-1,2-diphenylethanol as a chiral auxiliary.
A Production Function for Physician Services Revisited

We revisit Reinhardt's (1972) commonly used production function for physician services. This production function, although appropriate in some settings, is not adequate for more detailed studies. The generalized linear production function (Diewart, 1971) is an attractive alternative for this application: it admits zero values for inputs and allows the estimation of complex technical relationships. We find that, from 1965-1988, the technical relationships that describe the production process for physician services are remarkably stable. By empirically estimating the parameters of this more general production function, we provide crucial evidence about the q-complementarity of health worker inputs, the first of its kind in the literature on health labor markets.
A spectrum-level Hodge filtration on topological Hochschild homology

We define a functorial spectrum-level filtration on the topological Hochschild homology of any commutative ring spectrum R, and more generally the factorization homology $$R \otimes X$$ for any space X, echoing algebraic constructions of Loday and Pirashvili. We give a geometric description of this filtration, investigate its multiplicative properties, and show that it breaks $${\text {THH}}$$ up into common eigenspectra of the Adams operations.
Towards Dynamic Efficiency Innovation and its Implications for Antitrust

There is growing consensus that the goal of antitrust enforcement should be to manage for dynamic efficiency, that is, an appropriate balance between short-run static efficiencies such as reducing costs and maximizing consumer surplus, and the longer-term gains that arise from innovation. However, determining how to incorporate innovation into efficiency goals is complicated; innovation typically entails great uncertainty, long time horizons, and interdependencies across projects. This means there are no easy solutions for estimating the welfare impact of any given innovation investment or strategy. We can, however, use what we know about how firms manage the innovation process, including how they choose and value projects and ration their capital to meet their short- and long-term needs, to gain insight into how we can best foster firms’ incentives to innovate in ways that improve long-run economic welfare. I provide some illustrative examples for how these insights can be incorporated into antitrust enf...
Natural variation in teosinte at the domestication locus teosinte branched1 (tb1)

The teosinte branched1(tb1) gene is a major QTL controlling branching differences between maize and its wild progenitor, teosinte. The insertion of a transposable element (Hopscotch) upstream of tb1 is known to enhance the gene’s expression, causing reduced tillering in maize. Observations of the maize tb1 allele in teosinte and estimates of an insertion age of the Hopscotch that predates domestication led us to investigate its prevalence and potential role in teosinte. We assessed the prevalence of the Hopscotch element across an Americas-wide sample of 837 maize and teosinte individuals using a co-dominant PCR assay. Additionally, we calculated population genetic summaries using sequence data from a subset of individuals from four teosinte populations and collected phenotypic data using seed from a single teosinte population where Hopscotch was found segregating at high frequency. Genotyping results indicate the Hopscotch element is found in a number of teosinte populations and linkage disequilibrium near tb1 does not support recent introgression from maize. Population genetic signatures are consistent with selection on the tb1 locus, revealing a potential ecological role, but a greenhouse experiment does not detect a strong association between the Hopscotch and tillering in teosinte. Our findings suggest the role of Hopscotch differs between maize and teosinte. Future work should assess tb1 expression levels in teosinte with and without the Hopscotch and more comprehensively phenotype teosinte to assess the ecological significance of the Hopscotch insertion and, more broadly, the tb1 locus in teosinte.
Monte Carlo study of non-diffusive relaxation of a transient thermal grating in thin membranes

The impact of boundary scattering on non-diffusive thermal relaxation of a transient grating in thin membranes is rigorously analyzed using the multidimensional phonon Boltzmann equation. The gray Boltzmann simulation results indicate that approximating models derived from previously reported one-dimensional relaxation model and Fuchs-Sondheimer model fail to describe the thermal relaxation of membranes with thickness comparable with phonon mean free path. Effective thermal conductivities from spectral Boltzmann simulations free of any fitting parameters are shown to agree reasonably well with experimental results. These findings are important for improving our fundamental understanding of non-diffusive thermal transport in membranes and other nanostructures.
Cooperative Compute-and-Forward

We propose a class of signaling schemes that leverage transmitter cooperation in wireless networks employing compute-and-forward or physical-layer network coding. We devise a lattice-coding approach to superposition block Markov encoding from which we construct a cooperative lattice coding strategy. Transmitters broadcast lattice codewords, decode each other’s messages, and then cooperatively transmit resolution information which aids relays in decoding finite-field linear combinations of the incoming messages. We show that cooperation provides a substantial improvement in achievable computation rate and outage probability over noncooperative strategies. Using this strategy, we derive a new achievability scheme for the multiway relay channel, the rates of which are near capacity in many regimes and enjoy a diversity advantage over noncooperation.
What’s Cooking? Demand for Convenience Foods in the United States

Demand for convenience foods has grown in the United States, which has implications for dietary quality and health, but little is known about the drivers behind the growth in purchases of such foods. We construct a novel data set that contains price indexes, budget shares, advertising expenditures, and demographic and time variables for four Census regions between 1999 and 2010 for six types of convenience foods, including 4 food-at-home categories—basic ingredients, complex ingredients, ready to cook and ready to eat—and 2 food-away-from-home categories—fast food and sit down. We use these data to model demand for convenience foods using the almost ideal demand system, and then use the estimates to decompose growth in demand for convenience foods into price, advertising, demographic and time factors.
Heterogeneous Ice Nucleation Controlled by the Coupling of Surface Crystallinity and Surface Hydrophilicity

The microscopic mechanisms controlling heterogeneous ice nucleation are complex and remain poorly understood. Although good ice nucleators are generally believed to match ice lattice and to bind water, counter examples are often identified. Here we show, by advanced molecular simulations, that the heterogeneous nucleation of ice on graphitic surface is controlled by the coupling of surface crystallinity and surface hydrophilicity. Molecular level analysis reveals that the crystalline graphitic lattice with an appropriate hydrophilicity may indeed template ice basal plane by forming a strained ice layer, thus significantly enhancing its ice nucleation efficiency. Remarkably, the templating effect is found to transit from within the first contact layer of water to the second as the hydrophilicity increases, yielding an oscillating distinction between the crystalline and amorphous graphitic surfaces in their ice nucleation efficiencies. Our study sheds new light on the long-standing question of what constitu...
Learning Self-Control

This article examines how a decision maker who is only partially aware of his temptations learns about them over time. In facing temptations, individuals use their experience to forecast future self-control problems and choose the appropriate level of commitment. I demonstrate that rational learning can be perpetually partial and need not result in full sophistication. The main result of this article characterizes necessary and sufficient conditions for learning to converge to full sophistication. I apply this result to a consumption-savings environment in which a decision maker is tempted by present bias and establish a learning-theoretic justification for assuming sophistication in this setting.“An individual who finds himself continuously repudiating his past plans may learn to distrust his future behavior, and may do something about it.” — Strotz (1955)
Knowledge-based systems: a survey

This survey examines the roots of knowledge-based systems in artificial intelligence research, tracing them to the early realization that vast amounts of knowledge are a key to expert-level performance in AI systems. It considers both rule-based and frame-based implementation methods and their use in tools to ease the task of system construction. The survey concludes with an assessment of the current state of the art and with suggestions for some research directions that will be critical to providing improved methods for building knowledge-based systems.
The art of mistiming: How interruptions make mobile coupon campaigns effective

With the explosion of the mobile web, companies and brands are relying more and more on inbound marketing, focusing on generating dialogues and providing customers with more relevant and customized ad content. Interruptions, which were often used as attention-grabbing tactics, seem to be obsolete with rising privacy concerns. However, in this era of permission and relevance-based marketing, the authors conducted an SMS marketing field experiment with fast food brands to demonstrate how message design and targeting can drive interruptions via mobile devices to generate more awareness, redemptions and future purchase intentions of the brand.
DoubleTake: fast and precise error detection via evidence-based dynamic analysis

Programs written in unsafe languages like C and C++ often suffer from errors like buffer overflows, dangling pointers, and memory leaks. Dynamic analysis tools like Valgrind can detect these errors, but their overhead---primarily due to the cost of instrumenting every memory read and write---makes them too heavyweight for use in deployed applications and makes testing with them painfully slow. The result is that much deployed software remains susceptible to these bugs, which are notoriously difficult to track down. This paper presents evidence-based dynamic analysis, an approach that enables these analyses while imposing minimal overhead (under 5%), making it practical for the first time to perform these analyses in deployed settings. The key insight of evidence-based dynamic analysis is that for a class of errors, it is possible to ensure that evidence that they happened at some point in the past remains for later detection. Evidence-based dynamic analysis allows execution to proceed at nearly full speed until the end of an epoch (e.g., a heavyweight system call). It then examines program state to check for evidence that an error occurred at some time during that epoch. If so, it rolls back execution and re-executes the code with instrumentation activated to pinpoint the error. We present DoubleTake, a prototype evidence-based dynamic analysis framework. DoubleTake is practical and easy to deploy, requiring neither custom hardware, compiler, nor operating system support. We demonstrate DoubleTake's generality and efficiency by building dynamic analyses that find buffer overflows, memory use-after-free errors, and memory leaks. Our evaluation shows that DoubleTake is efficient, imposing under 5% overhead on average, making it the fastest such system to date. It is also precise: DoubleTake pinpoints the location of these errors to the exact line and memory addresses where they occur, providing valuable debugging information to programmers.
How equitable is access to finance in turkey ? evidence from the latest global FINDEX

Access to finance is a key component of poverty reduction, as it enables individuals to make economic decisions that can improve their welfare. The equality of access among different groups in society is also crucial for correctly allocating the positive benefits of improved financial services. In Turkey, bank account, debit card, and credit card ownership, which can serve as the main indicators of access to finance, are at a remarkably high level. However, adjusting the coverage rate of these indicators by controlling for age, education, gender, an income reveals that gender is the main source of inequality in Turkey at the individual level. Despite the progress made in addressing the gender disparity in access to finance between 2011 and 2014, females in Turkey continue to be financially less included. Moreover, Turkey's low level of savings and high rate of informal borrowing compared with its peers diminish individuals' resilience to future shocks. Promisingly, Turkey has been able to improve its rate of savings significantly over the past few years, although it continues to be among the countries that save at a lower level.
MOBILE PUMP DVT PROPHYLAXIS: JUST SAY NO TO DRUGS – AFFIRMS

Venous thromboembolic events, either deep vein thromboses or pulmonary emboli, are important complications in patients undergoing knee or hip arthroplasty. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a mobile compression device (ActiveCare+S.F.T.®; Medical Compression Systems, Inc., Or Akiva, Israel) with or without aspirin compared with current pharmacology protocols for venous thromboembolism prophylaxis in patients undergoing elective primary unilateral lower extremity joint arthroplasty. A multicenter registry was established to capture the rate of symptomatic venous thromboemboli following primary lower extremity joint arthroplasty in 3,060 patients from ten sites including knee arthroplasty (1,551) or hip arthroplasty (1,509). All patients were 18 years of age or older with no known history of venous thromboembolism, coagulation disorder, or solid tumor. Use of the compression device began peri-operatively and continued for a minimum of ten days. Patients with symptoms of deep venous thrombosis or pulmonary embolism underwent duplex ultrasonography and/or spiral computed tomography. All patients were evaluated at three months post-operatively to document any evidence of deep venous thrombosis or pulmonary embolism. Of 3,060 patients, twenty-eight (0.92%) had venous thromboembolism (20 distal deep venous thromboses, 3 proximal deep venous thromboses, and 5 pulmonary emboli). One death occurred with no autopsy performed. Symptomatic venous thromboembolic rates observed in lower extremity joint arthroplasty patients using the mobile compression device were non-inferior (not worse than) at a margin of 1.0% to rates reported for pharmacological prophylaxis, including warfarin, enoxaparin, rivaroxaban, and dabigatran except in the knee arthroplasty group where the mobile compression device fell short of rivaroxaban by 0.06%. Use of the mobile compression device with or without aspirin for patients undergoing lower extremity joint arthroplasty provide a non-inferior risk for developing venous thromboembolism compared with current pharmacological protocols reported in the literature.
Modeling Precursors for Event Forecasting via Nested Multi-Instance Learning

Forecasting large-scale societal events like civil unrest movements, disease outbreaks, and elections is an important and challenging problem. From the perspective of human analysts and policy makers, forecasting algorithms must not only make accurate predictions but must also provide supporting evidence, e.g., the causal factors related to the event of interest. We develop a novel multiple instance learning based approach that jointly tackles the problem of identifying evidence-based precursors and forecasts events into the future. Specifically, given a collection of streaming news articles from multiple sources we develop a nested multiple instance learning approach to forecast significant societal events such as protests. Using data from three countries in Latin America, we demonstrate how our approach is able to consistently identify news articles considered as precursors for protests. Our empirical evaluation demonstrates the strengths of our proposed approach in filtering candidate precursors, in forecasting the occurrence of events with a lead time advantage and in accurately predicting the characteristics of civil unrest events.
Roughness-Induced Pavement–Vehicle Interactions: Key Parameters and Impact on Vehicle Fuel Consumption

Pavement roughness affects rolling resistance and thus vehicle fuel consumption. When a vehicle travels at constant speed on an uneven road surface, the mechanical work dissipated in the vehicle’s suspension system is compensated by vehicle engine power and results in excess fuel consumption. This dissipation depends on both road roughness and vehicle dynamic characteristics. This paper proposes, calibrates, and implements a mechanistic model for roughness-induced dissipation. The distinguishing feature of the model is its combination of a thermodynamic quantity (energy dissipation) with results from random vibration theory to identify the governing parameters that drive the excess fuel consumption caused by pavement roughness, namely, the international roughness index (IRI) and the waviness number, w (a power spectral density parameter). It is shown through sensitivity analysis that the sensitivity of model output, that is, excess fuel consumption, to the waviness number is significant and comparable to ...
Hillsborough River Bascule Bridge Vibration and Rehabilitation

Hillsborough River Bascule Bridge, located in Tampa, Florida, vibrates significantly under traffic loading, and discomforting noises have been reported, especially in recent years. The cause of such a significant vibration was investigated. The bridge is briefly described. Analytical theory is then presented, including the vehicle model, bridge model, road surface model, and numerical methods. A vehicle is simulated as a three-dimensional nonlinear model. The bridge is treated as a space structure consisting of three-dimensional frame elements. The road profile is modeled as a stationary Gaussian random process that is described by a power spectral density function. The free and forced vibration characteristics of the bridge were investigated with trucks traveling over a rough deck. The stiffness effects of the main girders, bracings, and floor beams were studied. Analytical results indicate that insufficient stiffness of lateral bracings and floor beams is a main factor causing the severe vibration. Some...
Structure and Properties of Ir-Containing Oxides with Large Spin–Orbit Coupling: Ba2In2–xIrxO5+δ

In this work, the solid solution series Ba2In2–xIrxO5+δ (x = 0–1.4, 2) was synthesized, and its structural, magnetic, and charge-transport properties were measured. With increasing Ir content, three transitions in the room-temperature structure were observed: orthorhombic to tetragonal to cubic to a monoclinic distortion of a hexagonal BaTiO3 structure. Neutron diffraction shows Ba2In1.6Ir0.4O5.4 to be cubic and Ba2InIrO6 to be monoclinic, the latter contrary to previously published X-ray diffraction refinements. Magnetization measurements show Curie–Weiss behavior for x = 0.2–0.6, which arises from nearly 50:50 ratio of Ir(V) and Ir(VI). To our knowledge, this is the first time Ir(VI) has been stabilized with standard solid-state methods under ambient conditions. The electrical resistivity measurements show all the compounds studied are semiconducting and that resistivity decreases with increasing Ir content, suggesting the proximity to a metal–insulator transition. A sign reversal in the high-temperatur...