163,778 research outputs found
Modeling Criminal Careers as Departures from a Unimodal Population Age-Crime Curve: The Case of Marijuana Use
A major aim of longitudinal analyses of life course data is to describe the within- and between-individual variability in a behavioral outcome, such as crime. Statistical analyses of such data typically draw on mixture and mixed-effects growth models. In this work, we present a functional analytic point of view and develop an alternative method that models individual crime trajectories as departures from a population age-crime curve. Drawing on empirical and theoretical claims in criminology, we assume a unimodal population age-crime curve and allow individual expected crime trajectories to differ by their levels of offending and patterns of temporal misalignment. We extend Bayesian hierarchical curve registration methods to accommodate count data and to incorporate influence of baseline covariates on individual behavioral trajectories. Analyzing self-reported counts of yearly marijuana use from the Denver Youth Survey, we examine the influence of race and gender categories on differences in levels and timing of marijuana smoking. We find that our approach offers a flexible and realistic model for longitudinal crime trajectories that fits individual observations well and allows for a rich array of inferences of interest to criminologists and drug abuse researchers
From Multiview Image Curves to 3D Drawings
Reconstructing 3D scenes from multiple views has made impressive strides in
recent years, chiefly by correlating isolated feature points, intensity
patterns, or curvilinear structures. In the general setting - without
controlled acquisition, abundant texture, curves and surfaces following
specific models or limiting scene complexity - most methods produce unorganized
point clouds, meshes, or voxel representations, with some exceptions producing
unorganized clouds of 3D curve fragments. Ideally, many applications require
structured representations of curves, surfaces and their spatial relationships.
This paper presents a step in this direction by formulating an approach that
combines 2D image curves into a collection of 3D curves, with topological
connectivity between them represented as a 3D graph. This results in a 3D
drawing, which is complementary to surface representations in the same sense as
a 3D scaffold complements a tent taut over it. We evaluate our results against
truth on synthetic and real datasets.Comment: Expanded ECCV 2016 version with tweaked figures and including an
overview of the supplementary material available at
multiview-3d-drawing.sourceforge.ne
Reduction of nitric oxide emissions from a combustor
A turbojet combustor and method for controlling nitric oxide emissions by employing successive combustion zones is described. After combustion of an initial portion of the fuel in a primary combustion zone, the combustion products of the primary zone are combined with the remaining portion of fuel and additional plenum air and burned in a secondary combustion zone under conditions that result in low nitric oxide emissions. Low nitric oxide emissions are achieved by a novel turbojet combustor arrangement which provides flame stability by allowing stable combustion to be accompanied by low nitric oxide emissions resulting from controlled fuel-lean combustion (ignited by the emission products from the primary zone) in a secondary combustion zone at a lower combustion temperature resulting in low emission of nitric oxide
Connection Discovery using Shared Images by Gaussian Relational Topic Model
Social graphs, representing online friendships among users, are one of the
fundamental types of data for many applications, such as recommendation,
virality prediction and marketing in social media. However, this data may be
unavailable due to the privacy concerns of users, or kept private by social
network operators, which makes such applications difficult. Inferring user
interests and discovering user connections through their shared multimedia
content has attracted more and more attention in recent years. This paper
proposes a Gaussian relational topic model for connection discovery using user
shared images in social media. The proposed model not only models user
interests as latent variables through their shared images, but also considers
the connections between users as a result of their shared images. It explicitly
relates user shared images to user connections in a hierarchical, systematic
and supervisory way and provides an end-to-end solution for the problem. This
paper also derives efficient variational inference and learning algorithms for
the posterior of the latent variables and model parameters. It is demonstrated
through experiments with over 200k images from Flickr that the proposed method
significantly outperforms the methods in previous works.Comment: IEEE International Conference on Big Data 201
Classical technical analysis of Latin American market indices. Correlations in Latin American currencies (ARS, CLP, MXP) exchange rates with respect to DEM, GBP, JPY and USD
The classical technical analysis methods of financial time series based on
the moving average and momentum is recalled. Illustrations use the IBM share
price and Latin American (Argentinian MerVal, Brazilian Bovespa and Mexican
IPC) market indices. We have also searched for scaling ranges and exponents in
exchange rates between Latin American currencies (, , ) and
other major currencies , , , , and s. We have sorted
out correlations and anticorrelations of such exchange rates with respect to
, , and . They indicate a very complex or speculative
behavior.Comment: 21 pages, 14 figures; to be published in Rev. Braz. Phys. on the
occasion of D. Stauffer 60th birthda
Method of growing composites of the type exhibiting the Soret effect
A predetermine amount of segregation is introduced into a molten sample of a composite that exhibits the Soret effect, such amount approximating the amount of segregation resulting from directional solidification of the sample. The molten sample is then directionally solidified starting at the end opposite the end richer in the constituent that would migrate toward the cooler part of a liquid solution of the composite maintained in a temperature gradient. Since solidification commences at the end deficient in such constituent, its migration toward the interface between the solid and liquid during the solidification will compensate for the deficiency, yielding a more homogeneous product
The Inverse Bagging Algorithm: Anomaly Detection by Inverse Bootstrap Aggregating
For data sets populated by a very well modeled process and by another process
of unknown probability density function (PDF), a desired feature when
manipulating the fraction of the unknown process (either for enhancing it or
suppressing it) consists in avoiding to modify the kinematic distributions of
the well modeled one. A bootstrap technique is used to identify sub-samples
rich in the well modeled process, and classify each event according to the
frequency of it being part of such sub-samples. Comparisons with general MVA
algorithms will be shown, as well as a study of the asymptotic properties of
the method, making use of a public domain data set that models a typical search
for new physics as performed at hadronic colliders such as the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC).Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. Proceedings of the XIIth Quark Confinement and
Hadron Spectrum conference, 28/8-2/9 2016, Thessaloniki, Greec
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