Determinants of Economic Development Incentives Offered by States: A Test of the Arms Race Hypothesis

This paper tests the arms race hypothesis, which postulates that states tend to increase their incentive offerings to new firms if such incentive programs are in use in other states that are perceived to be direct competitors. Using a pooled time-series/cross-section sample of twelve states covering the period from 1969 through 1985 and a model that controls for the effects of various economic and political factors, we find strong support for the arms race hypothesis. This result is robust to the alternative specifications of the incentive offerings and different measures of the degree of competition among states

A decision-based perspective for the design of methods for systems design

Organization of material, a definition of decision based design, a hierarchy of decision based design, the decision support problem technique, a conceptual model design that can be manufactured and maintained, meta-design, computer-based design, action learning, and the characteristics of decisions are among the topics covered

The design of aircraft using the decision support problem technique

The Decision Support Problem Technique for unified design, manufacturing and maintenance is being developed at the Systems Design Laboratory at the University of Houston. This involves the development of a domain-independent method (and the associated software) that can be used to process domain-dependent information and thereby provide support for human judgment. In a computer assisted environment, this support is provided in the form of optimal solutions to Decision Support Problems

Optimal Quantum Circuits for General Two-Qubit Gates

In order to demonstrate non-trivial quantum computations experimentally, such as the synthesis of arbitrary entangled states, it will be useful to understand how to decompose a desired quantum computation into the shortest possible sequence of one-qubit and two-qubit gates. We contribute to this effort by providing a method to construct an optimal quantum circuit for a general two-qubit gate that requires at most 3 CNOT gates and 15 elementary one-qubit gates. Moreover, if the desired two-qubit gate corresponds to a purely real unitary transformation, we provide a construction that requires at most 2 CNOTs and 12 one-qubit gates. We then prove that these constructions are optimal with respect to the family of CNOT, y-rotation, z-rotation, and phase gates.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, new title, final journal versio

First-in-man evaluation of 124I-PGN650: A PET tracer for detecting phosphatidylserine as a biomarker of the solid tumor microenvironment

Purpose: PGN650 is a F(ab′) 2 antibody fragment that targets phosphatidylserine (PS), a marker normally absent that becomes exposed on tumor cells and tumor vasculature in response to oxidative stress and increases in response to therapy. PGN650 was labeled with 124 I to create a positron emission tomography (PET) agent as an in vivo biomarker for tumor microenvironment and response to therapy. In this phase 0 study, we evaluated the pharmacokinetics, safety, radiation dosimetry, and tumor targeting of this tracer in a cohort of patients with cancer. Methods: Eleven patients with known solid tumors received approximately 140 MBq (3.8 mCi) 124 I-PGN650 intravenously and underwent positron emission tomography–computed tomography (PET/CT) approximately 1 hour, 3 hours, and either 24 hours or 48 hours later to establish tracer kinetics for the purpose of calculating radiation dosimetry (from integration of the organ time-activity curves and OLINDA/EXM using the adult male and female models). Results: Known tumor foci demonstrated mildly increased uptake, with the highest activity at the latest imaging time. There were no unexpected adverse events. The liver was the organ receiving the highest radiation dose (0.77 mGy/MBq); the effective dose was 0.41 mSv/MBq. Conclusion: Although 124 I-PGN650 is safe for human PET imaging, the tumor targeting with this agent in patients was less than previously observed in animal studies

A Comparison of Different Modeling Strategies for Predicting Effective Properties of 3D Woven Composites

Three-dimensional (3D) woven composites are an attractive means of achieving superior mechanical performance in aerospace structures. Limited analysis capability currently exists to predict both effective elastic and strength properties for these complex composites. In this study, a comparison of three modeling strategies was performed to assess the ability of the different methods to predict the effective elastic properties of four distinct 3D orthogonal woven composites. Two finite element techniques (in-plane and triply-periodic boundary conditions) and one method of cells technique, the Multiscale Generalized Method of Cells, were considered