Individual and Society: Sociological Social Psychology

Unlike the few other texts for undergraduate sociological social psychology courses that present 3 distinct traditions (or faces ) ... Symbolic Interactionist (SI), Social Structure and Personality (SSP), and Group Processes and Structure (GPS) by topic alone, this text initially discusses these faces by research tradition, and emphasizes the different theoretical frameworks within which social psychological analyses are conducted. With this approach, the authors make clear the link between face of sociological social psychology, theory, and methodology. And students gain an appreciably better understanding of the field of sociological social psychology; how and why social psychologists trained in sociology ask particular kinds of questions; the types of research they are involved in; and how their findings have been, or can be, applied to contemporary societal patterns and problems. Great writing makes this approach successful and interesting for students, resulting in a richer, more powerful course experience. A website offers instructors high quality support material, written by the authors, which you will appreciate and value -- Provided by publisher

Code trolley: hardware-assisted control flow obfuscation

Many cybersecurity attacks rely on analyzing a binary executable to find exploitable sections of code. Code obfuscation is used to prevent attackers from reverse engineering these executables. In this work, we focus on control flow obfuscation - a technique that prevents attackers from statically determining which code segments are original, and which segments are added in to confuse attackers. We propose a RISC-V-based hardware-assisted deobfuscation technique that deobfuscates code at runtime based on a secret safely stored in hardware, along with an LLVM compiler extension for obfuscating binaries. Unlike conventional tools, our work does not rely on compiling hard-to-reverse-engineer code, but on securing a secret key. As such, it can be seen as a lightweight alternative to on-the-fly binary decryption.Published versio

Climate Effects on Rainfall Index Insurance Purchase Decisions

Rainfall Index insurance is a pilot insurance product offered to producers of hay and pasture in 9 states. This analysis examines the expected payoff of the RI insurance for bi-monthly periods based on rainfall shortage probabilities in alternative climate phases. Differences in expected returns indicate that selection of ENSO-specific optimal intervals may result in higher returns than those based on pooled rainfall series.rainfall insurance, ENSO, expected indemnity, Production Economics, Risk and Uncertainty,

Determinants of Agricultural Disaster Payments in the Southeastern U.S.: County Level Analysis

Using county level data we study if weather and climate variables or variables used as proxies for rent-seeking behavior determine disaster payment in the Southeast. We do not find evidence of rent-seeking but find that, in addition to weather, long term climate variables affect disaster payments.Farm Management, Risk and Uncertainty,

Bose-Einstein or HBT correlations and the anomalous dimension of QCD

Bose-Einstein (or HBT) correlation functions are evaluated for the fractal structure of QCD jets. These correlation functions have a stretched exponential (or Levy-stable) form. The anomalous dimension of QCD determines the Levy index of stability, thus the running coupling constant of QCD becomes measurable with the help of two-particle Bose-Einstein correlation functions. These considerations are tested on NA22 and UA1 two-pion correlation data.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, presented by T. Csorgo at the XXXIV International Symposium on Multiparticle Dynamics, Sonoma County, California, USA, July 2004, to appear in Acta Physica Polonica

Bose-Einstein or HBT correlation signature of a second order QCD phase transition

For particles emerging from a second order QCD phase transition, we show that a recently introduced shape parameter of the Bose-Einstein correlation function, the Levy index of stability equals to the correlation exponent - one of the critical exponents that characterize the behavior of the matter in the vicinity of the second order phase transition point. Hence the shape of the Bose-Einstein / HBT correlation functions, when measured as a function of bombarding energy and centrality in various heavy ion reactions, can be utilized to locate experimentally the second order phase transition and the critical end point of the first order phase transition line in QCD.Comment: 8 pages, talk given by T. Csorgo at the Workshop on Particle Correlations and Femtoscopy 2005, Kromeriz, Czech Republic, August 200

Tractability of multivariate problems for standard and linear information in the worst case setting: part II

We study QPT (quasi-polynomial tractability) in the worst case setting for linear tensor product problems defined over Hilbert spaces. We assume that the domain space is a reproducing kernel Hilbert space so that function values are well defined. We prove QPT for algorithms that use only function values under the three assumptions: 1) the minimal errors for the univariate case decay polynomially fast to zero, 2) the largest singular value for the univariate case is simple and 3) the eigenfunction corresponding to the largest singular value is a multiple of the function value at some point. The first two assumptions are necessary for QPT. The third assumption is necessary for QPT for some Hilbert spaces

Analysis of Irrigated Corn Production Adoption Decisions in Alabama

Expanding ethanol markets, abundance of water resources, and predominance of rainfed corn production in Alabama suggest possibility of irrigating cornfields. Numerical analysis shows that irrigated production becomes more preferable with higher corn prices and risk aversion. Adoption threshold is estimated at the price below its current level.Agribusiness, Crop Production/Industries, Land Economics/Use,

Influence of the particle shape on the equilibrium morphologies of supracolloidal magnetic filaments

We investigate the equilibrium morphologies of linear and ring-shaped magnetic filaments made from crosslinked ferromagnetic spherical or ellipsoidal colloidal particles. Using Langevin dynamics simulations, we calculate the radius of gyration and total magnetic moment of a single filament at zero field and different temperatures, analyzing the influence of the particles shape, the strength of their magnetic moment and the filament length. Our results show that, among such parameters, the shape of the particles has the strongest qualitative impact on the equilibrium behavior of the filaments