The Effectiveness of the Presentation and Removal of Money as Reward and Punishment in a Paired-Associate-Constant Order Learning Task

This type of research is believed to be important because of the implications it would seem to have for educational techniques. For example, a program could be instituted at the high school level whereby students would be rewarded with money for maintaining a certain academic standard but punished by the removal of a portion of this money for dropping below that standard. This technique might, in addition to facilitating their learning, act as a motivator in keeping them in school since many students drop out in order to make some money

Nowcasting ETAS Earthquakes: Information Entropy of Earthquake Catalogs

Earthquake nowcasting has been proposed as a means of tracking the change in large earthquake potential in a seismically active area. The method was developed using observable seismic data, in which probabilities of future large earthquakes can be computed using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) methods. Furthermore, analysis of the Shannon information content of the earthquake catalogs has been used to show that there is information contained in the catalogs, and that it can vary in time. So an important question remains, where does the information originate? In this paper, we examine this question using statistical simulations of earthquake catalogs computed using Epidemic Type Aftershock Sequence (ETAS) simulations. ETAS earthquake simulations are currently in widespread use for a variety of tasks, in modeling, analysis and forecasting. After examining several of the standard ETAS models, we propose a version of the ETAS model that conforms to the standard ETAS statistical relations of magnitude-frequency scaling, aftershock scaling, Bath's law, and the productivity relation, but with an additional property. We modify the model to introduce variable non-Poisson aftershock clustering, inasmuch as we test the hypothesis that the information in the catalogs originates from aftershock clustering. We find that significant information in the catalogs arises from the non-Poisson aftershock clustering, implying that the common practice of de-clustering catalogs may remove information that would otherwise be useful in forecasting and nowcasting. We also show that the nowcasting method provides similar results with the the ETAS models as it does with observed seismicity.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Modeling of electric power demand growth

Paper given at MIT conference entitled Energy: Demand, Conservation and Institutional Problems, February 12-15, 197

The Psychological and Physiological Effects of Music on Athletic Performance

Please view abstract in the attached PDF file

The Driver Has Control: Exploring Driving Performance with Varying Automation Capabilities

As vehicle automation becomes more capable and prevalent, an understanding of how drivers will interact with automation systems of varying capabilities will be of critical importance. In this study, we compare the performance of drivers on takeover of control from varying types of automation systems (single-function and combined function). Participants drove a 20-minute course with sections of automated driving, and with several traffic events designed to elicit a driver response. Structured transfers of control between automated and manual driving modes occurred following a 7-second countdown at fixed locations on the course. Significant differences were found between groups in terms of lanekeeping ability immediately after taking control following a period of automated vehicle control or partial driver/automation control, but significant differences were not found in accident evasion ability, even five seconds after resuming full control