6,127 research outputs found
The Value of Preventative Dental Care:A Discrete-Choice Experiment
Acknowledgments We thank all of the respondents to our survey who took the time to share their opinions and preferences with us, as well as all members of the IQuaD study team who provided input, advice, and comments on draft versions of the survey. Open Access via the Jisc Sage Open Access Agreement Funder - national institute for health research 10.13039/501100000272 09/01/45 Funding The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The project was funded by the UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme (project number: 09/01/45). The views and opinions expressed therein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Health or the funders that provide institutional support for the authors of this report. The Health Economics Research Unit and the Health Services Research Unit are funded by the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health and Social Care DirectoratesPeer reviewedPublisher PD
Detectability of non-differentiable generalized synchrony
Generalized synchronization of chaos is a type of cooperative behavior in
directionally-coupled oscillators that is characterized by existence of stable
and persistent functional dependence of response trajectories from the chaotic
trajectory of driving oscillator. In many practical cases this function is
non-differentiable and has a very complex shape. The generalized synchrony in
such cases seems to be undetectable, and only the cases, in which a
differentiable synchronization function exists, are considered to make sense in
practice. We show that this viewpoint is not always correct and the
non-differentiable generalized synchrony can be revealed in many practical
cases. Conditions for detection of generalized synchrony are derived
analytically, and illustrated numerically with a simple example of
non-differentiable generalized synchronization.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, submitted to PR
Probability Theory Compatible with the New Conception of Modern Thermodynamics. Economics and Crisis of Debts
We show that G\"odel's negative results concerning arithmetic, which date
back to the 1930s, and the ancient "sand pile" paradox (known also as "sorites
paradox") pose the questions of the use of fuzzy sets and of the effect of a
measuring device on the experiment. The consideration of these facts led, in
thermodynamics, to a new one-parameter family of ideal gases. In turn, this
leads to a new approach to probability theory (including the new notion of
independent events). As applied to economics, this gives the correction, based
on Friedman's rule, to Irving Fisher's "Main Law of Economics" and enables us
to consider the theory of debt crisis.Comment: 48p., 14 figs., 82 refs.; more precise mathematical explanations are
added. arXiv admin note: significant text overlap with arXiv:1111.610
Production of neutron-rich nuclei in fragmentation reactions of 132Sn projectiles at relativistic energies
The fragmentation of neutron-rich 132Sn nuclei produced in the fission of
238U projectiles at 950 MeV/u has been investigated at the FRagment Separator
(FRS) at GSI. This work represents the first investigation of fragmentation of
medium-mass radioactive projectiles with a large neutron excess. The measured
production cross sections of the residual nuclei are relevant for the possible
use of a two-stage reaction scheme (fission+fragmentation) for the production
of extremely neutron-rich medium-mass nuclei in future rare-ion-beam
facilities. Moreover, the new data will provide a better understanding of the
"memory" effect in fragmentation reactions.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Phase-Induced (In)-Stability in Coupled Parametric Oscillators
We report results on a model of two coupled oscillators that undergo periodic
parametric modulations with a phase difference . Being to a large
extent analytically solvable, the model reveals a rich dependence of
the regions of parametric resonance. In particular, the intuitive notion that
anti-phase modulations are less prone to parametric resonance is confirmed for
sufficiently large coupling and damping. We also compare our results to a
recently reported mean field model of collective parametric instability,
showing that the two-oscillator model can capture much of the qualitative
behavior of the infinite system.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures; a version with better quality figures can be
found in http://hypatia.ucsd.edu/~mauro/English/publications.htm
Reversals in nature and the nature of reversals
The asymmetric shape of reversals of the Earth's magnetic field indicates a
possible connection with relaxation oscillations as they were early discussed
by van der Pol. A simple mean-field dynamo model with a spherically symmetric
coefficient is analysed with view on this similarity, and a comparison
of the time series and the phase space trajectories with those of paleomagnetic
measurements is carried out. For highly supercritical dynamos a very good
agreement with the data is achieved. Deviations of numerical reversal sequences
from Poisson statistics are analysed and compared with paleomagnetic data. The
role of the inner core is discussed in a spectral theoretical context and
arguments and numerical evidence is compiled that the growth of the inner core
might be important for the long term changes of the reversal rate and the
occurrence of superchrons.Comment: 24 pages, 12 figure
Privatization and State Capacity in Postcommunist Society
Economists have used cross-national regression analysis to argue that postcommunist economic failure is the result of inadequate adherence liberal economic policies. Sociologists have relied on case study data to show that postcommunist economic failure is the outcome of too close adherence to liberal policy recommendations, which has led to an erosion of state effectiveness, and thus produced poor economic performance. The present paper advances a version of this statist theory based on a quantitative analysis of mass privatization programs in the postcommunist world. We argue that rapid large-scale privatization creates severe supply and demand shocks for enterprises, thereby inducing firm failure. The resulting erosion of tax revenues leads to a fiscal crisis for the state, and severely weakens its capacity and bureaucratic character. This, in turn, reacts back on the enterprise sector, as the state can no longer support the institutions necessary for the effective functioning of a modern economy, thus resulting in deindustrialization. Using cross-national regression techniques we find that the implementation of mass privatization programs negatively impacts measures of economic growth, state capacity and the security of property rights.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40192/3/wp806.pd
Analyzing collaborative learning processes automatically
In this article we describe the emerging area of text classification research focused on the problem of collaborative learning process analysis both from a broad perspective and more specifically in terms of a publicly available tool set called TagHelper tools. Analyzing the variety of pedagogically valuable facets of learners’ interactions is a time consuming and effortful process. Improving automated analyses of such highly valued processes of collaborative learning by adapting and applying recent text classification technologies would make it a less arduous task to obtain insights from corpus data. This endeavor also holds the potential for enabling substantially improved on-line instruction both by providing teachers and facilitators with reports about the groups they are moderating and by triggering context sensitive collaborative learning support on an as-needed basis. In this article, we report on an interdisciplinary research project, which has been investigating the effectiveness of applying text classification technology to a large CSCL corpus that has been analyzed by human coders using a theory-based multidimensional coding scheme. We report promising results and include an in-depth discussion of important issues such as reliability, validity, and efficiency that should be considered when deciding on the appropriateness of adopting a new technology such as TagHelper tools. One major technical contribution of this work is a demonstration that an important piece of the work towards making text classification technology effective for this purpose is designing and building linguistic pattern detectors, otherwise known as features, that can be extracted reliably from texts and that have high predictive power for the categories of discourse actions that the CSCL community is interested in
Evaluation of effective resistances in pseudo-distance-regular resistor networks
In Refs.[1] and [2], calculation of effective resistances on distance-regular
networks was investigated, where in the first paper, the calculation was based
on the stratification of the network and Stieltjes function associated with the
network, whereas in the latter one a recursive formula for effective
resistances was given based on the Christoffel-Darboux identity. In this paper,
evaluation of effective resistances on more general networks called
pseudo-distance-regular networks [21] or QD type networks \cite{obata} is
investigated, where we use the stratification of these networks and show that
the effective resistances between a given node such as and all of the
nodes belonging to the same stratum with respect to
(, belonging to the -th stratum with respect
to the ) are the same. Then, based on the spectral techniques, an
analytical formula for effective resistances such that
(those nodes , of
the network such that the network is symmetric with respect to them) is given
in terms of the first and second orthogonal polynomials associated with the
network, where is the pseudo-inverse of the Laplacian of the network.
From the fact that in distance-regular networks,
is satisfied for all nodes
of the network, the effective resistances
for ( is diameter of the network which
is the same as the number of strata) are calculated directly, by using the
given formula.Comment: 30 pages, 7 figure
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