A preliminary analysis of the Mariner 10 color ratio map of Mercury

A preliminary geological analysis of the Mariner 10 orange/UV color ratio map of Mercury is given, assuming a basaltic crust. Certain errors in the map are pointed out. The relationship between color and terrain are distinctly non-lunar. Rays and ejecta are bluer than average on Mercury, whereas they are redder on the Moon. This fact, along with the lack of the ferrous band in Mercury's spectral reflectance and smaller albedo contrasts, implies that the crust is low in Fe and Ti. There is no correlation between color boundaries and the smooth plains on Mercury, in contrast with the strong correlation between color and maria-highlands contacts on the Moon. The smooth plains are not Mercurian analogs of lunar maria, and a lunar-type of second wave melting did not occur. Ambiguous correlations between color and topography indicate that older, redder materials underlie younger, bluer rocks in many places on the planet, implying that the last stages of volcanism involved low-Fe lavas covering higher-Fe rocks. There is some evidence of late Fe-rich pyroclastic activity

PORTFOLIO ANALYSIS CONSIDERING ESTIMATION RISK AND IMPERFECT MARKETS

Mean-variance efficient portfolio analysis is applied to situations where not all assets are perfectly price elastic in demand nor are asset moments known with certainty. Estimation and solution of such a model are based on an agricultural banking example. The distinction and advantages of a Bayesian formulation over a classical statistical approach are considered. For maximizing expected utility subject to a linear demand curve, a negative exponential utility function gives a mathematical programming problem with a quartic term. Thus, standard quadratic programming solutions are not optimal. Empirical results show important differences between classical and Bayesian approaches for portfolio composition, expected return and measures of risk.Agricultural Finance, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

VLSI Computational Structures Applied to Fingerprint Image Analysis

Advances in integrated circuit technology have made possible the application of LSI and VLSI techniques to a wide range of computational problems. Image processing is one of the areas that stands to benefit most from these techniques. This thesis presents an architecture suitable for VLSI implementations which enables a wide range of image processing operations to be done in a real-time, pipelined fashion. These operations include filtering, thresholding, thinning and feature extraction. The particular class of images chosen for study are fingerprints. There exists a long history of fingerprint classification and comparison techniques used by humans, but previous attempts at automation have met with little success. This thesis makes use of VLSI image processing operations to create a graph structure representation (minutia graph) of the inter-relationships of various low-level features of fingerprint images. An approach is then presented which allows derivation of a metric for the similarity of these graphs and of the fingerprints which they represent. An efficient algorithm for derivation of maximal common subgraphs of two minutia graphs serves as the basis for computation of this metric, and is itself based upon a specialized clique-finding algorithm. Results of cross comparison of fingerprints from multiple individuals are presented

Minimum Wage Channels of Adjustment

The economic impact of the 2007-2009 increases in the federal minimum wage (MW) is analyzed using a sample of quick-service restaurants in Georgia and Alabama. Store-level biweekly payroll records for individual employees are used, allowing us to precisely measure the MW compliance cost for each restaurant. We examine a broad range of adjustment channels in addition to employment, including hours, prices, turnover, training, performance standards, and non-labor costs. Exploiting variation in the cost impact of the MW across restaurants, we find no significant effect of the MW increases on employment or hours over the three years. Cost increases were instead absorbed through other channels of adjustment, including higher prices, lower profit margins, wage compression, reduced turnover, and higher performance standards. These findings are compared with MW predictions from competitive, monopsony, and institutional/behavioral models; the latter appears to fit best in the short run.minimum wages, employment, labor market adjustments, labor market theories

Economic Statistics and U.S. Agricultural Policy

Economic statistics can be used to inform policy as it is being designed, avoid policy design mistakes, or implement government programs once they are established into law. Oftentimes, statistics are used for all three purposes. This paper considers the relationships between statistics and agricultural policy in the case of the United States. We address first the broad historical picture of U.S. official economic statistics concerning agriculture, and then turn to selected examples that relate policies to economic statistics in more detail. The examples show diversity in the interplay between statistics and policy. As policies have become broader in scope, addressing not only farm commodity markets but also differences among farms and a widening set of activities on farms, policymakers have asked for more detailed information about the financial situation of individual farm businesses and households, sources of risk in farm returns, and production practices that affect the environment.Agricultural policy, Data collection and estimation, Economic history of U.S. agriculture, Agricultural and Food Policy, Q18, C8, N52,

Optimal Strategies for Sinusoidal Signal Detection

We derive and study optimal and nearly-optimal strategies for the detection of sinusoidal signals hidden in additive (Gaussian and non-Gaussian) noise. Such strategies are an essential part of algorithms for the detection of the gravitational Continuous Wave (CW) signals produced by pulsars. Optimal strategies are derived for the case where the signal phase is not known and the product of the signal frequency and the observation time is non-integral.Comment: 18 pages, REVTEX4, 7 figures, 2 table

DESCRIPTION OF A METHOD TO CONTINUOUSLY REGISTER THE HAND-CURVE IN ROWERS

Previous methods of tracing the path of the rower's oar (the "hand-curve") have relied upon cinematographic methods, which have resulted in a minimal number of strokes being analysed. A method of continuously registering the hand-curve in rowers is presented. A modified Concept II oarlock was designed so that rotation of the oar about the X and Y-axes could be measured and thus the hand-curve obtained. A potential source of error in measurement is in the calibration of the potentiometers measuring the angle. Therefore, the repeatability of this procedure was examined. The calibration procedure was repeated five times and it was revealed that the construction of the calibration rig was of importance to maintain data integrity