Nano-Engineering Defect Structures on Graphene

We present a new way of nano-engineering graphene using defect domains. These regions have ring structures that depart from the usual honeycomb lattice, though each carbon atom still has three nearest neighbors. A set of stable domain structures is identified using density functional theory (DFT), including blisters, ridges, ribbons, and metacrystals. All such structures are made solely out of carbon; the smallest encompasses just 16 atoms. Blisters, ridges and metacrystals rise up out of the sheet, while ribbons remain flat. In the vicinity of vacancies, the reaction barriers to formation are sufficiently low that such defects could be synthesized through the thermally activated restructuring of coalesced adatoms.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Determining the Impact of Food Price and Income Changes on Obesity

Despite the significant rise in obesity in the U.S., economic research on obesity is still in its infancy. This paper employs a microeconomic approach to investigate the effects of price and income changes on weight in an effort to determine how a high-calorie food tax, a low-calorie food subsidy, and/or an income changes affect body weight. Although raising the price of high-calorie food typically will likely lead to decreased demand for such goods; it is not clear that such an outcome will actually reduce weight. The model developed in this paper identifies conditions under which price and income changes are mostly likely to actually result in a weight loss. The model is easily implemented using data on own-and cross-price elasticities that are often readily available from extant literature. This is important because survey data that contain both economic information, such as food prices, and weight are extremely rare. Information on relationship between price and weight is critical in developing appropriate public policy and in determining when and where fat taxes, thin subsidies or income re-distribution will achieve the desired objective of reducing obesity.Health Economics and Policy,

DESIGNING EXPERIMENTAL AUCTIONS FOR MARKETING RESEARCH: EFFECT OF VALUES, DISTRIBUTIONS, AND MECHANISMS ON INCENTIVES FOR TRUTHFUL BIDDING

Accurately estimating consumer demand for new products is an arduous task made even more difficult by the fact that individuals tend to overstate the amount they are willing to pay for new goods when asked hypothetical questions. Despite their appeal in eliminating hypothetical bias, marketers have been slow to adopt experimental auctions as a standard tool in pre-test market research. One issue that has slowed adoption of the methodology is the proliferation of auction mechanisms and the lack of clear guidance in choosing between mechanisms. In this paper, we provide insight into the theoretical properties of two incentive compatible value elicitation mechanisms, the BDM and Vickrey 2nd price auction, such that practitioners can make more informed decisions in designing experimental auctions to determine consumer willingness-to-pay. In particular, we draw attention to the shapes of the payoff functions and show in a simulation that the two mechanisms differ with respect to the expected cost of deviating from truthful bidding. We show that incentives for truthful bidding depend on the distribution of competing bidders' values and/or prices and individuals' true values for a good. The simulation indicates the 2nd price auction punishes deviations from truthful bidding more severely for high value individuals than the BDM mechanism. These results are confirmed by an experimental study, where we find more accurate bidding for high-value individuals in the 2nd price auction as compared to the BDM. Our results also indicate that when implementing the BDM mechanism, the greatest incentives for truthful value revelation are created when the random price generator is based on a normal distribution centered on an individual's expected true value.Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

A Multidimensional Homo Economicus: Cultural Dimensions of Economic Preferences in Four Countries

Previous work in experimental economics reveals specific differences in economic behavior, especially reciprocity and free-riding behavior, across cultures. We expand the possible pallet of cross-cultural behavioral differences that may exist. We hypothesize that different kinds of strategic interaction and individual decision-making behaviors differ across locations. The variety of experiments we use allow us to report multidimensional rather than just single dimensional differences in behavior across locations. In order to build a broad Homo Economicus we conducted economic experiments in four dissimilar locations: Hangzhou, China; Niamey, Niger; Grenoble, France; Manhattan, Kansas; and West Lafayette, Indiana. Each subject completed an ultimatum bargaining game experiment, Voluntary Contribution Mechanism experiment, time preference experiment, and risk preference experiment. Results indicate economic behavior is not independent of location. Location differences are greatest for strategic interaction behavior and less prevalent for individual decision-making behavior.Time preference, risk preference, voluntary contribution mechanism, Ultimatum bargaining game, cultural, China, France, Niger, Kansas, Indiana, US, Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

The Relative Importance of Preferences for Country-of-Origin in China, France, Niger and the United States

Country-of-origin (COO) is an increasingly politicized credence attribute in the globalizing food system. While international policy development in this area is geographically far-reaching, the benefits of country-of-origin labels (COOL) to producers and consumers from countries in different locations and levels of economic development are not clear. Previous work investigates the importance of COO to consumers, but is typically limited in scope to consumers in one nation. In addition, little is known about the importance of COO information relative to other credence attributes, especially in non-meat food products. This study measures the benefits of COOL to an internationally diverse set of consumers (in developed and developing countries) and estimates their priority rank in policy development. The paper draws upon research in the management literature suggesting consumer information needs are not based on quality alone, but also relate to affective (emotional) and normative (social acceptance) needs. A conjoint experiment is conducted in China, France, Niger and the United States to elicit consumer preferences for COO information, organic production, and genetic modification. The results indicate COO information is not as important as genetically modified content information (France, the United States, and Niger) or organic production information (China). Findings reveal individuals with quality and food safety information needs place higher importance on genetically modified and organic food information than COO information.country-of-origin, genetic modification, organic, conjoint, onion, information, food policy, International Relations/Trade, Q13, Q18, Q17,

Extent and Characteristics of Retail Fresh Beef Branding

Limited information exists regarding the extent and characteristics of branded fresh beef. Retail package data from a sample of grocery stores in three metropolitan areas enabled determining the extent of branded beef for ground beef, roasts, and steaks. Logit models identified factors affecting the probability of beef products being branded, and the probability of beef products carrying specific types of brands compared with store brands and generic (unbranded) beef. The extent of branded beef and type of brand both varied by store type, specific product, quality designation, package type, and presence of special labeling.Marketing,

Benchmark problems in which equality plays the major role

We have recently heard rumors that researchers are again studying paramodulation (Wos87) in the context of strategy for its control. In part to facilitate such research, and in part to provide test problems for evaluating other approaches to equality-oriented reasoning, we offer in this article a set of benchmark problems in which equality plays the dominant role. The test problems are taken from group theory, Robbins algebra, combinatory logic, and other areas. For each problem, we include appropriate clauses and comment as to its status with regard to provability by an unaided automated reasoning program

Can Neural Activation in Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Predict Responsiveness to Information? An Application to Egg Production Systems and Campaign Advertising

Citation: McFadden, B. R., Lusk, J. L., Crespi, J. M., Cherry, J. B. C., Martin, L. E., Aupperle, R. L., & Bruce, A. S. (2015). Can Neural Activation in Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Predict Responsiveness to Information? An Application to Egg Production Systems and Campaign Advertising. Plos One, 10(5), 15. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0125243Consumers prefer to pay low prices and increase animal welfare; however consumers are typically forced to make tradeoffs between price and animal welfare. Campaign advertising (i.e., advertising used during the 2008 vote on Proposition 2 in California) may affect how consumers make tradeoffs between price and animal welfare. Neuroimaging data was used to determine the effects of brain activation in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) on choices making a tradeoff between price and animal welfare and responsiveness to campaign advertising. Results indicated that activation in the dlPFC was greater when making choices that forced a tradeoff between price and animal welfare, compared to choices that varied only by price or animal welfare. Furthermore, greater activation differences in right dlPFC between choices that forced a tradeoff and choices that did not, indicated greater responsiveness to campaign advertising

Database computing in HEP

The major SSC experiments are expected to produce up to 1 Petabyte of data per year each. Once the primary reconstruction is completed by farms of inexpensive processors, I/O becomes a major factor in further analysis of the data. We believe that the application of database techniques can significantly reduce the I/O performed in these analyses. We present examples of such I/O reductions in prototypes based on relational and object-oriented databases of CDF data samples