Concern and counter-concern : the challenge of fragmented fears for the reguation of hydraulic fracturing

Proposals to use the process of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to extract natural gas in the United Kingdom has been met with both opposition and support as has often been the case for new extractive industries exploring new techniques or applications thereof. An idiosyncratic feature of the debate surrounding hydraulic fracturing is however the seeming lack of congruence of the concerns raised by experts and civic opposition. The authors consider the potential implications of this fragmentation of fears surrounding the process for its future regulation

How Many CMEs Have Flux Ropes? Deciphering the Signatures of Shocks, Flux Ropes, and Prominences in Coronagraph Observations of CMEs

We intend to provide a comprehensive answer to the question on whether all Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) have flux rope structure. To achieve this, we present a synthesis of the LASCO CME observations over the last sixteen years, assisted by 3D MHD simulations of the breakout model, EUV and coronagraphic observations from STEREO and SDO, and statistics from a revised LASCO CME database. We argue that the bright loop often seen as the CME leading edge is the result of pileup at the boundary of the erupting flux rope irrespective of whether a cavity or, more generally, a 3-part CME can be identified. Based on our previous work on white light shock detection and supported by the MHD simulations, we identify a new type of morphology, the `two-front' morphology. It consists of a faint front followed by diffuse emission and the bright loop-like CME leading edge. We show that the faint front is caused by density compression at a wave (or possibly shock) front driven by the CME. We also present high-detailed multi-wavelength EUV observations that clarify the relative positioning of the prominence at the bottom of a coronal cavity with clear flux rope structure. Finally, we visually check the full LASCO CME database for flux rope structures. In the process, we classify the events into two clear flux rope classes (`3-part', `Loop'), jets and outflows (no clear structure). We find that at least 40% of the observed CMEs have clear flux rope structures. We propose a new definition for flux rope CMEs (FR-CMEs) as a coherent magnetic, twist-carrying coronal structure with angular width of at least 40 deg and able to reach beyond 10 Rsun which erupts on a time scale of a few minutes to several hours. We conclude that flux ropes are a common occurrence in CMEs and pose a challenge for future studies to identify CMEs that are clearly not FR-CMEs.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figs, to be published in Solar Physics Topical Issue "Flux Rope Structure of CMEs

Cruisers in the City of Helsinki : Staging the Mobility of Cruise Passengers

International cruise passengers moving in urban destinations have particular time limitation that can make enabling and disabling elements of mobility meaningful on the quality of their visit. Identifying these elements is essential to improve their independent movement. Based on a staging mobilities framework that considers the dimensions of physical settings, material spaces, design (PMD), social interactions (SI) and embodied performances (EP) in situ, the research has analysed location-specific information in Helsinki, a popular port of call in the Baltic Sea. The study has used go-along observations and mobile application in data collection. The produced dataset was analysed by combining GIS-methods and content analyses. As a result, five categories were identified under the dimension of PMD: wayfinding tools, unexpected situations, lack of rest spots and walkability. Categories identified under the dimension of SI were local people, service providers and travel companions, and other tourists. Categories identified under the dimension of EP were traffic behaviour, occasioned activities, sense of direction, planning, and time-related anxiety. Urban destinations such as Helsinki can apply these results in practice, to make the movement of independently moving cruise passengers as effortless as possible, contributing to a better experience of the city space for both tourists and other city users. The proposed methodology could also be used to analyse other mobility-related phenomena.Peer reviewe

Deep learning to automate the labelling of head MRI datasets for computer vision applications

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to build a deep learning model to derive labels from neuroradiology reports and assign these to the corresponding examinations, overcoming a bottleneck to computer vision model development. METHODS: Reference-standard labels were generated by a team of neuroradiologists for model training and evaluation. Three thousand examinations were labelled for the presence or absence of any abnormality by manually scrutinising the corresponding radiology reports ('reference-standard report labels'); a subset of these examinations (n = 250) were assigned 'reference-standard image labels' by interrogating the actual images. Separately, 2000 reports were labelled for the presence or absence of 7 specialised categories of abnormality (acute stroke, mass, atrophy, vascular abnormality, small vessel disease, white matter inflammation, encephalomalacia), with a subset of these examinations (n = 700) also assigned reference-standard image labels. A deep learning model was trained using labelled reports and validated in two ways: comparing predicted labels to (i) reference-standard report labels and (ii) reference-standard image labels. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC-ROC) was used to quantify model performance. Accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and F1 score were also calculated. RESULTS: Accurate classification (AUC-ROC > 0.95) was achieved for all categories when tested against reference-standard report labels. A drop in performance (ΔAUC-ROC > 0.02) was seen for three categories (atrophy, encephalomalacia, vascular) when tested against reference-standard image labels, highlighting discrepancies in the original reports. Once trained, the model assigned labels to 121,556 examinations in under 30 min. CONCLUSIONS: Our model accurately classifies head MRI examinations, enabling automated dataset labelling for downstream computer vision applications. KEY POINTS: • Deep learning is poised to revolutionise image recognition tasks in radiology; however, a barrier to clinical adoption is the difficulty of obtaining large labelled datasets for model training. • We demonstrate a deep learning model which can derive labels from neuroradiology reports and assign these to the corresponding examinations at scale, facilitating the development of downstream computer vision models. • We rigorously tested our model by comparing labels predicted on the basis of neuroradiology reports with two sets of reference-standard labels: (1) labels derived by manually scrutinising each radiology report and (2) labels derived by interrogating the actual images

Prior knowledge and complacency in new product learning."

Our research examines the role of prior knowledge in learning new product information. Three studies demonstrate that, compared to consumers with lower prior knowledge, those with higher prior knowledge learn less about a new product. Further, higher knowledge consumers are able to learn more but learn less due to motivational deficits; inferior learning of new product information by those with higher prior knowledge is caused by inattention at encoding rather than reconstructive errors at retrieval. These results hold both when prior knowledge is manipulated experimentally (studies 1 and 2) and when it is an individual difference factor (study 3). M ost practitioners see consumer knowledge as an advantage, targeting many new products at expert heavy users. This strategy seems intuitively appealing when based on the assumption that experts have a learning or information processing advantage, proportionately higher levels of interest or involvement, and a greater likelihood of opinion-leadership. As Rogers (1995, p. 166) states, "When an adequate level of how-to knowledge is not obtained prior to the trial and adoption of an innovation, rejection and discontinuance are likely to result. To date, few diffusion investigations are available that deal with how-to knowledge." But are those with higher prior knowledge better able to learn about a new product offering? Fifty years of expertise research have culminated in two conflicting pictures Our research examines the role of prior knowledge in learning about new products in situations where new information makes existing product knowledge obsolete. We posit that, compared to consumers with lower prior knowledge, those with higher prior knowledge may learn less about the new *Stacy L. Wood is assistant professor of marketing, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208 (e-mail: [email protected]). John G. Lynch, Jr., is Hanes Corporation Foundation Professor of Business Administration, Duke University, Box 90120, Durham, NC 27708-0120 (email: [email protected]). The authors thank Joe Alba, Bill Bearden, Jim Bettman, Lisa Bolton, Wes Hutchinson, Randy Rose, the editor, associate editor, and three reviewers for helpful comments, and Scott Swain and Danny Wadden for exemplary research assistance. This research was partially funded by the Moore School of Business and the Fuqua School of Business. product. More important, we present evidence that this inferior learning is due to motivation at encoding rather than to retrieval errors. Those with higher prior knowledge incorrectly generalize from knowledge of existing products and assume that they already know how to use the new product properly. With the presence of certain cues at encoding, those with higher prior knowledge learn more. We demonstrate this result both when prior knowledge is manipulated experimentally and when it is a measured individual difference factor. There are almost as many definitions of "expertise" as researchers who study it (Shanteau 1992). Similar to Spence and Brucks (1997), we define degree of expertise as a function of the amount of domain-specific knowledge acquired through experience or training. This definition is not materially different from the concept of prior knowledge (PK). Thus, we first test our hypotheses by comparing consumers with experimentally induced levels of PK to avoid confounding with correlated constructs of involvement or self-perception of goals. We then replicate these results when real prior experience is measured, allowing us to tie our findings back to experience-based definitions in the expertise literature (e.g., Alba and Hutchinson 1987). HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT Advantages of High Prior Knowledge Cognitive science provides many examples of advantage in learning due to high PK Disadvantages of High Prior Knowledge Experts often fail to perform in accord with these processoriented advantages Overconfidence is a prevalent bias (Fischoff, Slovic, and Lichtenstein 1977); typically people assume that they know more than they do (e.g., Moorman 1999). One might expect that consumers with higher PK would be more overconfident (cf. Keren 1987). Repeated problem-solution patterns facilitate the formation of possibly inappropriate inference heuristics, which can subsequently lead to systematic biases (Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky 1982; The feeling-of-knowing phenomenon (Hart 1965) provides a further reason to expect poor performance by experts. Feelingof-knowing is a metacognitive preretrieval process in which one assesses one's memory for a memory Thus, overconfidence, use of heuristics, or FOK effects may cause knowledgeable consumers to inappropriately rely on self-generated inferences. Poor performance in this context could arise due to inference making at encoding of new information or at retrieval. For example, overconfidence might cause encoding errors due to superficial processing of new information or cause retrieval errors based on insufficient effort to retrieve new product information. Prior Knowledge Effects and New Product Innovation Little expertise research has examined reactions to product innovations. Will those with prior product category information be better able to learn how to use new products? Research in other domains has shown that expert superiority in learning or problem solving is strongly impacted by the external characteristics of the given task (e.g., Shanteau 1992). With a cognitive science approach, one might expect that consumers with a high degree of product category knowledge would be best able to learn about and use new products in that category. Behavioral decision researchers have reported results that seem on the surface to conflict. It is unclear, though, whether classic findings of expert disadvantage in consumer research should be viewed as reflecting a curse of expertise or completely adaptive behavior on the part of more knowledgeable consumers. A similar argument can be made for Bettman and Park's (1980) result that search is lower for high PK than for moderate PK consumers. Several of the disadvantages of PK noted are based on the knowledgeable consumers' complacency in reliance on old knowledge. Higher PK may lead to overconfidence (e.g., "I will learn this new software program in one night"), and this may abbreviate search or processing in a dysfunctional, superficial way. Similarly, the use of inappropriate schemas may be exacerbated by a strong familiarity-induced FOK. Thus, we hypothesize: H1: When obsolescence of PK is not cued explicitly, higher PK may lead to lower scores for new product learning compared to those consumers with lower PK. The argument that PK is not detrimental to learning when change is explicitly cued assumes that the negative effect of PK on learning new product information is due to shallow processing at encoding. In other words, when consumers with higher PK do not recognize that the new product represents a substantial change within the product category (i.e., PK has become obsolete or does not apply to the new product), they may not devote sufficient attentional resources to the learning task. This is in accord with We reason that, when motivated by recognition of change, higher PK consumers may devote the necessary resources to benefit from their enriched cognitive resources. H2: When obsolescence of PK is explicitly cued at the time of new product information exposure, higher PK consumers' scores for new product learning will improve relative to uncued scores more than is true for lower PK consumers. This motivation to process new information may occur naturally via the change cues. Moreau, In real innovation adoption contexts, expert consumers may be affected by the correlated constructs of prior domain knowledge and increased product category involvement STUDY 1: PRIOR KNOWLEDGE AND NEW PRODUCT LEARNING The goal of the first study was to test the influence of PK about allergy medications on the learning of information about a new allergy remedy (hypotheses 1 and 2). To avoid confounds with involvement, we chose to manipulate PK. We PRIOR KNOWLEDGE AND NEW PRODUCTS 419 FIGURE 1 CONCEPTUAL-PROCEDURAL DIAGRAM NOTE.-The dotted arrows indicate that incentive timing differed by study. Motivational incentives occurred only at encoding in study 1 and either before or after encoding in studies 2 and 3. The dashed arrows represent conceptual influence of prior knowledge on new product learning. chose a product category about which our respondents would have low PK and administered a training exercise to the high PK group prior to receipt of new product information. We manipulated the observable newness of the new product by altering superficial similarity of the new product to the old product. The purpose of this manipulation was to determine if a salient newness cue would promote more careful processing by higher PK participants. If higher PK participants make inappropriate inferences or use shallow processing because they are unaware of substantive changes in the product category, this newness cue might trigger better performance by higher PK than by lower PK participants. Without the cue, we expected experts to learn less new product information than novices. We chose allergy medications because there is a clear relationship between proper use and efficacy with pharmaceutical products. If a drug that should be taken on an empty stomach is taken with food, it may not work effectively, or it may cause unexpected side effects. Thus, if subjects score poorly on a test of usage instructions (and this is indicative of their actual behavior), we can plausibly assume that these subjects risk subpar product performance and perhaps even severe illness or death. For ethical reasons, the new product we introduced was fictional at the time of the studies, but it is similar to Claritin (loratadine), introduced in 1994. Method Design. A 2 (Higher versus Lower Prior Knowledge) # 2 (Drug Form) # 2 (Side Effects) between-subjects design tested the influence of expertise on learning and intended usage. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of eight conditions. To manipulate PK, participants read an information booklet on either allergy medications or toothwhitening processes. Those who read about allergy medications were designated as higher PK, while those who read about tooth-whitening processes were lower PK. The new product introduced later in the session was a new hybrid antihistamine. Two newness cue factors, Drug Form and Side Effects, manipulated the superficial similarity of the new medicines to existing medicines. For Drug Form, the new product was shown to be either a pill (similar to existing products, thus no newness cue) or a topical patch (dissimilar to existing products, providing a newness cue). For Side Effects, the new medicine was reported to have 420 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH few side effects (similar to existing products, thus no newness cue) or no side effects (dissimilar to existing products, providing a newness cue). Drug Form produced no effects on any dependent variable, so the results reported below collapse across this factor. One hundred and eighty-eight students at the University of South Carolina participated in the experiment for course credit. Sixty-five subjects who indicated that they had suffered from allergies in the past were eliminated from the data analysis. Mean responses for both the eliminated sufferers and the remaining subjects will be reported in the results section. Results of reported analyses replicate when these sufferers are included, however, we exclude them because, when the training manipulation is layered on existing PK, it is theoretically nonobvious whether the potential resultant increase in knowledge will outweigh the potential increase in overconfidence. Procedure. Each session lasted one hour and was conducted in groups of two to 12 participants. After a study introduction, participants read general product category information booklets, ostensibly as a warm-up task. Participants in the higher PK condition read about allergy medications. Participants in the lower PK condition read about tooth-whitening processes. Both information booklets were similarly structured and contained similar amounts of information. After this, the booklets were taken from the participants, and the manipulation check-a short general knowledge test on allergies and allergy medications-was administered. Finally, participants read an information booklet that contained information about a new product, a hybrid antihistamine allergy medication. This information was prefaced with the true statement that most allergies are developed in the early to mid-twenties, and it was hoped that this knowledge would motivate active consideration of the new medication. Participants were given as much time as they desired to read about the new product. The brochure did not differ between conditions except for the picture of the medicine (shown as a pill or a patch) and the description that "Certizol does not interact with known medications and has few (no) side effects." The text contained some new product information and usage instructions that were congruent with existing products; however, some information and instructions differed from the PK. This represented the obsolescence of some PK common in product innovation. Then, the product information was removed, and participants responded to a survey about the new product in which items were embedded pertaining to current/past experience with allergy medications, confidence, participants' purchase intentions if an allergy were later developed, and a quiz concerning proper usage of the new medication. This quiz constituted the important dependent variable to measure new product learning. (See example questions in table 1.) The quiz tested subjects on their knowledge of how to use the new medication properly (i.e., "this medicine should be taken at night") and only covered information that was similar across all conditions

Radio emission and mass loss rate limits of four young solar-type stars

Aims. Observations of free-free continuum radio emission of four young main-sequence solar-type stars (EK Dra, p1UMa, ?1Ori, and ?1Cet) are studied to detect stellar winds or at least to place upper limits on their thermal radio emission, which is dominated by the ionized wind. The stars in our sample are members of The Sun in Time programme and cover ages of ~0.1-0.65 Gyr on the main-sequence. They are similar in magnetic activity to the Sun and thus are excellent proxies for representing the young Sun. Upper limits on mass loss rates for this sample of stars are calculated using their observational radio emission. Our aim is to re-examine the faint young Sun paradox by assuming that the young Sun was more massive in its past, and hence to find a possible solution for this famous problem. Methods. The observations of our sample are performed with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) with excellent sensitivity, using the C-band receiver from 4-8 GHz and the Ku-band from 12-18 GHz. Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillitmeter Array (ALMA) observations are performed at 100 GHz. The Common Astronomy Software Application (CASA) package is used for the data preparation, reduction, calibration, and imaging. For the estimation of the mass loss limits, spherically symmetric winds and stationary, anisotropic, ionized winds are assumed. We compare our results to 1) mass loss rate estimates of theoretical rotational evolution models; and 2) to results of the indirect technique of determining mass loss rates: Lyman-a absorption. Results. We are able to derive the most stringent direct upper limits on mass loss so far from radio observations. Two objects, EK Dra and ?1Ori, are detected at 6 and 14 GHz down to an excellent noise level. These stars are very active and additional radio emission identified as non-thermal emission was detected, but limits for the mass loss rates of these objects are still derived. The emission of ?1Ori does not come from the main target itself, but from its M-dwarf companion. The stars p1UMa and ?1Cet were not detected in either C-band or in Ku-band. For these objects we give upper limits to their radio free-free emission and calculate upper limits to their mass loss rates. Finally, we reproduce the evolution of the Sun and derive an estimate for the solar mass of the Sun at a younger age

Rapid progression of prostate cancer in men with a BRCA2 mutation.

Men with BRCA2 mutations have been found to be at increased risk of developing prostate cancer. There is a recent report that BRCA2 carriers with prostate cancer have poorer survival than noncarrier prostate cancer patients. In this study, we compared survival of men with a BRCA2 mutation and prostate cancer with that of men with a BRCA1 mutation and prostate cancer. We obtained the age at diagnosis, age at death or current age from 182 men with prostate cancer from families with a BRCA2 mutation and from 119 men with prostate cancer from families with a BRCA1 mutation. The median survival from diagnosis was 4.0 years for men with a BRCA2 mutation vs 8.0 years for men with a BRCA1 mutation, and the difference was highly significant (P<0.01). It may be important to develop targeted chemotherapies to treat prostate cancer in men with a BRCA2 mutation

A Helicity-Based Method to Infer the CME Magnetic Field Magnitude in Sun and Geospace: Generalization and Extension to Sun-Like and M-Dwarf Stars and Implications for Exoplanet Habitability

Patsourakos et al. (Astrophys. J. 817, 14, 2016) and Patsourakos and Georgoulis (Astron. Astrophys. 595, A121, 2016) introduced a method to infer the axial magnetic field in flux-rope coronal mass ejections (CMEs) in the solar corona and farther away in the interplanetary medium. The method, based on the conservation principle of magnetic helicity, uses the relative magnetic helicity of the solar source region as input estimates, along with the radius and length of the corresponding CME flux rope. The method was initially applied to cylindrical force-free flux ropes, with encouraging results. We hereby extend our framework along two distinct lines. First, we generalize our formalism to several possible flux-rope configurations (linear and nonlinear force-free, non-force-free, spheromak, and torus) to investigate the dependence of the resulting CME axial magnetic field on input parameters and the employed flux-rope configuration. Second, we generalize our framework to both Sun-like and active M-dwarf stars hosting superflares. In a qualitative sense, we find that Earth may not experience severe atmosphere-eroding magnetospheric compression even for eruptive solar superflares with energies ~ 10^4 times higher than those of the largest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) X-class flares currently observed. In addition, the two recently discovered exoplanets with the highest Earth-similarity index, Kepler 438b and Proxima b, seem to lie in the prohibitive zone of atmospheric erosion due to interplanetary CMEs (ICMEs), except when they possess planetary magnetic fields that are much higher than that of Earth.Comment: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017SoPh..292...89

The Random Nature of Genome Architecture: Predicting Open Reading Frame Distributions

Background: A better understanding of the size and abundance of open reading frames (ORFS) in whole genomes may shed light on the factors that control genome complexity. Here we examine the statistical distributions of open reading frames (i.e. distribution of start and stop codons) in the fully sequenced genomes of 297 prokaryotes, and 14 eukaryotes. Methodology/Principal Findings: By fitting mixture models to data from whole genome sequences we show that the size-frequency distributions for ORFS are strikingly similar across prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes. Moreover, we show that i) a large fraction (60–80%) of ORF size-frequency distributions can be predicted a priori with a stochastic assembly model based on GC content, and that (ii) size-frequency distributions of the remaining “non-random” ORFs are well-fitted by log-normal or gamma distributions, and similar to the size distributions of annotated proteins. Conclusions/Significance: Our findings suggest stochastic processes have played a primary role in the evolution of genome complexity, and that common processes govern the conservation and loss of functional genomics units in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes.8 page(s