Atom Scattering from Disordered Surfaces in the Sudden Approximation: Double Collisions Effects and Quantum Liquids

The Sudden Approximation (SA) for scattering of atoms from surfaces is generalized to allow for double collision events and scattering from time-dependent quantum liquid surfaces. The resulting new schemes retain the simplicity of the original SA, while requiring little extra computational effort. The results suggest that inert atom (and in particular He) scattering can be used profitably to study hitherto unexplored forms of complex surface disorder.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure. Related papers available at http://neon.cchem.berkeley.edu/~dan

Conceptualization of the Human-Machine Symbiosis – A Literature Review

The vision of a symbiotic partnership between humans and machines has existed since the 1960s. With this paper we provide the first conceptualization of the human-machine symbiosis (HMS) and make three important contributions: we present the fundamentals of HMS by focusing on objectives, requirements, and boundaries; we propose a framework for the design of HMS; and we review HMS research and, specifically, what the literature says with respect to whether HMS has already been achieved

Transcriptional profiling of mouse peripheral nerves to the single-cell level to build a sciatic nerve ATlas (SNAT)

Peripheral nerves are organ-like structures containing diverse cell types to optimize function. This interactive assembly includes mostly axon-associated Schwann cells, but also endothelial cells of supporting blood vessels, immune system-associated cells, barrier-forming cells of the perineurium surrounding and protecting nerve fascicles, and connective tissue-resident cells within the intra-fascicular endoneurium and inter-fascicular epineurium. We have established transcriptional profiles of mouse sciatic nerve-inhabitant cells to foster the fundamental understanding of peripheral nerves. To achieve this goal, we have combined bulk RNA sequencing of developing sciatic nerves up to the adult with focused bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing of Schwann cells throughout postnatal development, extended by single-cell transcriptome analysis of the full sciatic nerve both perinatally and in the adult. The results were merged in the transcriptome resource Sciatic Nerve ATlas (SNAT: https://www.snat.ethz.ch). We anticipate that insights gained from our multi-layered analysis will serve as valuable interactive reference point to guide future studies

Self-interest, beliefs, and policy opinions: understanding how economic beliefs affect immigration policy preferences

Research on how economic factors affect attitudes toward immigration often focuses on labor market effects, concluding that, because workers’ skill levels do not predict opposition to low- versus highly skilled immigration, economic self-interest does not shape policy attitudes. We conduct a new survey to measure beliefs about a range of economic, political, and cultural consequences of immigration. When economic self-interest is broadened to include concerns about the fiscal burdens created by immigration, beliefs about these economic effects strongly correlate with immigration attitudes and explain a significant share of the difference in support for highly versus low-skilled immigration. Although cultural factors are important, our results suggest that previous work underestimates the importance of economic self-interest as a source of immigration policy preferences and attitudes more generally

Ballot secrecy concerns and voter mobilization: new experimental evidence about message source, context, and the duration of mobilization effects

Recent research finds that doubts about the integrity of the secret ballot as an institution persist among the American public. We build on this finding by providing novel field experimental evidence about how information about ballot secrecy protections can increase turnout among registered voters who had not previously voted. First, we show that a private group’s mailing designed to address secrecy concerns modestly increased turnout in the highly contested 2012 Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election. Second, we exploit this and an earlier field experiment conducted in Connecticut during the 2010 congressional midterm election season to identify the persistent effects of such messages from both governmental and non-governmental sources. Together, these results provide new evidence about how message source and campaign context affect efforts to mobilize previous non-voters by addressing secrecy concerns, as well as show that attempting to address these beliefs increases long term participation

Subtle linguistic cues may not affect voter behavior: new evidence

One of the most important recent developments in social psychology is the discovery of minor interventions that have large and enduring effects on behavior. A leading example of this class of results is Bryan et al. (2011), which shows that administering a set of survey items worded so that subjects think of themselves as voters (noun treatment) rather than as voting (verb treatment) substantially increases political participation (voter turnout) among subjects. We revisit these experiments by replicating and extending their research design in a large-scale field experiment. In contrast to the 11 to 14 percentage point greater turnout among those exposed to the noun rather than verb treatment reported in Bryan et al. (2011), we find no statistically significant difference in turnout between the noun and verb treatments (the point estimate of the difference is approximately zero). Further, when we benchmark these treatments against a standard get-outthe- vote message, we find that both are less effective at increasing turnout than a much shorter basic mobilization message. In sum, in our experiments, we find no evidence that describing a subject as a voter rather than as voting has a positive relative or absolute effect on subject behavior. In our conclusion, we detail how our study differs from Bryan et al. (2011) and discuss how our results might be interpreted

Predictors of a Healthy Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire (EDE-Q) Score 1 Year After Bariatric Surgery

BACKGROUND: Bariatric surgery (BS) has been shown to ameliorate health-related quality of life and eating disorder symptoms. However, the correlation of these changes with weight loss is not uniform, suggesting that additional factors have an impact on postoperative outcomes. OBJECTIVE: To assess the impact of BS on eating disorder symptoms at 1 year postoperatively and to generate predictive models for the achievement of optimal eating behavior. METHODS: Retrospective cohort study on a prospectively collected database of all consecutive patients who underwent primary BS in our academic center between January 2015 and March 2017. Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire (EDE-Q) was used to measure eating psychopathology. Logistic regression was used to estimate the odds ratio of achieving "healthy" EDE-Q at 1 year. Missing data was handled by multiple imputations for the regression model. RESULTS: Two-hundred thirty-four patients were included. A complete-case analysis in 135 cases showed a "healthy" EDE-Q in 27.4% at baseline and in 83.7% at 1 year (difference = 56.3%, P = 0.018). Only the baseline EDE-Q "healthy" status influenced significantly the odds of achieving "healthy" EDE-Q at 1 year (OR 6.7, 95% CI 1.18-38.14, P = 0.04). CONCLUSION: BS seems to promote successful treatment of self-reported eating disorder symptoms during the first postoperative year. The achievement of optimal results is independent of age, sex, weight loss, obesity-related comorbidity status, surgical technique, or 30-day surgical complications. Future studies, using validated questionnaires specifically designed to investigate eating behavior after BS and/or direct measurements of the eating behavior are needed to clarify the underlying neuropsychologic mechanisms that drive the observed postoperative changes

Inversion of Randomly Corrugated Surfaces Structure from Atom Scattering Data

The Sudden Approximation is applied to invert structural data on randomly corrugated surfaces from inert atom scattering intensities. Several expressions relating experimental observables to surface statistical features are derived. The results suggest that atom (and in particular He) scattering can be used profitably to study hitherto unexplored forms of complex surface disorder.Comment: 10 pages, no figures. Related papers available at http://neon.cchem.berkeley.edu/~dan