Visuals Dominate Investor Decisions about Entrepreneurial Pitches

Entrepreneurs and investors often deem substantive content to be particularly important as they evaluate the potential value of business propositions. Yet across 12 studies and 1,855 participants using live entrepreneurial pitch competitions, silent videos—but not sound recordings, video-with-sound recordings, or pitch transcriptions—best allowed both experts and novices to identify the original investors' selections of winning entrepreneurial pitches. These results suggest that people’s judgment may be highly influenced by visual information. Further, people do not seem to fully recognize how much visual information factors into their decisions, such that they neglect the more substantive metrics that they explicitly cite and value as core to their decisions. The findings highlight the power of dynamic visual cues—including gestures, facial expressions, and body language—and demonstrate that visible passion can dominate the content of business propositions in entrepreneurial pitch competitions

Leptospirosis Pulmonary Hemorrhage Syndrome In Salvador, Brazil From 2003 - 2012

ABSTRACT Objective: Leptospirosis pulmonary hemorrhage syndrome (LPHS) is a severe form of leptospirosis, with a case fatality rate exceeding 50%. Recently, LPHS has become the principal cause of mortality in leptospirosis patients in Salvador, Brazil. This study aims to describe the epidemiology of LPHS since 2003, characterize its clinical presentation, and identify risk factors. Methods: Patients admitted between January 1, 2003 and December 31, 2012 in the active hospital-based surveillance who met the clinical case definition for leptospirosis were included in the study. A standardized questionnaire was used to collect data from patient charts and in-person interviews. Unadjusted logistic regression models identified individual-level risk factors. Maps showing spatial distribution and clustering of leptospirosis cases were created to identify areas of high risk. Results: We identified 1,316 patients meeting our case definition, which included 113 LPHS, 184 NHPL, and 1019 NPL cases. Males were at greater risk for LPHS in all age groups. The LPHS-associated mortality was 65.5% (95% CI: 56.33-73.63), compared to 30.4% and 6.2% for NHPL and NPL cases, respectively. A lower microagglutination test (MAT) titer compared for LPHS compared to NPL cases in the acute phase suggests the absence of an early robust immune response. A high-risk LPHS cluster (p= 0.01) was identified and rat sightings was associated with NHPL patients (OR: 2.77, 95% CI: 1.23-6.23). Limited unique clinical correlates observed in patients with pulmonary manifestations compared to non-pulmonary forms of leptospirosis. Conclusion: We describe the clinical features and epidemiology of LPHS in Salvador, Brazil, since its emergence in 2003. Few clinical correlates were identified between LPHS and NHPL patients, suggesting that leptospirosis is a disease on a clinical spectrum. Multidimensional control measures focusing on areas of high risk are necessary to reduce the burden of leptospirosis

Harmful Attributions: The Role of Mind Perception

Introduction: Drawing from literature in social and clinical psychology, we explore mechanisms associated with the lack of empathy for people who engage in self-injurious behaviors. Methods: Using implicit and explicit measures across three samples, we tested whether knowledge of prior self-injury impacts observers’ empathy, perceived agency, perspective taking, and willingness to help a target individual. Results: We found in Studies 1-2 that observers report decreased empathy, perceive less agency, and make more dispositional attributions toward a person who engages in deliberate self-injury, compared to accidental injury. Study 3 indicates that observers perceive a target who engaged in deliberate selfinjury to have lower agency. Furthermore, when evaluating a target who has been victimized, observers report less empathy, compassion, and likelihood of helping if the target has a history of deliberate self-injury. Perceived agency accounted for decreased empathy, whereas empathy accounted for lower likelihood of helping. Discussion: Our findings imply that observers may be better able to empathize with people with a history of self-injury if they focus on the agency of the individual and situational causal explanations for the behavior

Radiative diffusivity factors in cirrus and stratocumulus clouds: Application to two-stream models

A diffusion-like description of radiative transfer in clouds and the free atmosphere is often used. The two stream model is probably the best known example of such a description. The main idea behind the approach is that only the first few moments of radiance are needed to describe the radiative field correctly. Integration smooths details of the angular distribution of specific intensity and it is assumed that the closure parameters of the theory (diffusivity factors) are only weakly dependent on the distribution. The diffusivity factors are investigated using the results obtained from both Stratocumulus and Cirrus phases of FIRE experiment. A new theoretical framework is described in which two (upwards and downwards) diffusivity factors are used and a detailed multistream model is used to provide further insight about both the diffusivity factors and their dependence on scattering properties of clouds

New generation methods for spur, helical, and spiral-bevel gears

New methods for generating spur, helical, and spiral-bevel gears are proposed. These methods provide the gears with conjugate gear tooth surfaces, localized bearing contact, and reduced sensitivity to gear misalignment. Computer programs have been developed for simulating gear meshing and bearing contact

Multivariate dynamic kernels for financial time series forecasting

The final publication is available at http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-44781-0_40We propose a forecasting procedure based on multivariate dynamic kernels, with the capability of integrating information measured at different frequencies and at irregular time intervals in financial markets. A data compression process redefines the original financial time series into temporal data blocks, analyzing the temporal information of multiple time intervals. The analysis is done through multivariate dynamic kernels within support vector regression. We also propose two kernels for financial time series that are computationally efficient without a sacrifice on accuracy. The efficacy of the methodology is demonstrated by empirical experiments on forecasting the challenging S&P500 market.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Spiral bevel and circular arc helical gears: Tooth contact analysis and the effect of misalignment on circular arc helical gears

A computer aided method for tooth contact analysis was developed and applied. Optimal machine-tool settings for spiral bevel gears are proposed and when applied indicated that kinematic errors can be minimized while maintaining a desirable bearing contact. The effect of misalignment for circular arc helical gears was investigated and the results indicted that directed pinion refinishing can compensate the kinematic errors due to misalignment

An Outlook on Correlations in Stock Prices

We present an outlook of the studies on correlations in the price timeseries of stocks, discussing the construction and applications of "asset tree". The topic discussed here should illustrate how the complex economic system (financial market) enrichens the list of existing dynamical systems that physicists have been studying for long.Comment: 6 pages, RevTeX format. To appear in the Conference Proceedings of ECONOPHYS-KOLKATA II: International Workshop on Econophysics of Stock Markets and Minority Games", February 14-17, 2006, SINP, Kolkata, as a book chapter in Eds. A. Chatterjee and B.K. Chakrabarti, Econophysics of Stock and other Markets, (Springer-Verlag (Italia), Milan, 2006