Prizes versus Wages with Envy and Pride

We show that if agents are risk neutral, prizes outperform wages when there is sufficient pride and envy relative to the noisiness of performance. If agents are risk averse, prizes are a necessary supplement to wages (as bonuses).Envy, Pride, Wages, Prizes, Bonus

Children hold owners responsible when property causes harm

Since ancient times, legal systems have held owners responsible for harm caused by their property. Across 4 experiments, we show that children aged 3–7 also hold owners responsible for such harm. Older children judge that owners should repair harm caused by property, and younger children may do this as well. Younger and older children judge that owners should apologize for harm, even when children do not believe the owners allowed the harm to occur. Children are also as likely to hold owners responsible for harm caused by property as for harm caused by the owners themselves. The present findings contribute to psychological accounts of ownership by showing that ownership not only confers rights to control property, but also responsibility for harm caused by property. The findings also contribute to our understanding of the attribution of responsibility, and challenge accounts claiming that directly causing harm, or allowing it to happen, is a prerequisite for responsibility. The findings provide support for an account claiming that property is an extension of its owner, and likewise reveal that responsibility for harm caused by property is an early developing aspect of the psychology of ownership. 2018 APA, all rights reserved

Gaussian Belief Propagation Based Multiuser Detection

In this work, we present a novel construction for solving the linear multiuser detection problem using the Gaussian Belief Propagation algorithm. Our algorithm yields an efficient, iterative and distributed implementation of the MMSE detector. We compare our algorithm's performance to a recent result and show an improved memory consumption, reduced computation steps and a reduction in the number of sent messages. We prove that recent work by Montanari et al. is an instance of our general algorithm, providing new convergence results for both algorithms.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figures, appeared in the 2008 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, Toronto, July 200

A community health support system for the planning of healthy cities

Communities are at the centre of concern for sustainable development, and they are entitled to a healthy and productive life, in harmony with the natural environment. Therefore, assuring equitable and effective health services through community and environmental health planning is an important factor for promoting sustainable development and constructing harmonious societies. Environmental and community health is crucial for the development of sustainable and healthy cities. One of the important pre-requisites of developing a sustainable and healthy city is a sound planning and development mechanism. This paper aims to investigate the challenges and opportunities of planning for healthy cities, and examine the effectiveness of participatory decision making systems in the development of healthy communities. It also introduces a recently developed methodology based on a web-based decision support system. This system contributes to solving environmental and community health problems, supports planning of healthy cities, and provides a powerful and effective platform for stakeholders and interested members of the community to confer with technicians, experts and decision makers. The primary focus is on the prospects and constraints of such a decision support system in improving community health behaviours, health planning, surveillance in urban communities, and environmental planning. The effectiveness of the web-based decision support system is measured by using the following yardsticks: increasing cooperation between stakeholders and the general public; improving the accuracy and quality of the decision-making process; and enhancing healthcare services of the locality. The paper tables the preliminary findings of the initial implementation of the decision support system in a pilot case study of the city of Logan, Australia, and concludes with future research directions

Disentangling the Origin and Heating Mechanism of Supernova Dust: Late-Time Spitzer Spectroscopy of the Type IIn SN 2005ip

This paper presents late-time near-infrared and {\it Spitzer} mid-infrared photometric and spectroscopic observations of warm dust in the Type IIn SN 2005ip in NGC 2906. The spectra show evidence for two dust components with different temperatures. Spanning the peak of the thermal emission, these observations provide strong constraints on the dust mass, temperature, and luminosity, which serve as critical diagnostics for disentangling the origin and heating mechanism of each component. The results suggest the warmer dust has a mass of $\sim 5 \times 10^{-4}~$\msolar, originates from newly formed dust in the ejecta, or possibly the cool, dense shell, and is continuously heated by the circumstellar interaction. By contrast, the cooler component likely originates from a circumstellar shock echo that forms from the heating of a large, pre-existing dust shell $\sim 0.01 - 0.05$~\msolar~by the late-time circumstellar interaction. The progenitor wind velocity derived from the blue edge of the He 1 1.083 \micron~P Cygni profile indicates a progenitor eruption likely formed this dust shell $\sim$100 years prior to the supernova explosion, which is consistent with a Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) progenitor star.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, Accepted to Ap

Evaporation of a two-dimensional charged black hole

We construct a dilatonic two-dimensional model of a charged black hole. The classical solution is a static charged black hole, characterized by two parameters, $m$ and $q$, representing the black hole's mass and charge. Then we study the semiclassical effects, and calculate the evaporation rate of both $m$ and $q$, as a function of these two quantities. Analyzing this dynamical system, we find two qualitatively different regimes, depending on the electromagnetic coupling constant $g_{A}$. If the latter is greater than a certain critical value, the charge-to-mass ratio decays to zero upon evaporation. On the other hand, for $g_{A}$ smaller than the critical value, the charge-to-mass ratio approaches a non-zero constant that depends on $g_{A}$ but not on the initial values of $m$ and $q$.Comment: Latex, 30 pages, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Cauchy horizon singularity without mass inflation

A perturbed Reissner-Nordstr\"om-de Sitter solution is used to emphasize the nature of the singularity along the Cauchy horizon of a charged spherically symmetric black hole. For these solutions, conditions may prevail under which the mass function is bounded and yet the curvature scalar $R_{\alpha\beta\gamma\delta} R^{\alpha\beta\gamma\delta}$ diverges.Comment: typeset in RevTex, 13 page