Investigating How Anticipation of Object States Drives Event Comprehension

Previous literature has suggested that, when given change of state events in a visual world paradigm task, individuals anticipate either the object that can be acted upon or the goal. This study investigated under what circumstances an individual anticipates one over the other. We used reversible action verbs (e.g. open/close), destruction verbs (e.g., eat), and creation verbs (e.g., knit) in the past and future tense to investigate how anticipation differs across these conditions. Individuals heard sentences such as The woman will open the umbrella while seeing four objects on a screen: the initial state (e.g., a closed umbrella), the end state (e.g., an open umbrella), and two distractors. The eye-tracking data showed that, for reversible action verbs and creation verbs, individuals anticipated the end state significantly more than the initial state in the past tense and future tense. For destruction verbs, no significant differences were found, but participants showed numerically more looks to the end state in the past tense and the initial state in the future tense. These results suggest that, in the past tense, individuals anticipate the goal of the action, which is also the object that can be acted on. In the future tense, individuals anticipate the goal most with fewer looks to the object that can be acted on. For the destruction verbs, the goal is not depicted, so individuals look most to the object to be acted upon

The embedding of the traveling salesman problem in a Markov Decision Process

In this paper we derive a new LP-relaxation of the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP, for short). This formulation comes from first embedding the TSP in a Markov Decision Process (MDP: for short), and from perturbing this MDP appropriately

Higher Ed\u27s Carbon Addiction

Each year higher education produces millions of metric tons of greenhouse gases (GHG). As research and study abroad programs span the globe, faculty and staff travel regularly to professional meetings. Colleges compete for prospective students and offer state-of-the-art technology, entertainment, food services, and other high-impact facilities. Universities that market a comfortable, stimulating campus in order to attract and retain talent may resist carbon budgeting, as combustion of dirty fossil fuels currently remains vital to the operation of most campus buildings, sport fields, and labs. Universities are integral to climate science knowledge production. Nevertheless, policymakers in many academic institutions appear unaware of important contributions from climate scholars, even those within their campus community. Experts have called for rapid and significant reduction in GHGs to mitigate the devastating effects of climate-related food insecurity, war and conflict, forced migration, economic loss, water shortages, biodiversity loss, polar and glacial ice melt, sea level rise, and ocean acidification. Higher education professionals show they are ill-prepared for climate governance when climate change science does not influence policy or action. In particular, transition away from high carbon-emitting energy sources such as coal and oil is essential to limit climate disruption (Hansen et al. 2013). Multiple pathways for energy transition are increasingly part of ongoing debates on college campuses. Paradoxically, scholarly research assessing fossil fuel divestment remains scant, suggesting an urgent need for comprehensive data collection and analysis

Excerpts from Peter Krass's Lecture "Andrew Carnegie: Ruthless Empire Builder and Pioneering Philanthropist"

“What I came to realize about Carnegie is that he is really like a flawed Shakespearean hero… he really did consider the world a stage… and when he was on that stage he wore a variety of masks and behind each mask was a distinct character and you really could not reconcile various characters.” “He would attempt to promote himself and ideas in one direction, but practically speaking it didn’t work. You get an idea that there are these two sides to Carnegie, this idealist side and this practical man.

Prevalence, prescribing and barriers to effective management of hypertension in older populations: a narrative review.

OBJECTIVES: Hypertension is the leading modifiable cause of mortality worldwide. Unlike many conditions where limited evidence exists for management of older individuals, multiple large, robust trials have provided a solid evidence-base regarding the management of hypertension in older adults. Understanding the impact of age on how the prevalence of hypertension and the role of pharmacotherapy in managing hypertension among older persons is a critical element is the provision of optimal health care for older populations. The aim of this study was to explore how the prevalence of hypertension changes with age, the evidence regarding pharmacological management in older adults and to identify known barriers to the optimal management of hypertension in older patients. METHODS: A review of English language studies published prior to 2013 in Medline, Embase and Google scholar was conducted. Key search terms included hypertension, pharmacotherapy, and aged. RESULTS: The prevalence of hypertension was shown to increase with age, however there is good evidence for the use of a number of pharmacological agents to control blood pressure in older populations. System, physician and patient related barriers to optimal blood pressure control were identified. CONCLUSIONS: Despite good evidence for pharmacological management of hypertension among olderpopulations, under treatment of hypertension is an issue. Concerns regarding adverse effects appearcentral to under treatment of hypertension among older populations

Behind The Curve: The National Media\u27s Reporting on Global Warming

In July 2004, eight States, the City of New York and three land trusts filed suit against five electric power corporations for contributing to global warming. The complaints allege that the defendants are the largest global warming polluters in the United States. The plaintiffs seek an injunction under the federal common law of public nuisance, or in the alternative, under state nuisance law, to require the power companies to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide. Press coverage of the plaintiffs’ global warming case so far has been mixed. The press has generally failed to understand several of the important legal principles involved, including the legal doctrine of public nuisance. The legal case takes place against a backdrop of a long campaign of distortion by industry relating to the science of global warming that has affected the reporting on global warming generally. Historically, the press has unwittingly distorted coverage of global warming science by uncritically accepting the industry view that the science is in dispute

Nanoladder cantilevers made from diamond and silicon

We present a "nanoladder" geometry that minimizes the mechanical dissipation of ultrasensitive cantilevers. A nanoladder cantilever consists of a lithographically patterned scaffold of rails and rungs with feature size $\sim$ 100 nm. Compared to a rectangular beam of the same dimensions, the mass and spring constant of a nanoladder are each reduced by roughly two orders of magnitude. We demonstrate a low force noise of $158 (+62)(-42)\,$zN and $190 (+42)(-33)\,$zN in a one-Hz bandwidth for devices made from silicon and diamond, respectively, measured at temperatures between 100--150 mK. As opposed to bottom-up mechanical resonators like nanowires or nanotubes, nanoladder cantilevers can be batch-fabricated using standard lithography, which is a critical factor for applications in scanning force microscopy

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR TWO INGOT ROLLING OPERATIONS IN A HOT REVERSING MILL

A method of rolling ingots includes rolling a first ingot with a hot reversing mill such that the first ingot is partially rolled. The method includes moving the partially rolled ingot downstream from the hot reversing mill and performing intermediate processing of the partially rolled first ingot. While performing intermediate processing of the partially rolled first ingot, the method includes rolling a second ingot with the hot reversing mill such that the second ingot is partially rolled. After performing intermediate processing of the partially rolled first ingot, the method includes storing the partially rolled second ingot, returning the partially rolled first ingot to the hot reversing mill, and rolling the partially rolled first ingot to a rolled first product. A rolling system may roll two ingots in parallel

Percentile objective criteria in limiting average Markov Control Problems

Infinite horizon Markov Control Problems, or Markov Decision Processes (MDP's, for short), have been extensively studied since the 1950's. One of the most commonly considered versions is the so-called "limiting average reward" model. In this model the controller aims to maximize the expected value of the limit-average ("long-run average") of an infinite stream of single-stage rewards or outputs. There are now a number of good algorithms for computing optimal deterministic policies in the limiting average MDP's. In this paper we adopt the point of view that there are many natural situations where the controller is interested in finding a policy that will achieve a sufficiently high long-run average reward, that is, a target level with a sufficiently high probability, that is, a percentile