Phonetic Similarity in Brand Name Innovation

When developing a new brand name, similarity of the new brand name to an existing brand name may affect perceptions of the new brand name. However, marketers typically have little guidance on the optimal level of similarity versus originality. Based on linguistic theory, we develop a method to determine this optimal level. In four experiments, we examine the phonetic similarity of a company’s new brand names to the company’s original brand name, implementing a highly controlled methodology based on linguistic rules. When pre-existing attitudes towards a company are positive, an inverted U-shaped pattern is observed in brand name attitudes, such that moderate levels of phonetic similarity are preferred over closer or more distant levels of phonetic similarity. When pre-existing attitudes towards a company are negative, an opposite, U-shaped pattern is observed, such that moderate levels of phonetic similarity are less preferred over closer or more distant levels of phonetic similarity. However, when there are no pre-existing attitudes towards the company, a direct, linear relation between phonetic similarity and attitudes is observed, such that close levels are preferred over moderate levels which, in turn, are preferred over distant levels, consistent with a simple familiarity effect on brand name attitudes.Brand Names, Linguistics, Attitudes

Nodal inequalities on surfaces

Given a Laplace eigenfunction on a surface, we study the distribution of its extrema on the nodal domains. It is classically known that the absolute value of the eigenfunction is asymptotically bounded by the 4-th root of the eigenvalue. It turns out that the number of nodal domains where the eigenfunction has an extremum of such order, remains bounded as the eigenvalue tends to infinity. We also observe that certain restrictions on the distribution of nodal extrema and a version of the Courant nodal domain theorem are valid for a rather wide class of functions on surfaces. These restrictions follow from a bound in the spirit of Kronrod and Yomdin on the average number of connected components of level sets.Comment: 14 pages, added a discussion of a connection with the Alexandrov-Backelman-Pucci inequalit

Soft Carrier Multiplications by Hot Electrons in Graphene

By using Boltzmann formalism, we show that carrier multiplication by impact ionization can take place at relatively low electric fields during electronic transport in graphene. Because of the absence of energy gap, this effect is not characterized by a field threshold unlike in conventional semiconductors, but is a quadratic function of the electric field. We also show that the resulting current is an increasing function of the electronic temperature, but decreases with increasing carrier concentration

Deep Active Learning for Named Entity Recognition

Deep learning has yielded state-of-the-art performance on many natural language processing tasks including named entity recognition (NER). However, this typically requires large amounts of labeled data. In this work, we demonstrate that the amount of labeled training data can be drastically reduced when deep learning is combined with active learning. While active learning is sample-efficient, it can be computationally expensive since it requires iterative retraining. To speed this up, we introduce a lightweight architecture for NER, viz., the CNN-CNN-LSTM model consisting of convolutional character and word encoders and a long short term memory (LSTM) tag decoder. The model achieves nearly state-of-the-art performance on standard datasets for the task while being computationally much more efficient than best performing models. We carry out incremental active learning, during the training process, and are able to nearly match state-of-the-art performance with just 25\% of the original training data

Hot-Cold Spots in Italian Macroseismic Data

The site effect is usually associated with local geological conditions, which increase or decrease the level of shaking compared with standard attenuation relations. We made an attempt to see in the macroseismic data of Italy some other effects, namely, hot/cold spots in the terminology of Olsen (2000), which are related to local fault geometry rather than to soil conditions. We give a list of towns and villages liable to amplify (+) or to reduce (-) the level of shaking in comparison with the nearby settlements. Relief and soil conditions cannot always account for the anomalous sites. Further, there are sites where both (+) and (-) effects are observed depending on the earthquake. The opposite effects can be generated by events from the same seismotectonic zone and along the same direction to the site. Anomalous sites may group themselves into clusters of different scales. All isolated anomalous patterns presented in this paper can be used in hazard analysis, in particular, for the modeling and testing of seismic effects

Do more, say less: Saying I love you in Chinese and American Cultures

Reticence to express emotions verbally has long been observed in Chinese culture, but quantitative comparisons with Western cultures are few. Explanations for emotional reticence have typically focused on the need in collectivist culture to promote group harmony, but this explanation is most applicable to negative emotions such as anger, not positive expressions such as Wo ai ni [I love you]. A survey on verbal usage of Wo ai ni was administered to university students in Beijing and Shanghai, and compared to uses of I love you by American students in the United States. Chinese respondents were not only overall more reticent than Americans in their love expressions, but differed from Americans in avoiding I love you expressions with family (especially parents). Interviews revealed that Chinese and American students, the two groups endorsed different reasons for saying Wo ai nil I love you. The reasons Americans provided most often related to the inherent importance of saying I love you, while this was the least frequently mentioned reason by Chinese. Bicultural Chinese interviewees observed that one could perform nonverbal actions or even say English I love you as substitutions for saying Wo ai ni. Chinese survey respondents did not endorse these options, and instead consistently minimized both verbal and nonverbal love expressions. The pattern of responses is consistent with theoretical proposals about high vs. low context cultures, especially with regards to the usefulness of saying I love you for relationship management purposes, and for asserting (or avoiding) statements of one\u27s individual autonomy

Geochemical Constraints for the Bulk Composition of the Moon

© 2018, Pleiades Publishing, Ltd. Abstract: The bulk composition of the silicate Moon (crust + mantle, BSM) is determined on the basis of inversion of gravitational and seismic data. It is shown that the mantle refractory oxides form two different groups depending on the thermal state. By the bulk Al2O3 content of ~3.0–4.6 wt %, the cold BSM models span the range of Al2O3 content of the silicate Earth (Bulk Silicate Earth, BSE), whereas the hot BSM models are significantly enriched in the Al2O3 content of ~5.1–7.3 wt % (Al2O3 content of ~1.2–1.7 × BSE) relative to BSE. In contrast, apart from the distribution of temperature, both BSM models are characterized by almost constant values of bulk FeO contents (~12.2–13.2 wt %) and MG# values (80.0–81.5), which are strongly distinct from those for BSE (~8 wt % FeO and 89 MG#). The results show that, for the geophysically possible distribution of temperatures, the silicate fraction of the Moon is enriched in FeO and depleted in MgO relative to BSE