A critical look at monetarist economics

Monetary policy ; Monetary theory ; Economics

Statement from the Montana Stockgrowers Association regarding the Livestock Mill Levy

Statement to the Revenue and Finance Committee from the Montana Stockgrowers Association regarding the Livestock Mill Levy.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/montanaconstitution/1472/thumbnail.jp

RGB-D Mapping and Tracking in a Plenoxel Radiance Field

Building on the success of Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs), recent years have seen significant advances in the domain of novel view synthesis. These models capture the scene's volumetric radiance field, creating highly convincing dense photorealistic models through the use of simple, differentiable rendering equations. Despite their popularity, these algorithms suffer from severe ambiguities in visual data inherent to the RGB sensor, which means that although images generated with view synthesis can visually appear very believable, the underlying 3D model will often be wrong. This considerably limits the usefulness of these models in practical applications like Robotics and Extended Reality (XR), where an accurate dense 3D reconstruction otherwise would be of significant value. In this technical report, we present the vital differences between view synthesis models and 3D reconstruction models. We also comment on why a depth sensor is essential for modeling accurate geometry in general outward-facing scenes using the current paradigm of novel view synthesis methods. Focusing on the structure-from-motion task, we practically demonstrate this need by extending the Plenoxel radiance field model: Presenting an analytical differential approach for dense mapping and tracking with radiance fields based on RGB-D data without a neural network. Our method achieves state-of-the-art results in both the mapping and tracking tasks while also being faster than competing neural network-based approaches.Comment: *The two authors contributed equally to this pape

Removing Adverse Volumetric Effects From Trained Neural Radiance Fields

While the use of neural radiance fields (NeRFs) in different challenging settings has been explored, only very recently have there been any contributions that focus on the use of NeRF in foggy environments. We argue that the traditional NeRF models are able to replicate scenes filled with fog and propose a method to remove the fog when synthesizing novel views. By calculating the global contrast of a scene, we can estimate a density threshold that, when applied, removes all visible fog. This makes it possible to use NeRF as a way of rendering clear views of objects of interest located in fog-filled environments. Additionally, to benchmark performance on such scenes, we introduce a new dataset that expands some of the original synthetic NeRF scenes through the addition of fog and natural environments. The code, dataset, and video results can be found on our project page: https://vegardskui.com/fognerf/Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl

The Regulatory Subunit of PKA-I Remains Partially Structured and Undergoes b-Aggregation upon Thermal Denaturation

Background: The regulatory subunit (R) of cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) is a modular flexible protein that responds with large conformational changes to the binding of the effector cAMP. Considering its highly dynamic nature, the protein is rather stable. We studied the thermal denaturation of full-length RIa and a truncated RIa(92-381) that contains the tandem cyclic nucleotide binding (CNB) domains A and B. Methodology/Principal Findings: As revealed by circular dichroism (CD) and differential scanning calorimetry, both RIa proteins contain significant residual structure in the heat-denatured state. As evidenced by CD, the predominantly a-helical spectrum at 25uC with double negative peaks at 209 and 222 nm changes to a spectrum with a single negative peak at 212–216 nm, characteristic of b-structure. A similar aRb transition occurs at higher temperature in the presence of cAMP. Thioflavin T fluorescence and atomic force microscopy studies support the notion that the structural transition is associated with cross-b-intermolecular aggregation and formation of non-fibrillar oligomers. Conclusions/Significance: Thermal denaturation of RIa leads to partial loss of native packing with exposure of aggregationprone motifs, such as the B’ helices in the phosphate-binding cassettes of both CNB domains. The topology of the bsandwiches in these domains favors inter-molecular b-aggregation, which is suppressed in the ligand-bound states of RIa under physiological conditions. Moreover, our results reveal that the CNB domains persist as structural cores through heatdenaturation

Extended Smoothed Boundary Method for Solving Partial Differential Equations with General Boundary Conditions on Complex Boundaries

In this article, we describe an approach for solving partial differential equations with general boundary conditions imposed on arbitrarily shaped boundaries. A continuous function, the domain parameter, is used to modify the original differential equations such that the equations are solved in the region where a domain parameter takes a specified value while boundary conditions are imposed on the region where the value of the domain parameter varies smoothly across a short distance. The mathematical derivations are straightforward and generically applicable to a wide variety of partial differential equations. To demonstrate the general applicability of the approach, we provide four examples herein: (1) the diffusion equation with both Neumann and Dirichlet boundary conditions; (2) the diffusion equation with both surface diffusion and reaction; (3) the mechanical equilibrium equation; and (4) the equation for phase transformation with the presence of additional boundaries. The solutions for several of these cases are validated against corresponding analytical and semi-analytical solutions. The potential of the approach is demonstrated with five applications: surface-reaction-diffusion kinetics with a complex geometry, Kirkendall-effect-induced deformation, thermal stress in a complex geometry, phase transformations affected by substrate surfaces, and a self-propelled droplet.Comment: This document is the revised version of arXiv:0912.1288v