3,386 research outputs found
Naturally Occurring Markets and Exogenous Laboratory Experiments: A Case Study of the Winner's Curse
There has been a dramatic increase in the use of experimental methods in the past two decades. An oft-cited reason for this rise in popularity is that experimental methods provide the necessary control to estimate treatment effects in isolation of other confounding factors. We examine the relevance of experimental findings from laboratory settings that abstract from the field context of the task that theory purports to explain. Using common value auction theory as our guide, we identify naturally occurring settings in which one can test the theory. In our treatments the subjects are not picked at random, as in lab experiments with student subjects, but are deliberately identified by their trading roles in the natural field setting. We find that experienced agents bidding in familiar roles do not fall prey to the winner's curse. Yet, when experienced agents are observed bidding in an unfamiliar role, we find that they frequently fall prey to the winner's curse. We conclude that the theory predicts field behavior well when one is able to identify naturally occurring field counterparts to the key theoretical conditions.
Using Chinese Character Formation Graphs to Test Proposals in Chinese Historical Phonology
This paper proposes the use of network techniques in the exploration of Old Chinese phonology as reflected in the phonophoric determinatives of xiéshēng 諧聲 characters. We use the approach to examine five specific proposals in Chinese historical phonology, and whether the distinctions suggested by these proposals can be said to be recoverable on the basis of phonophoric choice. The major finding is that the type A versus type B distinction is in some cases encoded in the choice of phonophoric determinative, while other distinctions are only spuriously if at all reflected in the phonophoric subseries
The Oxidation of Aroyl Propionic Acids by Sodium Hypochlorite
Author Institution: Department of Chemistry, The College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohi
Solid state television camera system Patent
Solid state television camera system consisting of monolithic semiconductor mosaic sensor and molecular digital readout system
Messung des Wirkungsquerschnittes und der Vektoranalysierstaerke der π⁺d→π⁺pn Reaktion in einem kinematisch vollstaendigen Experiment
Networks of lexical borrowing and lateral gene transfer in language and genome evolution
Like biological species, languages change over time. As noted by Darwin, there are many parallels between language evolution and biological evolution. Insights into these parallels have also undergone change in the past 150 years. Just like genes, words change over time, and language evolution can be likened to genome evolution accordingly, but what kind of evolution? There are fundamental differences between eukaryotic and prokaryotic evolution. In the former, natural variation entails the gradual accumulation of minor mutations in alleles. In the latter, lateral gene transfer is an integral mechanism of natural variation. The study of language evolution using biological methods has attracted much interest of late, most approaches focusing on language tree construction. These approaches may underestimate the important role that borrowing plays in language evolution. Network approaches that were originally designed to study lateral gene transfer may provide more realistic insights into the complexities of language evolution
Rotating Boson Stars and Q-Balls
We consider axially symmetric, rotating boson stars. Their flat space limits
represent spinning Q-balls. We discuss their properties and determine their
domain of existence. Q-balls and boson stars are stationary solutions and exist
only in a limited frequency range. The coupling to gravity gives rise to a
spiral-like frequency dependence of the boson stars. We address the flat space
limit and the limit of strong gravitational coupling. For comparison we also
determine the properties of spherically symmetric Q-balls and boson stars.Comment: 22 pages, 18 figure
Representing and Computing Uncertainty in Phonological Reconstruction
Despite the inherently fuzzy nature of reconstructions in historical
linguistics, most scholars do not represent their uncertainty when proposing
proto-forms. With the increasing success of recently proposed approaches to
automating certain aspects of the traditional comparative method, the formal
representation of proto-forms has also improved. This formalization makes it
possible to address both the representation and the computation of uncertainty.
Building on recent advances in supervised phonological reconstruction, during
which an algorithm learns how to reconstruct words in a given proto-language
relying on previously annotated data, and inspired by improved methods for
automated word prediction from cognate sets, we present a new framework that
allows for the representation of uncertainty in linguistic reconstruction and
also includes a workflow for the computation of fuzzy reconstructions from
linguistic data.Comment: To appear in: Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Computational
Approaches to Historical Language Chang
Breakdown of the mirror image symmetry in the optical absorption/emission spectra of oligo(para-phenylene)s
The absorption and emission spectra of most luminescent, pi-conjugated,
organic molecules are the mirror image of each other. In some cases, however,
this symmetry is severely broken. In the present work, the asymmetry between
the absorption and fluorescence spectra in molecular systems consisting of
para-linked phenyl rings is studied. The vibronic structure of the emission and
absorption bands is calculated from ab-initio quantum chemical methods and a
subsequent, rigorous Franck-Condon treatment. Good agreement with experiment is
achieved. A clear relation can be established between the strongly anharmonic
double-well potential for the phenylene ring librations around the long
molecular axis and the observed deviation from the mirror image symmetry.
Consequences for related compounds and temperature dependent optical
measurements are also discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 13 Figure
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