Financial literacy and subprime mortgage delinquency: evidence from a survey matched to administrative data

The exact cause of the massive defaults and foreclosures in the U.S. subprime mortgage market is still unclear. This paper investigates whether a particular aspect of borrowers' financial literacy—their numerical ability—may have played a role. We measure several aspects of financial literacy and cognitive ability in a survey of subprime mortgage borrowers who took out mortgages in 2006 or 2007 and match these measures to objective data on mortgage characteristics and repayment performance. We find a large and statistically significant negative correlation between numerical ability and various measures of delinquency and default. Foreclosure starts are approximately two-thirds lower in the group with the highest measured level of numerical ability compared with the group with the lowest measured level. The result is robust to controlling for a broad set of sociodemographic variables and not driven by other aspects of cognitive ability or the characteristics of the mortgage contracts. Our results raise the possibility that limitations in certain aspects of financial literacy played an important role in the subprime mortgage crisis.

Group Membership, Competition, and Altruistic versus Antisocial Punishment: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Army Groups

We investigate how group boundaries, and the economic environment surrounding groups, affect altruistic cooperation and punishment behavior. Our study uses experiments conducted with 525 officers in the Swiss Army, and exploits random assignment to platoons. We find that, without competition between groups, individuals are more prone to cooperate altruistically in a prisoner's dilemma game with in-group as opposed to out-group members. They also use a costly punishment option to selectively harm those who defect, encouraging a norm of cooperation towards the group. Adding competition between groups causes even stronger in-group cooperation, but also a qualitative change in punishment: punishment becomes antisocial, harming cooperative and defecting out-group members alike. These findings support recent evolutionary models and have important organizational implications.group membership, competition, punishment, army, experiment

How automation, machine learning, and DNA barcoding can accelerate species discovery in “dark taxa”: Robotics and AI

Robotics and artificial intelligence are two methods that are suitable for improving processes that are normally done manually. Therefore, these techniques also can be used when examining specimen-rich invertebrate samples, where traditional sorting methods are to slow and require expert knowledge. For that reason, we developed the DiversityScanner: a classification, sorting, and measurement robot for invertebrates. The 500 x 500 x 500 mm robot has three linear axes that enable a camera unit and an automated pipette to be moved over a square Petri dish, containing up to 150 specimens. After starting the DiversityScanner the image taken by an overview camera mounted directly above the Petri dish is utilized to calculate the position of the insects. Then the camera unit is moved over one specimen to capture high resolution detailed images. Convolutional neuronal networks (CNNs) are then used to classify the specimen into 14 different insect taxa (mostly families) and the specimen length and volume are estimated. In a final step, the specimen is moved into a microplate using an automated pipette. In this talk we show how the DiversityScanner uses automation and artificial intelligence to take advantage of previously nearly untapped resources in the study of specimen-rich invertebrate samples

DiversityScanner 4K: A High Resolution Extended Focus Camera Setup as Extension for the DiversityScanner

Manual examination of invertebrate species diversity and abundance in Malaise trap samples is a time-consuming and costly task that requires expert knowledge. Automated solutions based on robotics and artificial intelligence can assist experts in evaluating the large number of samples collected, especially when the phenotype of individual species in a sample needs to be assessed and classified. Therefore, we have developed the DiversityScanner, a robotic solution that provides the ability to automatically image, measure, classify, and sort invertebrates (< 3 mm) into 96-well microplates for barcoding. Because it is necessary to document even the smallest details, such as tiny bristles, on a specimen, we have significantly improved the image quality of the detailed images in the DiversityScanner 4k. This is achieved by using an extended focus system and a 12-megapixel camera. By using an electrically focus tunable lens from Optotune, extended focus images can be created from multiple z-stack images with different focus planes. An algorithm then automatically aligns the images, detecting sharp areas in each image, and produces high-resolution extended-focus images. Finally, the object can be classified by a convolutional neural network and the biomass of the insect can be estimated from the image

Uniaxial pressure dependencies of the phase transitions in GdMnO3_3

GdMnO$_3$ shows an incommensurate antiferromagnetic order below $\simeq 42$ K, transforms into a canted A-type antiferromagnet below $\simeq 20$ K, and for finite magnetic fields along the b axis ferroelectric order occurs below $\simeq 12$ K. From high-resolution thermal expansion measurements along all three principal axes, we determine the uniaxial pressure dependencies of the various transition temperatures and discuss their correlation to changes of the magnetic exchange couplings in $R$MnO$_3$ ($R = {\rm La, ... Dy}$).Comment: 2 pages, 3 figures, submitted to JMMM (Proceedings of ICM'06, Kyoto

Masking by fast gratings

Perception of an oriented pattern is impaired in the presence of a superimposed orthogonal mask. This masking effect most likely arises in visual cortex, where neuronal responses are suppressed by masks having a broad range of orientations. Response suppression is commonly ascribed to lateral inhibition between cortical neurons. Recent physiological results, however, have cast doubt on this view: powerful suppression has been observed with masks drifting too rapidly to elicit much of a response in cortex. We show here that the same is true for perceptual masking. From contrast discrimination thresholds, we estimated the cortical response to drifting patterns of various frequencies, and found it greatly reduced above 15-20 Hz. In the same subjects, we measured the strength of masking by the same patterns and found it equally strong for masks drifting slowly (2.7 Hz) as for masks drifting rapidly (27-38 Hz). Fast gratings thus cause strong masking while eliciting weak cortical responses. Our results might be explained by inhibition from cortical neurons that respond to unusually high frequencies, and yet do not make their signals fully available for perceptual judgments. A more parsimonious explanation, however, is that masking does not involve lateral inhibition from cortex. Masking might operate in retina or thalamus, which respond to much higher frequencies than cortex. Masking might also be due to thalamic signals to cortex, perhaps through depression at thalamocortical synapses

PIXHAWK: A micro aerial vehicle design for autonomous flight using onboard computer vision

We describe a novel quadrotor Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) system that is designed to use computer vision algorithms within the flight control loop. The main contribution is a MAV system that is able to run both the vision-based flight control and stereo-vision-based obstacle detection parallelly on an embedded computer onboard the MAV. The system design features the integration of a powerful onboard computer and the synchronization of IMU-Vision measurements by hardware timestamping which allows tight integration of IMU measurements into the computer vision pipeline. We evaluate the accuracy of marker-based visual pose estimation for flight control and demonstrate marker-based autonomous flight including obstacle detection using stereo vision. We also show the benefits of our IMU-Vision synchronization for egomotion estimation in additional experiments where we use the synchronized measurements for pose estimation using the 2pt+gravity formulation of the PnP proble