Applying Non-Energy Impacts from Other Jurisdictions in Cost-Benefit Analyses of Energy Efficiency Programs: Resources for States for Utility Customer-Funded Programs

Avoided energy and capacity costs are the primary yardstick utilities use to determine which energy efficiency programs are cost-effective for their customers. But sometimes "non-energy impacts" — not commonly recognized as directly associated with energy generation, transmission and distribution — represent substantial benefits, such as improving comfort, air quality and public health.Considering whether and how to include non-energy impacts is an important part of cost-benefit analyses for these programs. This report offers practical considerations for deciding which non-energy impacts to include and how to apply values or methods from other jurisdictions.Researchers reviewed studies quantifying non-energy impacts used in 30 states and applied a five-point system to indicate transferability of a value or method from each study for 16 categories of non-energy impacts:Water resource costs and benefitsOther fuels costs and benefitsAvoided environmental compliance costsEnvironmental impactsProductivityHealth and safety Asset valueEnergy and/or capacity price suppression effectsAvoided costs of compliance with Renewable Portfolio Standard requirementsAvoided credit and collection costsAvoided ancillary servicesComfortEconomic development and job impactsPublic health impactsEnergy security impactsIncreased reliabilityThe U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office supported this work

Autistic traits and positive psychotic experiences modulate the association of psychopathic tendencies with theory of mind in opposite directions

Various clinical disorders, including psychopathy, and autism and schizophrenia spectrum disorders, have been linked with impairments in Theory of Mind (ToM). However, although these conditions can co-occur in the same individual, the effect of their inter-play on ToM abilities has not been investigated. Here we assessed ToM abilities in 55 healthy adults while performing a naturalistic ToM task, requiring participants to watch a short film and judge the actors' mental states. The results reveal for the first time that autistic traits and positive psychotic experiences interact with psychopathic tendencies in opposite directions to predict ToM performance-the interaction of psychopathic tendencies with autism traits was associated with a decrement in performance, whereas the interaction of psychopathic tendencies and positive psychotic experiences was associated with improved performance. These effects were specific to cognitive rather than affective ToM. These results underscore the importance of the simultaneous assessment of these dimensions within clinical settings. Future research in these clinical populations may benefit by taking into account such individual differences

When Can You Fold a Map?

We explore the following problem: given a collection of creases on a piece of paper, each assigned a folding direction of mountain or valley, is there a flat folding by a sequence of simple folds? There are several models of simple folds; the simplest one-layer simple fold rotates a portion of paper about a crease in the paper by +-180 degrees. We first consider the analogous questions in one dimension lower -- bending a segment into a flat object -- which lead to interesting problems on strings. We develop efficient algorithms for the recognition of simply foldable 1D crease patterns, and reconstruction of a sequence of simple folds. Indeed, we prove that a 1D crease pattern is flat-foldable by any means precisely if it is by a sequence of one-layer simple folds. Next we explore simple foldability in two dimensions, and find a surprising contrast: ``map'' folding and variants are polynomial, but slight generalizations are NP-complete. Specifically, we develop a linear-time algorithm for deciding foldability of an orthogonal crease pattern on a rectangular piece of paper, and prove that it is (weakly) NP-complete to decide foldability of (1) an orthogonal crease pattern on a orthogonal piece of paper, (2) a crease pattern of axis-parallel and diagonal (45-degree) creases on a square piece of paper, and (3) crease patterns without a mountain/valley assignment.Comment: 24 pages, 19 figures. Version 3 includes several improvements thanks to referees, including formal definitions of simple folds, more figures, table summarizing results, new open problems, and additional reference

Multiple mechanisms of consciousness: the neural correlates of emotional awareness.

Emotional stimuli, including facial expressions, are thought to gain rapid and privileged access to processing resources in the brain. Despite this access, we are conscious of only a fraction of the myriad of emotion-related cues we face everyday. It remains unclear, therefore, what the relationship is between activity in neural regions associated with emotional representation and the phenomenological experience of emotional awareness. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging and binocular rivalry to delineate the neural correlates of awareness of conflicting emotional expressions in humans. Behaviorally, fearful faces were significantly more likely to be perceived than disgusted or neutral faces. Functionally, increased activity was observed in regions associated with facial expression processing, including the amygdala and fusiform gyrus during emotional awareness. In contrast, awareness of neutral faces and suppression of fearful faces were associated with increased activity in dorsolateral prefrontal and inferior parietal cortices. The amygdala showed increased functional connectivity with ventral visual system regions during fear awareness and increased connectivity with perigenual prefrontal cortex (pgPFC; Brodmann\u27s area 32/10) when fear was suppressed. Despite being prioritized for awareness, emotional items were associated with reduced activity in areas considered critical for consciousness. Contributions to consciousness from bottom-up and top-down neural regions may be additive, such that increased activity in specialized regions within the extended ventral visual system may reduce demands on a frontoparietal system important for awareness. The possibility is raised that interactions between pgPFC and the amygdala, previously implicated in extinction, may also influence whether or not an emotional stimulus is accessible to consciousness

Boldness psychopathic traits predict reduced gaze toward fearful eyes in men with a history of violence

Research with developmental and adult samples has shown a relationship of psychopathic traits with reduced eye gaze. However, these relationships remained to be investigated among forensic samples. Here we examined the eye movements of male violent offenders during an emotion recognition task. Violent offenders performed similar to non-offending controls, and their eye movements varied with the emotion and intensity of the facial expression. In the violent offender group Boldness psychopathic traits, but not Meanness or Disinhibition, were associated with reduced dwell time and fixation counts, and slower first fixation latencies, on the eyes compared with the mouth. These results are the first to show a relationship of psychopathic traits with reduced attention to the eyes in a forensic sample, and suggest that Boldness is associated with difficulties in orienting attention toward emotionally salient aspects of the face

Northern Bobwhite Demographic and Population Response Following an Intensive Habitat Modification to an Agricultural Landscape

Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) populations have been declining throughout most of their endemic range due to numerous factors (e.g., increased urbanization, predators); however, changing land-use practices have proved most detrimental to bobwhites. In parts of the southeastern USA, small-scale farming has been replaced by large-scale center-pivot irrigated fields and this has exacerbated habitat loss. Despite these trends, bobwhite populations in the Southeast have remained stable or increased on many areas employing intensive habitat management regimes, substantiating the importance of appropriate habitat management for long-term bobwhite persistence. In effort to reverse one such decline, we intensively modified a center-pivot, agriculture dominated landscape to benefit bobwhites by creating new habitat and improving existing habitat. Techniques utilized to modify this landscape were: establishment of linear habitats (field borders and buffer strips); planting longleaf pines; and management of existing habitat via prescribed burning and timber management. During 1998-2001, we monitored bobwhite (n = 498) demographics and population response following annual habitat restoration and management using radio-telemetry and fall abundance estimation (i.e., covey call-counts). Average survival during over-winter (0.4698, SE = 0.0721), breeding (0.3561, SE = 0 .0667) and annual (0.1673, SE = 0.0411) time-periods were higher than those reported for other agriculture studies and similar to those of intensively managed, “plantation” habitats. Bobwhite coveys and broods used newly developed longleaf pine, linear habitats (e.g. field borders/hedgerows), and managed woodlands. Further, nest site selection was commonly associated with these novel habitat types. As a result of the positive demographic response to habitat modification, bobwhite abundance also improved during the study. Consequently, we surmised that modification of agricultural landscapes may improve habitat quality and quantity for bobwhites and subsequently help to increase demographic rates and bobwhite abundance

What Really Matters: Assessing Individual Problem-Solving Performance in the Context of Biological Sciences

The evaluation of higher-level cognitive skills can augment traditional discipline-based knowledge testing by providing timely assessment of individual student problem-solving abilities that are critical for success in any professional development program. However, the wide-spread acceptance and implementation of higher level cognitive skills analysis has been delayed by the lack of rapid, valid, and reliable quantified-scoring techniques. At the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, we have developed an examination format that can be routinely and sequentially implemented for both formative and summative assessments of individual students in large classes. Rather than providing results in terms of an individual student’s knowledge base in a single academic discipline or group of disciplines, this type of examination provides information on performance in the application of specific problem-solving skills, which we term “domains,” to a contextual clinical or scientific problem. These domains, derived from the scientific method, are tested across various academic disciplines, and are reported in terms of the following: Initial and sequential hypothesis generation, investigation of these hypotheses, evaluation of newly acquired data, integration of basic science mechanisms with new information to explain the basis of the problem, and reflection on one’s own professional development in the context of the examination. The process for criterion referenced quantified grading of the examination is outlined in this paper. This process involves relatively rapid scoring, and permits the timely use of the resulting information for individual student feedback as well as curricular improvement. Data regarding grading consistency and comparison with other measures of student performance is also presented in this paper. An analysis of the performance characteristics of this examination, which has been utilized for over 10 years in a variety of course settings, indicates that it is valid, reliable, and utilizable. As such, the methodology is now routinely used in several undergraduate and graduate level biochemistry classes to monitor the development of individual student problem-solving abilities

The Lazy Bureaucrat Scheduling Problem

We introduce a new class of scheduling problems in which the optimization is performed by the worker (single ``machine'') who performs the tasks. A typical worker's objective is to minimize the amount of work he does (he is ``lazy''), or more generally, to schedule as inefficiently (in some sense) as possible. The worker is subject to the constraint that he must be busy when there is work that he can do; we make this notion precise both in the preemptive and nonpreemptive settings. The resulting class of ``perverse'' scheduling problems, which we denote ``Lazy Bureaucrat Problems,'' gives rise to a rich set of new questions that explore the distinction between maximization and minimization in computing optimal schedules.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures, Latex. To appear, Information and Computatio