49,431 research outputs found
Midyear update: major metros driving Texas expansion
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas ; Business cycles ; Maquiladora ; Employment ; Unemployment ; Retail trade
A survey of the effect of grooved runway operations on the wear of commercial airline tires
Effect of grooved runway operations on wear of commercial airline tire
The Z-index: A geometric representation of productivity and impact which accounts for information in the entire rank-citation profile
We present a simple generalization of Hirsch's h-index, Z =
\sqrt{h^{2}+C}/\sqrt{5}, where C is the total number of citations. Z is aimed
at correcting the potentially excessive penalty made by h on a scientist's
highly cited papers, because for the majority of scientists analyzed, we find
the excess citation fraction (C-h^{2})/C to be distributed closely around the
value 0.75, meaning that 75 percent of the author's impact is neglected.
Additionally, Z is less sensitive to local changes in a scientist's citation
profile, namely perturbations which increase h while only marginally affecting
C. Using real career data for 476 physicists careers and 488 biologist careers,
we analyze both the distribution of and the rank stability of Z with
respect to the Hirsch index h and the Egghe index g. We analyze careers
distributed across a wide range of total impact, including top-cited physicists
and biologists for benchmark comparison. In practice, the Z-index requires the
same information needed to calculate h and could be effortlessly incorporated
within career profile databases, such as Google Scholar and ResearcherID.
Because Z incorporates information from the entire publication profile while
being more robust than h and g to local perturbations, we argue that Z is
better suited for ranking comparisons in academic decision-making scenarios
comprising a large number of scientists.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure
Isomorphism and embedding of Borel systems on full sets
A Borel system consists of a measurable automorphism of a standard Borel
space. We consider Borel embeddings and isomorphisms between such systems
modulo null sets, i.e. sets which have measure zero for every invariant
probability measure. For every t>0 we show that in this category there exists a
unique free Borel system (Y,S) which is strictly t-universal in the sense that
all invariant measures on Y have entropy <t, and if (X,T) is another free
system obeying the same entropy condition then X embeds into Y off a null set.
One gets a strictly t-universal system from mixing shifts of finite type of
entropy at least t by removing the periodic points and "restricting" to the
part of the system of entropy <t. As a consequence, after removing their
periodic points the systems in the following classes are completely classified
by entropy up to Borel isomorphism off null sets: mixing shifts of finite type,
mixing positive-recurrent countable state Markov chains, mixing sofic shifts,
beta shifts, synchronized subshifts, and axiom-A diffeomorphisms. In particular
any two equal-entropy systems from these classes are entropy conjugate in the
sense of Buzzi, answering a question of Boyle, Buzzi and Gomez.Comment: 17 pages, v2: correction to bibliograph
Binomial-coefficient multiples of irrationals
Denote by a random infinite path in the graph of Pascal's triangle (left
and right turns are selected independently with fixed probabilities) and by
the binomial coefficient at the 'th level along the path . Then
for a dense set of in the unit interval, is almost surely dense but not uniformly distributed modulo 1.Comment: 10 pages, to appear in Monatshefte f. Mat
Molecular Characterization of Protease Activity in Serratia sp. Strain SCBI and Its Importance in Cytotoxicity and Virulence
A newly recognized Serratia species, termed South African Caenorhabditis briggsae isolate (SCBI), is both a mutualist of the nematode Caenorhabditis briggsae KT0001 and a pathogen of lepidopteran insects. Serratia sp. strain SCBI displays high proteolytic activity, and because secreted proteases are known virulence factors for many pathogens, the purpose of this study was to identify genes essential for extracellular protease activity in Serratia sp. strain SCBI and to determine what role proteases play in insect pathogenesis and cytotoxicity. A bank of 2,100 transposon mutants was generated, and six SCBI mutants with defective proteolytic activity were identified. These mutants were also defective in cytotoxicity. The mutants were found defective in genes encoding the following proteins: alkaline metalloprotease secretion protein AprE, a BglB family transcriptional antiterminator, an inosine/xanthosine triphosphatase, GidA, a methyl-accepting chemotaxis protein, and a PIN domain protein. Gene expression analysis on these six mutants showed significant downregulation in mRNA levels of several different types of predicted protease genes. In addition, transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis provided insight into how inactivation of AprE, GidA, and a PIN domain protein influences motility and virulence, as well as protease activity. Using quantitative reverse transcription-PCR (qRT-PCR) to further characterize expression of predicted protease genes in wild-type Serratia sp. SCBI, the highest mRNA levels for the alkaline metalloprotease genes (termed prtA1 to prtA4) occurred following the death of an insect host, while two serine protease and two metalloprotease genes had their highest mRNA levels during active infection. Overall, these results indicate that proteolytic activity is essential for cytotoxicity in Serratia sp. SCBI and that its regulation appears to be highly complex
Influence of Temperature on the Physiology and Virulence of the Insect Pathogen Serratia sp. Strain SCBI
The physiology of a newly recognized Serratia species, termed South African Caenorhabditis briggsae Isolate (SCBI), which is both a nematode mutualist and an insect pathogen, was investigated and compared to that of Serratia marcescens Db11, a broad-host-range pathogen. The two Serratia strains had comparable levels of virulence for Manduca sexta and similar cytotoxic activity patterns, but motility and lipase and hemolytic activities differed significantly between them
A quantitative perspective on ethics in large team science
The gradual crowding out of singleton and small team science by large team
endeavors is challenging key features of research culture. It is therefore
important for the future of scientific practice to reflect upon the individual
scientist's ethical responsibilities within teams. To facilitate this
reflection we show labor force trends in the US revealing a skewed growth in
academic ranks and increased levels of competition for promotion within the
system; we analyze teaming trends across disciplines and national borders
demonstrating why it is becoming difficult to distribute credit and to avoid
conflicts of interest; and we use more than a century of Nobel prize data to
show how science is outgrowing its old institutions of singleton awards. Of
particular concern within the large team environment is the weakening of the
mentor-mentee relation, which undermines the cultivation of virtue ethics
across scientific generations. These trends and emerging organizational
complexities call for a universal set of behavioral norms that transcend team
heterogeneity and hierarchy. To this end, our expository analysis provides a
survey of ethical issues in team settings to inform science ethics education
and science policy.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. Keywords: team ethics; team management;
team evaluation; science of scienc
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