An investigation of the statistical distribution of rises and falls in a stochastic process

This paper is a further investigation of a problem outlined to the Boeing Airplane Company. The purpose of the aforementioned report was to establish the necessary conditions under which two Gaussian processes of known power spectra will produce equivalent sequencings

Automatic Identification of Faked and Fraudulent Interviews in Surveys by Two Different Methods

This paper presents two new tools for the identification of faking interviewers in surveys. One method is based on Benford's Law, and the other exploits the empirical observation that fakers most often produce answers with less variability than could be expected from the whole survey. We focus on fabricated data, which were taken out of the survey before the data were disseminated in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). For two samples, the resulting rankings of the interviewers with respect to their cheating behavior are given. For both methods all of the evident fakers are identified.

An adjudicated hermeneutic single-case efficacy design study of experiential therapy for panic/phobia

This paper illustrates the application of an adjudicated form of Hermeneutic Single Case Efficacy Design (HSCED), a critical-reflective method for inferring change and therapeutic influence in single therapy cases. The client was a 61 year-old European-American male diagnosed with panic and bridge phobia. He was seen for 23 sessions of individual Process-Experiential/Emotion-Focused Therapy. In this study, affirmative and skeptic teams of researchers developed opposing arguments regarding whether the client changed over therapy and whether therapy was responsible for these changes. Three judges representing different theoretical orientations then assessed data and arguments, rendering judgments in favor of the affirmative side. We discuss clinical implications and recommendations for the future interpretive case study research

University of Maine Proposal for Joining the NSF Center for Advanced Forestry Systems

University of Maine (UM) is planning to join the existing multi-university Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) entitled The Center for Advanced Forestry Systems (CAFS) which was established in 2007 with four member institutions: North Carolina State University (lead university), Oregon State University, Purdue University and Virginia Tech. The primary focus of the proposed research site within CAFS will be modeling the productivity of managed natural forests. This research focus will be addressed at multiple scales ranging from the individual tree to the regional forest. UM has a long history of applied research in the management of naturally regenerated forests as well as a strong relationship with the forest products industry. The proposed activities at UM will augment current CAFS projects, and will more fully address the needs for scientific and technological advances for enhancing the competitiveness of the US forestry sector. The effort at UM has the potential to improve the competitiveness of the forest products industry by solving key problems using applied research and enhanced institutional collaboration. The broader scientific community will benefit through refereed publications and presentations at scientific meetings that focus on key nationwide research questions. Enhanced graduate student research opportunities will increase the number of trained professionals able to address these future forest resource challenges. UM also plans to address employee and student diversity issues

Study of modified area of polymer samples exposed to a he atmospheric pressure plasma jet using different treatment conditions

In the last decade atmospheric pressure plasma jets (APPJs) have been routinely employed for surface processing of polymers due to their capability of generating very reactive chemistry at near-ambient temperature conditions. Usually, the plasma jet modification effect spans over a limited area (typically a few cm²), therefore, for industrial applications, where treatment of large and irregular surfaces is needed, jet and/or sample manipulations are required. More specifically, for treating hollow objects, like pipes and containers, the plasma jet must be introduced inside of them. In this case, a normal jet incidence to treated surface is difficult if not impossible to maintain. In this paper, a plasma jet produced at the end of a long flexible plastic tube was used to treat polyethylene terephthalate (PET) samples with different incidence angles and using different process parameters. Decreasing the angle formed between the plasma plume and the substrate leads to increase in the modified area as detected by surface wettability analysis. The same trend was confirmed by the distribution of reactive oxygen species (ROS), expanding on starch-iodine-agar plates, where a greater area was covered when the APPJ was tilted. Additionally, UV-VUV irradiation profiles obtained from the plasma jet spreading on the surface confirms such behavior

Center for Research on Sustainable Forests 2013 Annual Report

Together, all of the scientists associated with the CRSF brought a total of $1.85 million in outside revenue to support forest research in Maine and the northern forest. Of that,$1.36 million (or 73%) was spent directly on the research. The Maine Economic Improvement Fund (MEIF) provides base operating funds for the CRSF. The $144K investment by MEIF this year leveraged another$1.71 million from outside sources to support the CRSF mission; thus providing a 12:1 return. A hallmark of the success of the CRSF research effort is also measured by the 130 organizations that collaborated directly in the research presented in this report. Results from CRSF research were presented this year in 32 journal articles; 32 book chapters, theses, and research reports; and 130 presentations at conferences and meetings

Nucleic acids and growth of \u3cem\u3eCalanus finmarchicus\u3c/em\u3e in the laboratory under different food and temperature conditions

We examined the effects of food concentration and temperature on nucleic acids and protein content of Calanus finmarchicus in order to evaluate the use of RNA as a growth rate index for this species. We measured RNA, DNA, and protein content of copepods reared from egg to adult stage in 5 combinations of food and temperature conditions (25 to 500 µg C l-1, 4 to 12°C). At 8°C, DNA, RNA and protein content and RNA:DNA differed among food treatments during Stages N6 through to adult female. Protein:DNA ratios and RNA:protein ratios were significantly different among food levels for only 3 of the 8 stages examined. At excess food, DNA, RNA, and protein content and RNA:DNA ratios were inversely related to temperature for most stages from C1 onward, but the effect of temperature was relatively small over the range of temperatures investigated. The RNA:DNA and protein:DNA ratios increased with developmental stage whereas the RNA:protein ratio and growth rates (measured in terms of protein, nitrogen, DNA, and carbon content) declined with increasing stage. Although the relationship of RNA:DNA to growth rates was stage-specific, the two were related when standardized for temperature and developmental stage. RNA:protein ratios were directly related to growth rates regardless of stage, and the slope of the relationship increased with increasing temperature in a nonlinear fashion. Our results emphasize the importance of temperature and developmental stage for the relationship of growth rates to RNA concentration and RNA:DNA ratios. We propose 2 ways to estimate in situ growth rates of C. finmarchicus from RNA:DNA or RNA:protein ratios and environmental temperatur

Growth and development rates of the copepod \u3cem\u3eCalanus finmarchicus\u3c/em\u3e reared in the laboratory

Development rates, nitrogen- and carbon-specific growth rates, size, and condition were determined for the copepod Calanus finmarchicus reared at 3 temperatures (4, 8, and 12°C) at non-limiting food concentrations and 2 limiting food concentrations at 8°C in the laboratory. Development rates were equiproportional, but not isochronal. Naupliar stage durations were similar, except for non-feeding stages, which were of short duration, and the first feeding stage, which was prolonged, while copepodite stage durations increased with increasing stage of development. Under limiting food concentrations at 8°C, development rates were prolonged but similar relative patterns in stage durations were observed. Body size (length and weight) was inversely related to temperature and positively related to food concentration. Condition measurements were not affected by temperature, but were positively related to food concentration. Growth rates increased with increasing temperature and increased asymptotically with increasing food concentration. At high food concentrations, growth rates of naupliar stages were high (except for individuals molting from the final naupliar stage to the first copepodite stage, in which growth rates were depressed), while growth of copepodites decreased with increasing stage of development. Neither nitrogen nor carbon growth rates, the former a proxy for structural growth, were exponential over the entire life cycle, but rather sigmoidal. Carbon-specific growth rates were greater than nitrogen-specific growth rates, and this difference increased with increasing stage of development, reflecting an augmentation in lipid deposition in the older stages. However, nitrogen and carbon growth rates were more similar under food-limited conditions. Based on this study, we recommend that secondary production rates of Calanus finmarchicus and possibly other lipid-storing copepods not be estimated from egg production measurements alone, as has been suggested for other species of copepods, because growth, including structural growth, is not equivalent for all stages