358 research outputs found
Contracts and Insurance Group Formation by Myopic Players
This paper employs a cooperative approach to insurance group formation problems.The insurance group formation is analyzed in terms of stability with respect to one-person deviations.Depending on the exact contractual setting, three stability concepts are proposed: individual, contractual and compensation stability.When we apply our general framework to the standard insurance setting of Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976), we find that, in each type of contractual setting, there are stable individually rational pooling outcomes while, on the contrary, individually rational separating outcomes are not stable.
Effects of turbulence and rotation on protostar formation as a precursor to seed black holes
Context. The seeds of the first supermassive black holes may have resulted
from the direct collapse of hot primordial gas in K haloes,
forming a supermassive or quasistar as an intermediate stage.
Aims. We explore the formation of a protostar resulting from the collapse of
primordial gas in the presence of a strong Lyman-Werner radiation background.
Particularly, we investigate the impact of turbulence and rotation on the
fragmentation behaviour of the gas cloud. We accomplish this goal by varying
the initial turbulent and rotational velocities.
Methods. We performed 3D adaptive mesh refinement simulations with a
resolution of 64 cells per Jeans length using the ENZO code, simulating the
formation of a protostar up to unprecedentedly high central densities of
cm, and spatial scales of a few solar radii. To achieve this
goal, we employed the KROME package to improve modelling of the chemical and
thermal processes.
Results. We find that the physical properties of the simulated gas clouds
become similar on small scales, irrespective of the initial amount of
turbulence and rotation. After the highest level of refinement was reached, the
simulations have been evolved for an additional ~5 freefall times. A single
bound clump with a radius of AU and a mass of ~ M is formed at the end of each simulation, marking the onset
of protostar formation. No strong fragmentation is observed by the end of the
simulations, regardless of the initial amount of turbulence or rotation, and
high accretion rates of a few solar masses per year are found.
Conclusions. Given such high accretion rates, a quasistar of
M is expected to form within years.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, fixed typos, added references and clarified some
details; accepted for publication in A&
A UV flux constraint on the formation of direct collapse black holes
The ability of metal free gas to cool by molecular hydrogen in primordial
halos is strongly associated with the strength of ultraviolet (UV) flux
produced by the stellar populations in the first galaxies. Depending on the
stellar spectrum, these UV photons can either dissociate molecules
directly or indirectly by photo-detachment of as the latter
provides the main pathway for formation in the early universe. In
this study, we aim to determine the critical strength of the UV flux above
which the formation of molecular hydrogen remains suppressed for a sample of
five distinct halos at by employing a higher order chemical solver and a
Jeans resolution of 32 cells. We presume that such flux is emitted by PopII
stars implying atmospheric temperatures of ~K. We performed
three-dimensional cosmological simulations and varied the strength of the UV
flux below the Lyman limit in units of . Our findings show that the
value of varies from halo to halo and is sensitive to the
local thermal conditions of the gas. For the simulated halos it varies from
400-700 with the exception of one halo where .
This has important implications for the formation of direct collapse black
holes and their estimated population at z > 6. It reduces the number density of
direct collapse black holes by almost three orders of magnitude compared to the
previous estimates.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, matches the accepted version to ber published in
MNRAS, higher resolution version is available at
http://www.astro.physik.uni-goettingen.de/~mlatif/Jcrit.pd
Sample Size Considerations for GEE Analyses of Three-Level Cluster Randomized Trials
Cluster randomized trials in health care may involve three instead of two levels, for instance, in trials where different interventions to improve quality of care are compared. In such trials, the intervention is implemented in health care units (“clusters”) and aims at changing the behavior of health care professionals working in this unit (“subjects”), while the effects are measured at the patient level (“evaluations”). Within the generalized estimating equations (GEE) approach, we derive a sample size formula that accounts for two levels of clustering: that of subjects within clusters and that of evaluations within subjects. The formula reveals that sample size is inflated, relative to a design with completely independent evaluations, by a multiplicative term that can be expressed as a product of two variance inflation factors, one that quantifies the impact of within-subject correlation of evaluations on the variance of subject-level means and the other that quantifies the impact of the correlation between subject level means on the variance of the cluster means. Power levels as predicted by the sample size formula agreed well with the simulated power for more than 10 clusters in total, when data was analyzed using bias-corrected estimating equations for the correlation parameters in combination with the model-based covariance estimator or the sandwich estimator with a finite sample correction
Wolbachia in the flesh: symbiont intensities in germ-line and somatic tissues challenge the conventional view of Wolbachia transmission routes
Symbionts can substantially affect the evolution and ecology of their hosts. The investigation of the tissue-specific distribution of symbionts (tissue tropism) can provide important insight into host-symbiont interactions. Among other things, it can help to discern the importance of specific transmission routes and potential phenotypic effects. The intracellular bacterial symbiont Wolbachia has been described as the greatest ever panzootic, due to the wide array of arthropods that it infects. Being primarily vertically transmitted, it is expected that the transmission of Wolbachia would be enhanced by focusing infection in the reproductive tissues. In social insect hosts, this tropism would logically extend to reproductive rather than sterile castes, since the latter constitute a dead-end for vertically transmission. Here, we show that Wolbachia are not focused on reproductive tissues of eusocial insects, and that non-reproductive tissues of queens and workers of the ant Acromyrmex echinatior, harbour substantial infections. In particular, the comparatively high intensities of Wolbachia in the haemolymph, fat body, and faeces, suggest potential for horizontal transmission via parasitoids and the faecal-oral route, or a role for Wolbachia modulating the immune response of this host. It may be that somatic tissues and castes are not the evolutionary dead-end for Wolbachia that is commonly thought
Proportionate flow shop games
htmlabstractIn a proportionate flow shop problem several jobs have to be processed through a fixed sequence of machines and the processing time of each job is equal on all machines. By identifying jobs with agents, whose costs linearly depend on the completion time of their jobs, and assuming an initial processing order on the jobs, we face two problems: the first one is how to obtain an optimal order that minimizes the total processing cost, the second one is how to allocate the cost savings obtained by ordering the jobs optimally. In this paper we focus on the allocation problem. PFS games are defined as cooperative games associated to proportionate flow shop problems. It is seen that PFS games have a nonempty core. Moreover, it is shown that PFS games are convex if the jobs are initially ordered in decreasing urgency. For this case an explicit game independent expression for the Shapley value is provid
Complete Genome Sequence Of A Vaccinal Newcastle Disease Virus Strain Isolated From An Owl (rhinoptynx Clamator)
Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)A Newcastle disease virus (NDV) was isolated in chicken embryonated eggs after detection by real-time reverse transcription- PCR (RRT-PCR) from a captive owl swab. The complete genome sequence of APMV-1/Rhinoptynx clamator/Brazil/22516/2009 (APMV-1, avian paramyxovirus type 1) was obtained using Illumina sequencing. Phylogenetic analysis of the complete genome classified the isolate within NDV class II genotype II. © 2016 Van Borm et al.46CNPq, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e TecnológicoConselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq
Beyond chance? The persistence of performance in online poker
A major issue in the widespread controversy about the legality of poker and the appropriate taxation of winnings is whether poker should be considered a game of skill or a game of chance. To inform this debate we present an analysis into the role of skill in the performance of online poker players, using a large database with hundreds of millions of player-hand observations from real money ring games at three different stakes levels. We find that players whose earlier profitability was in the top (bottom) deciles perform better (worse) and are substantially more likely to end up in the top (bottom) performance deciles of the following time period. Regression analyses of performance on historical performance and other skill-related proxies provide further evidence for persistence and predictability. Simulations point out that skill dominates chance when performance is measured over 1,500 or more hands of play
Loss of Wolbachia infection during colonisation in the invasive Argentine ant Linepithema humile
WOLBACHIA are maternally inherited bacteria, which are very common in arthropods and nematodes. Wolbachia infection may affect host reproduction through feminisation, parthenogenesis, male-killing, cytoplasmic incompatibility and increased fecundity. Previous studies showing discrepancies between the phylogenies of Wolbachia and its arthropod hosts indicate that infection is frequently lost, but the causes of symbiont extinction have so far remained elusive. Here, we report data showing that colonisation of new habitats is a possible mechanism leading to the loss of infection. The presence and prevalence of Wolbachia were studied in three native and eight introduced populations of the Argentine ant Linepithema humile. The screening shows that the symbiont is common in the three native L. humile populations analysed. In contrast, Wolbachia was detected in only one of the introduced populations. The loss of infection associated with colonisation of new habitats may result from drift (founder effect) or altered selection pressures in the new habitat. Furthermore, a molecular phylogeny based on sequences of the Wolbachia wsp gene indicates that L. humile has been infected by a single strain. Horizontal transmission of the symbiont may be important in ants as suggested by the sequence similarity of strains in the three genera Linepithema, Acromyrmex, and Solenopsis native from South and Central America
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