9,124 research outputs found
Fair Is Fair—Reshaping Alaska’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Act
Few fields of law impact as wide a swath of population as consumer protection law. Alaska adopted its consumer protection statute, the Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Act (UTPCPA), amid a national movement to strengthen consumer protection laws. The UTPCPA uses broad language to encompass a wide range of conduct. However, creative pleading and recent applications of the UTPCPA have expanded the law in ways that threaten Alaska businesses even in the absence of culpable conduct. This Note reviews the history of consumer protection, Alaska’s UTPCPA, and the incentives leading to an expanding application of the UTPCPA. The Note concludes by proposing potential legislative solutions to rein in abuse of the Act
Origin and Detection of Microstructural Clustering in Fluids with Spatial-Range Competitive Interactions
Fluids with competing short-range attractions and long-range repulsions mimic
dispersions of charge-stabilized colloids that can display equilibrium
structures with intermediate range order (IRO), including particle clusters.
Using simulations and analytical theory, we demonstrate how to detect cluster
formation in such systems from the static structure factor and elucidate links
to macrophase separation in purely attractive reference fluids. We find that
clusters emerge when the thermal correlation length encoded in the IRO peak of
the structure factor exceeds the characteristic lengthscale of interparticle
repulsions. We also identify qualitative differences between the dynamics of
systems that form amorphous versus micro-crystalline clusters.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
The Use of Online Panel Data in Management Research: A Review and Recommendations
Management scholars have long depended on convenience samples to conduct research involving human participants. However, the past decade has seen an emergence of a new convenience sample: online panels and online panel participants. The data these participants provide—online panel data (OPD)—has been embraced by many management scholars owing to the numerous benefits it provides over “traditional” convenience samples. Despite those advantages, OPD has not been warmly received by all. Currently, there is a divide in the field over the appropriateness of OPD in management scholarship. Our review takes aim at the divide with the goal of providing a common understanding of OPD and its utility and providing recommendations regarding when and how to use OPD and how and where to publish it. To accomplish these goals, we inventoried and reviewed OPD use across 13 management journals spanning 2006 to 2017. Our search resulted in 804 OPD-based studies across 439 articles. Notably, our search also identified 26 online panel platforms (“brokers”) used to connect researchers with online panel participants. Importantly, we offer specific guidance to authors, reviewers, and editors, having implications for both micro and macro management scholars
Development: Sketch for a Theory of Oct4
SummaryHow is it that Oct4, a transcription factor that controls pluripotency in stem cells, also controls lineage specification? A recent study investigating common Oct4 targets in vertebrate species indicates an evolutionarily conserved role in mediating cell adhesion. This finding may help decipher Oct4’s versatility in governing stem cell behaviors
Funnel control of nonlinear systems
Tracking of reference signals is addressed in the context of a class of
nonlinear controlled systems modelled by -th order functional differential
equations, encompassing inter alia systems with unknown "control direction" and
dead-zone input effects. A control structure is developed which ensures that,
for every member of the underlying system class and every admissible reference
signal, the tracking error evolves in a prescribed funnel chosen to reflect
transient and asymptotic accuracy objectives. Two fundamental properties
underpin the system class: bounded-input bounded-output stable internal
dynamics, and a high-gain property (an antecedent of which is the concept of
sign-definite high-frequency gain in the context of linear systems)
Funnel control of nonlinear systems
Tracking of reference signals is addressed in the context of a class of nonlinear controlled systems modelled by r-th-order functional differential equations, encompassing inter alia systems with unknown "control direction" and dead-zone input effects. A control structure is developed which ensures that, for every member of the underlying system class and every admissible reference signal, the tracking error evolves in a prescribed funnel chosen to reflect transient and asymptotic accuracy objectives. Two fundamental properties underpin the system class: bounded-input bounded-output stable internal dynamics, and a high-gain property (an antecedent of which is the concept of sign-definite high-frequency gain in the context of linear systems)
Overview: Computer vision and machine learning for microstructural characterization and analysis
The characterization and analysis of microstructure is the foundation of
microstructural science, connecting the materials structure to its composition,
process history, and properties. Microstructural quantification traditionally
involves a human deciding a priori what to measure and then devising a
purpose-built method for doing so. However, recent advances in data science,
including computer vision (CV) and machine learning (ML) offer new approaches
to extracting information from microstructural images. This overview surveys CV
approaches to numerically encode the visual information contained in a
microstructural image, which then provides input to supervised or unsupervised
ML algorithms that find associations and trends in the high-dimensional image
representation. CV/ML systems for microstructural characterization and analysis
span the taxonomy of image analysis tasks, including image classification,
semantic segmentation, object detection, and instance segmentation. These tools
enable new approaches to microstructural analysis, including the development of
new, rich visual metrics and the discovery of
processing-microstructure-property relationships.Comment: submitted to Materials and Metallurgical Transactions
Demonstration of Robust Quantum Gate Tomography via Randomized Benchmarking
Typical quantum gate tomography protocols struggle with a self-consistency
problem: the gate operation cannot be reconstructed without knowledge of the
initial state and final measurement, but such knowledge cannot be obtained
without well-characterized gates. A recently proposed technique, known as
randomized benchmarking tomography (RBT), sidesteps this self-consistency
problem by designing experiments to be insensitive to preparation and
measurement imperfections. We implement this proposal in a superconducting
qubit system, using a number of experimental improvements including
implementing each of the elements of the Clifford group in single `atomic'
pulses and custom control hardware to enable large overhead protocols. We show
a robust reconstruction of several single-qubit quantum gates, including a
unitary outside the Clifford group. We demonstrate that RBT yields physical
gate reconstructions that are consistent with fidelities obtained by randomized
benchmarking
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