3,242 research outputs found
Rhetoric and Food: The Rise of the Food Truck Movement
This analysis is an attempt to study the rise of a new mobile food medium the food truck. I examine the movement of rhetorical actors, the situation, the audiences, and discourses created and sustained through rhetorical practices. These include looking into contemporary controversies, the history and storytelling that helps to convey identity, a new aesthetic experience created by the medium, and specifically their sophistic character and rhetoric helping them speak on issues of social justice and change. To understand these texts, I examine each of them in light of their rhetorical situation and the convergence of a multitude of kairotic factors. I use the situation as a hinge to examine how the movement, through its rhetorical practices and characters have changed the foodscape and the foodways of the communities in which they are active
Steady-state Function of the Ubiquitous Mammalian Na/H Exchanger (NHE1) in Relation to Dimer Coupling Models with 2Na/2H Stoichiometry
We describe the steady-state function of the ubiquitous mammalian Na/H exchanger (NHE)1 isoform in voltage-clamped Chinese hamster ovary cells, as well as other cells, using oscillating pH-sensitive microelectrodes to quantify proton fluxes via extracellular pH gradients. Giant excised patches could not be used as gigaseal formation disrupts NHE activity within the patch. We first analyzed forward transport at an extracellular pH of 8.2 with no cytoplasmic Na (i.e., nearly zero-trans). The extracellular Na concentration dependence is sigmoidal at a cytoplasmic pH of 6.8 with a Hill coefficient of 1.8. In contrast, at a cytoplasmic pH of 6.0, the Hill coefficient is <1, and Na dependence often appears biphasic. Results are similar for mouse skin fibroblasts and for an opossum kidney cell line that expresses the NHE3 isoform, whereas NHE1−/− skin fibroblasts generate no proton fluxes in equivalent experiments. As proton flux is decreased by increasing cytoplasmic pH, the half-maximal concentration (K1/2) of extracellular Na decreases less than expected for simple consecutive ion exchange models. The K1/2 for cytoplasmic protons decreases with increasing extracellular Na, opposite to predictions of consecutive exchange models. For reverse transport, which is robust at a cytoplasmic pH of 7.6, the K1/2 for extracellular protons decreases only a factor of 0.4 when maximal activity is decreased fivefold by reducing cytoplasmic Na. With 140 mM of extracellular Na and no cytoplasmic Na, the K1/2 for cytoplasmic protons is 50 nM (pH 7.3; Hill coefficient, 1.5), and activity decreases only 25% with extracellular acidification from 8.5 to 7.2. Most data can be reconstructed with two very different coupled dimer models. In one model, monomers operate independently at low cytoplasmic pH but couple to translocate two ions in “parallel” at alkaline pH. In the second “serial” model, each monomer transports two ions, and translocation by one monomer allosterically promotes translocation by the paired monomer in opposite direction. We conclude that a large fraction of mammalian Na/H activity may occur with a 2Na/2H stoichiometry
Impact of inter-correlated initial binary parameters on double black hole and neutron star mergers
The distributions of the initial main-sequence binary parameters are one of
the key ingredients in obtaining evolutionary predictions for compact binary
(BH-BH / BH-NS / NS-NS) merger rates. Until now, such calculations were done
under the assumption that initial binary parameter distributions were
independent. Here, we implement empirically derived inter-correlated
distributions of initial binary parameters primary mass (M1), mass ratio (q),
orbital period (P), and eccentricity (e). Unexpectedly, the introduction of
inter-correlated initial binary parameters leads to only a small decrease in
the predicted merger rates by a factor of 2 3 relative to the previously
used non-correlated initial distributions. The formation of compact object
mergers in the isolated classical binary evolution favors initial binaries with
stars of comparable masses (q = 0.5 1) at intermediate orbital periods (log
P (days) = 2 4). New distributions slightly shift the mass ratios towards
smaller values with respect to the previously used flat q distribution, which
is the dominant effect decreasing the rates. New orbital periods only
negligibly increase the number of progenitors. Additionally, we discuss the
uncertainty of merger rate predictions associated with possible variations of
the massive-star initial mass function (IMF). We argue that evolutionary
calculations should be normalized to a star formation rate (SFR) that is
obtained from the observed amount of UV light at wavelength 1500{\AA} (SFR
indicator). In this case, contrary to recent reports, the uncertainty of the
IMF does not affect the rates by more than a factor of 2. Any change to the IMF
slope for massive stars requires a change of SFR in a way that counteracts the
impact of IMF variations on the merger rates. In contrast, we suggest that the
uncertainty in cosmic SFR at low metallicity can be a significant factor at
play.Comment: accepted for publication in A&
Dynamic Conversion Behavior at E-Commerce Sites
This paper develops a model of conversion behavior (i.e., converting store visits into purchases) that predicts each customer\u27s probability of purchasing based on an observed history of visits and purchases. We offer an individual-level probability model that allows for different forms of customer heterogeneity in a very flexible manner. Specifically, we decompose an individual\u27s conversion behavior into two components: one for accumulating visit effects and another for purchasing threshold effects. Each component is allowed to vary across households as well as over time. Visit effects capture the notion that store visits can play different roles in the purchasing process. For example, some visits are motivated by planned purchases, while others are associated with hedonic browsing (akin to window shopping); our model is able to accommodate these (and several other) types of visit-purchase relationships in a logical, parsimonious manner. The purchasing threshold captures the psychological resistance to online purchasing that may grow or shrink as a customer gains more experience with the purchasing process at a given website. We test different versions of the model that vary in the complexity of these two key components and also compare our general framework with popular alternatives such as logistic regression. We find that the proposed model offers excellent statistical properties, including its performance in a holdout validation sample, and also provides useful managerial diagnostics about the patterns underlying online buyer behavior
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Capturing Evolving Visit Behavior in Clickstream Data
Many online sites, both retailers and content providers, routinely monitor visitor traffic as a useful measure of their overall success. However, simple summaries such as the total number of visits per month provide little insight about individual-level site-visit patterns, especially in a changing environment such as the Internet. This article develops an individual-level model for evolving visiting behavior based on Internet clickstream data. We capture cross-sectional variation in site-visit behavior as well as changes over time as visitors gain experience with the site. In addition, we examine the relationship between visiting frequency and purchasing propensity at an e-commerce site. We find evidence supporting the notion that people who visit a retail site more frequently have a greater propensity to buy. We also show that changes (i.e., evolution) in an individual\u27s visit frequency over time provides further information regarding which customer segments are likely to have higher purchasing conversion rates
Incomplete Distal Renal Tubular Acidosis and Kidney Stones.
Renal tubular acidosis (RTA) is comprised of a diverse group of congenital or acquired diseases with the common denominator of defective renal acid excretion with protean manifestation, but in adults, recurrent kidney stones and nephrocalcinosis are mainly found in presentation. Calcium phosphate (CaP) stones and nephrocalcinosis are frequently encountered in distal hypokalemic RTA type I. Alkaline urinary pH, hypocitraturia, and, less frequently, hypercalciuria are the tripartite lithogenic factors in distal RTA (dRTA) predisposing to CaP stone formation; the latter 2 are also commonly encountered in other causes of urolithiasis. Although the full blown syndrome is easily diagnosed by conventional clinical criteria, an attenuated forme fruste called incomplete dRTA typically evades clinical testing and is only uncovered by provocative acid-loading challenges. Stone formers (SFs) that cannot acidify urine of pH < 5.3 during acid loading are considered to have incomplete dRTA. However, urinary acidification capacity is not a dichotomous but rather a continuous trait, so incomplete dRTA is not a distinct entity but may be one end of a spectrum. Recent findings suggest that incomplete dRTA can be attributed to heterozygous carriers of hypofunctional V-ATPase. The value of incomplete dRTA diagnosis by provocative testing and genotyping candidate genes is a valuable research tool, but it remains unclear at the moment whether they alter clinical practice and needs further clarification. No randomized controlled trials have been performed in SFs with dRTA or CaP stones, and until such data are available, treatment of CaP stones are centered on reversing the biochemical abnormalities encountered in the metabolic workup. SFs with type I dRTA should receive alkali therapy, preferentially in the form of K-citrate delivered judiciously to treat the chronic acid retention that drives both stone formation and bone disease
Optimum Quantum Error Recovery using Semidefinite Programming
Quantum error correction (QEC) is an essential element of physical quantum
information processing systems. Most QEC efforts focus on extending classical
error correction schemes to the quantum regime. The input to a noisy system is
embedded in a coded subspace, and error recovery is performed via an operation
designed to perfectly correct for a set of errors, presumably a large subset of
the physical noise process. In this paper, we examine the choice of recovery
operation. Rather than seeking perfect correction on a subset of errors, we
seek a recovery operation to maximize the entanglement fidelity for a given
input state and noise model. In this way, the recovery operation is optimum for
the given encoding and noise process. This optimization is shown to be
calculable via a semidefinite program (SDP), a well-established form of convex
optimization with efficient algorithms for its solution. The error recovery
operation may also be interpreted as a combining operation following a quantum
spreading channel, thus providing a quantum analogy to the classical diversity
combining operation.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure
Structured Near-Optimal Channel-Adapted Quantum Error Correction
We present a class of numerical algorithms which adapt a quantum error
correction scheme to a channel model. Given an encoding and a channel model, it
was previously shown that the quantum operation that maximizes the average
entanglement fidelity may be calculated by a semidefinite program (SDP), which
is a convex optimization. While optimal, this recovery operation is
computationally difficult for long codes. Furthermore, the optimal recovery
operation has no structure beyond the completely positive trace preserving
(CPTP) constraint. We derive methods to generate structured channel-adapted
error recovery operations. Specifically, each recovery operation begins with a
projective error syndrome measurement. The algorithms to compute the structured
recovery operations are more scalable than the SDP and yield recovery
operations with an intuitive physical form. Using Lagrange duality, we derive
performance bounds to certify near-optimality.Comment: 18 pages, 13 figures Update: typos corrected in Appendi
Bibliography of South Dakota Climate and Annotations
This bibliography is designed to aid scientists, agriculturalists, and others find what research work has been accomplished in Climatology in South Dakota and what data are available for further study and analysis. The list of publications by the Weather Bureau, the tables under Card Library of Weather Data on punch cards, and the Climatological Summaries of Weather Bureau Substations in South Dakota are sources of climatological data for the state. The various other publications listed are results of research work that pertains, at least in part, to Climatology in South Dakota. Although considerable effort was made to list all material available on this subject, some publications may have been inadvertently omitted
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