Accelerating innovation with prize rewards: History and typology of technology prizes and a new contest design for innovation in African agriculture

"This paper describes how governments and philanthropic donors could drive innovation through a new kind of technology contest. We begin by reviewing the history of technology prizes, which operate alongside private intellectual property rights and public R&D to accelerate and guide productivity growth towards otherwise-neglected social goals. Proportional “prize rewards” would modify the traditional winner-take-all approach, by dividing available funds among multiple winners in proportion to measured achievement. This approach would provide a royalty-like payment for incremental success. The paper provides concludes with a specific example for how such prizes could be implemented to reward and help scale up successful innovations in African agriculture, through payments to innovators in proportion to the value created by their technologies after adoption. " from authors' abstractProductivity growth, Technology adoption, intellectual property, Agricultural R&D, Innovation,

Half-space theorems for minimal surfaces in Nil_3 and Sol_3

We prove some half-space theorems for minimal surfaces in the Heisenberg group Nil_3 and the Lie group Sol_3 endowed with their left-invariant Riemannian metrics. If S is a properly immersed minimal surface in Nil_3 that lies on one side of some entire minimal graph G, then S is the image of G by a vertical translation. If S is a properly immersed minimal surface in Sol_3 that lies on one side of a special plane, then S is another special plane.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figure

A Meta-Analysis of Political Advertising

Political advertising is one of the dominant media for reaching voters. Previous metaanalyses (Allen & Burrell, 2002; Lau, Sigelman, Heldman, & Babbitt, 1999) found little or no net benefit to negative versus positive ads. However, this finding does not reveal whether ads have effects (both or neither could be persuasive). A meta-analysis revealed that political spots increased issue knowledge, influenced perceptions of the candidates’ character, altered attitudes, and affected candidate preference; influenced agenda-setting, and altered vote likelihood (turnout). One moderator variable was detected: The effect size for learning was larger for studies of students than non-students; however, the effect size for both sub-groups was significant. On the other hand, political ads had larger effects on attitudes for non-students than students

Minimizing Energy Consumption of MPI Programs in Realistic Environment

Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling proves to be an efficient way of reducing energy consumption of servers. Energy savings are typically achieved by setting a well-chosen frequency during some program phases. However, determining suitable program phases and their associated optimal frequencies is a complex problem. Moreover, hardware is constrained by non negligible frequency transition latencies. Thus, various heuristics were proposed to determine and apply frequencies, but evaluating their efficiency remains an issue. In this paper, we translate the energy minimization problem into a mixed integer program that specifically models most current hardware limitations. The problem solution then estimates the minimal energy consumption and the associated frequency schedule. The paper provides two different formulations and a discussion on the feasibility of each of them on realistic applications

Comments on Argumentative patterns in plenary debates in the European Parliament by Frans H. van Eemeren and Bart Garssen

Comments on Argumentative patterns in plenary debates in the European Parliament by Frans H. van Eemeren and Bart Garsse

A Functional Analysis of 2008 and 2012 Presidential Nomination Acceptance Addresses

This study investigates the presidential candidates’ nomination acceptance ad-dresses in 2008 and 2012. This study applied Benoit’s (2007) Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse to the four Acceptances (one from McCain, two from Obama, and one from Romney). Traditionally the conventions kick off the general election campaign and the nominees’ acceptance addresses are high-lights of these events. This work extends previous research on acceptance ad-dresses speeches from 1952-2004. The speeches in 2008 and 2012 used acclaims (73%) more than attacks (27%) or defenses (0.5%). Incumbents acclaimed more, and attacked less, than challengers, particularly when they discussed their records in office (past deeds). They discussed policy at about the same rate as character (52% to 48%). General goals and ideals were used more often as the basis of acclaims than attacks in these speeches

An analysis of Rorschach aggression and interpersonal variables in forensic and clinical samples

This study sought to compare the effectiveness of selected Rorschach aggression and interpersonal variables from three different scoring systems (Exner, 1993; Gacono & Meloy, 1994; Holt, 1977) in discriminating between protocols of individuals from each of three groups (n=23; 19 male, 4 female): those who have committed violent crimes, those who have committed nonviolent crimes, and clinical control participants. Approximately 78% of the violent group and 57% of the nonviolent group met criteria for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text revision [DSM-IV TR]; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD). All remaining members of both forensic groups qualified for another DSM-IV TR Personality Disorder with antisocial features. Participants in the clinical control group were negative for the presence of criminal history, antisocial features, and anger-management problems. All members of this latter group met the criteria for DSM-IV TR Personality Disorder diagnoses other than ASPD. Nonparametric analyses revealed significant main effects for two Exner variables (Sum T and Lambda), two Gacono and Meloy variables (AgC and Sum Ag), and six Holt variables (L20-AG, LO-AGTOT, AGIR, AGLVI, AGLV2, and AGTOT)In addition, a factor analysis was conducted on the full sample (N=69) for six Rorschach aggression variables (AG, MOR, AgC, AgPast, AGLV1, AGLV2) in an attempt to corroborate the findings of Baity and Hilsenroth (1999). Results of the principal factor solution supported these authors\u27 assessment that there are two unequivocal factors underlying unequivocal factors underlying these six variables. The amount of variance explained by these two factors in the current study (60%) was slightly lower than the figure reported by Baity and Hilsenroth in their investigation (77%). Factor loading patterns and relative magnitudes among variables loading on each factor, however, were nearly identical in both studies. Clinical and theoretical implications of the present findings and directions for future research are discussed

Meta-Analysis of Research on the Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse

Functional Theory has been applied to a variety of election campaign messages, including candidacy announcement speeches; TV spots; debates; direct mail brochures; candidate webpages; nomination acceptance addresses; vice presidential debates; senate, gubernatorial, and mayoral debates; senate, gubernatorial, and house TV spots; and debates and TV spots from other countries. This approach argues that election messages address one of three functions (acclaims, attacks, defenses) and one of two topics (policy, character). This study reports a meta-analysis of several Functional Theory predictions: acclaims are more common than attacks (defenses are consistently the least common function and were not tested here); policy is discussed more than character; when discussing past deeds incumbents acclaim more and attack less than challengers; attacks, and policy statements, are more common in general than primary campaigns; when addressing general goals and ideals, attacks outnumber acclaims. General goals were the basis of more acclaims and fewer attacks than future plans. Candidates use fewer acclaims and more attacks than other sources. Two hypotheses were not confirmed: incumbents did not attack more and acclaim less than challengers generally or when discussing future plans. The essay concludes with suggestions for future research in this area

Bully or Dupe?: Governor Chris Christie’s Image Repair on the Bridge Lane Closure Scandal

In 2013, two lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge – the busiest in the nation – in Fort Lee, NJ, were closed. In January of 2014, it emerged that Christie’s Deputy Chief of Staff Kelley instigated this problem. Governor Christie was accused of retaliating against Fort Lee’s Mayor Mark Sokolich, who had not endorsed Christie’s re-election bid. Christie fired Kelley, held a press conference, and apologized to Sokolich and the people of Fort Lee. Christie’s primary strategies were mortification and corrective action, but he also used denial, differentiation, minimization, and defeasibility to deal with this situation. Minimization was interesting as Christie attempted to lower expectations for his performance, reducing the offensiveness of his action