Constructive Decision Theory

Contemporary approaches to decision making describe a decision problem by sets of states and outcomes, and a rich set of acts: functions from states to outcomes over which the decision maker (DM) has preferences. Real problems do not come so equipped. It is often unclear what the state and outcome spaces would be. We present an alternative foundation for decision making, in which the primitive objects of choice are syntactic programs. We show that if the DM's preference relation on objects of choice satisfies appropriate axioms, then we can find states, outcomes, and an embedding of the programs into Savage acts such that preferences can be represented by EU in the Savage framework. A modeler can test for SEU behavior without having access to the subjective states and outcomes. We illustrate the power of our approach by showing that it can represent DMs who are subject to framing effects.Decision theory, subjective expected utility, behavioral anomalies

Interpolation of the Josephson interaction in highly anisotropic superconductors from a solution of the two dimensional sine-Gordon equation

In this paper we solve numerically the two dimensional elliptic sine-Gordon equation with appropriate boundary conditions. These boundary conditions are chosen to correspond to the Josephson interaction between two adjacent pancakes belonging to the same flux-line in a highly anisotropic superconductor. An extrapolation is obtained between the regimes of low and high separation of the pancakes. The resulting formula is a better candidate for use in numerical simulations than previously derived formulas.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure

Linking Kindness to Emotional Intelligence for Employee Satisfaction & Retention Through Professional Development Training

The present study aimed to examine the effects of linking kindness to emotional intelligence (EI) for employee satisfaction and retention through professional development training. 240 participants from two separate research sites from Associations (Corporate Offices) of the leading non-profit organization in the United States of America were asked to participate in a pre-test survey on kindness, administered through Survey Monkey, and another survey on emotional intelligence administered through MHS Assessments of the EI Consortium. The author took into consideration the non-profit’s Leadership Competency Model broken down into Leaders, which includes employees without supervision responsibilities; Team Leaders, made up of directors with responsibility for staff and programs; Multi-Team Leaders, which includes directors with oversight for Association-wide disciplines such as Marketing and Human Resources Management; and Organizational Leaders, made up of C-Suite leaders such as CEO and CFO. Following the pre-test survey conducted in June 2019 a training workshop intervention was held on October 23, 2019, with 29 employees across the leadership spectrum, in attendance. On January 23, 2020, the post-test survey was held with the same number of participants requested to participate. It is important to note that for the kindness survey, twenty-four character strengths, including kindness, and developed by Peterson and Seligman, were used and the MSCEIT developed by Mayor, Salovey, Caruso was used for emotional intelligence. The results showed minor differences in both the kindness and EI surveys from pre-test to post-test in all the areas studies. It was interesting to note, however, that there was a slight change in the Means of the VIA kindness scale, in kindness and love in pre-test over post-test. The author wishes to indicate that there were no survey questions in either constructs that included employee satisfaction and/or employee retention and even if there were, there was not sufficient time to observe any noticeable effects on employee satisfaction and or employee retention since the time between pre-test, training intervention and post-test was limited to less than six months

Credit's effect on productivity in Chinese agriculture : a microeconomic model of disequilibrium

Many government programs want to provide more credit to the farm sector to increase agricultural productivity. If the marginal effect on productivity is small, those resources might be put to better use elsewhere. The authors conducted an econometric analysis of the effect of credit on output supply which recognizies that credit markets are not necessarily at equilibrium - so that credit rationing and nonborrowing are both possible. Only about 37 percent of the farmers in the study area were constrained by inadequate formal credit. Informal credit sources provided funds for specific non-agricultural activities that were not fungible. The results indicate that one additional yuan of liquidity yielded 0.235 yuan of additional gross value of output. These results suggest that for the area of China covered in the study, a good part of the short-term credit may actually be used for consumption and investment. Two conclusions are suggested for evaluating the probable effect of expanding agricultural credit. First, not all farmers, and sometimes only a minority, are constrained in their farming operations by inadequate credit. And second, greater supplies of formal credit will be diverted in part to consumption, so the likely effect on output will be smaller than what one might expect if all funds are assumed to be used productively.Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies

Direct observation of a hydrophobic bond in loop-closure of a capped (-OCH2CH2-)n oligomer in water

The small r variation of the probability density P(r) for end-to-end separations of a -CH2CH3 capped (-OCH2CH2-)n oligomer in water is computed to be closely similar to the CH4 ... CH4 potential of mean force under the same circumstances. Since the aqueous solution CH4 ... CH4 potential of mean force is the natural physical definition of a primitive hydrophobic bond, the present result identifies an experimentally accessible circumstance for direct observation of a hydrophobic bond which has not been observed previously because of the low solubility of CH4 in water. The physical picture is that the soluble chain molecule carries the capping groups into aqueous solution, and permits them to find one another with reasonable frequency. Comparison with the corresponding results without the solvent shows that hydration of the solute oxygen atoms swells the chain molecule globule. This supports the view that the chain molecule globule might have a secondary effect on the hydrophobic interaction which is of first interest here. The volume of the chain molecule globule is important for comparing the probabilities with and without solvent because it characterizes the local concentration of capping groups. Study of other capping groups to enable X-ray and neutron diffraction measurements of P(r) is discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Universal Access for Roaming User via Mobile Agent Technology

[[abstract]]Mobile agents refer to self-contained and identifiable computer programs that can migrate along the network and can act on behalf of the user or other agents. Mobile agents often work on heterogeneous network and operating system environment. Therefore, an integrated logical interface to access physical structure via mobile agent application is become more and more urgent. In this paper, we proposed a tracking and persistent agent-based mobility management system in the case of distance learning. The main purpose of our system is addressed to achieve the universal access objective. In order to let the whole mobility management system full play, we encapsulated the utility tools to be a role-setting object. The role-setting object is an application-driven component, which can provide customization benefits for user and matching the user’s demands. These integrated technologies are sufficient in distance learning (virtual university) environment.[[notice]]補正完

Information Seeking Support System for E-Learning

[[abstract]]How to provide a multimedia information seeking support system (ISSS) is becoming more and more imperative. In this paper, we provide a multimedia ISSS for e-learning. This system requires flexible support for the modeling of multimedia content models and also supports possible interactivity, transfer of streams multimedia data such as audio, video, text and annotations using network facilities. However, we investigated the existing standards and applications for multimedia documents models such as HTML, MHEG, SMIL, and HyTime etc. We propose a new approach for the modeling of reusable and adaptable multimedia content. We also developed a comprehensive system for advanced multimedia content production: support for recording the presentation, retrieving the content, summarizing the presentation, weaving the presentation and customizing the representation. This approach significantly impacts and supports the multimedia presentation authoring processes in terms of methodology and commercial aspects.[[sponsorship]]IEEE Taipei Section; National Science Council; Ministry of Education; Tamkang University; Asia University; Providence University; The University of Aizu; Lanzhou University[[conferencetype]]國際[[conferencetkucampus]]淡水校園[[conferencedate]]20091203~20091205[[booktype]]紙本[[iscallforpapers]]Y[[conferencelocation]]Tamsui, Taipei, Taiwa

The Role of the Family in Immigrants' Labor-Market Activity: Evidence from the United States

We use Census of Population microdata for 1980 and 1990 to examine the labor supply and wages of immigrant husbands and wives in the United States in a family context. Earlier research by Baker and Benjamin (1997) posits a family investment model in which, upon arrival, immigrant husbands invest in their human capital while immigrant wives work to provide the family with liquidity during this period. Consistent with this model, they find for Canada that immigrant wives work longer hours upon arrival than comparable natives, but, with time in Canada, they are eventually overtaken by native wives. In contrast, we find that, among immigrants to the United States, both husbands and wives work and earn less than comparable natives upon arrival, with similar shortfalls for men and women. Further, both immigrant husbands and wives have similar, positive assimilation profiles in wages and labor supply and eventually overtake both the wages and the labor supply of comparable natives.

Dark matter halos in the multicomponent model. II. Density profiles of galactic halos

The multicomponent dark matter model with self-scattering and inter-conversions of species into one another is an alternative dark matter paradigm that is capable of resolving the long-standing problems of $\Lambda$CDM cosmology at small scales. In this paper, we have studied in detail the properties of dark matter halos with $M \sim 4-5 \times10^{11} M_{\odot}$ obtained in $N$-body cosmological simulations with the simplest two-component (2cDM) model. A large set of velocity-dependent cross-section prescriptions for elastic scattering and mass conversions, $\sigma_s(v)\propto v^{a_s}$ and $\sigma_c(v)\propto v^{a_c}$, has been explored and the results were compared with observational data. The results demonstrate that self-interactions with the cross-section per particle mass evaluated at $v=100$ km s$^{-1}$ being in the range of $0.01\lesssim \sigma_0/m\lesssim 1$ cm$^2$g$^{-1}$ robustly suppress central cusps, thus resolving the core-cusp problem. The core radii are controlled by the values of $\sigma_0/m$ and the DM cross-section's velocity-dependent power-law indices $(a_s,a_c)$, but are largely insensitive to the species' mass degeneracy. These values are in full agreement with those resolving the substructure and too-big-to-fail problems. We have also studied the evolution of halos in the 2cDM model with cosmic time.Comment: 17 pages, 13 figure