Playing the Odds: Pascal’s Wager and Decision Making in the Long Scholarly Conversation

This talk explores some of the philosophical issues surrounding the nature of the scholarly record and current challenges in academic libraries. The discussion arises from a 2011 Chronicle of Higher Education feature on a widely influential 1979 article entitled “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Making Under Risk,” which proposed a new model for how people assess risk and weigh decision factors. The theory has been applied to dozens of disciplines and cited thousands of times, and it has applications in academic collection development as well as everywhere else. It addressed the limitations of Utility Theory, which grew out of Pascal’s Wager (i.e., it’s safer to bet on the existence of God), but didn’t adequately explain how people— gamblers and insurance buyers, for instance—actually weigh risks and make decisions. The pace of change and new demands facing libraries offer the opportunity to ask new questions about the nature of the scholarly record. Increasing ubiquity and transience of information, along with rapidly shifting notions of authorship and ownership, offer some interesting questions about the role of academic library collections in scholarly communication as a whole

Graduate Recital: Douglas Black

Kemp Recital HallMarch 9, 2012Friday Evening8:00 p.m

Graduate Recital: Douglas Black, Jr.

Kemp Recital HallNovember 29, 2012Thursday Evening8:00 p.m

Written corrective feedback: preferences and justifications of teachers and students in a Thai context

This study investigates the preferences and justifications of teachers and students on written corrective feedback (WCF) at a tertiary institution in Thailand and is aimed at expanding on prior similar studies conducted with smaller data sets in different contexts. Quantitative and qualitative questionnaire data were collected from 262 intermediate students and 21 teachers in order to test two hypotheses: (1) teachers’ and students’ WCF preferences would differ significantly, and (2) their justifications for their preferences would differ significantly. The hypotheses were confirmed: teachers rated indirect feedback with metalinguistic comment as being most useful while students most preferred direct feedback with metalinguistic comment. This trend extended to all types of direct feedback being preferred by students while teachers preferred all types of indirect feedback. The most common explanation for the teachers’ preferences was the development of metacognitive skills, while accuracy was the greatest concern for students. The pedagogical implications of the results regarding expectations, student agency, and self-efficacy are discussed

Estimating the Benefits of Electric Vehicle Smart Charging at Non-Residential Locations: A Data-Driven Approach

In this paper, we use data collected from over 2000 non-residential electric vehicle supply equipments (EVSEs) located in Northern California for the year of 2013 to estimate the potential benefits of smart electric vehicle (EV) charging. We develop a smart charging framework to identify the benefits of non-residential EV charging to the load aggregators and the distribution grid. Using this extensive dataset, we aim to improve upon past studies focusing on the benefits of smart EV charging by relaxing the assumptions made in these studies regarding: (i) driving patterns, driver behavior and driver types; (ii) the scalability of a limited number of simulated vehicles to represent different load aggregation points in the power system with different customer characteristics; and (iii) the charging profile of EVs. First, we study the benefits of EV aggregations behind-the-meter, where a time-of-use pricing schema is used to understand the benefits to the owner when EV aggregations shift load from high cost periods to lower cost periods. For the year of 2013, we show a reduction of up to 24.8% in the monthly bill is possible. Then, following a similar aggregation strategy, we show that EV aggregations decrease their contribution to the system peak load by approximately 40% when charging is controlled within arrival and departure times. Our results also show that it could be expected to shift approximately 0.25kWh (~2.8%) of energy per non-residential EV charging session from peak periods (12PM-6PM) to off-peak periods (after 6PM) in Northern California for the year of 2013.Comment: Pre-print, under review at Applied Energ

Splicing bioinformatics to biology

A report on the 2nd Symposium on Alternative Transcript Diversity, Heidelberg, Germany, 21-23 March 2006

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?: THE EPA’S SPECIAL-CASE DETERMINATION FOR THE LOS ANGELES RIVER EXTENDS CLEAN WATER ACT PROTECTIONS CAST IN DOUBT BY THE ARMY CORPS AND THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT

In an effort to examine the implications EPA’s ability to extend Clean Water Act protection through the use of its special-case determination authority, this Article provides a case study of the Los Angeles River and the regulatory interplay between the Army Corps and the EPA. To begin, Part I sets forth the factual background of the LA River, describing its fickle and often volatile physical nature. It then describes the legal framework underlying the case by providing an overview of the Clean Water Act, its shared administration by the EPA and Army Corps, and the basis for the EPA’s special-case authority. Part II then discusses the Army Corps’ initial TNW determination and the EPA’s subsequent application of its special authority to overrule the Army Corps’ determination, while highlighting the agencies’ differing treatment and characterization of evidence used in making the determination. Finally, Part III discusses the potentially far-reaching consequences of the River’s navigability determination within the context of Southern California