Effects of Incentives on College Student\u27s Performance

Pay for performance embodies a theory that the more an employee is paid for their work, the more productive they will be. Using an online survey, this paper studies the effect of incentives on college students, specifically, if college students react differently to incentives than employees and to what degree college students can be motivated to increase their performance on assignments. Participants in the bonus contract were awarded one extra piece of candy for each correct answer. Those in the penalty contract are given the maximum ten pieces of candy before the quiz begins, and with every incorrect answer, one piece of candy is removed from the pile. The results of this study show that participants in the bonus and penalty structure did not differ in performance levels or effort exerted. However, students with a higher preference for compensation in candy also had higher performance levels, but did not spend more time on the task. Participants also showed a preference to be compensated with candy

The Narrative of Black Athletes in the National Hockey League

Major league sports have existed in the United States since the 1920s; today we have four major league sports - the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, and Major League Soccer. All of these sports have changed drastically, especially their demographics. All throughout the 20th century, Black people had fought for rights, both in and out of sports. This paper explores the narrative of Black players in the National Hockey League. Factors such as, socioeconomic status, interest level, and racism look to explain why so few players in the NHL are Black

Growing Graphs with Hyperedge Replacement Graph Grammars

Discovering the underlying structures present in large real world graphs is a fundamental scientific problem. In this paper we show that a graph's clique tree can be used to extract a hyperedge replacement grammar. If we store an ordering from the extraction process, the extracted graph grammar is guaranteed to generate an isomorphic copy of the original graph. Or, a stochastic application of the graph grammar rules can be used to quickly create random graphs. In experiments on large real world networks, we show that random graphs, generated from extracted graph grammars, exhibit a wide range of properties that are very similar to the original graphs. In addition to graph properties like degree or eigenvector centrality, what a graph "looks like" ultimately depends on small details in local graph substructures that are difficult to define at a global level. We show that our generative graph model is able to preserve these local substructures when generating new graphs and performs well on new and difficult tests of model robustness.Comment: 18 pages, 19 figures, accepted to CIKM 2016 in Indianapolis, I

Polaronic signature in the metallic phase of La0.7Ca0.3MnO3 films detected by scanning tunneling spectroscopy

In this work we map tunnel conductance curves with nanometric spatial resolution, tracking polaronic quasiparticle excitations when cooling across the insulator-to-metal transition in La0.7Ca0.3MnO3 films. In the insulating phase the spectral signature of polarons, a depletion of conductance at low bias flanked by peaks, is detected all over the scanned surface. These features are still observed at the transition and persist on cooling into the metallic phase. Polaron-binding energy maps reveal that polarons are not confined to regions embedded in a highly-conducting matrix but are present over the whole field of view both above and below the transition temperature.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Study on the Production and Re-use of Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) and Extracellular Polysaccharide by the Archaeon Haloferax mediterranei Strain DSM 1411

The halobacterium Haloferax mediterranei was used to study the production of two types of biopolymers: The biopolyester poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV) was accumulated as intracellular granules, whereas an extracelluar polysaccharide was excreted in parallel to biopolyester synthesis. After production, microbial re-use and degradation of these polymers under different conditions were investigated to assess the requirements for handling the product-rich fermentation broth prior to the downstream processing for product recovery. Degradation kinetics of the polymers and the impact of different storage conditions on molar mass of PHBV were studied. It turned out that the biotechnological fermentation process can be run without any sterility precautions. No major product losses were observed without pasteurization of fermentation broth after the stop of fermentation. In addition, neither PHBV nor EPS are re-utilized by the cells for biomass formation even if the culture is maintained under conditions of carbon starvation for an extended time

Realizing Exactly Solvable SU(N) Magnets with Thermal Atoms

We show that $n$ thermal fermionic alkaline-earth atoms in a flat-bottom trap allow one to robustly implement a spin model displaying two symmetries: the $S_n$ symmetry that permutes atoms occupying different vibrational levels of the trap and the SU($N$) symmetry associated with $N$ nuclear spin states. The high symmetry makes the model exactly solvable, which, in turn, enables the analytic study of dynamical processes such as spin diffusion in this SU($N$) system. We also show how to use this system to generate entangled states that allow for Heisenberg-limited metrology. This highly symmetric spin model should be experimentally realizable even when the vibrational levels are occupied according to a high-temperature thermal or an arbitrary non-thermal distribution.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures (including supplemental materials