Effect of response rates on non-distracted and distracted conditional discrimination performance

Two experiments were carried out in order to see if higher rates of responding during training result in higher stability of accuracy in the face of distraction. In the first experiment hens were exposed to a repeated acquisition procedure where they were taught to peck a number of 3 key combination response sequences (chains). In the first condition hens had the opportunity respond at any rate, in the second condition delays between each correct response were used to reduce response rate. Each session was made up of two periods. During the first period (training), hens learnt to complete chains. The second period was a test period where a stroboscope was used to distract behaviour. Accuracy during each condition and period was measured. The number of trials and rate of reinforcement were held constant. This procedure was repeated in a second experiment in order to test if habituation to the stroboscope was occurring. During both experiments the stroboscope was found to distract behaviour during the test period. During training, accuracy was higher for the no-delay condition than the delay condition. There were no large differences in accuracy between the no-delays condition and the delays condition during the test period, this was the same for both experiments. The second experiment showed that repeated presentation of the stroboscope resulted in higher accuracy meaning that habituation had occurred. The findings showed that when rate of reinforcement and number of practices were controlled, rate of responding alone during training did not change the stability of accuracy during distraction which was unexpected

Finance for Climate Resilience in the Dawn of the Paris Era

This brief examines the gap in adaptation finance that must be bridged in order to fulfill the values of the Paris agreement, with a focus on regions such as Southeast Asia that are at particular risk from the effects of climate change. It also discusses new adaptation finance commitments from governments and the private sector; the landscape of existing adaptation finance channels and initiatives onto which these commitments build; and the undiminished role of developed countries -- such as the United States, Japan, EU countries, and others -- to facilitate an increase in adaptation finance as the Paris era begins

Scaling limits for the critical Fortuin-Kastelyn model on a random planar map II: local estimates and empty reduced word exponent

We continue our study of the inventory accumulation introduced by Sheffield (2011), which encodes a random planar map decorated by a collection of loops sampled from the critical Fortuin-Kasteleyn (FK) model. We prove various \emph{local estimates} for the inventory accumulation model, i.e., estimates for the precise number of symbols of a given type in a reduced word sampled from the model. Using our estimates, we obtain the scaling limit of the associated two-dimensional random walk conditioned on the event that it stays in the first quadrant for one unit of time and ends up at a particular position in the interior of the first quadrant. We also obtain the exponent for the probability that a word of length $2n$ sampled from the inventory accumulation model corresponds to an empty reduced word, which is equivalent to an asymptotic formula for the partition function of the critical FK planar map model. The estimates of this paper will be used in a subsequent paper to obtain the scaling limit of the lattice walk associated with a finite-volume FK planar map.Comment: 49 pages, 2 figures; final version published in EJP. Changes include significantly approved exposition and relation to partition functio

Trading inference effort versus size in CNF Knowledge Compilation

Knowledge Compilation (KC) studies compilation of boolean functions f into some formalism F, which allows to answer all queries of a certain kind in polynomial time. Due to its relevance for SAT solving, we concentrate on the query type "clausal entailment" (CE), i.e., whether a clause C follows from f or not, and we consider subclasses of CNF, i.e., clause-sets F with special properties. In this report we do not allow auxiliary variables (except of the Outlook), and thus F needs to be equivalent to f. We consider the hierarchies UC_k <= WC_k, which were introduced by the authors in 2012. Each level allows CE queries. The first two levels are well-known classes for KC. Namely UC_0 = WC_0 is the same as PI as studied in KC, that is, f is represented by the set of all prime implicates, while UC_1 = WC_1 is the same as UC, the class of unit-refutation complete clause-sets introduced by del Val 1994. We show that for each k there are (sequences of) boolean functions with polysize representations in UC_{k+1}, but with an exponential lower bound on representations in WC_k. Such a separation was previously only know for k=0. We also consider PC < UC, the class of propagation-complete clause-sets. We show that there are (sequences of) boolean functions with polysize representations in UC, while there is an exponential lower bound for representations in PC. These separations are steps towards a general conjecture determining the representation power of the hierarchies PC_k < UC_k <= WC_k. The strong form of this conjecture also allows auxiliary variables, as discussed in depth in the Outlook.Comment: 43 pages, second version with literature updates. Proceeds with the separation results from the discontinued arXiv:1302.442