Purpose and Use of Contracted Acres Under Corn and Wheat Adjustment Programs

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Bayesian Restricted Likelihood Methods: Conditioning on Insufficient Statistics in Bayesian Regression

Bayesian methods have proven themselves to be successful across a wide range of scientific problems and have many well-documented advantages over competing methods. However, these methods run into difficulties for two major and prevalent classes of problems: handling data sets with outliers and dealing with model misspecification. We outline the drawbacks of previous solutions to both of these problems and propose a new method as an alternative. When working with the new method, the data is summarized through a set of insufficient statistics, targeting inferential quantities of interest, and the prior distribution is updated with the summary statistics rather than the complete data. By careful choice of conditioning statistics, we retain the main benefits of Bayesian methods while reducing the sensitivity of the analysis to features of the data not captured by the conditioning statistics. For reducing sensitivity to outliers, classical robust estimators (e.g., M-estimators) are natural choices for conditioning statistics. A major contribution of this work is the development of a data augmented Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm for the linear model and a large class of summary statistics. We demonstrate the method on simulated and real data sets containing outliers and subject to model misspecification. Success is manifested in better predictive performance for data points of interest as compared to competing methods

Designing Policies to Open Trade

In this paper we consider recent proposals to auction U.S. import quotas. using the funds so obtained to encourage relocation out of the protected industries. We argue that the information available to the government, or lack thereof, is a critical factor in understanding these policies. In a world or full information, it makes little sense to use auction quotas rather than tariffs. Similarly, it is unclear why an elaborate program of temporary protection is needed, rather than immediately opening trade and compensating people with an income transfer. When the government has Limited information, however, these policies become quite sensible and may even be optimal.

The Metanarratives of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Collective Cognitive Dissonance of Metamodernist Discursive Formation

My artworks explore the impacts of the technology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which began in the early 21st Century, upon global society and the human psyche. My works are instantiated by multi-year research in the areas of social psychology, cognitive dissonance, computer evolution and artificial intelligence. My body of work portrays a cautionary sensibility regards new technologies such as robotics, quantum supercomputing, Artificial Intelligence, commercial space travel and nanotechnology. In addition, my artwork attempts to increase awareness of the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. The perceptions and cognitions of artistic viewers relate directly to the psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. Beyond that, a population over several generations may be influenced by the fine artworks of their social moment in a social psychology phenomenon known as collective cognitive dissonance. In this paper, I will review these two cognitive phenomena and how the phenomenon of collective cognitive dissonance is ubiquitous in the current social moment of the early 21st century and in metamodern artworks. After reviewing the historical examples of USSR and Nazi Germany socialist realism, I will focus on what is now called the metamodern era. I use arguments from past and current examples to show how this phenomenon of collective cognitive dissonance is made active in fine artworks. I believe intentional and unintentional ubiquitous metanarratives, as portrayed in artworks, capture the worldviews of large subpopulations (beyond nation-states) within the internetworked globalized nanotechnology community we inhabit

Sequence analysis of the cis-regulatory regions of the bithorax complex of Drosophila

The bithorax complex (BX-C) of Drosophila, one of two complexes that act as master regulators of the body plan of the fly, has now been entirely sequenced and comprises approximate to 315,000 bp, only 1.4% of which codes for protein. Analysis of this sequence reveals significantly overrepresented DNA motifs of unknown, as well as known, functions in the nonprotein-coding portion of the sequence. The following types of motifs in that portion are analyzed: (i) concatamers of mono-, di-, and trinucleotides; (ii) tightly clustered hexanucleotides (spaced less than or equal to 5 bases apart); (iii) direct and reverse repeats longer than 20 bp; and (iv) a number of motifs known from biochemical studies to play a role in the regulation of the BX-C. The hexanucleotide AGATAC is remarkably overrepresented and is surmised to play a role in chromosome pairing. The positions of sites of highly overrepresented motifs are plotted for those that occur at more than five sites in the sequence, when <0.5 case is expected. Expected values are based on a third-order Markov chain, which is the optimal order for representing the BXCALL sequence

Differentials in the homological homotopy fixed point spectral sequence

We analyze in homological terms the homotopy fixed point spectrum of a T-equivariant commutative S-algebra R. There is a homological homotopy fixed point spectral sequence with E^2_{s,t} = H^{-s}_{gp}(T; H_t(R; F_p)), converging conditionally to the continuous homology H^c_{s+t}(R^{hT}; F_p) of the homotopy fixed point spectrum. We show that there are Dyer-Lashof operations beta^epsilon Q^i acting on this algebra spectral sequence, and that its differentials are completely determined by those originating on the vertical axis. More surprisingly, we show that for each class x in the $^{2r}-term of the spectral sequence there are 2r other classes in the E^{2r}-term (obtained mostly by Dyer-Lashof operations on x) that are infinite cycles, i.e., survive to the E^infty-term. We apply this to completely determine the differentials in the homological homotopy fixed point spectral sequences for the topological Hochschild homology spectra R = THH(B) of many S-algebras, including B = MU, BP, ku, ko and tmf. Similar results apply for all finite subgroups C of T, and for the Tate- and homotopy orbit spectral sequences. This work is part of a homological approach to calculating topological cyclic homology and algebraic K-theory of commutative S-algebras.Comment: Published by Algebraic and Geometric Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt/AGTVol5/agt-5-27.abs.htm

Data assimilation for the Martian atmosphere using MGS Thermal Emission Spectrometer observations

From the introduction: Given the quantity of data expected from current and forthcoming spacecraft missions to Mars, it is now possible to use data assimilation as a means of atmospheric analysis for the first time for a planet other than the Earth. Several groups have described plans to develop assimilation schemes for Mars [Banfield et al., 1995; Houben, 1999; Lewis and Read, 1995; Lewis et al., 1996, 1997; Zhang et al., 2001]. Data assimilation is a technique for the analysis of atmospheric observations which combines currently valid information with prior knowledge from previous observations and dynamical and physical constraints, via the use of a numerical model. Despite the number of new missions, observations of the atmosphere of Mars in the near future are still likely to be sparse when compared to those of the Earth, perhaps comprising one orbiter and a few surface stations at best at any one time. Data assimilation is useful as a means to extract the maximum information from such observations, both by a form of interpolation in space and time using model constraints and by the combination of information from different observations, e.g. temperature profiles and surface pressure measurements which may be irregularly distributed. The procedure can produce a dynamically consistent set of meteorological fields and can be used directly to test and to refine an atmospheric model against observations

Assimilation of TES data from the Mars Global Surveyor scientifc mapping phase

The Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES)aboard Mars Global Surveyor has produced data which cover almost two Martian years so far (during its scientific mapping phase). Thermal profiles for the atmosphere below 40 km and total dust opacities can be retrieved from TES nadir spectra and assimilated into a Mars general circulation model (MGCM), by using the assimilation techniques described in detail by Lewis et al. (2002). This paper describes some preliminary results from assimilations of temperature data from the period Ls=141°- 270° corresponding to late northern summer until winter solstice on Mars. Work in progress is devoted to assimilate both temperature and total dust opacity data for the full period for which they are already available