Game-Theoretic Analysis of the North Korean Missile Crisis

This paper will provide a game-theoretic analysis of the ongoing North Korean missile crisis. It begins by discerning from the available literature the options available to each party involved in the game and determining a rank ordering (best to worst) for each party of the possible combinations of options. I will use the Theory of Moves (ToM) to predict the ultimate outcome of the crisis. This requires, in addition, the initial “state of play� when negotiations begin, and the first mover in the game, both given by the history of the crisis. ToM allows the parties strictly alternating turns to move from the initial state. At each turn to move, a player can either move (back to the previous state or ahead to another state), or pass (remain in the current state). Equilibrium is achieved when the players choose not to move on consecutive turns, i.e., accept the current state as the ultimate outcome. The preference orderings of each player are difficult to determine with certainty, so we consider a variety of possibilities. A reading of the existing literature on the history of the crisis and the expressed interests of the countries involved suggests a set of plausible possibilities worth considering in this analysis. I use ToM to sort this set of possibilities into three subsets that each yield a different ultimate outcome. Comparisons are drawn between the predictions of the ToM and the Nash Equilibrium (NE), a popular game-theoretic approach. Thus, the analysis narrows the likely outcomes of the crisis from nine to three and indicates how the preference orderings of the two countries influence which of these three outcomes actually occurs

Extracting 3D parametric curves from 2D images of Helical objects

Helical objects occur in medicine, biology, cosmetics, nanotechnology, and engineering. Extracting a 3D parametric curve from a 2D image of a helical object has many practical applications, in particular being able to extract metrics such as tortuosity, frequency, and pitch. We present a method that is able to straighten the image object and derive a robust 3D helical curve from peaks in the object boundary. The algorithm has a small number of stable parameters that require little tuning, and the curve is validated against both synthetic and real-world data. The results show that the extracted 3D curve comes within close Hausdorff distance to the ground truth, and has near identical tortuosity for helical objects with a circular profile. Parameter insensitivity and robustness against high levels of image noise are demonstrated thoroughly and quantitatively

Evidence Based Protocol: Improving Nutrition Monitoring in Hospitalized Adults

Malnutrition affects a large number of adult inpatients. For these patients, the implications of the high rate of malnutrition include impaired wound healing, higher rates of infection, and an increased risk of death. These complications contribute to increased healthcare costs and longer lengths of stay. The level of monitoring and documentation of patients’ meal consumption was acknowledged to be below expectations in an acuity-adaptable neurosciences unit situated in a downtown hospital located in the Midwestern United States. The define-measure-analyze-improve-control (DMAIC) quality improvement framework guided the quality improvement team to develop a standard process for meal related activities. The rate of meal intake documentation improved after adoption of the standard process

The bioavailability of cadmium from sewage sludge-amended soils.

PhDCadmium is a potentially toxic trace element present, at low concentrations, in a variety of environmental media. The processing of waste-waters produces sewage sludge, in which cadmium may be present at high concentrations. Sewage sludge applied to soils used for the production of food crops represents a means for the elevation of human dietary exposure to cadmium. This study has examined aspects of the bioavailability of cadmium from sludge-amended soils. A number of sludge-amended and control soils were sampled and placed in tubs in the field. Duplicates of each soil were limed to a mean pH(H 20) of 6.9. Concentrations of cadmium in the edible tissues of cabbages and lettuces were lower for those plants grown on limed soils. Concentrations of cadmium in peeled potato tubers were not always reduced by the application of lime. Cadmium bioavailability was estimated by four soil test reagents, DTPA, EDTA-(Na) 2 , CaCl2 and NH4NO3 . The DTPA test proved to be the best indicator of plant cadmium concentrations. Multivariate statistics were used to develop models, based upon soil variables, for the prediction of plant cadmium concentrations and CF-values. Models were tested against an independent data set. Data quality for cadmium analyses was assessed by the routine use of certified reference materials. Methods of ETA-AAS analysis were developed and optimised for the control of interferences. Preliminary cadmium speciation studies, using SEC-ICP-MS, are described. Cadmium-binding species in the cytosol extract of potato tubers do not appear to survive in vitro gastro-intestinal enzymolysis. Cadmium- binding species in aqueous extracts of both intrinsically and extrinsically labelled samples of cooked potato tuber have molecular weights of < 2 x 10 3 daltons. An iterative model was written to examine the influence of soil and plant variables on the cadmium burden of the plough layer through tim

L'effet de la pratique de mouvements par imagerie motrice sur l'apprentissage d'habiletés et l'organisation cérébrale fonctionnelle

The main objective of this thesis was to examine the behavioural and functional cerebral reorganization produced by the mental practice of a motor skill in order to promote the use of this training method in neurologic rehabilitation. A first study was conducted to validate a new foot sequence task (FST) that allows precise measurement of the learning of sequential foot movements in normal subjects and patients with motor impairments. The results of a second study, which aimed at determining if motor imagery is essential to the learning of the FST through mental practice, showed that mental practice with motor imagery improved the learning of this task more than physical practice alone. Moreover, it was found that another type of mental practice, verbal rehearsal, can also improve the learning of the FST. However, only the subjects that had used motor imagery during practice remembered the sequence after several months without practice, which suggests that motor imagery contributes to learning but more importantly, that it is essential for the long term retention of motor skills learned with mental practice. A single-case study was then conducted to examine the effect of combined physical and mental practice on the learning of the FST in a patient who had had a stroke 4 months earlier. The results confirm that MP with motor imagery can improve the learning of this task when combined with physical practice and can contribute to the retention of the skill when used alone. Finally, a study using positron emission tomography showed that subjects who practiced the FST with motor imagery improved their performance, and displayed a functional reorganization similar to that observed after physical practice. However, practice with motor imagery seems to produce changes on the systems subserving motor preparation and anticipation rather than execution per se. Overall, the findings of this thesis confirm that MP with motor imagery is efficient at improving motor skill learning, and that this form of training changes the cerebral organization of subjects. The various results also provided new guidelines for future research and the use of mental practice in a neurologic rehabilitation

On Ohmic heating in the Earth's core I: Nutation constraints

We present calculations to place formal lower bounds on the energy dissipated by the magnetic field in the core. These bounds are discovered by solving for 3-D magnetic fields in the Earth's core that are optimally configured for minimizing the dissipation. Such bounds are relevant for addressing the balance of heat flow through the core-mantle boundary into the mantle, and thus for constraining Earth's history scenarios. The bounds we derive are based on a number of different constraints. We use observed values of the magnetic field at the core-mantle boundary for epoch 2001, and also the root-mean-square values of the radial magnetic field on the inner core boundary and the core mantle boundary inferred from interpretations of the Earth's nutations. A formal lower bound for the dissipation based on all the constraints is almost 10 GW. This lower bound is achieved for a 3-D magnetic field configuration that has very unlikely features. We present two further geophysically reasonable (but no longer rigorous) calculations that raise the dissipation towards 100 GW, not dissimilar to other recent estimates of dissipatio