Predicting elections from politicians’ faces

Prior research found that people’s assessments of relative competence predicted the outcome of Senate and Congressional races. We hypothesized that snap judgments of "facial competence" would provide useful forecasts of the popular vote in presidential primaries before the candidates become well known to the voters. We obtained facial competence ratings of 11 potential candidates for the Democratic Party nomination and of 13 for the Republican Party nomination for the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. To ensure that raters did not recognize the candidates, we relied heavily on young subjects from Australia and New Zealand. We obtained between 139 and 348 usable ratings per candidate between May and August 2007. The top-rated candidates were Clinton and Obama for the Democrats and McCain, Hunter, and Hagel for the Republicans; Giuliani was 9th and Thompson was 10th. At the time, the leading candidates in the Democratic polls were Clinton at 38% and Obama at 20%, while Giuliani was first among the Republicans at 28% followed by Thompson at 22%. McCain trailed at 15%. Voters had already linked Hillary Clinton’s competent appearance with her name, so her high standing in the polls met our expectations. As voters learned the appearance of the other candidates, poll rankings moved towards facial competence rankings. At the time that Obama clinched the nomination, Clinton was ahead in the popular vote in the primaries and McCain had secured the Republican nomination with a popular vote that was twice that of Romney, the next highest vote-getter.accuracy; appearance; forecasting methods; snap judgments

Reengineering real-time software systems

The problem this thesis solves is how to reengineer existing real- time applications implemented without software engineering (SE) attributes; with poor modularity and robustness, and that are difficult to read and maintain. The real-time system chosen for this study was the Model-based Mobile robot Language (MML) used on the Yamabico- 11 mobile robot, which was implemented without SE attributes. The approach taken was reengineering MML with a focus on improving modifiability while preserving functionality. First we developed a systematic plan using manual static analysis, then we incrementally reengineered the application with thorough system-level testing. Code review was used to locate and remove dead code, and synonymous and redundant variables and functions (improving modifiability, readability and robustness). Call-hierarchy tracing was used to gain explicit module restructuring insight for tighter cohesion (improving modifiability, modularity, and readability). Global-variable tracing was used to improve module coupling by localizing and minimizing global variables (improving modularity, readability, and robustness). The results were as follows: A method for applying SE to existing real-time applications after- the-fact called 'Reengineering Real-Time Software Systems' was developed, which improves modifiability, modularity, robustness and readability. MML now has improved modularity and robustness, and is easier to read and maintain.http://archive.org/details/reengineeringrea1094539996Captain, United States ArmyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Predicting Elections from Politicians\u27 Faces

Prior research found that people\u27s assessments of relative competence predicted the outcome of Senate and Congressional races. We hypothesized that snap judgments of facial competence would provide useful forecasts of the popular vote in presidential primaries before the candidates become well known to the voters. We obtained facial competence ratings of 11 potential candidates for the Democratic Party nomination and of 13 for the Republican Party nomination for the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. To ensure that raters did not recognize the candidates, we relied heavily on young subjects from Australia and New Zealand. We obtained between 139 and 348 usable ratings per candidate between May and August 2007. The top-rated candidates were Clinton and Obama for the Democrats and McCain, Hunter, and Hagel for the Republicans; Giuliani was 9th and Thompson was 10th. At the time, the leading candidates in the Democratic polls were Clinton at 38% and Obama at 20%, while Giuliani was first among the Republicans at 28% followed by Thompson at 22%. McCain trailed at 15%. Voters had already linked Hillary Clinton\u27s competent appearance with her name, so her high standing in the polls met our expectations. As voters learned the appearance of the other candidates, poll rankings moved towards facial competence rankings. At the time that Obama clinched the nomination, Clinton was ahead in the popular vote in the primaries and McCain had secured the Republican nomination with a popular vote that was twice that of Romney, the next highest vote-getter

Kane County water resources investigations: interim report on shallow aquifer potentiometric surface mapping

"Prepared for Kane County Development and Resources Management Department.""April 2005."Includes bibliographical references (p. 47-49)

A Rifted Margin Origin for the Crescent Basalts and Related Rocks in the Northern Coast Range Volcanic Province, Washington and British-Columbia

The remarkable early to middle Eocene volcanic sequence of the Crescent Formation exposed on the Olympic Peninsula consists predominantly of tholeiitic to minor transitional alkaline basalts with sparse sedimentary interbeds. A composite section measured in the vicinity of the Dosewallips River includes 8.4 km of pillowed to massive submarine basalts overlain by 7.8 km of subaerial flows. An upper limit of about 48 Ma on the age of the Crescent basalts is indicated by faunal assemblages in sediments interbedded with the uppermost flows in the sequence and a circa 50 Ma 40Ar/39Ar age on a leucogabbro from the presumably correlative Bremerton Igneous Complex. Stratigraphically controlled samples collected from throughout the Crescent basalt sequence show that two distinctly different chemical types exist. The lower part of the sequence originated from a relatively depleted mantle course resembling normal (N) to enriched (E)-MORB. The upper flows have a chemistry resembling E-MORB to oceanic island tholeiites. This difference could be due to either variable metasomatism of a single source domain, or influx of a separate enriched-mantle source component during the extrusion of the upper part of the sequence. Paleomagnetic measurements indicate that the Crescent basalts have not been significantly rotated, nor translated northwards since their extrusion. Paleotectonic reconstructions show that formation of the Crescent basalts and the Coast Range volcanic province as a whole coincided with a marked increase in the velocity of oblique convergence of the Kula plate with North America at about 60 Ma. Other geologic, geochemical, and paleomagnetic data are consistent with the interpretation that extrusion occurred in a basin or series of basins formed by a rift system along the continental margin of North America. Rifting might have been initiated by the influence of a hotspot, an increase in the rate of oblique convergence, or the kinematic effects of the Kula-Farallon ridge as it migrated along the margin. If extrusion is related to the passage of the triple junction, then the Coast Ranges can be considered to be an important tectonic marker for early to middle Eocene plate reconstructions

Evaluating the Economic Impact of Palliative and End-of-Life Care Interventions on Intensive Care Unit Utilization and Costs from the Hospital and Healthcare System Perspective.

Purpose of report: Understanding the impact of palliative care interventions on intensive care unit (ICU) costs and utilization is critical for demonstrating the value of palliative care. Performing these economic assessments, however, can be challenging. The purpose of this special report is to highlight and discuss important considerations when assessing ICU utilization and costs from the hospital perspective, with the goal of providing recommendations on methods to consider for future analyses. FINDINGS: ICU length of stay (LOS) and associated costs of care are common and important outcome measures, but must be analyzed properly to yield valid conclusions. There is significant variation in costs by day of stay in the ICU with only modest differences between an ICU day at the end of a stay and the first day on the acute care floor; this variation must be appropriately accounted for analytically. Furthermore, reporting direct variable costs, in addition to total ICU costs, is needed to understand short-term and long-term impact of a reduction in LOS. Importantly, incentives for the hospital to realize savings vary depending on reimbursement policies. SUMMARY: ICU utilization and costs are common outcomes in studies evaluating palliative care interventions. Accurate estimation and interpretation are key to understanding the economic implications of palliative care interventions

Supersymmetry Breaking in the Early Universe

Supersymmetry breaking in the early universe induces scalar soft potentials with curvature of order the Hubble constant. This has a dramatic effect on the coherent production of scalar fields along flat directions. For the moduli problem it generically gives a concrete realization of the problem by determining the field value subsequent to inflation. However it might suggest a solution if the minimum of the induced potential coincides with the true minimum. The induced Hubble scale mass also has important implications for the Affleck-Dine mechanism of baryogenesis. This mechanism requires large squark or slepton expectation values to develop along flat directions in the early universe. This is generally not the case if the induced mass squared is positive, but does occur if it is negative. The resulting baryon to entropy ratio depends mainly on the dimension of the nonrenormalizable operator in the superpotential which stabilizes the flat direction, and the reheat temperature after inflation. Unlike the original scenario, it is possible to obtain an acceptable baryon asymmetry without subsequent entropy releases.Comment: 11 pages, requires phyzz

The Impact of Galaxy Cluster Mergers on Cosmological Parameter Estimation from Surveys of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect

Sensitive surveys of the Cosmic Microwave Background will detect thousands of galaxy clusters via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. Two SZ observables, the central or maximum and integrated Comptonization parameters y_max and Y, relate in a simple way to the total cluster mass, which allow the construction of mass functions (MFs) that can be used to estimate cosmological parameters such as Omega_M, sigma_8, and the dark energy parameter w. However, clusters form from the mergers of smaller structures, events that can disrupt the equilibrium of intracluster gas upon which SZ-M relations rely. From a set of N-body/hydrodynamical simulations of binary cluster mergers, we calculate the evolution of Y and y_max over the course of merger events and find that both parameters are transiently "boosted," primarily during the first core passage. We then use a semi-analytic technique developed by Randall et al. (2002) to estimate the effect of merger boosts on the distribution functions YF and yF of Y and y_max, respectively, via cluster merger histories determined from extended Press-Schechter (PS) merger trees. We find that boosts do not induce an overall systematic effect on YFs, and the values of Omega_M, sigma_8, and w were returned to within 2% of values expected from the nonboosted YFs. The boosted yFs are significantly biased, however, causing Omega_M to be underestimated by 15-45%, sigma_8 to be overestimated by 10-25%, and w to be pushed to more negative values by 25-45%. We confirm that the integrated SZ effect, Y, is far more robust to mergers than y_max, as previously reported by Motl et al. (2005) and similarly found for the X-ray equivalent Y_X, and we conclude that Y is the superior choice for constraining cosmological parameters.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Positron emission tomography with f18-fluorodeoxyglucose in the staging and preoperative evaluation of malignant pleural mesothelioma

AbstractObjectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the utility of positron emission tomography with F18-fluorodeoxyglucose in the preoperative evaluation and staging of malignant mesothelioma in patients who were candidates for aggressive combined modality therapy. Methods: Eighteen consecutive patients with biopsy-proven malignant mesothelioma underwent positron emission tomographic scanning. The results of positron emission tomographic imaging were compared with results obtained by computed tomography, mediastinoscopy, thoracoscopy, and pathologic examination of surgical specimens. All patients fasted and received an average of 14.5 ± 2.7 mCi of F18-fluorodeoxyglucose for positron emission tomographic scanning. Attenuation-corrected whole-body and regional emission images of the chest and upper abdomen were acquired and formatted into transaxial, coronal, and sagittal images. Results: All primary malignant mesotheliomas accumulated F18-fluorodeoxyglucose, and the mean standardized uptake value was 7.6 (range, 3.33-14.85; n = 9). There were no false-negative results of positron emission tomography. Identification of occult extrathoracic metastases by positron emission tomography was the basis for excluding two patients from surgical therapy. There were two false-positive results of positron emission tomography: increased F18-fluorodeoxyglucose uptake in the contralateral chest that was negative by thoracoscopic biopsy (n = 1) and increased abdominal F18-fluorodeoxyglucose uptake after partial colectomy for diverticular disease (n = 1). Conclusions: Positron emission tomography can identify malignant pleural mesothelioma and appears to be a useful noninvasive staging modality for patients being considered for aggressive combined modality therapy. (J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2000;120:128-33

Risk related to pre–diabetes mellitus and diabetes mellitus in heart failure with reduced ejection fraction: insights from prospective comparison of ARNI with ACEI to determine impact on global mortality and morbidity in heart failure trial

Background—The prevalence of pre–diabetes mellitus and its consequences in patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction are not known. We investigated these in the Prospective Comparison of ARNI With ACEI to Determine Impact on Global Mortality and Morbidity in Heart Failure (PARADIGM-HF) trial. Methods and Results—We examined clinical outcomes in 8399 patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction according to history of diabetes mellitus and glycemic status (baseline hemoglobin A1c [HbA1c]: <6.0% [<42 mmol/mol], 6.0%–6.4% [42–47 mmol/mol; pre–diabetes mellitus], and ≥6.5% [≥48 mmol/mol; diabetes mellitus]), in Cox regression models adjusted for known predictors of poor outcome. Patients with a history of diabetes mellitus (n=2907 [35%]) had a higher risk of the primary composite outcome of heart failure hospitalization or cardiovascular mortality compared with those without a history of diabetes mellitus: adjusted hazard ratio, 1.38; 95% confidence interval, 1.25 to 1.52;P<0.001. HbA1c measurement showed that an additional 1106 (13% of total) patients had undiagnosed diabetes mellitus and 2103 (25%) had pre–diabetes mellitus. The hazard ratio for patients with undiagnosed diabetes mellitus (HbA1c, >6.5%) and known diabetes mellitus compared with those with HbA1c<6.0% was 1.39 (1.17–1.64); P<0.001 and 1.64 (1.43–1.87); P<0.001, respectively. Patients with pre–diabetes mellitus were also at higher risk (hazard ratio, 1.27 [1.10–1.47];P<0.001) compared with those with HbA1c<6.0%. The benefit of LCZ696 (sacubitril/valsartan) compared with enalapril was consistent across the range of HbA1c in the trial. Conclusions—In patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction, dysglycemia is common and pre–diabetes mellitus is associated with a higher risk of adverse cardiovascular outcomes (compared with patients with no diabetes mellitus and HbA1c <6.0%). LCZ696 was beneficial compared with enalapril, irrespective of glycemic status