A HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION ANALYSIS OF FUELWOOD DEMAND IN RHODE ISLAND

A model analyzing household substitution of fuelwood for other heating fuels is needed to clarify the relationship between energy prices and patterns of forest resource utilization. This paper employs the household production methodology to model fuelwood demand in Rhode Island. Data from a cross-sectional survey of 515 households are employed to test a discrete-choice model of household participation in wood-burning and a four-equation system modeling household production of heat and aesthetic benefits from fuelwood and stove capital. Control of selection bias via inclusion of an appropriate instrument allows analysis of aggregate demands. Some broad policy prescriptions applicable to the Northeast generally are presented.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Quantum Corrections to the Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m and Kerr-Newman Metrics

We use effective field theory techniques to examine the quantum corrections to the gravitational metrics of charged particles, with and without spin. In momentum space the masslessness of the photon implies the presence of nonanalytic pieces $\sim \sqrt{-q^2},q^2\log -q^2$ etc. in the form factors of the energy-momentum tensor. We show how the former reproduces the classical non-linear terms of the Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m and Kerr-Newman metrics while the latter can be interpreted as quantum corrections to these metrics, of order $G\alpha\hbar/mr^3$Comment: 16 page latex file with two figure

Brief Amici Curiae of Intellectual Property Professors in Support of Petitoner

Congress enacted the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in 1946 as a comprehensive statute to regulate the field of federal administrative law. In holding that the PTO Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences is not subject to the standards of judicial review set forth in the APA, the [Zurko] decision isolates patent law from the rest of administrative law and undermines the APA’s goal of achieving consistency and uniformity in federal administrative law

Conditioning of Leverage Scores and Computation by QR Decomposition

The leverage scores of a full-column rank matrix A are the squared row norms of any orthonormal basis for range(A). We show that corresponding leverage scores of two matrices A and A + \Delta A are close in the relative sense, if they have large magnitude and if all principal angles between the column spaces of A and A + \Delta A are small. We also show three classes of bounds that are based on perturbation results of QR decompositions. They demonstrate that relative differences between individual leverage scores strongly depend on the particular type of perturbation \Delta A. The bounds imply that the relative accuracy of an individual leverage score depends on: its magnitude and the two-norm condition of A, if \Delta A is a general perturbation; the two-norm condition number of A, if \Delta A is a perturbation with the same norm-wise row-scaling as A; (to first order) neither condition number nor leverage score magnitude, if \Delta A is a component-wise row-scaled perturbation. Numerical experiments confirm the qualitative and quantitative accuracy of our bounds.Comment: This version has been accepted to SIMAX but has not yet gone through copy editin

Repair Expenses, Selling Contracts, and House Prices

This paper examines the impact of repair expenses on the selling price of a house. Using data from settlement statements, we investigate the frequency and extent to which performance of major repairs is part of the sales contract. We find that most homes are restored to a "normally maintained" state each time the home changes hands, and that the cost of bringing the home to this condition is included as part of house selling price. This implies it may be unnecessary to measure maintenance levels when using transaction data to study components of house price or to construct house price indexes.

Observation of a quenched moment of inertia in a rotating strongly interacting Fermi gas

We make a model-independent measurement of the moment of inertia of a rotating, expanding strongly-interacting Fermi gas. Quenching of the moment of inertia is observed for energies both below and above the superfluid transition. This shows that a strongly interacting Fermi gas with angular momentum can support irrotational flow in both the superfluid and collisional normal fluid regimes.Comment: 4 pages 5 figure

Statistical Modeling of Epistasis and Linkage Decay using Logic Regression

Logic regression has been recognized as a tool that can identify and model non-additive genetic interactions using Boolean logic groups. Logic regression, TASSEL-GLM and SAS-GLM were compared for analytical precision using a previously characterized model system to identify the best genetic model explaining epistatic interaction for vernalization-sensitivity in barley. A genetic model containing two molecular markers identified in vernalization response in barley was selected using logic regression while both TASSEL-GLM and SAS-GLM included spurious associations in their models. The results also suggest the logic regression can be used to identify dominant/recessive relationships between epistatic alleles through its use of conjugate operators