1,029 research outputs found
Bayesian Analysis of Structural Effects in an Ordered Equation System
We describe a new simulation-based algorithm for Bayesian estimation of structural effects in models where the outcome of interest and an endogenous treatment variable are ordered. Our algorithm makes use of a reparameterization, suggested by Nandram and Chen (1996) in the context of a single equation ordered-probit model, which significantly improves the mixing of the standard Gibbs sampler. We illustrate the improvements afforded by this new algorithm in a generated data experiment and also make use of our methods in an empirical application. Specifically, we take data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and investigate the impact of maternal alcohol consumption on early infant health. Our results show clear evidence that the health outcomes of infants whose mothers drink while pregnant are worse than the outcomes of infants whose mothers never consumed alcohol while pregnant. In addition, the estimated parameters clearly suggest the need to control for the endogeneity of maternal alcohol consumption.
Bayesian Modeling of School Effects Using Hierarchical Models with Smoothing Priors
We describe a new and flexible framework for modeling school effects. Like previous work in this area, we introduce an empirical model that evaluates school performance on the basis of student level test-score gains. Unlike previous work, however, we introduce a flexible model that relates follow-up student test scores to baseline student test scores and explore for possible nonlinearities in these relationships. Using data from High School and Beyond (HSB) and adapting the methodology described in Koop and Poirier (2004a), we test and reject the use of specifications that have been frequently used in research and as a basis for policy. We find that nonlinearities are important in the relationship between intake and follow-up achievement, that rankings of schools are sensitive to the model employed, and importantly, that commonly used specifications can give different and potentially misleading assessments of school performance. When estimating our preferred semiparametric specification, we find small but ``significant'' impacts of some school quality proxies (such as district-level expenditure per pupil) in the production of student achievement.
Comparative Study of Different Methods in Vibration-Based Terrain Classification for Wheeled Robots with Shock Absorbers
open access articleAutonomous robots that operate in the field can enhance their security and efficiency by
accurate terrain classification, which can be realized by means of robot-terrain interaction-generated
vibration signals. In this paper, we explore the vibration-based terrain classification (VTC),
in particular for a wheeled robot with shock absorbers. Because the vibration sensors are
usually mounted on the main body of the robot, the vibration signals are dampened significantly,
which results in the vibration signals collected on different terrains being more difficult to
discriminate. Hence, the existing VTC methods applied to a robot with shock absorbers may degrade.
The contributions are two-fold: (1) Several experiments are conducted to exhibit the performance of
the existing feature-engineering and feature-learning classification methods; and (2) According to
the long short-term memory (LSTM) network, we propose a one-dimensional convolutional LSTM
(1DCL)-based VTC method to learn both spatial and temporal characteristics of the dampened
vibration signals. The experiment results demonstrate that: (1) The feature-engineering methods,
which are efficient in VTC of the robot without shock absorbers, are not so accurate in our project;
meanwhile, the feature-learning methods are better choices; and (2) The 1DCL-based VTC method
outperforms the conventional methods with an accuracy of 80.18%, which exceeds the second method
(LSTM) by 8.23%
ANALYSIS OF INTERNET BEHAVIOR CHARACTERISTICS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL RISK FACTORS OF ADOLESCENTS WITH INTERNET ADDICTION
A nonzero solution for bounded selfadjoint operator equations and homoclinic orbits of Hamiltonian systems
We obtain an existence theorem of nonzero solution for a class of bounded selfadjoint operator equations. The main result contains as a special case the existence result of a nontrivial homoclinic orbit of a class of Hamiltonian systems by Coti Zelati, Ekeland and Séré. We also investigate the existence of nontrivial homoclinic orbit of indefinite second order systems as another application of the theorem
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