9,204 research outputs found
Seasonality, precautionary savings and health uncertainty: Evidence from farm households in central Kenya
The high prevalence of risks in low income economies makes managing uncertainty critical for productivity and survival. This paper analyzes seasonal changes in farm householdsâ per capita consumption and saving in response to weather and health shocks. Using a sample of 196 households in central Kenya, it tests the notion that people save most of their transitory income, and examines their precautionary saving motives. The results show that the propensity to save out of transitory income is about a fifth of what the permanent income hypothesis postulates. The propensity to save differs by wealth, with the poor exhibiting stronger precautionary motives towards rainfall variability. But the wealth effect is weak, suggesting that the asset base is vulnerable even for the better-off. However, precautionary savings tend to increase with wealth among HIV/AIDS affected households. Since illness is associated with higher consumption, and therefore less investment, we find more volatile consumption for HIV/AIDS affected households
An Extensible Benchmarking Infrastructure for Motion Planning Algorithms
Sampling-based planning algorithms are the most common probabilistically
complete algorithms and are widely used on many robot platforms. Within this
class of algorithms, many variants have been proposed over the last 20 years,
yet there is still no characterization of which algorithms are well-suited for
which classes of problems. This has motivated us to develop a benchmarking
infrastructure for motion planning algorithms. It consists of three main
components. First, we have created an extensive benchmarking software framework
that is included with the Open Motion Planning Library (OMPL), a C++ library
that contains implementations of many sampling-based algorithms. Second, we
have defined extensible formats for storing benchmark results. The formats are
fairly straightforward so that other planning libraries could easily produce
compatible output. Finally, we have created an interactive, versatile
visualization tool for compact presentation of collected benchmark data. The
tool and underlying database facilitate the analysis of performance across
benchmark problems and planners.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine (Special Issue on
Replicable and Measurable Robotics Research), 201
Photoacoustic detection of stimulated emission pumping in p-difluorobenzene
Photoacoustic detection has been used to monitor a stimulated emission pumping process in pâdifluorobenzene. Using the Ă^(1)B_(2u)5^1 state as an intermediate, several vibrational levels of the ground electronic state were populated. The photoacoustic method is an attractive alternative to other detection techniques because of its sensitivity, simplicity, and its ability to differentiate between stimulated emission pumping and excited state absorption. An example of excited state absorption in aniline is given
Atomic structure of Mn wires on Si(001) resolved by scanning tunneling microscopy
At submonolayer coverage, Mn forms atomic wires on the Si(001) surface
oriented perpendicular to the underlying Si dimer rows. While many other
elements form symmetric dimer wires at room temperature, we show that Mn wires
have an asymmetric appearance and pin the Si dimers nearby. We find that an
atomic configuration with a Mn trimer unit cell can explain these observations
due to the interplay between the Si dimer buckling phase near the wire and the
orientation of the Mn trimer. We study the resulting four wire configurations
in detail using high-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) imaging and
compare our findings with STM images simulated by density functional theory.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
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