552 research outputs found
Reconsidering the Puebloan Languages in a Southwestern Areal Context
Areal linguistics is the study of diffused linguistic features across different languages which are geographically contiguous and culturally connected. My research attempts to standardize definitions for the vocabulary surrounding linguistic diffusion which will apply cross-areally. I also examine these definitions within the case study of the Pueblo and Southwest regions of North America. These areas have been culturally linked, but no agreement has been made as to whether or not these make up a linguistic area with sub-areas or are both part of a much larger area including the Great Basin, southern Plains, and southern Californian languages
A model for fluvial bedrock incision by impacting suspended and bed load sediment
A mechanistic model is derived for the rate of fluvial erosion into bedrock by abrasion from uniform size particles that impact the bed during transport in both bed and suspended load. The erosion rate is equated to the product of the impact rate, the mass loss per particle impact, and a bed coverage term. Unlike previous models that consider only bed load, the impact rate is not assumed to tend to zero as the shear velocity approaches the threshold for suspension. Instead, a given sediment supply is distributed between the bed and suspended load by using formulas for the bed load layer height, bed load velocity, logarithmic fluid velocity profile, and Rouse sediment concentration profile. It is proposed that the impact rate scales linearly with the product of the near-bed sediment concentration and the impact velocity and that particles impact the bed because of gravitational settling and advection by turbulent eddies. Results suggest, unlike models that consider only bed load, that the erosion rate increases with increasing transport stage (for a given relative sediment supply), even for transport stages that exceed the onset of suspension. In addition, erosion can occur if the supply of sediment exceeds the bed load transport capacity because a portion of the sediment load is transported in suspension. These results have implications for predicting erosion rates and channel morphology, especially in rivers with fine sediment, steep channel-bed slopes, and large flood events
Paper Session II-C - Can Robots Build a Lunar Habitat?
Developing a human habitat on the lunar surface will require an extensive infrastructure with a large number of assembled and tested components. Automating the development of this infrastructure using robotic systems would greatly reduce the cost. However, advances in the technology must be reali/.ed for robots to be used in such typical tasks as mating module and equipment interfaces and connecting umbilicals and fasteners.
This paper addresses the challenges in automating the assembly of lunar components. The specific tasks which must be automated and the corresponding technology advances required are discussed here. This is an attempt to foster discussion of the issues of automating lunar surface operations and to highlight the most critical areas of technology that must be addressed to make lunar habitation a reality
Fluent dreaming for language models
Feature visualization, also known as "dreaming", offers insights into vision
models by optimizing the inputs to maximize a neuron's activation or other
internal component. However, dreaming has not been successfully applied to
language models because the input space is discrete. We extend Greedy
Coordinate Gradient, a method from the language model adversarial attack
literature, to design the Evolutionary Prompt Optimization (EPO) algorithm. EPO
optimizes the input prompt to simultaneously maximize the Pareto frontier
between a chosen internal feature and prompt fluency, enabling fluent dreaming
for language models. We demonstrate dreaming with neurons, output logits and
arbitrary directions in activation space. We measure the fluency of the
resulting prompts and compare language model dreaming with max-activating
dataset examples. Critically, fluent dreaming allows automatically exploring
the behavior of model internals in reaction to mildly out-of-distribution
prompts. Code for running EPO is available at
https://github.com/Confirm-Solutions/dreamy. A companion page demonstrating
code usage is at https://confirmlabs.org/posts/dreamy.htmlComment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 4 table
Incentive-Theoretic Bayesian Inference for Collaborative Science
Contemporary scientific research is a distributed, collaborative endeavor,
carried out by teams of researchers, regulatory institutions, funding agencies,
commercial partners, and scientific bodies, all interacting with each other and
facing different incentives. To maintain scientific rigor, statistical methods
should acknowledge this state of affairs. To this end, we study hypothesis
testing when there is an agent (e.g., a researcher or a pharmaceutical company)
with a private prior about an unknown parameter and a principal (e.g., a
policymaker or regulator) who wishes to make decisions based on the parameter
value. The agent chooses whether to run a statistical trial based on their
private prior and then the result of the trial is used by the principal to
reach a decision. We show how the principal can conduct statistical inference
that leverages the information that is revealed by an agent's strategic
behavior -- their choice to run a trial or not. In particular, we show how the
principal can design a policy to elucidate partial information about the
agent's private prior beliefs and use this to control the posterior probability
of the null. One implication is a simple guideline for the choice of
significance threshold in clinical trials: the type-I error level should be set
to be strictly less than the cost of the trial divided by the firm's profit if
the trial is successful
Comparing the traditional and Multiple Mini Interviews in the selection of post-graduate medical trainees
Background: The traditional, panel style interview and the multiple mini interview (MMI) are two options to use in the selection of medical trainees with each interview format having inherent advantages and disadvantages. Our aim was to compare the traditional and MMI on the same cohort of postgraduate applicants to the Department of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery at the University of Toronto.Method: Twenty-seven applicants from the 2010 Canadian Residency Matching Service selected for interview at the University of Toronto, Department of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery were included in the study. Each applicant participated in both a traditional interview and MMI.Results:  Traditional interviews marked out of a total maximum score of 570. On the traditional interview, scores ranged from 397-543.5 (69.6 - 95.3%), the mean was 460.2. The MMI maximum score was out of 180. MMI scores ranged from 93 – 146 (51.7 - 81.1%) with a mean of 114.8. Traditional interview total scores were plotted against MMI total scores. Scores correlated reasonably well, Pearson Correlation = 0.315 and is statistically significant at p = 0.001. Inter-interview reliability for the two interview methods was 0.038, with poor overall agreement 0.07%.Conclusions: MMI and traditional interview scores are correlated but do not reliably lead to the same rank order. We have demonstrated that these two interview formats measure different characteristics. One format may also be less reliable leading to greater variation in final rank. Further validation research is certainly required.Key Words: Multiple mini interview; medical education; traditional interview; postgraduate admission
Comparing the traditional and Multiple Mini Interviews in the selection of post-graduate medical trainees
Background: The traditional, panel style interview and the multiple mini interview (MMI) are two options to use in the selection of medical trainees with each interview format having inherent advantages and disadvantages. Our aim was to compare the traditional and MMI on the same cohort of postgraduate applicants to the Department of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery at the University of Toronto.Method: Twenty-seven applicants from the 2010 Canadian Residency Matching Service selected for interview at the University of Toronto, Department of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery were included in the study. Each applicant participated in both a traditional interview and MMI.Results:  Traditional interviews marked out of a total maximum score of 570. On the traditional interview, scores ranged from 397-543.5 (69.6 - 95.3%), the mean was 460.2. The MMI maximum score was out of 180. MMI scores ranged from 93 – 146 (51.7 - 81.1%) with a mean of 114.8. Traditional interview total scores were plotted against MMI total scores. Scores correlated reasonably well, Pearson Correlation = 0.315 and is statistically significant at p = 0.001. Inter-interview reliability for the two interview methods was 0.038, with poor overall agreement 0.07%.Conclusions: MMI and traditional interview scores are correlated but do not reliably lead to the same rank order. We have demonstrated that these two interview formats measure different characteristics. One format may also be less reliable leading to greater variation in final rank. Further validation research is certainly required.Key Words: Multiple mini interview; medical education; traditional interview; postgraduate admission
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