High Payoff Research Articles

Review of the Structural Shape for Aft Transition Ring of Submarine

Submarines, which have been called an invisible force, are strategic underwater weapon systems that perform missions such as anti-surface warfare, anti-submarine warfare, and high payoff target strikes with the advantage of underwater covertness. A submarine should be able to withstand the hydrostatic pressure of the deep sea. In this respect, the submarine pressure hull, as the main structural system to resist the external pressure corresponding to the submerged depth, should ensure the survivability from hazards and threats such as leakage, fires, shock, explosion, etc. To do this, the initial scantling of the submarine pressure hull must be calculated appropriately in the concept design phase. The shape of the aft transition ring varies according to its connection with the submarine aft end conical structure, pressure hull cylindrical part, and non-pressure hull of the submarine; the design of the aft transition ring should not only take into account stress flow and connectivity but also the cost increase due to the increased man-hours of its complex geometry. Therefore, trade-off studies based on the four different shapes of the aft transition ring are carried out considering both the review of the structural strength through nonlinear finite element analysis (FEA) and economic feasibility by reviewing the estimations of the manufacturing working days and material costs. Finally, the most rational structural aft transition ring shape for a submarine amongst four reviewed types was proposed.

Investigating cooperation with robotic peers.

We explored how people establish cooperation with robotic peers, by giving participants the chance to choose whether to cooperate or not with a more/less selfish robot, as well as a more or less interactive, in a more or less critical environment. We measured the participants' tendency to cooperate with the robot as well as their perception of anthropomorphism, trust and credibility through questionnaires. We found that cooperation in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) follows the same rule of Human-Human Interaction (HHI), participants rewarded cooperation with cooperation, and punished selfishness with selfishness. We also discovered two specific robotic profiles capable of increasing cooperation, related to the payoff. A mute and non-interactive robot is preferred with a high payoff, while participants preferred a more human-behaving robot in conditions of low payoff. Taken together, these results suggest that proper cooperation in HRI is possible but is related to the complexity of the task.

A Beautiful Life: High Risk-High Payoff in Genetic Science.

This narrative is a personal view of adventures in genetic science and society that have blessed my life and career across five decades. The advances I enjoyed and the lessons I learned derive from educational training, substantial collaboration, and growing up in the genomics age. I parse the stories into six research disciplines my students, fellows, and colleagues have entered and, in some cases, made an important difference. The first is comparative genetics, where evolutionary inference is applied to genome organization, from building gene maps in the 1970s to building whole genome sequences today. The second area tracks the progression of molecular evolutionary advances and applications to resolve the hierarchical relationship among living species in the silence of prehistory. The third endeavor outlines the birth and maturation of genetic studies and application to species conservation. The fourth theme discusses how emerging viruses studied in a genomic sense opened our eyes to host-pathogen interaction and interdependence. The fifth research emphasis outlines the population genetic-based search and discovery of human restriction genes that influence the epidemiological outcome of abrupt outbreaks, notably HIV-AIDS and several cancers. Finally, the last arena explored illustrates how genetic individualization in human and animals has improved forensic evidence in capital crimes. Each discipline has intuitive and technological overlaps, and each has benefitted from the contribution of genetic and genomic principles I learned so long ago from Drosophila. The journey continues.

Mechanical Characteristics of a Roll-Bonded Cu-Clad Steel Sheet Processed Through Incremental Forming

Incremental sheet forming (ISF) is an emerging cold forming process with a high economic payoff. In this study, the influence of the ISF process on the tensile properties of Cu-clad Steel sheet is analyzed experimentally. Depending on the forming conditions, the post-ISF values of yield strength, tensile strength, and ductility are found to range from 161 to 430, 288 to 449 MPa, and 4.93 to 16.62 pct, respectively. These properties show a strong dependence on several correlated quantities such as the applied plastic strain, grain size, and mean residual stress. As the plastic strain increases from 0.08 to 0.8, the width of the grain decreases from 8.11 to 5.78 µm and the residual stress increases from − 15 to − 131 MPa. In comparison to the unformed sheet, ISF enhances the yield strength (4.6 to 117 pct) and tensile strength (0.6 to 73 pct). The nature of change in ductility (− 67 to 117 pct), however, depends on the process conditions, especially the state of the unformed sheet (i.e., rolled/annealed) and the value of applied strain. In general, the rolled (or prestrained) sheet upon ISF experiences an increase in ductility. The annealed sheet, however, sees a drop in ductility when the forming strains are low (e.g., 0.4). X-ray diffraction (XRD) and electron dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) analyses confirm that no new phase formed during ISF.

Cultural and evolutionary dynamics with best-of-k learning when payoffs are uncertain

Social learning not only takes the form of random copying of other individuals, but also involves learners’ choice of what to learn or from whom to learn. Best-of-k learning refers to a kind of success-biased social learning strategy in which a learner randomly samples k exemplars from the population and imitates the most ”successful” one, or the one gaining the highest payoff. While it is intuitive that best-of-k learning can promote the spread of superior variants and thereby enable cumulative cultural evolution, a previous mathematical analysis has shown that it may sometimes result in maladaptive cultural evolution when the payoffs associated with cultural variants vary stochastically. If so, best-of-k learners may be selectively disfavored and in the long run replaced by unbiased learners, who simply copy someone chosen at random. Here we develop new mathematical models that are more simplified and mathematically tractable than the previous model to achieve a fuller analysis of cultural and evolutionary dynamics involving best-of-k learning and stochastic payoffs. We find that best-of-k learning, unlike unbiased learning, can facilitate the invasion of an on average inferior variant that sometimes gives a very high payoff, destabilize a population fixed with a variant that is on average superior but occasionally results in a very low payoff, and maintain cultural polymorphism at equilibrium. Considering gene-culture coevolution of learning rules and cultural variants, under the assumption that social learning is always faithful, it is shown that a population of best-of-k learners at the culturally polymorphic state can always be invaded by unbiased learners and eventually converges to a culturally monomorphic state. Nonetheless, we show that best-of-k learning can be stable against invasion by unbiased learning if social learning is sometimes combined with individual learning.

The evolving landscape for alloy design

Abstract

The impact of truncation selection and diffusion on cooperation in spatial games

Natural Selection is frequently modelled via proportional selection where survival is proportional to the average payoff differential. There has been little attention devoted to modelling truncation selection where replicators below a threshold are culled and survivors reproduce. Here, we systematically explore truncation selection for two strategy games in a spatial setting. We employ two variations of truncation selection: independent, where the threshold is fixed; and dependent, where the proportion culled is fixed. Further, we explore the effects of diffusion with the algorithms: contest-diffusion-offspring (CDO), and diffusion-contest-offspring (DCO). CDO and DCO frequently facilitate and diminish cooperation, respectively. For independent truncation, there are three qualitative regimes determined by the payoff threshold: cooperation decreases as the threshold rises; polymorphisms are stable; and extinction is frequent. Further, an intermediate payoff to cooperators playing defectors can maximize cooperation for the DCO algorithm with a high payoff threshold. Dependent truncation affects games differently; lower levels reduce cooperation for the Hawk Dove game and increase it for the Stag Hunt, and higher levels produce the opposite effects. Comparing these truncation methods to proportional selection, we show how they impact the prevalence of cooperation.

Too good to be true? Psychological responses to uncommon options in risk–reward environments

Risks and rewards, or payoffs and probabilities, are inversely related in many choice environments. We investigated people's psychological responses to uncommon combinations of risk and reward that deviate from learned regularities (e.g., options that offer a high payoff with an unusually high probability) as they evaluated risky options. In two experiments (N = 183), participants first priced monetary gambles drawn from environments in which risks and rewards were negatively correlated, positively correlated, or uncorrelated. In later trials, they evaluated gambles with uncommon combinations of risk and reward—that is, options that deviated from the respective environment's risk–reward structure. Pricing, response times, and (in Experiment 2) pupil dilation were recorded. In both experiments, participants took more time when responding to uncommon compared to foreseeable options or when the same options were presented in an uncorrelated risk–reward environment. This result was most pronounced when the uncommon gambles offered higher expected values compared to the other gambles in the set. Moreover, these uncommon, high‐value options were associated with an increase in pupil size. These results suggest that people's evaluations of risky options are based not only on the options' payoffs and probabilities but also on the extent to which they fit the risk–reward structure of the environment.

Focus theory of choice and its application to resolving the St. Petersburg, Allais, and Ellsberg paradoxes and other anomalies

We present a decision theory which models and axiomatizes a decision-making procedure. This procedure involves two steps: in the first step, for each action, some specific event which can bring about a relatively high payoff with a relatively high probability or a relatively low payoff with a relatively high probability is selected as the positive or negative focus, respectively; in the second step, based on the foci of all actions, a decision maker chooses a most-preferred action. Our model handles decision making with risk or under ambiguity or under ignorance within a unified framework. Our model resolves several anomalies, including the St. Petersburg, Allais, and Ellsberg paradoxes, and violations of stochastic dominance.

Innovate Versus Imitate: Theory and Experimental Evidence

We model and experimentally evaluate the trade-off between innovation and imitation commonly faced by firms and individuals. Innovation involves searching for a high payoff opportunity, but paying a cost to do so. Imitation involves avoiding the search cost and copying the most successful payoff opportunity uncovered thus far. We formulate a novel model of sequential innovation versus imitation decisions made by a group of n regret minimizing agents. We analyze the consequences of complete versus incomplete information about the distribution of payoffs from innovation on agent's decisions. We then study these predictions in a laboratory experiment where we find evidence in support of our theoretical predictions.

Trust-Based Collaborative Privacy Management in Online Social Networks

Online social networks have now become the most popular platforms for people to share information with others. Along with this, there is a serious threat to individuals’ privacy. One privacy risk comes from the sharing of co-owned data, i.e., when a user shares a data item that involves multiple users, some users’ privacy may be compromised, since different users generally have different opinions on who can access the data. How to design a collaborative management mechanism to deal with such a privacy issue has recently attracted much attention. In this paper, we propose a trust-based mechanism to realize collaborative privacy management. Basically, a user decides whether or not to post a data item based on the aggregated opinion of all involved users. The trust values between users are used to weight users’ opinions, and the values are updated according to users’ privacy loss. Moreover, the user can make a tradeoff between data sharing and privacy preserving by tuning the parameter of the proposed mechanism. We formulate the selecting of the parameter as a multi-armed bandit problem and apply the upper confidence bound policy to solve the problem. Simulation results demonstrate that the trust-based mechanism can encourage the user to be considerate of others’ privacy, and the proposed bandit approach can bring the user a high payoff.

Memory-based conformity enhances cooperation in social dilemmas

The problem of how cooperative behaviors emerge in real world has been widely investigated and it is found that cooperative behaviors are closely related to memory, which means a rational player can get a more reasonable strategy by comprehensively considering certain amount of historical information within its memory scope. On the other hand, due to the potential risk during pursuing high payoff in human society, selecting the most common strategy for a player inside the interaction range is relatively safer, at least its payoff is not much lower than average, which is known as conformity. Motivated by these facts, we here propose a mechanism of conformity with memory whose core lies in two facts: (i) Each player first applies a memory rule to compare its own historical payoffs with a limited memory length and to take the strategy corresponding to the maximal payoff as historical optimal strategy; (ii) Each player can get the virtual optimal strategy by selecting the most common strategy from its neighbors’ historical optimal strategies according to the conformity rule. The asynchronous updating algorithm, together with the virtual strategy, is used to study the evolution of cooperation with different memory lengths on a regular lattice. Simulation results show that the proposed mechanism remarkably promotes cooperation in three classical evolutionary social dilemmas. More specifically, it is revealed that the cooperation level decreases gradually as the memory length increases in the prisoner’s dilemma and snowdrift game, and that the cooperation level increases as so does the memory length in the stag-hunt game.

Simulated Clinical Encounters Using Patient-Operated mHealth: Experimental Study to Investigate Patient-Provider Communication.

BackgroundThis study investigates patient-centered mobile health (mHealth) technology in terms of the secondary user experience (UX). Specifically, it examines how personal mobile technology, under patient control, can be used to improve patient-provider communication about the patient’s health care during their first visit to a provider. Common ground, a theory about language use, is used as the theoretical basis to examine interactions. A novel concept of this study is that it is one of the first empirical studies to explore the relative meaningfulness of a secondary UX for specific health care tasks.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to investigate the extent that patient-operated mHealth technology can be designed to improve the communication between the patient and provider during an initial face-to-face encounter.MethodsThe experimental study was conducted in 2 large Midwestern cities from February 2016 to May 2016. A custom-designed smartphone app prototype was used as the study treatment. The experimental design was posttest-only control group and included video-recorded simulated face-to-face clinical encounters in which an actor role-played a patient. Experienced clinicians consisting of doctors (n=4) and nurses (n=8) were the study participants. A thematic analysis of qualitative data was performed. Quantitative data collected from time on task measurements were analyzed using descriptive statistics.ResultsThree themes that represent how grounding manifested during the encounter, what it meant for communication during the encounter, and how it influenced the provider’s perception of the patient emerged from the qualitative analysis. The descriptive statistics were important for inferring evidence of efficiency and effectiveness of communication for providers. Overall, encounter and task times averaged slightly faster in almost every instance for the treatment group than that in the control group. Common ground clearly was better in the treatment group, indicating that the idea of designing for the secondary UX to improve provider outcomes has merit.ConclusionsCombining the notions of common ground, human-computer interaction design, and smartphone technology resulted in a prototype that improved the efficiency and effectiveness of face-to-face collaboration for secondary users. The experimental study is one of the first studies to demonstrate that an investment in the secondary UX for high payoff tasks has value but that not all secondary UXs are meaningful for design. This observation is useful for prioritizing how resources should be applied when considering the secondary UX.

Do Mutual Fund Investors Overweight the Probability of Extreme Payoffs in the Return Distribution?

We investigate the role of extreme positive payoffs in the distribution of monthly fund returns in investors’ mutual fund preferences. We document a positive and significant relationship between the maximum style-adjusted monthly return (MAX) and future fund flows. The relationship is robust to controlling for average performance, volatility, skewness, and various other fund characteristics. Our findings are consistent with the notion that fund investors overweight the probability of high payoff states in the past return distribution. We further show that MAX is not a useful predictor of future performance and that an increase in a fund’s visibility does not explain our findings.

Portfolio selection through Maslow’s need hierarchy theory

ABSTRACTInspired by Maslow’s need hierarchy theory, we construct a new portfolio selection framework using the bi-level optimization technique in which the lower-level need relates to safety (low risk) while the upper-level need is concerned with self-actualization (high payoff). Specially, we consider a bi-level portfolio selection model using variance and conditional value-at-risk associated with the lower-level need and upper-level need, respectively. Accordingly, we propose a procedure to solve this bi-level optimization problem without the normal distribution assumption. Empirical study on the American stock market and U.K. stock market shows that our new model can determine optimal portfolios with moderate diversification. Out of sample performance also confirms that in our framework investors can obtain higher returns in a safe way compared to models in the traditional framework.

PDVSA's Hail Mary: A Chapter 15 Bankruptcy Solution

A Chapter 15 bankruptcy is the best option for restructuring PDVSA’s debts because it would provide PDVSA with benefits that no other restructuring can offer — it would protect PDVSA’s assets and restructure its debts through one unified process. Venezuela could enact a Chapter 15 solution in four steps: (1) create a Venezuelan public-sector bankruptcy law, (2) comply with Chapter 15’s eligibility requirements, (3) obtain recognition by U.S. courts for PDVSA’s bankruptcy proceeding, and (4) confirm a bankruptcy plan that can be enforced by U.S. courts. The barriers for each step are high, but examples from other countries suggest it is possible a Chapter 15 restructuring would be successful. Even if PDVSA is unable to confirm a bankruptcy plan, PDVSA would receive significant benefits at each stage in the process. A Chapter 15 proceeding could provide a stay to protect PDVSA’s assets from creditors as well as protect its non-Venezuelan entities, such as CITGO. Additionally, at each stage bankruptcy gives PDVSA leverage over creditors to make a restructuring deal out of court. Because of the unique benefits offered by Chapter 15, it is PDVSA’s Hail Mary — it comes with definite risks, but the potential for a high payoff.

The Indifferent, the Good Samaritan, the Brave and the Agent in Allais Paradox situation – or How Endowment Effect Influences Our Decision in Case of Allais Paradox?

AbstractBackground and purpose:Mainstream economic models do not take ownership into consideration. Only after the findings of behavioural economists was endowment effect widely observed. Endowment effect means that goods that one owns are valued higher than other goods not held in endowment. At the same time the principal-agent literature is concerned with how the principal (such as employer) can motivate his agent (say the employee), to act in the principal’s interests and also for their holdings. The main problem is that acting in somebody’s else’s interests can influence our values as well. Moreover, the principal as owner suffers from endowment effect. Both situations can be treated as a risky decision. Risk confuses our rationality in a predictable way.Design/Methodology/Approach:Due to this it was observed how foreign students from various cultural backgrounds decided (n=186 answers) in a risky financial situation by focusing on Allais’ classic gambles. I also presented their preferences over certain and uncertain outcomes regarding the owner of the final win; i.e. how they choose for themselves or on behalf of one of their best friends. One famous experiment - which tested the descriptive validity of the axioms’ expected utility theory - was Allais. Allais handled probabilities and outcomes in high hypothetical payoff financial gamble situations; he found that when offering two similar options, the common consequences will not be removed by the actors. I was interested in what happens when the actors take risks on behalf of others. It was used between-subjects technique on an extended multicultural sample. Regarding the two different topics, three hypotheses were tested (1); based on Allais paradox (2); observed ownerships (3); the comparison of two phenomena.Results:The results show that the subjects responded differently when they needed to decide about their own properties rather when their friends’ properties were concerned. When a sure safe outcome was offered to the subjects, they took more risk on behalf of their friends rather than own. Moreover, the subjects do not take into consideration that the same attributes must be ignored, so Allais paradox was verified.Conclusion:The goal of this paper is then twofold. First, it was established a conceptual link between Allais-type behaviour and ownership problem. Second, Allais axiom was used to characterize different roles. Knowing predictable patterns of seemingly irrational heuristics in human behaviour can improve economic theory. At the same time, this knowledge helps us to avoid irrational decisions.

Loss Aversion, Lying and Probability

In a one-step binary lying experiment, subjects privately observe a random device that indicates a low payoff with probability p or a high payoff with probability 1-p. Subjects are paid whatever they report, inducing some subjects to lie in order to receive the high payoff. Currently experimenters use the binomial distribution to analyze the experimental data. This paper presents an alternative methodology based on the Poisson binomial distribution rather than the binomial. I derive a closed-form expression for the conditional probability of lying given the number of low payoff reports. I then use the set of these probabilities to show that the number of reports of the low payoff is Poisson binomially distributed. Given the number of low reports, in addition to the conditional probability of lying, I use the Poisson binomial distribution to calculate the expected number of low reports, the probability that the low report occurred by chance, the expected number of liars and other quantities of interest..

Electromagnetic Signals Following Stellar-mass Black Hole Mergers

Abstract It is often assumed that gravitational-wave (GW) events resulting from the merger of stellar-mass black holes are unlikely to produce electromagnetic (EM) counterparts. We point out that the progenitor binary has probably shed a mass ≳10 M ⊙ during its prior evolution. If even a tiny fraction of this gas is retained in a circumbinary disk, the sudden mass loss and recoil of the merged black hole shocks and heats it within hours of the GW event. Whether the resulting EM signal is detectable is uncertain. The optical depth through the disk is likely to be high enough that the prompt emission consists only of photons from its optically thin skin, while the majority may take years to emerge. However, if some mechanism can release more photons in a time comparable to the few-hour energy production time, the peak luminosity of the EM signal could be detectable. For a disk retaining only ∼10−3 of the mass shed in the earlier binary evolution, medium-energy X-rays to infrared emission would be observable hours after the GW event for source distances of ∼500 Mpc. Events like this may already have been observed, but ascribed to unidentified active galactic nuclei. Improved sky localization should eventually allow identification based on spatial coincidence. A detection would provide unique constraints on formation scenarios and potentially offer tests of strong-field general relativity. Accordingly, we argue that the high scientific payoff of an EM detection fully justifies search campaigns.

The Legal Grounds of Irregular Migration: A Global Game Approach

Abstract This paper analyses the relationship between regular and irregular migration taking into account the migration network effect and the network creation mechanism. We assume that migrants can obtain a high payoff only if a critical mass of migrants is reached in the destination country. If candidates to migration receive biased signals about the economic situation of the destination country, the migrants’ decision problem can be analyzed as a standard global game. Tying the quota of regular migrants to the economic performance of countries might create large discontinuities in immigration flows, with some countries attracting the bulk of irregular migrants and the other being shunned by the migrants.