Initial Assignment Research Articles

Functional feeding groups of aquatic insect families in Latin America: a critical analysis and review of existing literature.

Aquatic macroinvertebrates are involved in numerous processes within aquatic ecosystems. They often have important effects on ecosystem processes such as primary production (via grazing), detritus breakdown, and nutrient mineralization and downstream spiraling. The functional feeding groups (FFG) classification was developed as a tool to facilitate the incorporation of macroinvertebrates in studies of aquatic ecosystems. This classification has the advantage of combining morphological characteristics (e.g., mouth part specialization) and behavioral mechanisms (e.g., way of feeding) used by macroinvertebrates when consuming resources. Although recent efforts have greatly advanced our ability to identify aquatic macroinvertebrates, there is limited information on FFG assignment. Furthermore, there has been some variation in the use of the FFG classification, in part due to an emphasis on using gut content analysis to assign FFG, which is more appropriate for assigning trophic guilds. Thus, the main goals of this study are to (1) provide an overview of the value of using the FFG classification, (2) make an initial attempt to summarize available information on FFG for aquatic insects in Latin America, and (3) provide general guidelines on how to assign organisms to their FFGs. FFGs are intended to reflect the potential effects of organisms in their ecosystems and the way they consume resources. Groups include scrapers that consume resources that grow attached to the substrate by removing them with their mouth parts; shredders that cut or chew pieces of living or dead plant material, including all plant parts like leaves and wood; collectors-gatherers that use modified mouth parts to sieve or collect small particles (< 1 mm) accumulated on the stream bottom; filterers that have special adaptations to remove particles directly from the water column; and predators that consume other organisms using different strategies to capture them. In addition, we provide details on piercers that feed on vascular plants by cutting or piercing the tissue using sharp or chewing mouth parts and consume plant liquids. We also provide a list of families of aquatic insects in Latin America, with an initial assignment to FFGs. We recommended caution when assigning FFGs based on gut contents, as it can provide misleading information. Overall, FFG is a very useful tool to understand the role of aquatic macroinvertebrates in stream ecosystems and comparisons among studies will benefit from consistency in their use.

Development and Application of a Software Tool for the Interpretation of Organic Mixtures' Spectra - Hydrogen Deuterium Exchange (STORM-HDX) to Interpret APPI HDX MS Spectra

New software was developed for the assignment of elemental formulae based on high-resolution mass spectra and subsequent hydrogen/deuterium exchange data. Entire peaks in high-resolution mass spectra were grouped by their Kendrick mass defect values, and the weighted RMS deviations between theoretical and experimental values were used to determine elemental formulae. After this initial assignment, formulae containing deuterium atoms were sorted in order to interpret hydrogen/deuterium exchange spectra. The software was successfully applied to hydrogen/deuterium exchange spectra of resins and aromatic fractions from heavy crude oil.

MMWR: CDC Guidance for Evaluating Healthcare Personnel for Hepatitis B Virus Protection and for Administering Postexposure Management

MMWR: CDC Guidance for Evaluating Healthcare Personnel for Hepatitis B Virus Protection and for Administering Postexposure Management

THE ‘BATHTUB COFFIN’ FROM TEL QITAF: A RE-EXAMINATION OF ITS CONTEXT AND FUNCTION

Investigation of the ‘bathtub coffin’ from Tel Qitaf in the Beth Shean Valley indicates that its archaeological context is less secure than generally recognized. Additional research demonstrates that a large number of similar vessels in the Levantine corpus are also not found in burial contexts. This calls into question assumptions that such ‘bathtubs’ functioned solely as interment vessels and that their presence in the Iron II reflects foreign migrants or emulation of Mesopotamian burial traditions. While the function of clay ‘bathtubs’ cannot be answered here, any hypothesis of their intended use must take into account both burial and non-burial contexts. One possibility is that they had a primary function in crafts manufacture and were secondarily used for burial. The present study serves as a warning to be wary of circular arguments, in which an initial assignment of hypothesized function influences subsequent reconstructions of context that then supports further functional interpretations.

Self-Adjusting Weighted Averages in Standard Scoring

Like many of their counterparts in university teaching, law professors routinely rely on all-or-nothing final examinations. But all-or-nothing final exams put enormous pressure on students, who often labor for months with no meaningful feedback on their mastery of the material.One alternative to the all-or-nothing final exam consists of administering some sort of initial graded assignment. Assigning a relatively modest weight to the initial assignment maintains the primacy of the comprehensive final exam. To further minimize the pressure that accompanies the initial assignment, I propose an algorithm for adjusting the weight of the grade on the initial assignment so that students who boost their performance by the time of the final exam will benefit from their improvement. By the same token, students who do well on the initial assignment may wish to “lock in” some of the benefit of that performance as a hedge against declining performance on the final exam.The method for self-adjusting weighted averages described in this paper achieves both of those objectives. It does so in strictly parametric terms, thereby removing guesswork and potential capriciousness in grading decisions. By using the standard logistic function to adjust the relative weight of z-scores, the method prescribed in this paper preserves the symmetry inherent in the presumptively elliptical distribution of grades.

Coasean Bargaining in Consumer Bankruptcy

During my first weeks as a graduate student in economics, a professor described the Coase Theorem as “nearly a tautology:” Assume a world in which bargaining is costless. If there are gains from trade, the Theorem tells us, the parties will trade. The initial assignment of property rights will not affect the final allocation because the parties will bargain (costlessly) to an efficient outcome. “How can that be a theorem?,” I remember thinking at the time.

Discrete harmony search algorithm for flexible job shop scheduling problem with multiple objectives

Flexible job-shop scheduling problem (FJSP) is a practically useful extension of the classical job shop scheduling problem. This paper proposes an effective discrete harmony search (DHS) algorithm to solve FJSP. The objectives are the weighted combination of two minimization criteria namely, the maximum of the completion time (Makespan) and the mean of earliness and tardiness. Firstly, we develop a new method for the initial machine assignment task. Some existing heuristics are also employed for initializing the harmony memory with discrete machine permutation for machine assignment and job permutation for operation sequencing. Secondly, we develop a new rule for the improvisation to produce a new harmony for FJSP incorporating machine assignment and operation sequencing. Thirdly, several local search methods are embedded to enhance the algorithm's local exploitation ability. Finally, extensive computational experiments are carried out using well-known benchmark instances. Computational results and comparisons show the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed DHS algorithm for solving the FJSP with weighted combination of two objectives.

Postoperative Therapy With Infliximab Prevents Long-term Crohn’s Disease Recurrence

A previous randomized, placebo-controlled study showed that infliximab maintenance therapy prevented recurrence of Crohn's disease 1 year after an ileocolonic resection. We evaluated recurrence of Crohn's disease, on the basis of endoscopic examination and/or the need for additional surgical resection, beyond the first postoperative year. In a prospective, open-label, long-term follow-up study, 24 patients previously randomly assigned to receive infliximab for 1 year after an ileocolonic resection were given the option to continue, stop, or start infliximab therapy. The primary end point was the time to recurrence of Crohn's disease, on the basis of endoscopic evidence (endoscopic recurrence), from the initial assignment to postoperative infliximab or placebo. Secondary end points were rate of endoscopic recurrence, time to reoperation, and rate of surgical recurrence in relation to the total time on infliximab. All patients were followed for at least 5 years after surgery. Patients assigned to the infliximab group in the first year after surgery had a longer mean time to first endoscopic recurrence (1231 ± 747 days) than patients originally assigned to the placebo group (460 ± 121 days, P= .003). Colonoscopies identified Crohn's disease recurrence in 22.2% of patients who received long-term infliximab and in 93.9% of those not on infliximab (P < .0001). Compared with no infliximab, the adjusted rate ratio for being in endoscopic remission while on infliximab was 13.47 (95% confidence interval, 3.52-61.53; P= .0001). Patients originally assigned to the infliximab group had a mean longer time to surgery (1798 ± 359 days) than patients originally assigned to the placebo group (1058 ± 529 days, P= .04). The rate of surgical recurrence (required additional surgical resection) was significantly lower among patients who received infliximab for most of the follow-up period than patients who received it for shorter periods (20.0% vs 64.3%, P= .047). Postoperative infliximab maintenance beyond 1 year prevents recurrence of Crohn's disease.

Friendship and Study Assistance Ties of University Students

We analyze the characteristics of the social networks of students studying in the economics department in one Russian university. We focus on student friendship and study assistance ties and demonstrate how these networks are connected with the individual characteristics of students and their peers. We find that the probability of a tie existing is explained by the gender homophily, and initial student assignment to the same exogenously defined study group. Students ask for help and form friendships with students who have similar academic achievements. Academically successful students are more popular in study assistance networks while there is no gender difference in student popularity in both networks. Our findings enhance the understanding of the role of friendship and study assistance ties in the formation of peer group effects.

Discussion of “Dynamic treatment regimes: Technical challenges and applications”

We congratulate Drs. Laber, Lizotte, Qian, Pelham and Murphy on an outstanding review of dynamic treatment regimes (DTRs). This group has done pioneering work in advancing the theory and applications of DTRs. In a DTR, the treatment type and level are repeatedly adjusted according to an individual’s need. An important part of designing DTRs is to choose tailoring variables. A tailoring variable is a variable that is used to decide how to adjust the treatment. Laber et al. say that the current state of the art for choosing tailoring variable is to construct low-dimensional summaries of information that is available at the time of treatment on a subject’s status, where the summaries are motivated by clinical judgment, exploratory analyses and convenience. Laber et al. state that an important open problem is the development of formal feature extraction and construction techniques for choosing tailoring variables for DTRs. In this discussion, we discuss a method for choosing tailoring variables when the data available is a simple randomized clinical trial in which the treatment regimes after the initial randomization are set by protocol. This includes trials in which the treatment regime is changed over time based on a patient’s status in a set way specified by the protocol. In such trials, at a given time past the initial treatment assignment, there is no variation in how a patient is treated at that time given a patient’s status and past treatment history, i.e., every patient who has the same status and treatment history at time t past initial treatment assignment receives the treatment at time t that is specified by the protocol. Because of this lack of variation in treatment regimes after the initial treatment assignment, such simple randomized clinical trials cannot be used to evaluate DTRs. However, we will show that such simple randomized clinical trials may provide useful data for designing DTRs to evaluate in a later Sequential, Multiple, Assignment Randomized Trial (SMART).

Influence of the velocity vector base relocation to the center of mass of the interrogation area on PIV accuracy

This paper is aimed at modification of calculation algorithm used in data processing from PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) method. The modification of standard Multi-step correlation algorithm is based on imaging the centre of mass of the interrogation area to define the initial point of the respective vector, instead of the geometrical centre. This paper describes the principle of initial point-vector assignment, the corresponding data processing methodology including the test track analysis. Both approaches are compared within the framework of accuracy in the conclusion. The accuracy test is performed using synthetic and real data.

Dynamic Data Driven Crowd Sensing Task Assignment

To realize the full potential of mobile crowd sensing, techniques are needed to deal with uncertainty in participant locations and trajectories. We propose a novel model for spatial task assignment in mobile crowd sensing that uses a dynamic and adaptive data driven scheme to assign moving participants with uncertain trajectories to sensing tasks, in a near-optimal manner. Our scheme is based on building a mobility model from publicly available trajectory history and estimating posterior location values using noisy/uncertain measurements upon which initial tasking assignments are made. These assignments may be refined locally (using exact information) and used by participants to steer their future data collection, which completes the feedback loop. We present the design of our proposed approach with rationale to suggest its value in effective mobile crowd sensing task assignment in the presence of uncertain trajectories.

QoS-Aware Multiobjective Optimization Algorithm for Web Services Selection with Deadline and Budget Constraints

The problem of QoS-aware multiobjective optimization is an important issue for Web services selection in distributed computing environment. In this paper, a novel algorithm called MOASS (multiobjective optimization algorithm for web service selection) is proposed through analyzing the genetic operators such as constraint handling, the initial population generation, fitness assignment, and diversity preservation. Compared with MOEAWP (Yu et al., 2007), simulation results show that the feasible objective region can be filled uniformly with the optimal solutions obtained by MOASS under different test applications. In the case of higher constraints especially, MOASS can obtain more high-quality and evenly distributed nondominated solutions than MOEAWP.

Topology Control with vMIMO Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Virtual multi-input-multi-output (or vMIMO) communication is a promising technology to improve the spatial diversity of wireless networks. Using this mechanism, multiple single-antenna nodes can coordinate their transmissions and receptions so as to reduce power consumption. This paper studies the problem of constructing an energy-efficient topology in wireless sensor networks using vMIMO communication. We first define the problem involving joint optimization of vMIMO, partner selection and topology control. As this problem is NP-Complete, a distributed and heuristic algorithm, called vMIMO topology control (VMTC), is proposed to solve this problem. The algorithm uses an improved binary searching method to obtain an initial power assignment. A local competition method is then adopted to implement the partner selection. At last, we reduce the power consumption of each node by using efficient vMIMO modes. Our theoretical analysis show that this algorithm can achieve an approximate performance of O(1). Our simulations show that VMTC helps to decrease the power consumptions by about 32% compared to the existing algorithms.

Throughput-memory footprint trade-off in synthesis of streaming software on embedded multiprocessors

We study the trade-off between throughput and memory footprint of embedded software that is synthesized from acyclic static dataflow (task graph) specifications targeting distributed memory multiprocessors. We identify iteration overlapping as a knob in the synthesis process by which one can trade application throughput for its memory requirement. Given an initial processor assignment and non-overlapped task schedule, we formally present underlying properties of the problem, such as constraints on a valid iteration overlapping, maximum possible throughput, and minimum memory footprint. Moreover, we develop an effective algorithm for generation of a rich set of design points that provide a range of trade-off options. Experimental results on a number of applications and architectures validate the effectiveness of our approach.

Price-based congestion control and local channel-link assignment for multi-radio wireless mesh networks

In multi-radio multi-channel wireless mesh networks, engineering the network capacity requires a complex cross-layer design. In this paper, in order to make the complex problem implementable in a distributed manner, we make a decoupling approach that breaks down the entire design space into routing and initial channel assignment, and distributed congestion control and local channel reassignment. We propose a unified priced-based framework for distributed congestion control and localized channel-link assignment algorithms. We demonstrate the convergence of the proposed algorithms with respect to different fairness objectives (i.e., proportional fairness and max–min fairness) via simulation on both grid and random topologies. The proposed algorithms achieve faster convergence with less overhead in the control and forwarding plane than previous multi-path based algorithms.

Disseminating new farming practices among small scale farmers: An experimental intervention in Uganda

We used a randomized control trial to measure how the free distribution of hybrid seeds and chemical fertilizers for maize production affected their adoption by small-scale farmers in the subsequent seasons. Information on their demand for the same inputs for two years after the initial trial revealed that the demand of the free-input recipients was significantly higher than that of non-recipients; that of the neighbors of the recipients fell in-between. The initial treatment assignment has a persistent influence on the farmers’ demand whereas the difference between the free-input recipients and their neighbors has been reduced over time. The reduction of their gap in the demand for fertilizers is partly driven by social learning through information networks. However, there was no clear evidence on learning effects from peers on the demand for the hybrid seeds.

Hybrid Frame Rate Upconversion Method Based on Motion Vector Mapping

Liquid crystal displays (LCDs), which serve as receivers of high visual quality video, suffer from motion blur issues. One of the methods in terminating motion blur is motion compensated frame rate upconversion, which is widely adopted in LCDs. In the previous work, i.e., particle-based frame rate upconversion, the computation complexity is high while repeated operations and some improper cost evaluation setup are observed. Therefore, in this paper, hybrid frame rate upconversion is proposed with two features. First, the cost evaluation for particle-based motion trajectory calibration is modified based on the possible noise sources and video resolution variations. Second, repeated operations in particle-based motion trajectory calibration are observed. Therefore, original particle-based motion trajectory calibration is replaced by initial motion vector assignment and subsequent motion vector mapping to achieve computation complexity reduction, while the effective search range is relatively expanded. According to the experiment results, the visual quality is enhanced by 1.87 dB on average, compared with state-of-the-art unidirectional-based frame rate upconversion approaches. On the other hand, the computation complexity of the proposed design is reduced by 25-90% based on target video resolution, concluding a high visual quality and low computation complexity frame rate upconversion design.

The impact of labor market entry conditions on initial job assignment and wages

We estimate the effects of labor market entry conditions on wages for male individuals first entering the Austrian labor market between 1978 and 2000. We find a large negative effect of unfavorable entry conditions on starting wages and a sizable negative long-run effect. Our preferred estimates imply a decrease in starting wages by about 0.9 % and a lifetime loss in wages of about 1.3 % for an increase in the initial local unemployment rate by one percentage point. We show that poor entry conditions are associated with lower quality of a worker’s first employer and that the quality of workers’ first employer explains as much as three-quarters of the observed long-run wage effects resulting from poor entry conditions. Moreover, wage effects are much more persistent for blue-collar workers because some of them appear to be permanently locked in into low-paying jobs/tasks.

Updated potential energy function of the Rb2 $a^3\Sigma _u^+$a3Σu+ state in the attractive and repulsive regions determined from its joint analysis with the 23Πg state

We report new experimental data for the Rb2 a(3)Σu(+) and 2(3)Π0g states obtained using the Perturbation Facilitated Infrared-Infrared Double Resonance (PFIIDR) technique. The results include ro-vibrational term values of the 2(3)Π0g state and resolved fluorescence spectra of the 2(3)Π0g→a(3)Σu(+) transitions for a wide range of rotational and vibrational quantum numbers. An analysis of these data confirms the initial assignment of the transitions to the a(3)Σu(+) state reported in our earlier work [B. Beser, V. B. Sovkov, J. Bai, E. H. Ahmed, C. C. Tsai, F. Xie, L. Li, V. S. Ivanov, and A. M. Lyyra, J. Chem. Phys. 131, 094505 (2009)]. The potential energy functions of the Rb2 a(3)Σu(+) and 2(3)Π0g states are derived from a simultaneous fit of the available experimental data. The improved potential function of the Rb2 a(3)Σu(+) state spans both the attractive and repulsive regions starting with internuclear distance R ∼ 4.5 Å.