There are two major control problems associated with vibrational MEMS gyroscopes: to control two vibrating axes (or modes) of the gyroscope, and to estimate a time-varying rotation rate. This paper demonstrates how a novel active disturbance rejection control addresses these problems in the presence of the mismatch of natural frequencies between two axes, mechanical-thermal noises, Quadrature e...

As highly as Americans prize independence, older Americans fear dependence even more. Yet nutrition’s effect on independence in later years is often overlooked as a research focus and is underappreciated by older adults themselves and by those working with them. Nutrition scientists can and should play a greater role in prolonging independence by focusing more attention on the health promotion ...

BACKGROUND One of the goals of plant breeding is to create crops to provide better nutrition for humans and livestock. Insufficient intake of protein is one of the most severe factors affecting the growth and development of children in developing countries. More than a century ago, in 1896, Hopkins initiated the well-known Illinois long-term selection for maize seed protein concentration, yield...

Weather derivatives are contingent claims with payoff based on a pre-specified weather index. Firms exposed to weather risk can transfer it to financial markets via weather derivatives. We develop a utility-based model for pricing baskets of weather derivatives under default risk on the issuer side in over-the-counter markets. In our model, agents maximise the expected utility of their terminal...

Organizations often face the challenge of communicating their strategies to local decision makers. The di culty presents itself in nding a way to measure performance which meaningfully conveys how to implement the organization's strategy at local levels. I show that organizations solve this communication problem by combining performance measures in such a way that performance gains come closest...

Over long timescales, neuronal dynamics can be robust to quite large perturbations, such as changes in white matter connectivity and grey matter structure through processes including learning, aging, development and certain disease processes. One possible explanation is that robust dynamics are facilitated by homeostatic mechanisms that can dynamically rebalance brain networks. In this study, w...

Estimating the price elasticity of China’s imports is difficult because many imports are used to produce exports and because the real effective exchange rate has remained fairly stable. To circumvent the first problem, we control for re-exports, and to increase the discriminatory power of the tests, we employ a panel data set including imports from 25 countries. The results indicate that a 10 p...

The Money Follows the Person (MFP) demonstration provides federal grant funds to 29 states and the District of Columbia1 to support state efforts to rebalance their long-term care systems. This report provides an early assessment of the balance of state long-term care systems before the implementation of the demonstration. We examine the starting points for the grantee states before the effects...

High Intensity focused Ultrasounds (HIFU) is a novel therapeutic method for local hyperthermia and mechanical action on the tissue. The Ultrasonic waves emitted by a transducer propagate through the skin using a coupling gel to the desired target location. New HIFU transducers have been designed to increase flexibility, efficiency and precision of therapy. They can emits full long lines of 10 m...

We focus on affine term structure models as tools for active bond portfolio management. We use multi-factor term structure models to produce forecasts for the future values of the state variables. Starting from the conditional moments of the state vector implied by the models, we introduce binomial approximations to come up with discrete scenarios for the future state variables. From the theore...