Observational studies draw inferences about the possible effect of a treatment on subjects, where the assignment of subjects into a treated group versus a control group is outside the control of the investigator. Let r1(x) be the response when a unit with covariates x receives the treatment (z = 1), and r0(x) be the response when that unit does not receive the treatment (z = 0). Then one is int...

Controlling spatiotemporal chaos in excitable media by applying low-amplitude perturbations locally is of immediate applicability, e.g., in treating ventricular fibrillation, a fatal disturbance in the normal rhythmic functioning of the heart. We look at a mechanism of control by the local application of a series of biphasic pulses, i.e., involving both positive and negative stimulation. This r...

The dual systems model posits that adolescent risk-taking results from an imbalance between a cognitive control system and an incentive processing system. Researchers interested in understanding the development of adolescent risk-taking use a diverse array of behavioral and self-report measures to index cognitive control and incentive processing. It is currently unclear whether different measur...

We are interested in estimating the average effect of a binary treatment on a scalar outcome. If assignment o the treatment is exogenous or unconfounded, that is, independent of the potential outcomes given covariates, biases associated with simple treatmentcontrol average comparisons can be removed by adjusting for differences in the covariates. Rosenbaum and Rubin (1983) show that adjusting s...

In attempting to build an effective speech recognition infrastructure, there are several core challenges. First and foremost, such a system needs to be able to translate from spoken commands to function calls on specific agents. In doing do, it needs to use information from spoken statements to route commands to the appropriate agents. Additionally, in processing such commands, the infrastructu...

In this article, propensity score matching (PSM) methods are applied to data from the 2005 International Social Survey Program Work Orientations (ISSP-WO) survey to examine the public sector pay premium in New Zealand. Taking account of a wide range of worker characteristics and attitudes, job attributes, and the effects that jobs have on workers and their family life, there appears to be a pay...

Recognising that practical intelligence plays an important role in an individual’s job success, we explore whether differences in practical intelligence exist between male and female workers in the ICT industry. Taking an interpretive approach we found patterns and themes in the responses to workplace scenarios of ICT workers in three organizations from the viewpoint of gender: Assertiveness, E...

The present study centers on innovativeness and risk-taking. These two personality traits are among the most distinctive entrepreneurial characteristics. They provide a good starting point for a comparison of entrepreneurial behaviour between Finnish and U.S. entrepreneurs and small business owners. The Carland Entrepreneurship Index (CEI) was employed to measure the varying degrees of innovati...