In an exchange economy under uncertainty populated by multiple consumers, we how the heterogeneity in the individual consumers’ subjective beliefs affect the representative consumer’s utility function. We derive a formula that indicates that the more heterogeneous the individual consumers’ beliefs are, the higher probabilities the representative consumer’s belief attaches to extreme events that...

Due to the constantly evolving nature of Web-based Education (WBE) it is often difficult for educators to understand the issues, challenges, impact, and effort required to introduce WBE innovations. This lack of knowledge can contribute to the limited adoption and less than successful implementation of WBE innovations. This paper draws on an aspect of innovation diffusion theory to propose a mo...

We present a semi-supervised online method for novelty detection and evaluate its performance for radio astronomy time series data. Our approach uses adaptive eigenbases to combine 1) prior knowledge about uninteresting signals with 2) online estimation of the current data properties to enable highly sensitive and precise detection of novel signals. We apply the method to the problem of detecti...

The tragic attacks of September 11 and the bioterrorist threats with respect to anthrax that followed have raised a set of issues regarding how we deal with events where there is considerable ambiguity and uncertainty about the likelihood of their occurrence and their potential consequences. This paper discusses how one can link the tools of risk assessment and our knowledge of risk perception ...

C. Arnaboldi a,F. T. Avignone III b, J. Beeman c,d,M. Barucci e, M. Balata f,C. Brofferio a, C. Bucci f,S. Cebrian g, R. J. Creswick b,S. Capelli a, L. Carbone a,O. Cremonesi a, A. de Ward h,E. Fiorini a, H. A. Farach b,G. Frossati h, A. Giuliani i,D. Giugni a, P. Gorla a,E. E. Haller c,d, I. G. Irastorza g,R. J. McDonald c, A. Morales g,E. B. Norman c, P. Negri a, A. Nucciotti a, M. Pedretti i...

Thirty one self-immolators were compared with thirty one suicide attempters by consuming organophosphorus compounds in spheres like their personality, nature of life events and presence of depression. The personality of self-immolators was unique in the sense that they lack ego strength and superego strength and they were impulsive, aggressive and sensitive. They were not depressed. Life events...

We show that Lévy distributed variations of payoffs in the prisoner's dilemma game impede cooperation as the frequency of rare events increases. Lévy flights thus facilitate defection, but also uphold the evolutionary process, arguably maintaining a healthy level of competitiveness amongst the agents. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Scientists, health care professionals and the general public have all raised concerns about the potential health impact natural and manmade sources bioaerosols. In response in september 2012 the Natural Environmental Research Council and public health England jointly funded a workshop to review the ‘sources, quantification and health implications of bioaerosols’. The organising committee for th...

Web-based education, started about 6 years ago, is growing by leaps and bound and is expected to reach almost 5 million students by 2006. Many players have already been eliminated but many more are emerging. Many institutions are at a cross road and in many cases their survival depends on how successfully they handle WBE. In this regard they can learn from early adopters of WBE and learn from t...

The presence of low-copy-number regulators and switch-like signal propagation in regulatory networks are expected to increase noise in cellular processes. We developed a noise amplifier that detects fluctuations in the level of low-abundance mRNAs in yeast. The observed fluctuations are not due to the low number of molecules expressed from a gene per se but originate in the random, rare events ...