The reinforcers that maintain target instrumental responses also reinforce other responses that compete with them for expression. This competition, and its imbalance at points of transition between different schedules of reinforcement, causes behavioral contrast. The imbalance is caused by differences in the rates at which different responses come under the control of component stimuli. A model for this theory of behavioral contrast is constructed by expanding the coupling coefficient of MPR (Killeen, 1994). The coupling coefficient gives the degree of association of a reinforcer with the target response (as opposed to other competing responses). Competing responses, often identified as interim or adjunctive or superstitious behavior, are intrinsic to reinforcement schedules, especially interval schedules. In addition to that base-rate of competition, additional competing responses may spill over from the prior component, causing initial contrast; and they may be modulated by conditioned reinforcement or punishment from stimuli associated with subsequent component change, causing terminal contrast. A formalization of these hypotheses employed (a) a hysteresis model of off-target responses giving rise to initial contrast, and (b) a competing traces model of the suppression or enhancement of ongoing competitive responses by signals of following-schedule transition. The theory was applied to transient contrast, the following schedule effect, and the component duration effect.

Sensory systems encode both the static quality of a stimulus (e.g., color or shape) and its kinetics (e.g., speed and direction). The limits with which stimulus kinetics can be resolved are well understood in vision, audition, and somatosensation. However, the maximum temporal resolution of olfactory systems has not been accurately determined. Here, we probe the limits of temporal resolution in insect olfaction by delivering high frequency odor pulses and measuring sensory responses in the antennae. We show that transduction times and pulse tracking capabilities of olfactory receptor neurons are faster than previously reported. Once an odorant arrives at the boundary layer of the antenna, odor transduction can occur within less than 2 ms and fluctuating odor stimuli can be resolved at frequencies more than 100 Hz. Thus, insect olfactory receptor neurons can track stimuli of very short duration, as occur when their antennae encounter narrow filaments in an odor plume. These results provide a new upper bound to the kinetics of odor tracking in insect olfactory receptor neurons and to the latency of initial transduction events in olfaction.

Summer extreme heat events in the arid Phoenix, Arizona (USA) metropolitan region for the period 2041-2070 are projected based on the ensemble of ten climate models from the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program for the SRES A2 greenhouse gas emissions scenario by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Extreme heat events are identified by measures related to two thresholds of the maximum daily air temperature distribution for the historical reference period 1971-2000. Comparing this reference period to the model ensemble-mean, the frequency of extreme heat events is projected to increase by a factor of six to 1.9 events per summer and the average number of event days per year is projected to increase by a factor of 14. The inter-model range for the average number of EHE days per summer is larger for the projected climate, 10.6 to 42.2 days, than for simulations of the past climate simulations (1.5 to 2.4 days).

Case studies suggest that ethnic groups with autonomous institutional arrangements are more prone to secede, but other evidence indicates that autonomy reduces the likelihood of secession. To address this debate, we disaggregate their autonomy status into three categories—currently autonomous, never autonomous, and lost autonomy—and then unpack how each shapes the logic of collective action. We argue groups that were never autonomous are unlikely to mobilize due to a lack of collective action capacity, whereas currently autonomous groups may have the capacity but often lack the motivation. Most important, groups that have lost autonomy often possess both strong incentives and the capacity to pursue secession, which facilitates collective action. Moreover, autonomy retraction weakens the government’s ability to make future credible commitments to redress grievances. We test these conjectures with data on the autonomous status and separatist behavior of 324 groups in more than 100 countries from 1960 to 2000. Our analysis shows clear empirical results regarding the relationship between autonomy status and separatism. Most notably, we find that formerly autonomous groups are the most likely to secede, and that both currently autonomous and never autonomous groups are much less likely.

In this paper we describe a new method of defining C^*-algebras from oriented combinatorial data, thereby generalizing the construction of algebras from directed graphs, higher-rank graphs, and ordered groups. We show that only the most elementary notions of concatenation and cancellation of paths are required to define versions of Cuntz-Krieger and Toeplitz-Cuntz-Krieger algebras, and the presentation by generators and relations follows naturally. We give sufficient conditions for the existence of an AF core, hence of the nuclearity of the C^*-algebras, and for aperiodicity, which is used to prove the standard uniqueness theorems.

Topographic maps produced from Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data are useful for paleoseismic and neotectonic research because they pro- vide submeter representation of faulting-related surface features. Offset measurements of geomorphic features, made in the field or on a remotely sensed imagery, commonly assume a straight or smooth (i.e., undeflected) pre-earthquake geometry. Here, we present results from investigation of an ∼20 cm deep and >5 m wide swale with a sharp bend along the San Andreas fault (SAF) at the Bidart fan site in the Carrizo Plain, California. From analysis of LiDAR topography images and field measure- ments, the swale was initially interpreted as a channel tectonically offset ∼4:7 m. Our observations from exposures in four backhoe excavations and 25 hand-dug trenchettes show that even though a sharp bend in the swale coincides with the trace of the A.D. 1857 fault rupture, the swale formed after the 1857 earthquake and was not tectonically offset. Subtle fractures observed within a surficial gravel unit overlying the 1857 rupture trace are similar to fractures previously documented at the Phelan fan and LY4 paleoseismic sites 3 and 35 km northwest of Bidart fan, respectively. Collectively, the fractures suggest that a post-1857 moderate-magnitude earthquake caused ground cracking in the Carrizo and Cholame stretches of the SAF. Our obser- vations emphasize the importance of excavation at key locations to validate remote and ground-based measurements, and we advocate more geomorphic characterization for each site if excavation is not possible.

The relationship between carrier concentration and donor atomic concentration has been determined in n-type Ge films doped with P. The samples were carefully engineered to minimize non-active dopant incorporation by using specially designed P(SiH₃)₃ and P(GeH₃)₃ hydride precursors. The in situ nature of the doping and the growth at low temperatures, facilitated by the Ge₃H₈ and Ge₄H₁₀ Ge sources, promote the creation of ultra-low resistivity films with flat doping profiles that help reduce the errors in the concentration measurements. The results show that Ge deviates strongly from the incomplete ionization expected when the donor atomic concentration exceeds N_d  = 10¹⁷ cm^-3, at which the energy separation between the donor and Fermi levels ceases to be much larger than the thermal energy. Instead, essentially full ionization is seen even at the highest doping levels beyond the solubility limit of P in Ge. The results can be explained using a model developed for silicon by Altermatt and coworkers, provided the relevant model parameter is properly scaled. The findings confirm that donor solubility and/or defect formation, not incomplete ionization, are the major factors limiting the achievement of very high carrier concentrations in n-type Ge. The commercially viable chemistry approach applied here enables fabrication of supersaturated and fully ionized prototypes with potential for broad applications in group-IV semiconductor technologies.

Signaling cascades proliferate signals received on the cell membrane to the nucleus. While noise filtering, ultra-sensitive switches, and signal amplification have all been shown to be features of such signaling cascades, it is not understood why cascades typically show three or four layers. Using singular perturbation theory, Michaelis-Menten type equations are derived for open enzymatic systems. Cascading these equations we demonstrate that the output signal as a function of time becomes sigmoidal with the addition of more layers. Furthermore, it is shown that the activation time will speed up to a point, after which more layers become superfluous. It is shown that three layers create a reliable sigmoidal response progress curve from a wide variety of time-dependent signaling inputs arriving at the cell membrane, suggesting the evolutionary benefit of the observed cascades.

Allowing resource users to communicate in behavioural experiments on commons dilemmas increases the level of cooperation. In actual common pool resource dilemmas in the real world, communication is costly, which is an important detail missing from most typical experiments. We conducted experiments where participants must give up harvesting opportunities to communicate. The constrained communication treatment is compared with the effect of limited information about the state of the resource and the actions of the other participants. We find that despite making communication costly, performance of groups improves in all treatments with communication. We also find that constraining communication has a more significant effect than limiting information on the performance of groups.

Studies of stratified spin-up experiments in enclosed cylinders have reported the presence of small pockets of well-mixed fluids but quantitative measurements of the mixedness of the fluid has been lacking. Previous numerical simulations have not addressed these measurements. Here we present numerical simulations that explain how the combined effect of spin-up and thermal boundary conditions enhances or hinders mixing of a fluid in a cylinder. The energy of the system is characterized by splitting the potential energy into diabatic and adiabatic components, and measurements of efficiency of mixing are based on both, the ratio of dissipation of available potential energy to forcing and variance of temperature. The numerical simulations of the Navier–Stokes equations for the problem with different sets of thermal boundary conditions at the horizontal walls helped shed some light on the physical mechanisms of mixing, for which a clear explanation was absent.