Surrogate utilities in civil engineering: the Kelly criterion and Shannon's information

Large-scale engineering projects often entail large financial and environmental risks because of their size and long life. Decisions usually have to be made long before the risks can be appreciated. Decision theory should be helpful in this but utility curves are needed for its application and these are almost impossible to obtain. The Kelly criterion, which involves maximizing the expected value of the logarithm of wealth, offers an approach to minimizing financial risk; and Shannon's measure of information offers a criterion for the design of networks for environmental monitoring for early detection of hazards whose characteristics may not be known in advance. Both measures implicitly involve logarithmic utility functions.     

Group status and reciprocity norms: Can the door-in-the-face effect be obtained in an out-group context?

The psychological underpinnings of the door-in-the-face (DITF) effect are examined in 2 experiments. The research contrasts the traditional reciprocal concessions interpretation of the effect with arguments based on social identity and perceptual contrast. Study 1 replicated the DITF effect in contemporary France and clarified earlier methodological ambiguities to rule out an explanation based on perceptual contrast. Study 2 manipulated the traditional DITF variables along with the in-group–out-group status of the petitioner and suggested that the effects of earlier research were enhanced by participants’ presumption of the petitioner’s in-group status. These experiments demonstrate that both reciprocal concessions and in-group bias operate as additive factors in producing the DITF effect and that the original research probably profited from participants’ implicit assumptions of common identity while supporting the hypothesis of some universal norm for reciprocal concessions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Analysis of source-follower buffers implemented with graded-channel SOI nMOSFETs operating at cryogenic temperatures

This work studies the operation of source-follower buffers implemented with standard and graded-channel (GC) fully depleted (FD) SOI nMOSFETs at low temperatures. The analysis is performed by comparing the voltage gain of buffers implemented with GC and standard SOI nMOS transistors considering devices with the same mask channel length and same effective channel length. It is shown that the use of GC devices allows for achieving improved gain in all inversion levels in a wide range of temperatures. In addition, this improvement increases as temperature is reduced. It is shown that GC transistors can provide virtually constant gain, while for standard devices, the gain departs from the maximum value depending on the temperature and inversion level imposed by the bias current and input voltage. Two-dimensional numerical simulations were performed in order to study the reasons for the enhanced gain of GC MOSFETs at low temperatures.