Females in species that produce broods of multiple offspring need to partition resources among simultaneously growing ova, embryos or neonates. In birds, the duration of growth of a single egg exceeds the ovulation interval, and when maternal resources are limited, a temporal overlap among several developing follicles in the ovary might result in a trade-off of resources among them. We studied ...

In this paper a new criterion for comparing measurement results and determining conformity with specifications is proposed, which essentially is a strategy of estimating the empirical relationships of objects. Comparing with traditional methods given in GUM: 2008 and ISO 14253-1, this criterion improves the resolution of comparison by reducing the sizes of the coverage intervals to be compared....

Most image registration problems are formulated in an asymmetric fashion. Given a pair of images, one is implicitly or explicitly regarded as template, and warped onto the other to match. In this paper, we focus on this seemingly arbitrary choice of the roles, and reveal how it may lead to biased warp estimates in the presence of relative scaling. We present a principled way of selecting for th...

We study the issue of polarization in society through a model of opinion formation. We say an opinion formation process is polarizing if it results in increased divergence of opinions. Empirical studies have shown that homophily, i.e., greater interaction between like-minded individuals, results in polarization. However, we show that DeGroot's well-known model of opinion formation based on repe...

It is well known that standard game-theoretic approaches to voting mechanisms lead to a multitude of Nash Equilibria (NE), many of which are counter-intuitive. We focus on truth-biased voters, a model recently proposed to avoid such issues. The model introduces an incentive for voters to be truthful when their vote is not pivotal. This is a powerful refinement, and recent simulations reveal tha...

We present a method for estimating intrinsic images from a fixed-viewpoint image sequence captured under changing illumination directions. Previous work on this problem reduces the influence of shadows on reflectance images, but does not address shading effects which can significantly degrade reflectance image estimation under the typically biased sampling of illumination directions. In this pa...

productivity shocks are one of the most important factors that influence the firms ‘ decisions on he optimal consumption of production inputs. unobservable productivity shocks create selection and simultaneity problems causing biased estimates of production function by ordinary least squares. however, to estimate coefficients associated with production function by levinsohn and petrin technique...

Experimental studies show that plant root morphologies can vary widely from straight gravity-aligned primary roots to fractal-like root architectures. However, the opaqueness of soil makes it difficult to observe how environmental factors modulate these patterns. Here, we combine a transparent hydrogel growth medium with a custom built 3D laser scanner to directly image the morphology of Medica...

This paper introduces age-based population heterogeneity in the Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992) model to improve measurement of aggregate labor and aggregate human capital. The estimation results are consistent with this model, and they indicate a hump-shaped and quantitatively important partial relation between the initial population age distribution and the subsequent rate of economic growth f...

The thalamocortical axon (TCA) projection originates in dorsal thalamus, conveys sensory input to the neocortex, and has a critical role in cortical development. We show that the secreted axon guidance molecule netrin-1 acts in vitro as an attractant and growth promoter for dorsal thalamic axons and is required for the proper development of the TCA projection in vivo. As TCAs approach the hypot...