In auctions with private information acquisition costs, we completely characterize efficient and optimal two-stage selling mechanisms, with the first stage being the pre-screening or entry right allocation mechanism, and the second stage being the traditional private good provision mechanism. Both efficiency and optimality require the second stage mechanism to be ex post efficient. For the firs...

Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs) became an integral part in most systems. The Pipelined ADC (PADC) is one of the preferred ADCs; it is perfect for applications requiring high speed and medium resolution. Hence, the test of ADCs in general as well as PADCs is not only interesting but mandatory; the need for a low cost and efficient test technique in order to test the PADC is increasing. The f...

We consider an auction environment with costly entry wherein the cost mainly stems from information acquisition. Bidders are endowed with original estimates (“types”) about their private values and can further learn their true values of the object for sale by incurring an entry cost. We first derive an integral form of the envelope formula as required by incentive compatible two-stage mechanism...

In this paper, we propose a two-stage multi-task learning representation method for the classification of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) target images. The first stage of the proposed approach uses multi-features joint sparse representation learning, modeled as a ℓ 2 , 1 -norm regularized multi-task sparse learning problem, to find an effective subset of training samples. Then, a new dictionary...

The question of whether age-of-acquisition (AoA), frequency, and repetition priming effects occur at a common stage or at different stages of processing is addressed. Two single-stage accounts (i.e., cumulative frequency and a neural-network simulation) are considered in regard to their predictions concerning the interactions between AoA and frequency with aging and priming effects. A repetitio...

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease that occurs due to loss of dopamine, a neurotransmitter and slow destruction of neurons. Brain area affected by progressive destruction of neurons is responsible for controlling movements, rigid gestures of patients with PD, uncontrollable position, postural instability, and tremor. Commercial activity-promoting gaming systems such as the ...

Existing comprehensive patient assistance programs can help cancer patients overcome needs and barriers to care: yet the costs of such programs and who utilizes them is not well described. 333 women with primary early stage breast cancer in New York City either chose to attend or abstain from attending one of these programs. We obtained the operating costs of the most utilized patient assistanc...

We analyse the dynamics of human gait with simple nonlinear time series analysis methods that are appropriate for undergraduate courses. We show that short continuous recordings of the human locomotory apparatus possess properties typical of deterministic chaotic systems. To facilitate interest and enable the reproduction of presented results, as well as to promote applications of nonlinear tim...