We investigate the influence of fractal structure on material properties. We calculate the statistical correlation functions of fractal media defined by level-cut Gaussian random fields. This allows the modeling of both surface fractal and mass fractal materials. Variational bounds on the conductivity, diffusivity and elastic moduli of the materials are evaluated. We find that a fractally rough...

The distinction between concrete and abstract concepts is psychologically valid but so far it can hardly be quantified in any objective way, which prevents it from being further studied in computational linguistics. This paper proposes a systematic way to measure concreteness from the surface structure of dictionary definitions. Comparing the scores from WordNet definitions with human ratings, ...

In most developed countries, gender equality and neutrality have been widely promoted and embraced— through public policy—as a socio-cultural goal since at least the mid-twentieth century. Accordingly, we predicted that a population of highly educated youth from a relatively wealthy developed country (mostly students from a Canadian university) would display little or no significant gender bias...

Food manufacturers need to understand the taste preferences of their consumers in order to develop successful new products. The existence of consumer segments that differ in systematic ways in their taste preferences can have important implications for product development. Rather than developing a product to please all potential consumers, the manufacturer may decide to optimize the product for...

In an earlier valuation study two of the authors encountered questions from about 20% of the focus group members on the lines: "When I answer your questions should I wear my private (consumer) hat or my public (citizen) hat?". Even though the presence of "public" or altruistic preferences and of multiple preference orderings has achieved attention in the literature over several decades, little ...

Geographers have been reticent on the role of the African diaspora in the contouring of Brazil’s biological and cultural landscapes. Whereas paradigm shifts have occurred in regards to environmental stability in the tropical realm and the pristine nature of pre-Columbian landscapes, these have not translated to a rigorous reassessment of the geographical position of Africans and their descendan...

We specify a system of equations that fully reflects the supply and demand sides of the market for agricultural open space at equilibrium. Although simple, the system is exceedingly flexible and allows for household and parcel heterogeneity. We derive an empirical model directly from the structural equations and contrast this using a simulated landscape with the econometric specification most o...