A wealth of evidence for the automaticity of perceptual organization processes points toward the existence of a global-to-local processing bias in early perceptual stages. Global features are encoded and spontaneously reported during early conscious vision, resulting in the perception of coherent objects prior to identifying detailed information. Yet, results from experiments that presented illusory figure presentation below the perceptual threshold to study the reliance of perceptual organization on visual awareness have shown conflicting findings, leaving open the question of how global features interact during figure perception. The present study will examine the interaction between symmetry and perceptual completion under conditions of restricted awareness.

Continue reading

This project has a two-fold aim. First, we seek to determine what makes an idea seem novel versus ordinary and if there is an ideal mix of the two. Second, building on these findings, we build a generative model that suggests tweaks to an idea that enhance its perceived creativity and appeal. We will pursue these two aims using 69K recipes and reviews from allrecipes.com. We will use NLP approach to extract important features from the recipe such as ingredients, preparation instruction and review content.

Continue reading

The Acute Care and Emergency Referral Systems (ACERS) Project is a three-year, USAID-funded implementation research and capacity building project that aims to contribute to the improvement in maternal and newborn survival rates by increasing care-seeking behavior, strengthening emergency referral and dispatch systems, and providing high quality emergency obstetric and newborn care (EmONC) services in the Northern and Oti Regions of Ghana.

Continue reading

Using a validated survey called the Digital IT Maturity Survey, the team is conducting a three-wave, longitudinal, repeated measures survey in a national sample of NHs. Currently, in year 2 of recruitment and analyzing year 1 data. Methods include an examination of the relationships between NH IT Maturity and stages of maturity, and nationally-reported, publicly-available NH Quality Measures available through Nursing Home Compare over three consecutive years. Specific aims are: 1) Explore NH IT maturity using the survey and staging model during a 3-year national assessment 2) Examine if NH IT maturity is associated with CMS quality measures in a national sample of NHs over 3 years. This study includes a survey of NH IT Maturity in a nationally representative sample including 10% of NHs recruited from each state in the United States (N=1,570). Statistical analysis will be done using the software SAS v9 (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA). Since the sampling method involves stratification by state and since the sampling weights assigned to homes will depend on the number of respondents within each state, the analysis must take the complex sampling design into account. SAS procedures including SURVEYMEANS, SURVEYFREQ, SURVEYLOGISTIC, and SURVEYREG will be used for such analyses.

Continue reading

Prediction Markets have been used to forecasts outcomes of research interest using market mechanism (See https://www.nature.com/news/the-power-of-prediction-markets-1.20820). A decentralized prediction market, Augur, has been created on blockchain for betting purposes (See, https://www.augur.net/). An alternative approach to prediction market has been proposed in Dalal et al (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0040162511000734). This project proposes to develop a new model for decentralized prediction market which can be used to elicit opinions of university researchers on socially important issues. Specifically, the project will use Ethereum based platform to develop a smart contract and an ERC-20 compliant token for researchers to participate in the new market.

Continue reading

The federal government spends billions of dollars a year supporting rural broadband (internet access), subsidizing build-out in low-density areas that do not have broadband (unserved areas). However, it is not clear whether the rural areas most in need are receiving a fair share of the funding. Using a very large dataset of broadband availability, census data and recent auction results, the project will analyze whether unserved areas with high racial diversity or lower median income are receiving a fair share of funding. Depending on team size, we will also attempt to create a shareable master data set building on OpenStreetMap and other sources that provides key data points for census units.

Continue reading

Water joined gold, oil and other commodities traded on Wall Street, highlighting worries that the life-sustaining natural resource may become scarce across more of the world. In the state of California, the biggest U.S. agriculture market and world’s fifth-largest economy, this challenge is particularly prevalent. Farmers, hedge funds and municipalities are now able to prepare for the risk that future water availability issues can bring in the state of California.

Continue reading