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Lexical entrainment is a phenomenon in which people tend to re-use the words used by conversational partners (Brennan & Clark, 1996). It is explained as either an automatic reaction caused by priming (Pickering & Garrod, 2004), or a strategic behavior where two interlocutors achieve conceptual agreements for communicative purposes (Brennan & Clark, 1996). Past studies suggest that speakers tend to entrain more when interacting with listeners with lower language competence, such as computers (Branigan, Pickering, Pearson, McLean, & Brown, 2011), children (Cai, Sun, & Zhao, 2021), and non-native partners (Cai et al., 2021; Suffill, Kutasi, Pickering, & Branigan, 2021). However, few studies have explored how the features of speakers themselves determine the pattern of entrainment, and the studies that do exist suggest that speaker proficiency (as opposed to listener proficiency) may not affect entrainment behavior. In this study, we target bilingual groups and explore individual differences in lexical entrainment by looking at their entrainment behavior with picture matching and naming tasks. Over the course of two experiments, we investigate English entrainment in English-speaking bilinguals, as well as Mandarin entrainment in Mandarin-English bilinguals. Unlike the previous literature, our results suggest that a speaker’s language dominance/proficiency may have an effect on that speaker’s entrainment: bilinguals who are less dominant/proficient in English tend to entrain more in English, although the effect in Mandarin did not reach significance.

Human trafficking is a serious crime and violation of human rights that results in numerous harms. Although the phenomenon is not new, scholarship on the issue has grown substantially since the first legal framework was passed in 2000. However, the existing literature has been criticized for its skewed focus on victims, among other things. The dearth of information on traffickers and their operations limits our ability to reduce or prevent perpetration. The current study presents a comprehensive and critical review of the existing literature focused on traffickers to synthesize what is already known and highlight the key gaps. Twenty-nine articles met the inclusion criteria of (1) focusing on traffickers and their operations and (2) relying on data either directly from traffickers or sources that contained detailed information about criminal cases against traffickers. We used an iterative process to identify relevant studies, which included collecting articles of which we were already familiar or were identified in existing reviews, searching their reference lists, and conducting cited-by searches until saturation was reached. Topics found in the extant literature included: characteristics of traffickers, relationships between traffickers and victims, organizational characteristics and networks, operations, connections with other crimes, motivations, perceptions of behavior, and risks associated with trafficking. It concludes with recommendations for future research and a discussion of how bridging gaps in the literature could support more rigorous mathematical modeling that is needed to identify and assess promising perpetration prevention and intervention strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analytic solutions are derived for the problem of scattering of obliquely incident plane waves from a rectangular crack in a fluid-saturated porous solid. The propagation direction and polarization direction of the incident waves can be arbitrary. The solutions are based on expanding the crack opening displacements in terms of Chebyshev functions. Explicit expressions for the frequency-dependent stress intensity factors and scattering far fields are obtained. The poroelastic effects play a key role in determining the crack opening mode by changing the effective normal stress applied on the crack surfaces. Consequently, the dynamic responses of the crack can be quite different from those of conventional dry crack in an elastic solid. The effects of scattered slow-P waves as well as wave-induced crack fluid pressure on the dynamic stress intensity factors are clarified, and a corner effect is observed in the scattering patterns for moderately high frequencies. The comparisons of synthetic seismograms with the elastic model show the slow-P waves can cause significant energy loss and waveform change. This study can be used for fracture analysis of porous media and nondestructive testing for individual hydraulic fractures in reservoirs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study a network interdiction problem involving two agents: a defender and an evader. The evader seeks to traverse a path from a source node to a terminus node in a directed network without being detected. The game takes place in two stages. In the first stage, the defender removes a set of arcs in the network. In the second stage, the defender and evader play a simultaneous game. The defender monitors a set of arcs, thus increasing the probability that the evader will be detected on that arc (if the evader uses the arc). The evader selects a source‐terminus path. Because the second stage is played simultaneously, both agents use mixed‐strategy solutions. We approach the solution of the second‐stage problem by proposing a constraint‐and‐column generation algorithm. We show that both the constraint‐generation and column‐generation problems are NP‐hard. Accordingly, we prescribe approximate versions of these problems that can be solved more efficiently. Our algorithm relies on solving the approximate versions until it is necessary to obtain an exact solution of the constraint‐generation and column‐generation problems. Then, to link the first‐ and second‐stage problems, we model the original problem using an epigraph reformulation, which we solve using a Benders‐decomposition based approach. The efficacy of our approach is demonstrated on a set of randomly generated test instances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healthcare workers' (HCWs) safety and availability to care for patients are critical during a pandemic such as the one caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. Among providers of different specialities, it is critical to protect those working in hospital settings with a high risk of infection. Using an agent-based simulation model, various staffing policies were developed and simulated for 90 days using data from the largest health systems in South Carolina. The model considers staffing policies that include geographic segregation, interpersonal contact limits, and a combination of factors, including the patient census, transmission rates, vaccination status of providers, hospital capacity, incubation time, quarantine period, and interactions between patients and providers. Comparing the existing practices to various risk-adjusted staffing policies, model predictions show that restricted teaming and rotating schedules significantly (p -value <0.01) reduced weekly HCW unavailability and the number of infected HCWs by 22% and 38%, respectively, when the vaccination rates among HCWs were lower (<75%). However, as the vaccination rate increases, the benefits of risk-adjusted policies diminish; and when 90% of HCWs were vaccinated, there were no significant (p -value = 0.09) benefits. Although these simulated outcomes are specific to one health system, our findings can be generalised to other health systems with multiple locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the multi‐vehicle covering tour problem with speed optimization, we aim to construct a set of maximal coverage routes for a fleet of vehicles that serve (observe) a set of secondary sites, given a fixed time schedule and coverage requirements. We develop an exact solution approach using a branch‐and‐price framework with a label‐correcting algorithm and a set of innovative dominance rules to solve the resulting pricing problem. We also develop a two‐stage heuristic capable of finding effective initial solutions. In addition, we consider practical extensions to the model by incorporating risk thresholds, energy capacities, and time windows. To validate our proposed solution approaches, we perform an extensive set of numerical experiments. Numerical results show the computational advantage of our proposed solution approaches compared with a state‐of‐the‐art commercial solver. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]