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We apply the Rawlsian principle to a canonical discrete object allocation problem. A matching is Rawlsian if it is impossible to improve the ranking of assignment for the worst-off agent or reduce the cardinality of the set of the worst-off agent-body. None of the well-known mechanisms are Rawlsian. We introduce an efficient and Rawlsian class of mechanisms. Strategy-proofness is incompatible with Rawlsianism; therefore, no Rawlsian mechanism is strategy-proof. • We study Rawlsian matchings in a canonical object allocation framework. • None of the well-known mechanisms is Rawlsian. • A new mechanism class is proposed and shown to be Rawlsian and efficient. • Rawlsianism is incompatible with strategy-proofness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of supply and demand, in view of the unreasonable structure of logistics system and the inefficient use of logistics resources, a matching measurement method system of regional logistics system structure and logistics resources based on quantity, structure, space and time (QSST) equilibrium is proposed, mainly including the matching mechanism and process model, matching measurement model and matching discrimination analysis. It mainly includes the matching mechanism and process model, matching measurement model, and matching degree discriminant analysis. Combined with the coupled coordination degree model, an example analysis of the matching degree of logistics system structure and logistics resources in China is conducted using relevant panel data from 2011 to 2020, and the study confirms that structural mismatch is currently an important element affecting the sustainable development of China's logistics industry. This theory and method can better evaluate the matching state of logistics structure and resources, find the individual advantages of the matching relationship between the two in different stages, make a correct analysis and evaluation of the evolution trend of the matching relationship between the two, and then provide a basis for managers to plan the green, healthy and sustainable logistics structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 3‐graph F ${\rm{ {\mathcal F} }}$ is U(s,2s+1) $U(s,2s+1)$ if for any s $s$ edges e1,...,es∈E(F) ${e}_{1},\ldots ,{e}_{s}\in E({\rm{ {\mathcal F} }})$, ∣e1∪⋯∪es∣≤2s+1 $| {e}_{1}\cup \cdots \cup {e}_{s}| \le 2s+1$. Frankl and Kupavskii proposed the following conjecture: For any 3‐graph F ${\rm{ {\mathcal F} }}$ with n $n$ vertices, if F ${\rm{ {\mathcal F} }}$ is U(s,2s+1) $U(s,2s+1)$, then e(F)≤maxn−12,(n−s−1)s+12+s+13,2s+13. $\begin{array}{c}e({\mathscr{F}})\le \max \left\{\left(\genfrac{}{}{0ex}{}{n-1}{2}\right),(n-s-1)\left(\genfrac{}{}{0ex}{}{s+1}{2}\right)\right.\\ \,\left.+\left(\genfrac{}{}{0ex}{}{s+1}{3}\right),\left(\genfrac{}{}{0ex}{}{2s+1}{3}\right)\right\}.\end{array}$ In this paper, we confirm Frankl and Kupavskii's conjecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Very recently, Alon and Frankl initiated the study of the maximum number of edges in n $n$‐vertex F $F$‐free graphs with matching number at most s $s$. For fixed F $F$ and s $s$, we determine this number apart from a constant additive term. We also obtain several exact results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I explain puzzles in the school assignment literature using a many-to-one matching model in which participants on one side of the market, the students, are endowed with ego-utilities à la Köszegi (2006). Ego concerns generate a form of information avoidance that results in non-truthful participation in DA matching mechanisms. In particular, students' best replies may be non-monotonic in school ranks. I show that truthful reporting can be restored by imposing a limit on the measure of students that a school can deem acceptable. Furthermore, students may be sensitive to signal garbling, in the sense of Blackwell (1953). In terms of policy, the results imply that admission committees' reliance on application dimensions that are seemingly weak proxies of academic performance may be beneficial. Other implications suggest that affirmative action policies might be beneficial. However, when students' best replies exhibit non-monotonicity in schools' selectivity, such policies might backfire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boosting Employment of Resettled Refugees Whether a resettled refugee finds employment in the United States depends in no small part on which host community they are first welcomed to. Every week, resettlement agencies are assigned a group of refugees who they are required to place in communities around the country. In "Dynamic Placement in Refugee Resettlement," Ahani, Gölz, Procaccia, Teytelboym, and Trapp develop an allocation system that recommends where to place an incoming refugee family with the aim of boosting the overall employment success. Should capacities in high-employment areas be used up as quickly as possible, or does it make sense to hold back for a perfect match? The simple algorithm, based on two-stage stochastic programming, achieves over 98% of the hindsight-optimal employment, compared with under 90% for the greedy-like approaches that were previously used in practice. Their algorithm is now part of the Annie™ MOORE optimization software used by a leading American refugee resettlement agency. Employment outcomes of resettled refugees depend strongly on where they are initially placed in the host country. Each week, a resettlement agency is allocated a set of refugees by the U.S. government. The agency must place these refugees in its local affiliates while respecting the affiliates' annual capacities. We develop an allocation system that recommends where to place an incoming refugee family to improve total employment success. Our algorithm is based on two-stage stochastic programming and achieves over 98% of the hindsight-optimal employment, compared with under 90% of current greedy-like approaches. This dramatic improvement persists even when we incorporate a vast array of practical features of the refugee resettlement process including inseparable families, batching, and uncertainty with respect to the number of future arrivals. Our algorithm is now part of the Annie™ MOORE optimization software used by a leading American refugee resettlement agency. Funding: This work was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council [Grant ES/R007470/1]; the Office of Naval Research [Grant N00014-20-1-2488]; and the National Science Foundation's Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation [Grant CMMI-1825348], Division of Computing and Communication Foundations [Grants CCF-1733556 and CCF-2007080], Division of Mathematical Sciences [Grant DMS-1928930], and Division of Information and Intelligent Systems [Grant IIS-2024287]. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2021.0534. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cybersecurity refers to the actions that are used by people and companies to protect themselves and their information from cyber threats. Different security methods have been proposed for detecting abnormal network behavior, but some effective attacks are still a major concern in the computer community. Many security gaps, such as denial of service, spam, phishing, and other types of attacks, are reported daily, and the number of attacks is growing. Intrusion detection is a security protection method that is used to detect and report any abnormal traffic automatically that may affect network security, such as internal attacks, external attacks, and maloperations. This paper proposes an anomaly intrusion detection system method based on a new RNA encoding method and the ResNet50 Model, where encoding is performed by splitting the training records into different groups. These groups are protocol, service, flag, and digit, and each group is represented by the number of RNA characters that can represent the group's values. The RNA encoding phase converts network traffic records into RNA sequences, allowing for a comprehensive representation of the dataset. The detection model, which uses the ResNet architecture, effectively addresses training challenges and achieves high detection rates for different attack types. The KDD-Cup99 dataset is used for both training and testing. The testing dataset includes new attacks that do not appear in the training dataset, which means that the system can detect new attacks in the future. The efficiency of the suggested anomaly intrusion detection system is determined by calculating the detection rate (DR), false alarm rate (FAR), and accuracy. The achieved DR, FAR, and accuracy are 96.24%, 6.133%, and 95.99%, respectively. The experimental results revealed that the RNA encoding method can improve intrusion detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficiency Adjusted Deferred Acceptance Rule (EDA) is a promising candidate mechanism for a public school assignment. A potential drawback of EDA is that it could encourage students to game the system since it is not strategy‐proof. However, to successfully strategize, students typically need information that is unlikely to be available to them in practice. We model school choice under incomplete information and show that EDA is regret‐free truth‐telling, which is a weaker incentive property than strategy‐proofness and was introduced by Fernandez (2020). We also show that there is no efficient matching rule that weakly Pareto dominates a stable matching rule and is regret‐free truth‐telling. Note that the original version of EDA by Kesten (2010) weakly Pareto dominates a stable matching rule, but it is not efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the L(2, 1)-labeling of the Mycielski graph and the iterated Mycielski graph of graphs in general. For a graph G and all t ≥ 1, we give sharp bounds for λ(Mt(G)) the L(2, 1)-labeling number of the t-th iterated Mycielski graph in terms of the number of iterations t, the order n of G, the maximum degree △, and λ(G) the L(2, 1)-labeling number of G. For t = 1, we present necessary and sufficient conditions between the 4-star matching number of the complement graph and λ(M(G)) the L(2, 1)-labeling number of the Mycielski graph of a graph, with some applications to special graphs. For all t ≥ 2, we prove that for any graph G of order n, we have 2t-1(n + 2) - 2 ≤ λ(Mt(G)) ≤ 2t(n + 1) - 2. Thereafter, we characterize the graphs achieving the upper bound 2t(n+1)-2, then by using the Marriage Theorem and Tutte's characterization of graphs with a perfect 2-matching, we characterize all graphs without isolated vertices achieving the lower bound 2t-1(n+2)-2. We determine the L(2, 1)-labeling number for the Mycielski graph and the iterated Mycielski graph of some graph classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study two well‐known Ramsey‐type problems for (vertex‐)ordered complete graphs. Two independent edges in ordered graphs can be nested, crossing, or separated. Apart from two trivial cases, these relations define six types of subgraphs, depending on which one (or two) of these relations are forbidden. Our first target is to refine a remark by Erdős and Rado that every 2‐coloring of the edges of a complete graph contains a monochromatic spanning tree. We show that forbidding one relation we always have a monochromatic (nonnested, noncrossing, and nonseparated) spanning tree in a 2‐edge‐colored ordered complete graph. On the other hand, if two relations are forbidden, then it is possible that we have monochromatic (nested, separated, and crossing) subtrees of size only ~n∕2 $\unicode{x0007E}n\unicode{x02215}2$ in a 2‐colored ordered complete graph on n $n$ vertices. Some of these results relate to drawings of complete graphs. For instance, the existence of a monochromatic nonnested spanning tree in 2‐colorings of ordered complete graphs verifies a more general conjecture for twisted drawings. Our second subject is to refine the Ramsey number of matchings, that is, pairwise independent edges for ordered complete graphs. Cockayne and Lorimer proved that for given positive integers t,n $t,n$, m=(t−1)(n−1)+2n $m=(t-1)(n-1)+2n$ is the smallest integer with the following property: every t $t$‐coloring of the edges of a complete graph Km ${K}_{m}$ contains a monochromatic matching with n $n$ edges. We conjecture that this result can be strengthened: t $t$‐colored ordered complete graphs on m $m$ vertices contain monochromatic nonnested and also nonseparated matchings with n $n$ edges. We prove this conjecture for some special cases including the following. (i) Every t $t$‐colored ordered complete graph on t+3 $t+3$ vertices contains a monochromatic nonnested matching of size two (n=2 $n=2$ case). We prove it by showing that the chromatic number of the subgraph of the Kneser graph induced by the nonnested 2‐matchings in an ordered complete graph on t+3 $t+3$ vertices is (t+1) $(t+1)$‐chromatic.(ii) Every 2‐colored ordered complete graph on 3n−1 $3n-1$ vertices contains a monochromatic nonseparated matching of size n $n$ (t=2 $t=2$ case). This is the hypergraph analog of a result of Kaiser and Stehlík who proved that the Kneser graph induced by the nonseparated 2‐matchings in an ordered complete graph on t+3 $t+3$ vertices is (t+1) $(t+1)$‐chromatic. For nested, separated, and crossing matchings the situation is different. The smallest m $m$ ensuring a monochromatic matching of size n $n$ in every t $t$‐coloring is 2(t(n−1))+1) $2(t(n-1))+1)$ in the first two cases and one less in the third case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modular prediction model of high pressure common rail system was established to study the influence of high‐pressure pipeline integration matching on the fuel injection characteristics of common rail system. The influence of common rail volume on pressure building and pressure fluctuation in common rail tubes was analyzed. The influence of common rail volume on the matching of fuel injection frequency (number of fuel injectors) and fuel supply frequency (number of plunger pumps) was studied by using the control variable method, and the basic optimal solution of the system was obtained. The influence of the common rail structure on the fuel flow characteristics of the system was also studied. The matching relationship between high pressure tubing and common rail system is studied by introducing dimensionless numbers such as length‐diameter ratio of pipeline. The results demonstrate that the increase of the storage space of the accumulator can effectively reduce the fluctuation in the system, so that the injection volume increases slowly and then decreases rapidly, with a slope of −5.70 × 10−3 mm3. The increase of the diameter of the common rail makes the fuel flow characteristics become good first and then bad, and the increase of the length of the common rail can soothe the pressure fluctuations. The increase of the diameter of the link tube (LT) makes the fuel injection volume of the injector increase first and then decrease. The optimal VR solution for the LT is 0.0249 and the optimal ratio of the length to diameter of a pipeline solution is 55.10. The structure of the distribution tube and its matching to the common rail have little effect on the fuel flow characteristics. When the diameter and length of the injection tube are too large, the influence on the injection pressure of the injector is negatively correlated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a numerical study of a planar antenna with a complex form factor. The antenna is based on a combination of two resonators, a disc resonator and a ring resonator. The feeding of the ring resonator is performed using a coplanar structure: pointwise by galvanic contact between the central conductor of the coplanar line and the ring resonator and by distributed electromagnetic coupling of the ring resonator and the aperture of the outer conductor of the coplanar line. The antenna was placed over a metal plane whose geometric dimensions were significantly larger than those of the antenna to exclude the influence of edge diffraction effects. In numerical simulation a complex approach including the method of semi-open resonator and the finite element method (FEM) implemented within the commercial package HFFS was used. The dependences of spectral, energy and polarization characteristics on material constants and frequency parameter have been investigated. It was found that within the framework of single-parameter optimization it is impossible to simultaneously achieve a high level of all important parameters. The values of frequencies of spectral lines in the spectral characteristics of the antenna are found with a relative error not worse than 1200 Hz. Frequency ranges within which there is no degeneration of oscillation types are established. The distributions of surface currents on the metal elements of the antenna, allowing to determine the position of phase centers of excitation, are presented. It is shown that the proposed antenna can provide an acceptable level of matching both at fixed frequencies and in sufficiently wide local frequency bands, reaching 11% with respect to the center frequency of the sub-band. The boundary values of gain coefficients in frequency bands are established. The simulation results allow to predict effective radiation with formation of practically single-lobe radiation pattern and presence of elliptical polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Motivated by designing observational studies using matching methods subject to fine balance constraints, we introduce a new optimization problem. This problem consists of two phases. In the first phase, the goal is to cluster the values of a continuous covariate into a limited number of intervals. In the second phase, we find the optimal matching subject to fine balance constraints with respect to the new covariate we obtained in the first phase. We show that the resulting optimization problem is NP-hard. However, it admits an FPT algorithm with respect to a natural parameter. This FPT algorithm also translates into a polynomial time algorithm for the most natural special cases of the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of China Mechanical Engineering is the property of Editorial Board of China Mechanical Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Natural wetlands in urbanised areas provide practical services, including flood control and amenity values such as views, wildlife habitat and recreational opportunities. But cities also construct wetlands to improve flood control and ecosystem services, the value of which might change property prices. This paper reports analyses of property prices that provide estimates of wetlands' localised amenity values in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city. A major challenge is that the selection of sites for wetlands' construction is not random; amenity value is potentially confounded by property and neighbourhood characteristics that vary across space and over time. We use a combination of repeat‐sales models, difference‐in‐differences and matching models to control for unobserved heterogeneity in property and neighbourhood characteristics. The results indicate that local benefit from constructed wetlands ranges from about 5% to 9% depending on the location of the property in areas adjacent to the wetlands or in a larger catchment of interest. Our results have a causal interpretation if the selection criteria are applied uniformly across Auckland and are valuable in assessing the benefits of constructed wetlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

При изучении иностранного языка студенты неизбежно сталкиваются с межъязыковой интерференцией. Особенно часто интерференция проявляется на грамматическом уровне. Цель данной статьи заключается в том, чтобы обосновать применение основ конструктивной интерференции при создании упражнений, которые будут способствовать усвоению грамматики иностранного языка у студентов. В работе представлены подходы к определению интерференции, в частности, грамматической интерференции, рассмотрены термины, которые обозначают отрицательный и положительный перенос. Приведены примеры упражнений, которые демонстрируют как сравнение грамматических категорий русского и французского языков помогает при обучении иностранному языку. Автор делает вывод, что применение основ конструктивной интерференции способствует эффективному изучению иностранного языка и развитию коммуникативной компетенции студентов.

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Objectives/hypothesisTo quantify the effect of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic upon the 2020 to 2021 residency match for Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (OHNS).Study designRetrospective cohort design.MethodsResidency match outcomes for all applicants to our institution during 2020 to 2021 were collected from the National Residency Matching Program including medical school of origin and matched program. Matches were categorized as to home-program, within-region, or out-of-region and sorted by US geographic region. Matches from the 2020 to 2021 cycle were compared to those from 2019 to 2020, as well as averages and trends from match cycles 2016 to 2020. Statistical analysis included descriptive statistics and chi-square testing.ResultsDuring 2020 to 2021, there were 436 applicants to our single OHNS program. From 2019-2020 to 2020-2021, the match rate decreased significantly for groups studied, including: All applicants (72.0% [268/372] to 64.7% [282/436]; P = .025); all US MD Senior applicants (76.5% [254/332] to 68.9% [262/380]; P = .024); and US MD Seniors specifically without a home program (77.5% [31/40] to 56.4% [22/39]; P = .046). The match rate for US MD Seniors with a home program did not change significantly (76.4% [223/292] to 70.4% [240/341]; P = .09). From 2019-2020 to 2020-2021, the proportion of US MD seniors who matched to home-program increased significantly (22.0% [49/223] to 30.0% [72/240]; P = .05).ConclusionThe COVID-19 pandemic saw high volumes of OHNS applicants with an overall decreased rate of matching compared to previous years. These changes particularly affected applicants without home programs. Home-program matching increased significantly, likely as a consequence of the limitations placed on in-person away experiences including interviews. Laryngoscope, 132:1934-1938, 2022.

Earth observation utilizes multisource satellite data to enhance photogrammetry mapping. This study introduces a novel method to improve the geometric positioning accuracy of large-scale optical satellite imagery by combined adjustment with NASA's Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) laser altimetry data. Although ICESat-2 is known for its high vertical accuracy, its potential to improve horizontal accuracy has been limited due to the difficulty in matching caused by temporal inconsistencies across large survey areas. To address this, our method employs a robust terrain profile elevation sequence similarity matching technique, refined with two-dimensional Gaussian fitting to achieve enhanced position extraction. We also propose a weighted adjustment strategy that uses matching confidence to enhance the precision of the combined adjustments. Large-scale tests across various terrains showed that our approach has significantly reduced horizontal and vertical positioning errors to 4.3 and 1.7 m, respectively, outperforming existing methods.

Motivated by bipartite Gallai–Ramsey type problems, we consider edge-colorings of complete bipartite graphs without rainbow tree and matching. Given two graphs G and H , and a positive integer k , define the bipartite Gallai–Ramsey number bgr k (G : H) as the minimum number of vertices n such that n 2 ≥ k and for every N ≥ n , any coloring (using all k colors) of the complete bipartite graph K N , N contains a rainbow copy of G or a monochromatic copy of H. In this paper, we first describe the structures of a complete bipartite graph K n , n without rainbow P 4 + and 3 K 2 , respectively, where P 4 + is the graph consisting of a P 4 with one extra edge incident with an interior vertex. Furthermore, we determine the exact values or upper and lower bounds on bgr k (G : H) when G is a 3-matching or a 4-path or P 4 + , and H is a bipartite graph. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water, soil, and heat are strategic supporting elements for human survival and social development. The degree of matching between human-land-water-heat elements directly influences the sustainable development of a region. However, the current evaluation of the matching of human-land-water-heat elements overlooks the influence of elevation factors on the matching results, especially evident in mountainous areas. Taking the Yunnan Plateau with distinctive mountainous features as the research subject, divided into 11 elevation ranges, the Lorenz Gini coefficient, asymmetry coefficient, matching distance, and imbalance index are used to assess the spatial matching and balance of human-land-water-heat elements. A projection tracing model is employed to analyze its water resource carrying capacity. Analyses revealed that the Gini coefficient of monthly precipitation from the 1950s to 2022 on the Yunnan Plateau increases with increasing latitude, whereas the correlation with elevation is notably lower. The asymmetry coefficient increases gradually from west to east with change in longitude. The mismatch of the human–land–water–heat system in regions at different elevations is in the order 1800–2000 m > 2000–2200 m > 1400–1600 m > 800 m > other areas. The matching of the human–land–water–heat system in different wet–dry years and seasons also fluctuates with elevation, resulting in serious seasonal drought and water shortage problems in mountainous areas with elevations of 1200–1600, 1800–2000 m, and >2600 m. The spatial equilibrium of temperature and precipitation in regions of different elevations is best, followed by that of cultivated land, while that of the population is the worst. The Gini coefficients for different water cycle processes of precipitation, surface runoff, and regulating storage capacity for water supply continue to increase. Specifically, the Gini coefficient of industrial water supply is the highest, reaching 0.576, and that of agricultural irrigation is the lowest (0.424). Through artificial regulation of lake and reservoir water, seasonal changes in the demand for agricultural irrigation water are offset to achieve a demand–supply balance and matching of land and water resources. The water resource capacity of different elevation ranges is evenly underloaded. However, the potential of the water resource capacity varies obviously with elevation in the order 2000–2200 m < 1800–2000 m < 1600–8000 m < 1400–1600 m < other areas. It appears that the greater the human–land–water–heat system mismatch, the smaller the regional potential of the water resource capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer vision in the structural health monitoring (SHM) field has become popular, especially for processing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) data, but still has limitations both in experimental testing and in practical applications. Prior works have focused on UAV challenges and opportunities for the vibration-based SHM of buildings or bridges, but practical and methodological gaps exist specifically for linear infrastructure systems such as pipelines. Since they are critical for the transportation of products and the transmission of energy, a feasibility study of UAV-based SHM for linear infrastructures is essential to ensuring their service continuity through an advanced SHM system. Thus, this study proposes a single UAV for the seismic monitoring and safety assessment of linear infrastructures along with their computer vision-aided procedures. The proposed procedures were implemented in a full-scale shake-table test of a natural gas pipeline assembly. The objectives were to explore the UAV potential for the seismic vibration monitoring of linear infrastructures with the aid of several computer vision algorithms and to investigate the impact of parameter selection for each algorithm on the matching accuracy. The procedure starts by adopting the Maximally Stable Extremal Region (MSER) method to extract covariant regions that remain similar through a certain threshold of image series. The feature of interest is then detected, extracted, and matched using the Speeded-Up Robust Features (SURF) and K-nearest Neighbor (KNN) algorithms. The Maximum Sample Consensus (MSAC) algorithm is applied for model fitting by maximizing the likelihood of the solution. The output of each algorithm is examined for correctness in matching pairs and accuracy, which is a highlight of this procedure, as no studies have ever investigated these properties. The raw data are corrected and scaled to generate displacement data. Finally, a structural safety assessment was performed using several system identification models. These procedures were first validated using an aluminum bar placed on an actuator and tested in three harmonic tests, and then an implementation case study on the pipeline shake-table tests was analyzed. The validation tests show good agreement between the UAV data and reference data. The shake-table test results also generate reasonable seismic performance and assess the pipeline seismic safety, demonstrating the feasibility of the proposed procedure and the prospect of UAV-based SHM for linear infrastructure monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empowering women is a policy goal that has received a lot of interest from policy-makers in the developing world in recent years, yet little is known about effective ways to promote it sustainably. Most existing interventions fail to address the multidimensional nature of empowerment. Using a double matching design to construct the sampling frame and to estimate causal effects, I evaluate the long-term impact of a multifaceted policy intervention designed to improve women’s empowerment in the Atlantic region in Colombia. This intervention provided information about women’s rights, soft skills and vocational training, seed capital, and mentoring simultaneously. I find that this intervention has mixed results: there are improvements in incomes and other economic dimensions along with large political and social capital effects, but limited or null impacts on women’s rights knowledge and control over one’s body. Using a list experiment, I even find an increase in the likelihood of intra-household violence. The results highlight the importance of addressing the multidimensional nature of women’s empowerment in policy innovations designed to foster it and incorporating men in these efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I present a class of models for random matching markets with non-homogeneous agent preferences, drawn from the computer science literature on network structure. An analogue of the Watts–Strogatz (1998) 'small-world' network model supports significant incentives to manipulate matching outcomes. The scope for manipulation remains substantial as markets become large and unbalanced—contrasting prior work which found little scope under uniform or homogeneous random preferences. This scope for manipulation directly corresponds to core size and differences in agents' welfare between core outcomes. These results suggest largeness and cross-side imbalance may be insufficient to fully explain small cores in matching markets; I discuss alternative explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dyslexia is a reading difficulty that can be found everywhere, regardless of a person's ethnicity or race. The manifestation of dyslexia depends on the structure and orthography of a language. There is a lack of research into Arabic dyslexia, particularly the benefits of adaptive learning in this area. The study presented in this paper aimed to understand the impact on learners' reading performance, satisfaction and behaviour when matching e-training material with learner attributes. The focus is on learners with short vowel dyslexia. The study was undertaken with 22 female primary school children in Saudi Arabia, all of whom were native Arabic speakers. These children were divided into two groups: a matched group (which included learners with short vowel dyslexia) and a mismatched group (which included learners with vowel dyslexia). An e-training system 'DysTypeTrain2' was designed and developed to support the study. A mixed-methods approach was used to collect both quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data were collected from (i) pre- and post-test results to calculate the improvement in reading performance and (ii) learner satisfaction scores. The qualitative data were collected from observations of learners' behaviour. It was found that the learners' reading performance and satisfaction improved in both experimental conditions (short vowel dyslexia group and vowel dyslexia group), regardless of their Arabic dyslexia type, indicating that the system was effective and the learning process was improved. Further, the learners were happy and excited about the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem definition: Generating recommendations of compatible dating partners is a challenging task for online dating platforms because uncovering users' idiosyncratic preferences is difficult. Thus, platforms tend to recommend popular users to others more frequently than unpopular users. This paper studies such popularity bias in an online dating platform's recommendations and its consequences for users' likelihood of finding dating partners. Methodology/results: Motivated by the empirical evidence that a user's chance of being recommended by the platform's algorithm increases significantly with the user's popularity, we study an online dating platform's incentive that generates popularity bias by modeling the platform's recommendations and users' subsequent interactions in a three-stage matching game. Our analysis shows that the recommendations that maximize the platform's revenue and those that maximize the number of successful matches between users are not necessarily at odds, even though the former leads to a higher bias against unpopular users. Unbiased recommendations result in significantly lower revenue for the platform and fewer matches when users' implicit cost of evaluating incoming messages is low. Popular users help the platform generate more revenue and a higher number of successful matches as long as these popular users do not become "out of reach." We validate our theoretical results by running simulations of the platform based on a machine learning–based predictive model that estimates users' behavior. Managerial implications: Our result indicates that an online dating platform can increase revenue and users' chances of finding dating partners simultaneously with a certain degree of bias against unpopular users. Online dating platforms can use our theoretical results to understand user behavior and our predictive model to improve their recommendation systems (e.g., by selecting a set of users leading to the highest probabilities of matching or other revenue-generating interactions). Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.0132. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this paper, we analyze two types of refutations for Unit Two Variable Per Inequality (UTVPI) constraints. A UTVPI constraint is a linear inequality of the form: $a_{i}\cdot x_{i}+a_{j} \cdot x_{j} \le b_{k}$ , where $a_{i},a_{j}\in \{0,1,-1\}$ and $b_{k} \in \mathbb{Z}$. A conjunction of such constraints is called a UTVPI constraint system (UCS) and can be represented in matrix form as: ${\bf A \cdot x \le b}$. UTVPI constraints are used in many domains including operations research and program verification. We focus on two variants of read-once refutation (ROR). An ROR is a refutation in which each constraint is used at most once. A literal-once refutation (LOR), a more restrictive form of ROR, is a refutation in which each literal ( $x_i$ or $-x_i$) is used at most once. First, we examine the constraint-required read-once refutation (CROR) problem and the constraint-required literal-once refutation (CLOR) problem. In both of these problems, we are given a set of constraints that must be used in the refutation. RORs and LORs are incomplete since not every system of linear constraints is guaranteed to have such a refutation. This is still true even when we restrict ourselves to UCSs. In this paper, we provide NC reductions between the CROR and CLOR problems in UCSs and the minimum weight perfect matching problem. The reductions used in this paper assume a CREW PRAM model of parallel computation. As a result, the reductions establish that, from the perspective of parallel algorithms, the CROR and CLOR problems in UCSs are equivalent to matching. In particular, if an NC algorithm exists for either of these problems, then there is an NC algorithm for matching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the employment effects of the 2019 minimum wage increase in Spain on individual probabilities of losing employment status (extensive margin) and lowering work intensity (intensive margin). To do so, we use variation of workers' exposure to the reform by comparing monthly employment transitions into unemployment and reductions in number of working hours between employees earning less than the minimum wage (treatment group) and those earning more and that should therefore be unaffected by the reform (control group). We find that the new minimum wage significantly increased the probability of experiencing unemployment (1.7 percentage points) and a reduction in work intensity (0.9 percentage points) for treated workers after one year. Our results suggest substantial heterogeneity by age, prior work intensity, economic sector and geographical region of employees affected by the reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to solve the problem of poor performance of traditional point feature algorithm under low texture and poor illumination, this paper presents a new visual SLAM method based on point–line fusion of line structure constraint. This method first uses an algorithm for homogeneity to process the extracted point features, solving the traditional problem of excessive aggregation and overlap of corner points, which makes the visual front end better able to obtain environmental information. In addition, improved line extraction method algorithm by using the strategy of eliminating the line length makes the line extraction performance twice as efficient as the LSD algorithm, the optical flow tracking algorithm is used to replace the traditional matching algorithm to reduce the running time of the system. In particular, the paper proposes a new constraint on the position of the spatially extracted lines, using the parallelism of 3D lines to correct for degraded lines in the projection process, and adding a new constraint on the line structure to the error function of the whole system, the newly constructed error function is optimized by sliding window, which significantly improves the accuracy and completeness of the whole system in constructing maps. Finally, the performance of the algorithm was tested on a publicly available dataset. The experimental results show that our algorithm performs well in point extraction and matching, the proposed point–line fusion system is better than the popular VINS-mono and PL-VINS algorithms in terms of running time, quality of information obtained, and positioning accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We identify the causal effects of three types of internships (mandatory intra-curricular, voluntary intra-curricular, and voluntary extra-curricular) among university graduates on job interview and hiring chances, and explore the mechanisms underlying these effects. To this end, we perform a vignette experiment among HR professionals in Belgium. Our results indicate that internships improve one's job interview and hiring chances, with voluntary extra-curricular internships having the strongest effect. With respect to the mechanisms, we find that internships improve employers' perceptions about the job seekers' skills acquired during the educational career, their pre-existing abilities and motivations, and their knowledge of the job content and working conditions. The first two types of perceptions are also found to be strong predictors of the hiring outcomes. The effects of internships on hiring chances are not found to be reduced or reinforced by the presence of other work experiences (student work, volunteering). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of a programme that aims to activate welfare recipients to become self-employed. We use unique administrative data which contain applicants for a self-employment programme between 2007 and 2010. We examine the long-term effects of the programme on people's welfare recipience, employment and income until 8 years after they applied to the programme. The estimations show positive long-term effects of being accepted into the programme. It seems that even applying to the programme and subsequently being rejected also had positive employment effects. This was probably due to the training and guidance the applicants received while writing a business plan, which was a prerequisite to participating in the programme. Moreover, a cost–benefit analysis showed that the programme is cost-effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Engineering Sciences & Information Technology is the property of Arab Journal of Sciences & Research Publishing (AJSRP) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Objective: To investigate the effect on major postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) of mode of conception, differentiating between naturally conceived pregnancies, fresh embryo in vitro fertilisation (fresh‐IVF) and frozen embryo transfer (frozen‐IVF). Design: Retrospective cohort study. Setting: The French Burgundy Perinatal Network database, including all deliveries from 2006 to 2020, was linked to the regional blood centre database. Population or sample: In all, 244 336 women were included, of whom 240 259 (98.3%) were singleton pregnancies. Methods: The main analyses were conducted in singleton pregnancies, including 237 608 naturally conceived, 1773 fresh‐IVF and 878 frozen‐IVF pregnancies. Multivariate logistic regression models adjusted on maternal age, body mass index, smoking, parity, induction of labour, hypertensive disorders, diabetes, placenta praevia and/or accreta, history of caesarean section, mode of delivery, birthweight, birth place and year of delivery, were used. Main outcome measures: Major PPH was defined as PPH requiring blood transfusion and/or emergency surgery and/or interventional radiology. Results: The prevalence of major PPH was 0.74% (n = 1749) in naturally conceived pregnancies, 1.92% (n = 34) in fresh‐IVF pregnancies, and 3.30% (n = 29) in frozen‐IVF pregnancies. The risk of major PPH was higher in frozen‐IVF pregnancies than in both naturally conceived pregnancies (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 2.63, 95% CI 1.68–4.10) and fresh‐IVF pregnancies (aOR 2.78, 95% CI 1.44–5.35). Conclusions: We found that frozen‐IVF pregnancies have a higher risk of major PPH and they should be subject to increased vigilance in the delivery room. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background There are scarce data on best practices to control for confounding in observational studies assessing vaccine effectiveness to prevent COVID-19. We compared the performance of three well-established methods [overlap weighting, inverse probability treatment weighting and propensity score (PS) matching] to minimize confounding when comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Subsequently, we conducted a target trial emulation to study the ability of these methods to replicate COVID-19 vaccine trials. Methods We included all individuals aged ≥75 from primary care records from the UK [Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) AURUM], who were not infected with or vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 as of 4 January 2021. Vaccination status was then defined based on first COVID-19 vaccine dose exposure between 4 January 2021 and 28 January 2021. Lasso regression was used to calculate PS. Location, age, prior observation time, regional vaccination rates, testing effort and COVID-19 incidence rates at index date were forced into the PS. Following PS weighting and matching, the three methods were compared for remaining covariate imbalance and residual confounding. Last, a target trial emulation comparing COVID-19 at 3 and 12 weeks after first vaccine dose vs unvaccinated was conducted. Results Vaccinated and unvaccinated cohorts comprised 583 813 and 332 315 individuals for weighting, respectively, and 459 000 individuals in the matched cohorts. Overlap weighting performed best in terms of minimizing confounding and systematic error. Overlap weighting successfully replicated estimates from clinical trials for vaccine effectiveness for ChAdOx1 (57%) and BNT162b2 (75%) at 12 weeks. Conclusion Overlap weighting performed best in our setting. Our results based on overlap weighting replicate previous pivotal trials for the two first COVID-19 vaccines approved in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A set of edges Γ ${\rm{\Gamma }}$ of a graph G $G$ is an edge dominating set if every edge of G $G$ intersects at least one edge of Γ ${\rm{\Gamma }}$, and the edge domination number γe(G) ${\gamma }_{e}(G)$ is the smallest size of an edge dominating set. Expanding on work of Laskar and Wallis, we study γe(G) ${\gamma }_{e}(G)$ for graphs G $G$ which are the incidence graph of some incidence structure D $D$, with an emphasis on the case when D $D$ is a symmetric design. In particular, we show in this latter case that determining γe(G) ${\gamma }_{e}(G)$ is equivalent to determining the largest size of certain incidence‐free sets of D $D$. Throughout, we employ a variety of combinatorial, probabilistic and geometric techniques, supplemented with tools from spectral graph theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A system manager makes dynamic pricing and dispatch control decisions in a queueing network model motivated by ride hailing applications. A novel feature of the model is that it incorporates travel times. Unfortunately, this renders the exact analysis of the problem intractable. Therefore, we study this problem in the heavy traffic regime. Under the assumptions of complete resource pooling and common travel time and routing distributions, we solve the problem in closed form by analyzing the corresponding Bellman equation. Using this solution, we propose a policy for the queueing system and illustrate its effectiveness in a simulation study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are generally considered the highest level of evidence and the preferred approach to comparing the effectiveness of different treatments. However, the cost of an RCT can be very high, and it may be considered unethical to randomly assign patients to treatments that have no real benefits or even may cause harm. For rare events, it may take a long time and require a large number of patients to observe a sufficient number of outcomes. RCTs may have low external validity or generalizability. Observational studies provide valuable alternatives, particularly for developing predictive models and assessing the effectiveness of interventions. This article aims to provide a general introduction to the advantages and disadvantages of two major observational study designs, namely cohort and case-control studies. Cohort studies compare the outcomes of exposed and unexposed groups over time. However, the nonrandom allocation may lead to confounding bias. Propensity score matching and statistical adjustment are often used to address this problem, but they cannot deal with unmeasured confounders. Case-control studies select participants based on their outcomes and retrospectively collect information on the exposure levels of the case and control groups. We will discuss methods to minimize or adjust for confounding bias, such as propensity score matching and statistical adjustment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) program is an innovative approach that provides economic incentives directly to natural resource exploiters in order to shape their behavior. Although the implementation of PES programs and the context in which these programs are implemented are often different across space, the spatial heterogeneities in the impacts of PES programs are often neglected in studies. In this study, we demonstrate the spatial and temporal dynamics of the Normalized Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI) in the grassland where China's Grassland Ecological Compensation Program (GECP) has been implemented, and we evaluate the impacts of the GECP on the NDVI. We found that most of the grassland in the GECP area showed small changes in NDVI between 2000 and 2010. On average, the GECP only had a marginal positive effect on the NDVI of grassland. Although the magnitude of impacts of the GECP was relatively small in most places where the program is implemented, we detected substantial heterogeneities in the impacts of the GECP on the NDVI. The impact of the GECP on the NDVI differed substantially, particularly between Inner Mongolia, Sichuan, and other provinces. Our findings suggest that there can be substantial heterogeneities in the impacts of PES programs across space, which can be leveraged to promote the efficacy of the GECP and many other PES programs around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study characterizes the subcortical auditory brainstem response (speech-ABR) and cortical auditory processing (P1 and Mismatch Negativity; MMN) to speech sounds and their relationship to autistic traits and sensory features within the same group of autistic children (n = 10) matched on age and non-verbal IQ to their typically developing (TD) peers (n = 21). No speech-ABR differences were noted, but autistic individuals had larger P1 and faster MMN responses. Correlations revealed that larger P1 amplitudes and MMN responses were associated with greater autistic traits and more sensory features. These findings highlight the complexity of the auditory system and its relationships to behaviours in autism, while also emphasizing the importance of measurement and developmental matching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most social choice settings, the participating agents express their preferences over the different alternatives in the form of linear orderings. While this clearly simplifies preference elicitation, it inevitably leads to poor performance with respect to optimizing a cardinal objective, such as the social welfare, since the values of the agents remain virtually unknown. This loss in performance because of lack of information is measured by the notion of distortion. A recent array of works put forward the agenda of designing mechanisms that learn the values of the agents for a small number of alternatives via queries, and use this limited extra information to make betterinformed decisions, thus improving distortion. Following this agenda, in this work we focus on a class of combinatorial problems that includes most well-known matching problems and several of their generalizations. For problems such as One-Sided Matching, Two-Sided Matching, General Graph Matching, and Short Cycle Packing, we design two-query mechanisms that achieve the best-possible worst-case distortion in terms of social welfare, and outperform the best-possible expected distortion achieved by randomized ordinal mechanisms. Our results extend to problems like k-Constrained Resource Allocation, General Graph k-Matching, and k-Clique Packing, when k is restricted to be any constant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mass movements that are able to overthrow a dictator do not always lead to democracy. Transition periods present narrow windows of opportunity in which activists face difficult decisions to build democracy and prevent authoritarian relapse. Existing scholarship offers limited guidance for pro-democracy forces because it focuses on unchangeable structural factors and cases with a known outcome. We propose an innovative approach for finding informative comparisons for ongoing transitions after authoritarian breakdowns. We quantify the similarity between all breakdowns caused by mass uprisings since 1945 based on their structural preconditions. We then apply our approach to Sudan's ongoing transition and draw lessons from two similar cases: the Philippines in 1986 (successful democratization); and Burma/Myanmar in 1988 (failed democratization). Our analysis shows that structural factors are weak predictors of transition outcomes and that Sudan shares characteristics with cases of both failed and successful democratization. Therefore, democratic transition appears possible in Sudan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phase Ib/II oncology trials, despite their small sample sizes, aim to provide information for optimal internal company decision‐making concerning novel drug development. Hybrid controls (a combination of the current control arm and controls from one or more sources of historical trial data [HTD]) can be used to increase statistical precision. Here we assess combining two sources of Roche HTD to construct a hybrid control in targeted therapy for decision‐making via an extensive simulation study. Our simulations are based on the real data of one of the experimental arms and the control arm of the MORPHEUS‐UC Phase Ib/II study and two Roche HTD for atezolizumab monotherapy. We consider potential complications such as model misspecification, unmeasured confounding, different sample sizes of current treatment groups, and heterogeneity among the three trials. We evaluate two frequentist methods (with both Cox and Weibull accelerated failure time [AFT] models) and three different commensurate priors in Bayesian dynamic borrowing (with a Weibull AFT model), and modifications within each of those, when estimating the effect of treatment on survival outcomes and measures of effect such as marginal hazard ratios. We assess the performance of these methods in different settings and the potential of generalizations to supplement decisions in early‐phase oncology trials. The results show that the proposed joint frequentist methods and noninformative priors within Bayesian dynamic borrowing with no adjustment on covariates are preferred, especially when treatment effects across the three trials are heterogeneous. For generalization of hybrid control methods in such settings, we recommend more simulation studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The data enabling the estimation of the possibility of finding a matched unrelated donor (MUD) within a relatively short time is important for the success of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). In the present study, 738 unrelated Croatian patients in the program of unrelated HSCT were retrospectively analyzed for gender matching, donor origin (national or international), the distribution of HLA alleles and haplotypes, as well as for the probability of finding a 9‐10/10 MUD. Almost 70% of the patients in our study group had a 10/10 MUD, while among the patients with a 9/10 MUD, a 1st field resolution level mismatched donor was selected for 55.0% of patients. The majority of pairs were HLA‐A mismatched (33.8%). A comparison of HLA allele frequencies between two subgroups of patients revealed significant differences for 13 alleles. However, after p value correction, the difference in frequency remained significant only for four alleles; three HLA alleles (B*08:01, C*07:01, and DRB1*03:01) demonstrated a significantly higher frequency among patients with a 10/10 MUD (Pcorr < 0.0001, Pcorr = 0.0096, and Pcorr < 0.0001, respectively), while the B*35:08 allele was significantly more present among patients with a 9/10 MUD (Pcorr = 0.0328). The comparison of the distribution of HLA haplotypes between patients with a 10/10 MUD and patients with a 9/10 MUD showed significant differences for a number of two‐locus and three‐locus haplotypes, as well as for one five‐locus haplotype (HLA‐A*01:01~B*08:01~C*07:01~DRB1*03:01~DQB1*02:01), which was significantly more present in the group of patients with a 10/10 MUD. At least one HLA haplotype from the group of non‐frequent HLA haplotypes (positions >1000) was carried by patients with a 9/10 MUD. The data obtained by the present study will contribute to a better estimation of the probability of finding a suitable 9‐10/10 MUD for Croatian patients in need of HSCT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]