The Effects of Pair Budget Goal Difficulty and Pair Identity on Decision-Making and Performance

Mixed incentive compensation structures have been widely studied in the accounting literature (e.g., Tian et al. 2017; Dekker et al. 2012, Rothenberg 2011; Hwang et al. 2009). However, the findings in the literature as to the effectiveness of mixed incentives are not consistent. The inconsistency in the mixed incentives literature may be due to the various levels of social dilemma embedded in the research setting of the studies. Therefore, I experimentally investigated two factors that may reduce the embedded social dilemma issue and improve the effectiveness of mixed incentive compensation. In this study, student participants were assigned to pairs to complete a computerized letter-decoding task in which I manipulated (1) pair budget goal difficulty (easy vs. difficult) and (2) pair identity (strong vs. weak). I found that when given a difficult pair budget goal, pair members cooperated more and sabotaged less than when given an easy pair budget goal. Furthermore, I found that assigned a difficult goal, participants in highly identified pairs sabotaged less than those in weakly identified pairs. However, this difference was not found in the easy goal condition. Also, I found that when the goal was easy, strong pair identity enhanced productivity through inducing additional participant effort. When the goal was difficult, strong pair identity enhanced productivity through the suppression of sabotage. The results have implications for understanding individuals’ strategic behaviors when they face conflicts of interest and provide practical insights for the design of mixed incentive compensation systems

Fast Fourier transform via automorphism groups of rational function fields

The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$ computes evaluations of a given polynomial of degree less than $n$ at a specifically chosen set of $n$ distinct evaluation points in $\mathbb{F}_q$. If $q$ or $q-1$ is a smooth number, then the divide-and-conquer approach leads to the fastest known FFT algorithms. Depending on the type of group that the set of evaluation points forms, these algorithms are classified as multiplicative (Math of Comp. 1965) and additive (FOCS 2014) FFT algorithms. In this work, we provide a unified framework for FFT algorithms that include both multiplicative and additive FFT algorithms as special cases, and beyond: our framework also works when $q+1$ is smooth, while all known results require $q$ or $q-1$ to be smooth. For the new case where $q+1$ is smooth (this new case was not considered before in literature as far as we know), we show that if $n$ is a divisor of $q+1$ that is $B$-smooth for a real $B>0$, then our FFT needs $O(Bn\log n)$ arithmetic operations in $\mathbb{F}_q$. Our unified framework is a natural consequence of introducing the algebraic function fields into the study of FFT

The HIV-1 late domain-2 S40A polymorphism in antiretroviral (or ART)-exposed individuals influences protease inhibitor susceptibility.

BackgroundThe p6 region of the HIV-1 structural precursor polyprotein, Gag, contains two motifs, P7TAP11 and L35YPLXSL41, designated as late (L) domain-1 and -2, respectively. These motifs bind the ESCRT-I factor Tsg101 and the ESCRT adaptor Alix, respectively, and are critical for efficient budding of virus particles from the plasma membrane. L domain-2 is thought to be functionally redundant to PTAP. To identify possible other functions of L domain-2, we examined this motif in dominant viruses that emerged in a group of 14 women who had detectable levels of HIV-1 in both plasma and genital tract despite a history of current or previous antiretroviral therapy.ResultsRemarkably, variants possessing mutations or rare polymorphisms in the highly conserved L domain-2 were identified in seven of these women. A mutation in a conserved residue (S40A) that does not reduce Gag interaction with Alix and therefore did not reduce budding efficiency was further investigated. This mutation causes a simultaneous change in the Pol reading frame but exhibits little deficiency in Gag processing and virion maturation. Whether introduced into the HIV-1 NL4-3 strain genome or a model protease (PR) precursor, S40A reduced production of mature PR. This same mutation also led to high level detection of two extended forms of PR that were fairly stable compared to the WT in the presence of IDV at various concentrations; one of the extended forms was effective in trans processing even at micromolar IDV.ConclusionsOur results indicate that L domain-2, considered redundant in vitro, can undergo mutations in vivo that significantly alter PR function. These may contribute fitness benefits in both the absence and presence of PR inhibitor

Algebraic Geometry Codes for Distributed Matrix Multiplication Using Local Expansions

Code-based Distributed Matrix Multiplication (DMM) has been extensively studied in distributed computing for efficiently performing large-scale matrix multiplication using coding theoretic techniques. The communication cost and recovery threshold (i.e., the least number of successful worker nodes required to recover the product of two matrices) are two major challenges in coded DMM research. Several constructions based on Reed-Solomon (RS) codes are known, including Polynomial codes, MatDot codes, and PolyDot codes. However, these RS-based schemes are not efficient for small finite fields because the distributed order (i.e., the total number of worker nodes) is limited by the size of the underlying finite field. Algebraic geometry (AG) codes can have a code length exceeding the size of the finite field, which helps solve this problem. Some work has been done to generalize Polynomial and MatDot codes to AG codes, but the generalization of PolyDot codes to AGcodes still remains an open problem as far as we know. This is because functions of an algebraic curve do not behave as nicely as polynomials. In this work, by using local expansions of functions, we are able to generalize the three DMM schemes based on RS codes to AG codes. Specifically, we provide a construction of AG-based PolyDot codes for the first time. In addition, our AG-based Polynomial and MatDot codes achieve better recovery thresholds compared to previous AG-based DMM schemes while maintaining similar communication costs. Our constructions are based on a novel basis of the Riemann-Roch space using local expansions, which naturally generalizes the standard monomial basis of the univariate polynomial space in RS codes. In contrast, previous work used the non-gap numbers to construct a basis of the Riemann-Roch space, which can cause cancellation problems that prevent the conditions of PolyDot codes from being satisfied

The Coupling Analysis of the Theory of Embeddability and the Rural Famers’ Spiritual and Cultural Education

The authors researched on the significant methodological significance of the theory of Embeddability analysis framework when it is used in research of the Rural Famers’ Spiritual and Cultural Education, and furthermore analyzed the Coupling of the theory of Embeddability and the Rural Famers’ Spiritual and Cultural Education. The result showed that the methodological significance of the Theory of Embeddability when it is used in research of Rural Famers’ Spiritual and Cultural Education is: 1st, from the perspective of overall situation to observing the Rural Famers’ Spiritual and Cultural Education, and entirely promoted the development of the Rural Famers’ Spiritual and Cultural Education. 2nd, arranged the internal and external connection of the Mental Cultural Education of Rural Farmers, and revealed the law of the development of Mental Cultural Education of Rural Farmers. 3rd , strengthened the openness of the Rural Famers’ Spiritual and Cultural Education, enhanced its developmental activity and enlarged its developmental space. The coupling of the theory of Embeddability and the Mental Cultural Education of Rural Farmers fully show that the theory strengthened the Rural Famers’ Spiritual and Cultural Education of integrity, highlighted the connecting of the Rural Famers’ Spiritual and Cultural Education and revealed its openness

Asymptotic construction of locally repairable codes with multiple recovering sets

Locally repairable codes have been extensively investigated due to practical applications in distributed and cloud storage systems in recent years. However, not much work on asymptotic behavior of locally repairable codes has been done. In particular, there is few result on constructive lower bound of asymptotic behavior of locally repairable codes with multiple recovering sets. In this paper, we construct some families of asymptotically good locally repairable codes with multiple recovering sets via automorphism groups of function fields of the Garcia-Stichtenoth towers. The main advantage of our construction is to allow more flexibility of localities