Permit Trading and Credit Trading: A Comparison of Cap-Based and Rate-Based Emissions Trading under Perfect and Imperfect Competition

This paper compares emissions trading based on a cap on total emissions (permit trading) and on relative standards per unit of output (credit trading). Two types of market structure are considered: perfect competition and Cournot oligopoly. The e?ect of combining the two schemes is also discussed. We ?nd that output and abatement costs are higher under credit trading. Combining the two schemes may give an increase in welfare. With perfect competition, permit trading always leads to higher welfare than credit trading. With imperfect competition, credit trading may out perform permit trading. Environmental policy can lead to both entry and exit of ?rms. Entry and exit have a profound impact on the performance of the schemes, especially under imperfect competition. We ?nd that it may be impossible to implement certain levels of total industry emissions. Under credit trading several levels of the relative standard can achieve the same total level of emissions.emissions trading, entry and exit, permit allocation, tradable performance standards

Het kan in Westernieland:onderzoek naar kwaliteiten van de leefomgeving

Aan de Vereniging Dorpsbelangen Westernieland zijn de gezamelijke onderzoeksresultaten aangeboden van vijf onderzoeken, die gehouden zijn in Westernieland. Vijf studenten deden onderzoek naar respectievelijk ouderen, agrarische ondernemers, woningbezitters en kinderen in Westernieland. Ook is een breed uitgezet inwonersonderzoek uitgevoerd waarover een afzonderlijk onderzoeksrapport is verschenen (J. Rozema (2010). Het leeft in Westernieland. Inwonersonderzoek naar de leefbaarheid in Westernieland. Kenniscentrum Gebiedsontwikkeling NoorderRuimte, Hanzehogeschool Groningen)

Additive Dose Response Models: Explicit Formulation and the Loewe Additivity Consistency Condition

Lederer S, M. H. Dijkstra T, Heskes T. Additive Dose Response Models: Explicit Formulation and the Loewe Additivity Consistency Condition. Frontiers in Pharmacology. 2018;9: 31

Position and Velocity Coupling of Postural Sway to Somatosensory Drive

, and sinusoidal vertical axis rotation (SVAR) technique rotates Elaine Henson. Position and velocity coupling of postural sway seated subjects at a range of frequencies to measure the gain to somatosensory drive. J. Neurophysiol. 79: 1661Neurophysiol. 79: -1674Neurophysiol. 79: , 1998. and phase of eye movements in the dark as a measure of Light touch contact of a fingertip to a stationary surface provides vestibular function (Howard 1982; whole-body posture body sway relative to the touch plate averaged 20-30Њ at 0.1-Hz Such control theory techniques have not been impledrive and decreased approximately linearly to 0130Њ at 0.8-Hz drive. System gain was Ç1 across frequency. The large phase lags mented for somatosensory function with regard to upright observed cannot be accounted for with velocity coupling alone but stance control. Extensive empiric studies have determined indicate that body sway also was coupled to the position of the that the primary role of somatosensation is to provide infortouch plate. Fitting of a linear second-order model to the data mation concerning contact surface forces and properties such suggests that postural control parameters are not fixed but adapt as texture and friction and the relative configuration of body to the moving frame of reference. Moreover, coupling to both segments (Dietz 1992

A comparative study of cell classifiers for image-based high-throughput screening

BACKGROUND: Millions of cells are present in thousands of images created in high-throughput screening (HTS). Biologists could classify each of these cells into a phenotype by visual inspection. But in the presence of millions of cells this visual classification task becomes infeasible. Biologists train classification models on a few thousand visually classified example cells and iteratively improve the training data by visual inspection of the important misclassified phenotypes. Classification methods differ in performance and performance evaluation time. We present a comparative study of computational performance of gentle boosting, joint boosting CellProfiler Analyst (CPA), support vector machines (linear and radial basis function) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) on two data sets of HT29 and HeLa cancer cells. RESULTS: For the HT29 data set we find that gentle boosting, SVM (linear) and SVM (RBF) are close in performance but SVM (linear) is faster than gentle boosting and SVM (RBF). For the HT29 data set the average performance difference between SVM (RBF) and SVM (linear) is 0.42 %. For the HeLa data set we find that SVM (RBF) outperforms other classification methods and is on average 1.41 % better in performance than SVM (linear). CONCLUSIONS: Our study proposes SVM (linear) for iterative improvement of the training data and SVM (RBF) for the final classifier to classify all unlabeled cells in the whole data set. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2105-15-342) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Object pose: Perceiving 3-D shape as sticks and slabs

Estimating the pose (three-dimensional orientation) of objects is an important aspect of 3-D shape perception. We studied the ability of observers to match the pose of the principal axes of an object with the pose of a cross consisting of three perpendicular axes. For objects, we used a long and a flat spheroid and eight symmetric objects with aspect ratios of dimensions of approximately 4:2:1. Stimulus cues were the contour and stereo for the spheroids, and contour, stereo, and shading for the symmetric objects. In addition, the spheroids were shown with or without surface texture and with or without active motion. Results show that observers can perform the task with standard deviations of a few degrees, though biases could be as large as 30º. The results can be naturally decomposed in viewer-centered coordinates, and it turns out that the estimation of orientation in the frontoparallel plane (tilt) is more precise than estimation of orientation in depth (slant, roll). A comparison of long and flat spheroids shows that sticks lead to better performance than do slabs. This can even be the case within the same object; the pose of the stick-like aspect is seen with more precision than is the pose of the slab-like aspect. The largest biases occurred when the spheroids were displayed with the binocular contour as the only cue. We can explain these biases by assuming that subjects ’ settings are influenced by the orientation of the rim. Next to perceiving where objects are located in our environment

Physical modelling of water, fauna and flora: knowledge gaps, avenues for future research and infrastructural needs

peer reviewedPhysical modelling is a key tool for generating understanding of the complex interactions between aquatic organisms and hydraulics, which is important for management of aquatic environments under environmental change and our ability to exploit ecosystem services. Many aspects of this field remain poorly understood and the use of physical models within eco-hydraulics requires advancement in methodological application and substantive understanding. This paper presents a review of the emergent themes from a workshop tasked with identifying the future infrastructure requirements of the next generation of eco-hydraulics researchers. The identified themes are: abiotic factors, adaptation, complexity and feedback, variation, and scale and scaling. The paper examines these themes and identifies how progress on each of them is key to existing and future eðorts to progress our knowledge of eco-hydraulic interactions. Examples are drawn from studies on biofilms, plants, and sessile and mobile fauna in shallow water fluvial and marine environments. Examples of research gaps and directions for educational, infrastructural and technological advance are also presented.PISCES work package of HYDRALAB FP

The beholder’s share in the perception of orientation of 2D shapes.

Previous research on orientation perception of twodimensional (2-D) shapes has demonstrated a higher performance at cardinal orientations (horizontal and vertical) than at oblique orientations. This superiority of performance around the vertical and the horizontal is called the oblique effect (see the reviews of The oblique effect results in higher accuracy and precision in the ability to match and discriminate orientations around the vertical and the horizontal than in other orientations, and many empirical results show this effect. Andrews (1967) presented a short line at the fovea and asked observers to set it parallel to a long reference line. The results showed the oblique effect both in accuracy and in precision. Bouma and Andriessen (1968) asked observers to set a point on the extension of a line segment and obtained similar results; the point setting was more accurate and precise for cardinal orientations than for oblique ones. Westheimer and Beard (1998) used an orientation discrimination task to investigate the orientation perception of lines. Observers were shown a line at a specific orientation, followed by another line at another orientation, and they were asked whether the second one was clockwise or counterclockwise relative to the orientation of the f irst line. Results of this orientation discrimination task again showed the oblique effect. There is much discussion about the origin of the oblique effect. Two types of explanations have been put forward: those based on properties of neural processing (see 1227 Copyright 2002 Psychonomic Society, Inc. This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grant SBR-9809447 and by a seed grant from The Ohio State University. We thank Manoj Subbaram and Mark A. Bullimore of the College of Optometry at OSU for testing our observers for astigmatism. We thank Jim Crowell, Jim Todd, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to B. Liu, School of Optometry, University of California, 360 Minor Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720 (e-mail: [email protected]). A considerable amount of research demonstrates that people perceive cardinal orientations (horizontal and vertical) more accurately than other orientations; this is termed the oblique effect. We investigated the interaction of this effect with the degree of elongation of the stimulus. Our stimuli were ellipses with a wide range of aspect ratios, varying from a circle (aspect ratio = 1) to a line (aspect ratio = 123.5). The task was to set a probe line in the same orientation as the long axis of the ellipse. In our first experiment, we determined that performance is degraded as the aspect ratio decreases; furthermore, the bias and response variability are linearly related to a transformation of aspect ratio (roundness). We found significant individual differences; the results show high within-subjects correlations and low between-subjects correlations. In our second experiment, we had observers judge the orientation of circles randomly mixed in with ellipses of low aspect ratio. The observers demonstrated intrinsic preferences and generated reproducible distributions of orientation settings with idiosyncratic profiles. These distributions predict the influence on the response to ellipses with an aspect ratio higher than one and can be considered as the beholder's share in the perception of shape orientation

Lighting-from-above prior in biological motion perception

Fedorov LA, Dijkstra TMH, Giese MA. Lighting-from-above prior in biological motion perception. Scientific Reports. 2018;8(1): 1507.The visual system is able to recognize body motion from impoverished stimuli. This requires combining stimulus information with visual priors. We present a new visual illusion showing that one of these priors is the assumption that bodies are typically illuminated from above. A change of illumination direction from above to below flips the perceived locomotion direction of a biological motion stimulus. Control experiments show that the underlying mechanism is different from shape-from-shading and directly combines information about body motion with a lighting-from-above prior. We further show that the illusion is critically dependent on the intrinsic luminance gradients of the most mobile parts of the moving body. We present a neural model with physiologically plausible mechanisms that accounts for the illusion and shows how the illumination prior might be encoded within the visual pathway. Our experiments demonstrate, for the first time, a direct influence of illumination priors in high-level motion vision