Browse Articles

The Effect of Various Liquid Mediums on the Transport of Photonic Energy and its Impact on the Quantum Efficiency of Photovoltaic Cells

Payra et al. | May 05, 2015

The Effect of Various Liquid Mediums on the Transport of Photonic Energy and its Impact on the Quantum Efficiency of Photovoltaic Cells

A photovoltaic cell (PV cell), or solar cell, converts the energy of light into electricity and is the basis for solar power. In order to increase the efficiency of PV cells, the authors in this study used common household items as photon transmissions mediums and measured their effects on the temperature and voltage output of the PV cells.

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The Effect of Ethanol Concentration on Beta-Cell Development in Zebrafish

Payne et al. | Jan 15, 2014

The Effect of Ethanol Concentration on Beta-Cell Development in Zebrafish

Alcohol is known to cause various developmental diseases including Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Here the authors investigate the effect of ethanol on the development of zebrafish beta cells, the part of the pancreas associated with Type 1 Diabetes. They find that exposure to ethanol does adversely affect beta-cell development, suggesting that alcohol ingestion during pregnancy may be linked to diabetes in newborns.

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Importance of pay on job satisfaction

Ravi et al. | Mar 25, 2025

Importance of pay on job satisfaction

Pay is a widely debated factor in workplace motivation, influencing both incentives and job satisfaction. This work analyzed employee reviews across various industries to examine the relationship between pay importance and job satisfaction. Findings suggest that job satisfaction decreases as the importance of pay increases, particularly in construction, food, and finance industries, as well as among entry-level and experienced workers, though the results were not statistically significant.

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Are Teens Willing to Pay More for Their Preferred Goods?

Johnson et al. | Sep 28, 2019

Are Teens Willing to Pay More for Their Preferred Goods?
Image credit: Blake Wisz

Each day we are flooded with new items that promise us a better experience at a better price. This forces buyers to continuously chose between sticking to what they know, or trying something new. In turn, companies need to be aware of the factors affecting consumer choices, that too within the different fractions of society. In this study the authors investigate the effect of survey-based price setting on profits made based on African American teen purchases, and how African-American teen loyalty to a particular brand affects their willingness to pay a higher price than the market average for their preferred brand items.

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Gradient boosting with temporal feature extraction for modeling keystroke log data

Barretto et al. | Oct 04, 2024

Gradient boosting with temporal feature extraction for modeling keystroke log data
Image credit: Barretto and Barretto 2024.

Although there has been great progress in the field of Natural language processing (NLP) over the last few years, particularly with the development of attention-based models, less research has contributed towards modeling keystroke log data. State of the art methods handle textual data directly and while this has produced excellent results, the time complexity and resource usage are quite high for such methods. Additionally, these methods fail to incorporate the actual writing process when assessing text and instead solely focus on the content. Therefore, we proposed a framework for modeling textual data using keystroke-based features. Such methods pay attention to how a document or response was written, rather than the final text that was produced. These features are vastly different from the kind of features extracted from raw text but reveal information that is otherwise hidden. We hypothesized that pairing efficient machine learning techniques with keystroke log information should produce results comparable to transformer techniques, models which pay more or less attention to the different components of a text sequence in a far quicker time. Transformer-based methods dominate the field of NLP currently due to the strong understanding they display of natural language. We showed that models trained on keystroke log data are capable of effectively evaluating the quality of writing and do it in a significantly shorter amount of time compared to traditional methods. This is significant as it provides a necessary fast and cheap alternative to increasingly larger and slower LLMs.

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Health services in Iraq - A cross-sectional survey of adolescents in Basra

Al Saeedi et al. | Aug 12, 2022

Health services in Iraq - A cross-sectional survey of adolescents in Basra

This study is a cross-sectional survey of adolescents in Basra, Iraq, from November 2020 to March 2021 about types of adolescent problems, the individuals and institutions adolescents turn to, and the role of public health centers in dealing with their problems. The survey found that psychological problems represent the largest proportion of health problems, and most adolescents turn to their parents to discuss their problems. The work indicates that there is an urgent need to pay attention to public health centers and provide health and psychological support to adolescents.

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Economic performance of solar energy systems financed with green bonds in New Jersey

Peng et al. | Jan 22, 2025

Economic performance of solar energy systems financed with green bonds in New Jersey
Image credit: Peng and Peng 2025

Global reliance on extractive energy sources has many downsides, among which are inconsistent supply and consequent price volatility that distress companies and consumers. It is unclear if renewable energy offers stable and affordable solutions to extractive energy sources. The cost of solar energy generation has decreased sharply in recent years, prompting a surge of installations with a range of financing options. Even so, most existing options require upfront payment, making installation inaccessible for towns with limited financial resources. The primary objective of our research is to examine the use of green bonds to finance solar energy systems, as they eliminate the need for upfront capital and enable repayment through revenue generated over time. We hypothesized that if we modeled the usage of green bonds to finance the installation of a solar energy system in New Jersey, then the revenue generated over the system’s lifetime would be enough to repay the bond. After modeling the financial performance of a proposed solar energy-producing carport in Madison, New Jersey, financed with green bonds, we found that revenue from solar energy systems successfully covered the annual green bond payments and enabled the installers to obtain over 50% of the income for themselves. Our research demonstrated green bonds as a promising option for New Jersey towns with limited financial resources seeking to install solar energy systems, thereby breaking down a financial barrier.

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Using economic indicators to create an empirical model of inflation

Kasera et al. | Dec 01, 2022

Using economic indicators to create an empirical model of inflation

Here, seeking to understand the correlation of 50 of the most important economic indicators with inflation, the authors used a rolling linear regression to identify indicators with the most significant correlation with the Month over Month Consumer Price Index Seasonally Adjusted (CPI). Ultimately the concluded that the average gasoline price, U.S. import price index, and 5-year market expected inflation had the most significant correlation with the CPI.

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