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A rational principal delegates learning to an overconfident agent who overestimates the precision of the information he collects. The principal chooses between two contracts: commitment, in which the agent commits to the duration of learning in advance, and flexible, in which the agent decides when to stop learning in real time. When the agent is sufficiently overconfident, the principal optimally ties the agent's hands by offering him the commitment contract. When the principal can choose both the contract and the agent's level of overconfidence, selecting the rational agent is suboptimal when the cost of learning is sufficiently high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An original plasma chemical process initiated by microwave discharge in a mixture of metal and dielectric powders was applied to prepare specific materials, which consisted of microsized spherical particles of aluminum oxide covered with silver nanoparticles. The prepared materials are highly uniform in shape, size distribution, and composition. Their cytotoxicity was investigated using the human cell lines MCF7, HEK293T, A549, and VA-13 and the bacterial strains E. coli JW5503 (ΔtolC) and E. coli K12. Their cytotoxicity was found not to exceed the cytotoxicity of the starting materials. Thus, the prepared materials can be considered highly promising for catalysis and biotechnology applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]