Creation of ballot sequences in a periodic cellular automaton

Motivated by an attempt to develop a method for solving initial value problems in a class of one dimensional periodic cellular automata (CA) associated with crystal bases and soliton equations, we consider a generalization of a simple proposition in elementary mathematics. The original proposition says that any sequence of letters 1 and 2, having no less 1's than 2's, can be changed into a ballot sequence via cyclic shifts only. We generalize it to treat sequences of cells of common capacity s > 1, each of them containing consecutive 2's (left) and 1's (right), and show that these sequences can be changed into a ballot sequence via two manipulations, cyclic and "quasi-cyclic" shifts. The latter is a new CA rule and we find that various kink-like structures are traveling along the system like particles under the time evolution of this rule.Comment: 31 pages. Section 1 changed and section 5 adde

Combatting electoral traces: the Dutch tempest discussion and beyond

In the Dutch e-voting debate, the crucial issue leading to the abandonment of all electronic voting machines was compromising radiation, or tempest. Other countries, however, do not seem to be bothered by this risk. In this paper, we use actor-network theory to analyse the socio-technical origins of the Dutch tempest issue in e-voting, and its consequences for e-voting beyond the Netherlands. We introduce the term electoral traces to denote any physical, digital or social evidence of a voter's choices in an election. From this perspective, we provide guidelines for risk analysis as well as an overview of countermeasures

Approval voting and the Poisson-Myerson environment

Dans ce papier, de nouveaux résultats sont fournis dans le modèle de Poisson-Myerson. Ces résultats se révèlent utiles pour l'étude du vote par assentiment. En effet, le Théorème d'Equivalence des Magnitudes (MET) réduit fortement la complexité du calcul des magnitudes des pivots. Un exemple est fourni qui contraste avec les résultats de Laslier (2004) sur le vote par assentiment. Dans une situation de vote avec trois candidats, le gagnant de l'élection ne coïncide pas avec le gagnant de Condorcet du profil à l'équilibre. Une discussion sur la stabilité de l'équilibre est fournie.

Latent Fisher Discriminant Analysis

Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) is a well-known method for dimensionality reduction and classification. Previous studies have also extended the binary-class case into multi-classes. However, many applications, such as object detection and keyframe extraction cannot provide consistent instance-label pairs, while LDA requires labels on instance level for training. Thus it cannot be directly applied for semi-supervised classification problem. In this paper, we overcome this limitation and propose a latent variable Fisher discriminant analysis model. We relax the instance-level labeling into bag-level, is a kind of semi-supervised (video-level labels of event type are required for semantic frame extraction) and incorporates a data-driven prior over the latent variables. Hence, our method combines the latent variable inference and dimension reduction in an unified bayesian framework. We test our method on MUSK and Corel data sets and yield competitive results compared to the baseline approach. We also demonstrate its capacity on the challenging TRECVID MED11 dataset for semantic keyframe extraction and conduct a human-factors ranking-based experimental evaluation, which clearly demonstrates our proposed method consistently extracts more semantically meaningful keyframes than challenging baselines.Comment: 12 page

Analysis of Buffer Starvation with Application to Objective QoE Optimization of Streaming Services

Our purpose in this paper is to characterize buffer starvations for streaming services. The buffer is modeled as an M/M/1 queue, plus the consideration of bursty arrivals. When the buffer is empty, the service restarts after a certain amount of packets are \emph{prefetched}. With this goal, we propose two approaches to obtain the \emph{exact distribution} of the number of buffer starvations, one of which is based on \emph{Ballot theorem}, and the other uses recursive equations. The Ballot theorem approach gives an explicit result. We extend this approach to the scenario with a constant playback rate using T\`{a}kacs Ballot theorem. The recursive approach, though not offering an explicit result, can obtain the distribution of starvations with non-independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) arrival process in which an ON/OFF bursty arrival process is considered in this work. We further compute the starvation probability as a function of the amount of prefetched packets for a large number of files via a fluid analysis. Among many potential applications of starvation analysis, we show how to apply it to optimize the objective quality of experience (QoE) of media streaming, by exploiting the tradeoff between startup/rebuffering delay and starvations.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures; IEEE Infocom 201

On the informational efficiency of simple scoring rules

efficient information aggregation, scoring rules, Poisson games, approval voting

Case Study: Election Observation Dispatches From the Polls

Provides an overview of the diversification among poll observers, from political parties to researchers to journalists and bloggers, and what they may contribute to the voting process. Summarizes state rules on media and public access to polling places

Justice in Review: New Trends in State Sentencing and Corrections 2014-2015

In 2014 and 2015, 46 states enacted at least 201 bills, executive orders, and ballot initiatives to reform at least one aspect of their sentencing and corrections systems. In conducting this review of state criminal justice reforms, Vera found that most of the policy changes focused on three areas: creating or expanding opportunities to divert people away from the criminal justice system; reducing prison populations by enacting sentencing reform, expanding opportunities for early release from prison, and reducing the number of people admitted to prison for violating the terms of their community supervision; and supporting reentry into the community from prison. By providing concise summaries of representative reforms in each of these areas, this report serves as a practical guide for other state and federal policymakers looking to affect similar changes in criminal justice policy