William Penn Foundation 2010 Annual Report

Contains message from the foundation's leaders, message from the departing president, program information, detailed grantee profiles, mission statement, financial statements, grants list, and lists of corporation members, board members, and staff

Bits Through Bufferless Queues

This paper investigates the capacity of a channel in which information is conveyed by the timing of consecutive packets passing through a queue with independent and identically distributed service times. Such timing channels are commonly studied under the assumption of a work-conserving queue. In contrast, this paper studies the case of a bufferless queue that drops arriving packets while a packet is in service. Under this bufferless model, the paper provides upper bounds on the capacity of timing channels and establishes achievable rates for the case of bufferless M/M/1 and M/G/1 queues. In particular, it is shown that a bufferless M/M/1 queue at worst suffers less than 10% reduction in capacity when compared to an M/M/1 work-conserving queue.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, accepted in 51st Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, University of Illinois, Monticello, Illinois, Oct 2-4, 201

Rafael Torres, Jr. - Does the United States Supreme Court decision in the \u3cem\u3eCitizens United v. the Federal Election Commission\u3c/em\u3e case affect the voluntary departure of United States Senators

The United States Supreme Court decision in the case of Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission raised concerns about how unlimited independent expenditures by organizations would influence campaigns and elections. This concern has been expressed through media and politicians, but research on the subject is conflicting. One argument is that protecting unlimited contributions as free speech gives a disproportionate amount of speech to non-voting entities. The other argument is that speech does not directly influence elections and it is ultimately the voter\u27s decision on which candidate to choose. Laws that affect elections also affect departures. The connection between campaign finance and Senate departures is that a change in the law will affect election outcomes causing more Senators to voluntarily depart from Congress in anticipation of a contentious election. I am studying the 108-113th Congresses to determine if there is a difference in Senate departures before and after the decision. Voluntary departure includes retirement, resignation, and moving to another public office. The differences in departure will be determined by changes in the rate of departure and the profiles of voluntarily departing Senators. If the court\u27s decision has made elections more competitive then there should be an increase in Senate departures. The study examines the differences before and after the Citizens United ruling based on age, the number of years of service in the Senate, and the last election win margin. I will lastly discuss possible future empirical research on Congressional retirements as well as post-Senate career profiles.https://epublications.marquette.edu/mcnair_2013/1003/thumbnail.jp

A framework for selecting workflow tools in the context of composite information systems

When an organization faces the need of integrating some workflow-related activities in its information system, it becomes necessary to have at hand some well-defined informational model to be used as a framework for determining the selection criteria onto which the requirements of the organization can be mapped. Some proposals exist that provide such a framework, remarkably the WfMC reference model, but they are designed to be appl icable when workflow tools are selected independently from other software, and departing from a set of well-known requirements. Often this is not the case: workflow facilities are needed as a part of the procurement of a larger, composite information syste m and therefore the general goals of the system have to be analyzed, assigned to its individual components and further detailed. We propose in this paper the MULTSEC method in charge of analyzing the initial goals of the system, determining the types of components that form the system architecture, building quality models for each type and then mapping the goals into detailed requirements which can be measured using quality criteria. We develop in some detail the quality model (compliant with the ISO/IEC 9126-1 quality standard) for the workflow type of tools; we show how the quality model can be used to refine and clarify the requirements in order to guarantee a highly reliable selection result; and we use it to evaluate two particular workflow solutions a- ailable in the market (kept anonymous in the paper). We develop our proposal using a particular selection experience we have recently been involved in, namely the procurement of a document management subsystem to be integrated in an academic data management information system for our university.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Evaluation of Technology Concepts for Traffic Data Management and Relevant Audio for Datalink in Commercial Airline Flight Decks

Datalink is currently operational for departure clearances and in oceanic environments and is currently being tested in high altitude domestic enroute airspace. Interaction with even simple datalink clearances may create more workload for flight crews than the voice system they replace if not carefully designed. Datalink may also introduce additional complexity for flight crews with hundreds of uplink messages now defined for use. Finally, flight crews may lose airspace awareness and operationally relevant information that they normally pickup from Air Traffic Control (ATC) voice communications with other aircraft (i.e., party-line transmissions). Once again, automation may be poised to increase workload on the flight deck for incremental benefit. Datalink implementation to support future air traffic management concepts needs to be carefully considered, understanding human communication norms and especially, the change from voice- to text-based communications modality and its effect on pilot workload and situation awareness. Increasingly autonomous systems, where autonomy is designed to support human-autonomy teaming, may be suited to solve these issues. NASA is conducting research and development of increasingly autonomous systems, utilizing machine-learning algorithms seamlessly integrated with humans whereby task performance of the combined system is significantly greater than the individual components. Increasingly autonomous systems offer the potential for significantly improved levels of performance and safety that are superior to either human or automation alone. Two increasingly autonomous systems concepts - a traffic data manager and a conversational co-pilot - were developed to intelligently address the datalink issues in a complex, future state environment with significant levels of traffic. The system was tested for suitability of datalink usage for terminal airspace. The traffic data manager allowed for automated declutter of the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) display. The system determined relevant traffic for display based on machine learning algorithms trained by experienced human pilot behaviors. The conversational co-pilot provided relevant audio air traffic control messages based on context and proximity to ownship. Both systems made use of the connected aircraft concepts to provide intelligent context to determine relevancy above and beyond proximity to ownship. A human-in-the-loop test was conducted in NASA Langley Research Centers Integration Flight Deck B-737-800 simulator to evaluate the traffic data manager and the conversational co-pilot. Twelve airline crews flew various normal and non-normal procedures and their actions and performance were recorded in response to the procedural events. This paper details the flight crew performance and evaluation during the events

Managing Executive Transitions

A handbook for nonprofits going through or anticipating executive transitions

Parallel algorithms for simulating continuous time Markov chains

We have previously shown that the mathematical technique of uniformization can serve as the basis of synchronization for the parallel simulation of continuous-time Markov chains. This paper reviews the basic method and compares five different methods based on uniformization, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses as a function of problem characteristics. The methods vary in their use of optimism, logical aggregation, communication management, and adaptivity. Performance evaluation is conducted on the Intel Touchstone Delta multiprocessor, using up to 256 processors

Department of Economics Newsletter, v12, Winter 2005

Inside This Issue: --A Message From the Department Head --Scholarship News --New Scholarships --Alumni News --Another Field for Economists: The Football Field --Economics Scholarship Contributors --Alumni-In-Residence --Reflections from Melissa, \u2799 --Reflections from Tom, \u2786 --How my Economics Major Served me in my Career and in Life --Nicholas Sly, ‘04 --State Support and Higher Education --The Economics Club --Comments from Club President --Janet Rives on Being Retired --Departing Faculty...and New Faculty --From Our Emeritus Faculty --The Russia Trip - 2005 --Faculty Notes...as they report it! --Center for Economic Educationhttps://scholarworks.uni.edu/econews/1000/thumbnail.jp