Lowest Unique Bid Auctions

We consider a class of auctions (Lowest Unique Bid Auctions) that have achieved a considerable success on the Internet. Bids are made in cents (of euro) and every bidder can bid as many numbers as she wants. The lowest unique bid wins the auction. Every bid has a fixed cost, and once a participant makes a bid, she gets to know whether her bid was unique and whether it was the lowest unique. Information is updated in real time, but every bidder sees only what's relevant to the bids she made. We show that the observed behavior in these auctions differs considerably from what theory would prescribe if all bidders were fully rational. We show that the seller makes money, which would not be the case with rational bidders, and some bidders win the auctions quite often. We describe a possible strategy for these bidders

A Taxonomy of Views about Time in Buddhist and Western Philosophy

We find the claim that time is not real in both western and eastern philosophical traditions. In what follows I will call the view that time does not exist temporal error theory. Temporal error theory was made famous in western analytic philosophy in the early 1900s by John McTaggart (1908) and, in much the same tradition, temporal error theory was subsequently defended by Gödel (1949). The idea that time is not real, however, stretches back much further than that. It is common to hear it said that according to Buddhist philosophy (as though that were a monolithic view) time is illusory. While it is not true that, in general, either contemporary or ancient Buddhist scholars have thought time to be illusory, there are certainly some schools of Buddhist thought, such as that of traditional Dzogchen practitioners, according to which there is no time. This paper is an attempt to set out a taxonomy of different views about what it takes for there to be time and, alongside that, a taxonomy of views about whether there is time or not, and if there is time what it is like

Generation of an optimal target list for the Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory (EChO)

The Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory (EChO) has been studied as a space mission concept by the European Space Agency in the context of the M3 selection process. Through direct measurement of the atmospheric chemical composition of hundreds of exoplanets, EChO would address fundamental questions such as: What are exoplanets made of? How do planets form and evolve? What is the origin of exoplanet diversity? More specifically, EChO is a dedicated survey mission for transit and eclipse spectroscopy capable of observing a large, diverse and well-defined planetary sample within its four to six year mission lifetime. In this paper we use the end-to-end instrument simulator EChOSim to model the currently discovered targets, to gauge which targets are observable and assess the EChO performances obtainable for each observing tier and time. We show that EChO would be capable of observing over 170 relativity diverse planets if it were launched today, and the wealth of optimal targets for EChO expected to be discovered in the next 10 years by space and ground-based facilities is simply overwhelming. In addition, we build on previous molecular detectability studies to show what molecules and abundances will be detectable by EChO for a selection of real targets with various molecular compositions and abundances. EChO's unique contribution to exoplanetary science will be in identifying the main constituents of hundreds of exoplanets in various mass/temperature regimes, meaning that we will be looking no longer at individual cases but at populations. Such a universal view is critical if we truly want to understand the processes of planet formation and evolution in various environments. In this paper we present a selection of key results. The full results are available online (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/exoplanets/echotargetlist/).Comment: Accepted for publication in Experimental Astronomy, 20 pages, 10 figures, 3 table

Surveillance and security - a dodgy relationship

Modern societies are vulnerable. We have known this long before the attacks of September 11, but they made it clear to everyone. The second lesson learned was that it is impossible to foresee such events. Although these attacks to the real world were 'low-tech', now there are attempts around the globe to control especially the electronic or virtual world. However, does more surveillance really lead to more security? If so, what will be the price we have to pay? This paper gives an overview over what happened on a governmental level after September 11 in the EU, in some EU-member states and in the USA. Apart from political actions, we already face even direct socio-economic implications as some anonymizer services were shut down. They empowered Internet users to protect their right of privacy, and they were the first targets of investigation and suspicion. Shutting down these services reduces the potential room of users to protect their privacy by using privacy enhancing technologies (PETs). This is an indicator for a serious societal problem: democracy already has changed. In a second part this paper analyses the relationship between surveillance and security. It is argued that, the international over-reactions will not lead to the intended effects. Rather, they will have long-term implications for the respective societies.Privacy, security, surveillance, international policy

The formulation of General Relativity in extended phase space as a way to its quantization

Our attempts to find an explanation for quantum behavior of the Early Universe appeal, as a rule, to the Wheeler - DeWitt Quantum Geometrodynamics which relies upon Hamiltonian formulation of General Relativity proposed by Arnowitt, Deser and Misner (ADM). In spite of the fact that the basic ideas of this approach were put forward about fifty years ago, even now we do not have clear understanding what Hamiltonian formulation of General Relativity must be. An evidence for it gives a recent paper by Kiriushcheva and Kuzmin [arXiv:0809.0097], where the authors claim that the formulation by ADM and that by Dirac made in his seminal work of 1958 are not equivalent. If so, we face the question what formalism should be chosen. Another problem is that we need a well-grounded procedure of constructing a generator of transformations in phase space for all gravitational variables including gauge ones. It suggests the notion of extended phase space. After analyzing the situation, we show that Hamiltonian formulation in extended phase space is a real alternative to Dirac and ADM formulations and can be constructed to be equivalent to the original (Lagrangian) formulation of General Relativity. Quantization in extended phase space is straightforward and leads to a new description of quantum Universe in which an essential place is given to gauge degrees of freedom.Comment: 4 pages, talk presented at the XII Marcel Grossmann Meeting, Paris, France, July 2009, an equation correcte

A Three Country Comparison of the Impact of Slower Growth on Three Industries using Input-Output Analysis

Western Europe has, in the 1970's entered a period of reduced real growth. During the boom times of the 1960's, nearly all industries were growing at a rate allowing employment to remain, at worst, relatively constant. During this present decade, Western European industry first experienced a recession and is now in the process of a recovery in which output growth seems to be substantially below that of the 1960's. Some industries have made the change to the reduced growth rates with relative ease while others have encountered severe adjustment difficulties. Were warning flags in evidence in the 1960's pointing to industries which would be particularly sensitive to a slowdown in overall real growth? If so, what were these flags? Where can we see them most clearly? Do they have any bearing on the outlook for Western Europe in 1985

The People Inside

Our collection begins with an example of computer vision that cuts through time and bureaucratic opacity to help us meet real people from the past. Buried in thousands of files in the National Archives of Australia is evidence of the exclusionary “White Australia” policies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which were intended to limit and discourage immigration by non-Europeans. Tim Sherratt and Kate Bagnall decided to see what would happen if they used a form of face-detection software made ubiquitous by modern surveillance systems and applied it to a security system of a century ago. What we get is a new way to see the government documents, not as a source of statistics but, Sherratt and Bagnall argue, as powerful evidence of the people affected by racism

How a Book Changed a Nation [2022]

“We don’t believe in vampires.” I didn’t bother to turn away from the TV to look at my parents. On screen, a crew of young men were interviewing an old woman. She spoke only Romanian, and a too-perfect female voice spoke for her in English. I could see the confident fear in her expression as she exclaimed that vampires were indeed real and that she was always scared of them. She wasn’t alone. All of Transylvania were aware of the existence of vampires. Truly, these young men— ghost hunters and cryptologists—were right to come here to this haunted nation. The crew moved to Bran Castle, home of the infamous Count Dracula. It was time to look for vampiric activity. If they were lucky, perhaps they would even find the ghost of cruel Dracula himself. They stumbled down the halls at night with candles to guide them. “Vlad Ţepeş (a.k.a. Dracul) was a king of a different Romanian kingdom. He stayed no more than three days in Bran Castle, if any,” my mother said. At that, my attention was split. What did my parents mean by saying that Dracula—the Dracula—didn’t actually live at Bran Castle (or, as I and so many lovingly called it, “Dracula’s Castle”)? “Vampires are not even Romanian.” My worldview on what I thought vampires were ended at that moment. As a first generation American to two Romanian-born immigrants (Transylvanian ones to boot), I thought I knew enough about “real” vampires even without being a vampire aficionado. I knew that Bram Stoker’s Dracula is what made Transylvania so memorable. Was it all a lie

The Educational Semantic Web: Visioning and Practicing the Future of Education

Abstract: I (Terry) first became interested in the semantic web from reading Berners-Lee's original works and following first generation developments of semantic web technologies in information science, e-business and health fields. I then began including the ideas in talks I gave at various conferences and forums in 2003. Naturally, I became curious about what other educators were doing with the semantic web and so Googled the term, "education semantic web". Much to my surprise and disappointment, I found that most of the references were to my own admittedly introductory and visionary comments made in these speeches. Where was the real work, innovation and actual prototype development? Fortunately, we were able to locate this type of work and we believe that most of the leading researchers in the area of the educational semantic web have contributed to this special issue. Of course, if we have missed your work, we welcome comments and URLs in the discussion areas of the special issue. Editors: Terry Anderson and Denise Whitelock