Information Causality, the Tsirelson Bound, and the 'Being-Thus' of Things

The principle of `information causality' can be used to derive an upper bound---known as the `Tsirelson bound'---on the strength of quantum mechanical correlations, and has been conjectured to be a foundational principle of nature. To date, however, it has not been sufficiently motivated to play such a foundational role. The motivations that have so far been given are, as I argue, either unsatisfactorily vague or appeal to little if anything more than intuition. Thus in this paper I consider whether some way might be found to successfully motivate the principle. And I propose that a compelling way of so doing is to understand it as a generalisation of Einstein's principle of the mutually independent existence---the `being-thus'---of spatially distant things. In particular I first describe an argument, due to Demopoulos, to the effect that the so-called `no-signalling' condition can be viewed as a generalisation of Einstein's principle that is appropriate for an irreducibly statistical theory such as quantum mechanics. I then argue that a compelling way to motivate information causality is to in turn consider it as a further generalisation of the Einsteinian principle that is appropriate for a theory of communication. I describe, however, some important conceptual obstacles that must yet be overcome if the project of establishing information causality as a foundational principle of nature is to succeed.Comment: '*' footnote added to page 1; 24 pages, 1 figure; Forthcoming in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physic

Review of agricultural extension in India: Are farmers' information needs being met?

Despite a wide range of reform initiatives in agricultural extension in India in the past decades, the coverage of, access to, and quality of information provided to marginalized and poor farmers is uneven. This paper aims to ascertain why farmers are not accessing information and where information gaps exist, despite the variety of extension approaches in India. Using information provision and access as the basis for analysis, the paper reviews some of the major agricultural extension programs in India by considering their ability to provide information and facilitate information sharing and use in farming communities. The review gives a broad overview of the current extension scene in India while providing a synthesis of recent debates and the observations of various authors as well as working groups in the Ministry of Agriculture and the Planning Commission. The paper examines the challenges and constraints of each agricultural extension approach as it attempts to provide farmers with access to information that is relevant to their farm enterprises. As a result of this analysis, opportunities are identified for increasing extension services' effectiveness and efficiency in reaching smallholder farmers. Research gaps are also identified. The review concludes that there is an increasing need to work in partnership and to share knowledge and skills in order to provide locally relevant services that meet the information needs of marginal and smallholder farmers in India.agricultural extension, Knowledge, information, Innovation, Public-private partnership, Gender, Education,

Stealthy Plaintext

Correspondence through email has become a very significant way of communication at workplaces. Information of most kinds such as text, video and audio can be shared through email, the most common being text. With confidential data being easily sharable through this method most companies monitor the emails, thus invading the privacy of employees. To avoid secret information from being disclosed it can be encrypted. Encryption hides the data effectively but this makes the data look important and hence prone to attacks to decrypt the information. It also makes it obvious that there is secret information being transferred. The most effective way would be to make the information seem harmless by concealing the information in the email but not encrypting it. We would like the information to pass through the analyzer without being detected. This project aims to achieve this by “encrypting” plain text by replacing suspicious keywords with non-suspicious English words, trying to keep the grammatical syntax of the sentences intact

The Virtue of Being Underestimated: A Note on Discriminatory Contracts in Hidden Information Models

A standard hidden information model is considered to study the influence of the a priori productivity distribution on the optimal contract. A priori more productive (hazard rate dominant) agents work less, enjoy lower rents, but generate a higher expected surplus.adverse selection, statistical discrimination, stochastic order relation

What is being conveyed to health professionals and consumers through web and print sources of nutrition information?

Nutrition misinformation can be harmful. Within dietetics there is an acknowledgement that nutrition information should be consistent, science-based and made relevant to different segments of the population. This paper reports on a study, conducted in Scotland, which involved focus groups and interviews with consumers and health professionals to explore messages relating to a healthy diet and to starchy foods and foods high in fat or sugar in particular. The research also involved a discourse analysis of articles aimed at health professionals and consumers. Evidence based, clearly written web and print articles were not the norm. Many articles contained value-laden messages and inconsistent or unclear advice. Nutrition information was rarely contextualized for consumers to help them incorporate the advice into their daily lives. Consumers and health professionals reported feeling 'bombarded' by messages about diet, which was sometimes confusing. There is considerable scope for improving nutrition messaging in Scotland.Peer reviewe

Being Fast Means Being Chatty: The Local Information Cost of Graph Spanners

We introduce a new measure for quantifying the amount of information that the nodes in a network need to learn to jointly solve a graph problem. We show that the local information cost ($\textsf{LIC}$) presents a natural lower bound on the communication complexity of distributed algorithms. For the synchronous CONGEST-KT1 model, where each node has initial knowledge of its neighbors' IDs, we prove that $\Omega(\textsf{LIC}_\gamma(P)/ \log\tau \log n)$ bits are required for solving a graph problem $P$ with a $\tau$-round algorithm that errs with probability at most $\gamma$. Our result is the first lower bound that yields a general trade-off between communication and time for graph problems in the CONGEST-KT1 model. We demonstrate how to apply the local information cost by deriving a lower bound on the communication complexity of computing a $(2t-1)$-spanner that consists of at most $O(n^{1+1/t + \epsilon})$ edges, where $\epsilon = \Theta(1/t^2)$. Our main result is that any $O(\textsf{poly}(n))$-time algorithm must send at least $\tilde\Omega((1/t^2) n^{1+1/2t})$ bits in the CONGEST model under the KT1 assumption. Previously, only a trivial lower bound of $\tilde \Omega(n)$ bits was known for this problem. A consequence of our lower bound is that achieving both time- and communication-optimality is impossible when designing a distributed spanner algorithm. In light of the work of King, Kutten, and Thorup (PODC 2015), this shows that computing a minimum spanning tree can be done significantly faster than finding a spanner when considering algorithms with $\tilde O(n)$ communication complexity. Our result also implies time complexity lower bounds for constructing a spanner in the node-congested clique of Augustine et al. (2019) and in the push-pull gossip model with limited bandwidth

Coherent use of information by hens observing their former dominant defeating or being defeated by a stranger.

This study examines the role of observation during the formation of triads in female domestic hens. Results indicate that during hierarchy formation, a hen observing agonistic interactions and conflict settlement between its former dominant and a stranger uses this information when in turn confronted by the latter. Under a first condition (E, N=15 triads), bystanders witnessed their prior dominant being defeated by a stranger before being introduced to them. In a second condition (C1, N=16 triads), bystanders witnessed the victory of their prior dominant over a stranger. In a third condition (C2, N=15 triads), bystanders witnessed two strangers establishing a dominance relationship before being introduced to their prior dominant and to a stranger the former had just defeated. The behavioural strategies of bystanders depended on the issue of the conflict they had witnessed. Bystanders of the E condition behaved as having no chance of defeating the stranger. They never initiated an attack against it, and upon being attacked, readily submitted in turn to the stranger. On the contrary, bystanders of the C1 condition behaved as having some chances against the stranger. They initiated attacks in 50% of cases, and won 50% of conflicts against the stranger. Under condition C2, bystanders first initiated contact with the strangers in only 27% of cases, which approximates the average of their chances for defeating the stranger. However, bystanders finally defeated the strangers in 40% of cases. These results suggest that bystanders of conditions E and C1 gained some information on the relationship existing between their prior dominant and the stranger and that they used it coherently, perhaps through transitive inference, thus contributing to the existence of transitive relationships within the triads. Alternate explanations are examined

Issues in multi-media information networks

In an integrated service environment, where users exchange various types of aural and visual information, networks should appear friendly to its users providing tools for management of multi-media information. Networks should also efficiently satisfy diverse performance requirements of different information being exchanged.In this paper we present new architecture for integrated service networks being investigated and developed by the Distributed Computation and Communication Group at the Department of Computer Science in the Columbia University. Research efforts are devoted to developing both (1) document management software to allow users to manipulate and relate text/graphics/voice information in a dynamic way, and (2) a tree network architecture for reliable and efficient exchange of multi-media information