Panel: Looking Backwards and Forwards

Ten years ago, at 90 nanometers, EDA was challenged and deemed inadequate in dealing with increasing complexity, power consumption, and sub-wavelength lithography, thus harming the progress of mobile phones. Today, at 10 nanometers, integration capacity has increased by two orders of magnitude, power consumption has been successfully "tamed", and 193 nanometer immersion lithography is still relied upon. Also thanks to EDA, tools, methodologies, and flows that were originally devised for design enablement for the emerging technology nodes, have been successfully redeployed at the established technology nodes, where they represent a critical design differentiation factor. However, the battleground is changing again: after the billions of phones, trillions of "things" lie ahead. Moving forward, emerging and established technology nodes, digital and analog, hardware and software will be equally critical. What is EDA doing and, more important, what should EDA do - and is not doing - in order for the next decade to be as great as the past one? This panel session, moderated by EPFL Professor Giovanni De Micheli, gathers academia, semiconductor, and EDA industry to discuss the challenges and requirements of the new era

Short-term consumer cash loans: looking backwards and forwards

Sponsored by the Marjorie J. and Richard L.D. Morse Family and Community Public Policy ScholarshipCitation: Sanders, A. (2007). Short-term consumer cash loans: looking backwards and forwards. Unpublished manuscript, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS.The concept of borrowing and lending has been around as long as humans have been living communally and is indeed part of the social fabric of communities (Seabright, 2004). The manifestation for consumer’s need to borrow cash for short periods of time came along somewhat later, but the idea of borrowing and lending is as old as the concept of community. Today’s manifestation of that need is frequently found in the form of short-term cash consumer loans, also known as payday loans

Looking forwards and backwards: dynamics and genealogies of locally regulated populations

We introduce a broad class of spatial models to describe how spatially heterogeneous populations live, die, and reproduce. Individuals are represented by points of a point measure, whose birth and death rates can depend both on spatial position and local population density, defined via the convolution of the point measure with a nonnegative kernel. We pass to three different scaling limits: an interacting superprocess, a nonlocal partial differential equation (PDE), and a classical PDE. The classical PDE is obtained both by first scaling time and population size to pass to the nonlocal PDE, and then scaling the kernel that determines local population density; and also (when the limit is a reaction-diffusion equation) by simultaneously scaling the kernel width, timescale and population size in our individual based model. A novelty of our model is that we explicitly model a juvenile phase: offspring are thrown off in a Gaussian distribution around the location of the parent, and reach (instant) maturity with a probability that can depend on the population density at the location at which they land. Although we only record mature individuals, a trace of this two-step description remains in our population models, resulting in novel limits governed by a nonlinear diffusion. Using a lookdown representation, we retain information about genealogies and, in the case of deterministic limiting models, use this to deduce the backwards in time motion of the ancestral lineage of a sampled individual. We observe that knowing the history of the population density is not enough to determine the motion of ancestral lineages in our model. We also investigate the behaviour of lineages for three different deterministic models of a population expanding its range as a travelling wave: the Fisher-KPP equation, the Allen-Cahn equation, and a porous medium equation with logistic growth

Looking forwards and backwards: dynamics and genealogies of locally regulated populations

We introduce a broad class of mechanistic spatial models to describe how spatially heterogeneous populations live, die, and reproduce. Individuals are represented by points of a point measure, whose birth and death rates can depend both on spatial position and local population density, defined at a location to be the convolution of the point measure with a suitable non-negative integrable kernel centred on that location. We pass to three different scaling limits: an interacting superprocess, a nonlocal partial differential equation (PDE), and a classical PDE. The classical PDE is obtained both by a two-step convergence argument, in which we first scale time and population size and pass to the nonlocal PDE, and then scale the kernel that determines local population density; and in the important special case in which the limit is a reaction-diffusion equation, directly by simultaneously scaling the kernel width, timescale and population size in our individual based model. A novelty of our model is that we explicitly model a juvenile phase. The number of juveniles produced by an individual depends on local population density at the location of the parent; these juvenile offspring are thrown off in a (possibly heterogeneous, anisotropic) Gaussian distribution around the location of the parent; they then reach (instant) maturity with a probability that can depend on the local population density at the location at which they land. Although we only record mature individuals, a trace of this two-step description remains in our population models, resulting in novel limits in which the spatial dynamics are governed by a nonlinear diffusion. Using a lookdown representation, we are able to retain information about genealogies relating individuals in our population and, in the case of deterministic limiting models, we use this to deduce the backwards in time motion of the ancestral lineage of an individual sampled from the population. We observe that knowing the history of the population density is not enough to determine the motion of ancestral lineages in our model. We also investigate (and contrast) the behaviour of lineages for three different deterministic models of a population expanding its range as a travelling wave: the Fisher-KPP equation, the Allen-Cahn equation, and a porous medium equation with logistic growth

To Hell with Aeneas: looking backwards and forwards in Aeneid 6

The word tandem (‘at last’) near the very beginning of Aeneid 6 carries its full meaning. Finally the Trojans reach Italy, their fated destination, but not before five books’ worth of adventures in Carthage and around the Mediterranean since the capture and destruction of Troy. This arrival marks the transition from the Odyssean wanderings of the first half of the epic to the lliadic war which the Trojans must win in order to found their new city. It is here in Italy, and especially in the underworld, that Aeneas pauses to reflect on his past before he is free to lay the foundations of a Roman future. Here Fiachra Mac Gorain explores some of the ways in which both hero and poet build on the past and look to the future in this pivotal book

The Influence of Start Position, Initial Step Type, and Usage of a Focal Point on Sprinting Performance

International Journal of Exercise Science 6(4) : 320-327, 2013. For many athletes, sprinting acceleration is vital to sport performance. The purpose of this study was to observe the influences of starting position, type of initial step taken, and a focal point on sprinting velocity, stride length, and acceleration over a 9.1 m distance. Two trials of four conditions were video recorded in which subjects had no focal point (n = 10) or a lateral focal point (n = 9). The four conditions were: forwards (control), backwards, 90° left (90°L), and 90° right (90°R). Lower velocities (p \u3e 0.05) were observed with focal point usage from the 90°R and 90°L starting positions. Four initial steps were observed during the forwards, 90°L, and 90°R conditions: backwards step, anterior tilt with forward step, pivot-crossover step, and lateral side step. The use of a backwards step resulted in an increased velocity (+0.80 m·s-1, p \u3c 0.01) for the 90° turn trials and increased acceleration (+ 0.37 m·s-2,p \u3c 0.01). Our results indicate that looking at a target can cause a decline in sprint velocity and acceleration over a short distance. Moreover, utilizing a backwards step to initiate a 90° turn may generate more power and force, increasing their velocity for short sprints. We recommend training athletes with a target or focal points to help combat the reduced speed and initiate movement with initial backwards step