Boyer-Moore strategy to efficient approximate string matching

International audienceWe propose a simple but e cient algorithm for searching all occurrences of a pattern or a class of patterns (length m) in a text (length n) with at most k mismatches. This algorithm relies on the Shift-Add algorithm of Baeza-Yates and Gonnet [6], which involves representing by a bit number the current state of the search and uses the ability of programming languages to handle bit words. State representation should not, therefore, exceeds the word size w, that is, m(⌈log2(k+1)⌉+1 )≤w. This algorithm consists in a preprocessing step and a searching step. It is linear and performs 3n operations during the searching step. Notions of shift and character skip found in the Boyer-Moore (BM) [9] approach, are introduced in this algorithm. Provided that the considered alphabet is large enough (compared to the Pattern length), the average number of operations performed by our algorithm during the searching step becomes n(2+(k+4)/(m-k))

The Changing Nature of Mass Belief Systems: The Rise of Concept Ideologues & Policy Wonks

In today’s world of intense ideological conflict at the elite level, the nature of mass belief systems has changed dramatically since the last time Converse’s famous levels of conceptualization (Campbell et al., 1960; Converse, 1964) were coded in 2000.  This paper shows that the percentage with well-developed belief systems based on a clear understanding of public policy choices has increased substantially since then.  It also introduces a new category termed “policy wonks” to reflect a sub-category that Converse only referred to in passing but which is now quite common.  Unlike respondents whom I classify as “concept ideologues” in this paper, policy wonks do not employ overarching concepts such as liberalism/conservatism or the scope of government.  Rather, policy wonks just refer to at least three public policy stands when asked what they like and dislike about the major parties and presidential candidates.  Although it was very rare for citizens in the 1950s to show a clear belief system based on the specific choices of government action, today’s highly intense and polarized policy debates have made programmatic-oriented belief systems quite common.  A close examination of policy wonks shows that they are just as politically knowledgeable and consistent on issue dimensions as concept ideologues (i.e., those who employ ideological terms).  Hence, policy wonks possess a well-defined belief system based on employing an understanding of public policy, thereby befitting Converse’s criteria for classification at the top level of conceptualization.   The substantial increases in both concept ideologues and policy wonks accounts for virtually all of the increase since the 1980s in respondents whose partisanship matches their ideology (i.e., conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats).  Not only are respondents at the top of levels of conceptualization more numerous than they used to be, but being more consistent than they used to be has led to a marked increase in the overall correspondence between partisanship and ideology.  On the other hand, the decrease in ideologically inconsistent partisans (i.e., liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats) has occurred across all conceptualization levels.  Thus, party polarization is a combination of:  1) better-developed belief systems increasing ideological-partisan consistency; and 2) partisan sorting decreasing partisans who are out step with their party’s ideological stance.Past research has shown that Republicans are substantially more likely to be ideologues whereas Democrats are much more inclined to conceptualize politics in terms of group benefits.  This pattern was quite evident in the 2008 and 2012 American National Election Study (ANES) responses that I personally coded.  However, two developments occurred in 2016 that dramatically reshaped the partisan nature of belief systems.  First, the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party evidenced a great deal of ideological thinking, thereby pushing Democrats to a record percentage at the top level of ideological conceptualization.  Second, the voters who supported Trump in the Republican primaries were much less likely to be ideologues or policy wonks than those who supported more traditional Republican candidates.  These developments combined to make Democrats and Republicans more similar than ever before in terms of ideological conceptualization in 2016.

A Multi-Method Approach to Identifying Norms and Normative Expectations within a Corporate Hierarchy: Evidence from the Financial Services Industry

This paper presents the results of a field study at a large financial services firm that combines multiple methods, including two economic experiments, to measure ethical norms and their behavioral correlates. Standard survey questions eliciting ethical evaluations of actions in on-the-job ethical dilemmas are transformed into a series of incentivized coordination games in the first experiment. We use the results of this experiment to identify the actual ethical norms for financial adviser behavior held by key personnel – financial advisers and their corporate leaders – in three settings: a clash of incentives between serving the client and earning commissions, a dilemma about fiduciary responsibility to a client, and a dilemma about whistle-blowing on a peer. We also measure the beliefs of financial advisers about the ethical expectations of their corporate leaders and the beliefs of corporate leaders about financial adviser norms. In addition, we ask financial advisers about their personal normative opinions, matching a common methodology in the literature. We find, first, systematic agreements in the normative evaluations across the corporate hierarchy that are consistent with ex ante expectations, but second, we also find some measurable differences between the normative expectations of corporate leaders about on-the-job behavior and the actual norms shared among financial advisers. When there is a normative mismatch across the hierarchy we are able to distinguish miscommunication from ethical disagreement between leaders and employees. Our subjects also report their job satisfaction and take part in a second incentivized experiment in which it is costly to report private information honestly. A last finding is that a mismatch between advisers’ personal ethical opinions and corporate norms – especially those of peers – strongly correlates with job dissatisfaction, and less strongly but significantly with the willingness to be dishonest.field experiment, financial services, corporate leader, financial adviser, ethics, norms, coordination game

Pattern discovery in trees : algorithms and applications to document and scientific data management

Ordered, labeled trees are trees in which each node has a label and the left-to-right order of its children (if it has any) is fixed. Such trees have many applications in vision, pattern recognition, molecular biology and natural language processing. In this dissertation we present algorithms for finding patterns in the ordered labeled trees. Specifically we study the largest approximately common substructure (LACS) problem for such trees. We consider a substructure of a tree T to be a connected subgraph of T. Given two trees T1, T2 and an integer d, the LACS problem is to find a substructure U1 of T1 and a substructure U2 of T2 such that U1 is within distance d of U2 and where there does not exist any other substructure V1 of T1 and V2 of T2 such that V1 and V2 satisfy the distance constraint and the sum of the sizes of V1 and V2 is greater than the sum of the sizes of U1 and U2. The LACS problem is motivated by the studies of document and RNA comparison. We consider two types of distance measures: the general edit distance and a restricted edit distance originated from Selkow. We present dynamic programming algorithms to solve the LACS problem based on the two distance measures. The algorithms run as fast as the best known algorithms for computing the distance of two trees when the distance allowed in the common substructures is a constant independent of the input trees. To demonstrate the utility of our algorithms, we discuss their applications to discovering motifs in multiple RNA secondary structures. Such an application shows an example of scientific data mining. We represent an RNA secondary structure by an ordered labeled tree based on a previously proposed scheme. The patterns in the trees are substructures that can differ in both substitutions and deletions/insertions of nodes of the trees. Our techniques incorporate approximate tree matching algorithms and novel heuristics for discovery and optimization. Experimental results obtained by running these algorithms on both generated data and RNA secondary structures show the good performance of the algorithms. It is shown that the optimization heuristics speed up the discovery algorithm by a factor of 10. Moreover, our optimized approach is 100,000 times faster than the brute force method. Finally we implement our techniques into a graphic toolbox that enables users to find repeated substructures in an RNA secondary structure as well as frequently occurring patterns in multiple RNA secondary structures pertaining to rhinovirus obtained from the National Cancer Institute. The system is implemented in C programming language and X windows and is fully operational on SUN workstations

Humane Education Volume 07, Number 03

So you want a pet -- a mini unit on making responsible decisions about pet ownership (Lorraine P. Holden) Flash! Good news about Kind News! 1983 Humane Education Teacher of the Year -- \u27The Teacher Who Cares About Animals\u27 : Cindy Crawford (Lorraine P. Holden) Happenings Our neighbors\u27 pets (Lorraine P. Holden and Beverly Armstrong) Research in Review -- Young children\u27s beliefs about animals (Vanessa Malcarne) Humane Education Reader Survey A doggone good start (Vivian Leidy) Learning Center -- It\u27s music to their ears (Lorraine P. Holden) The teacher\u27s pet -- factors to consider in deciding about a classroom pet (Julie Rovner) Calendar Film Reviews (Argus Archives) What\u27s a Picture Worth? -- Share the Earth but keep the litte

Differences in job expectations, satisfactions, and rewards between White and Black middle managers in urban health care organizations.

The problem that was addressed in this study were differences in job expectations, rewards, perceived criteria for promotion, and relations with supervisors and staff among black and white middle-level managers in health care. Assessments on the influences of perceived expectations on job satisfaction, satisfaction with rewards, and self-perceived job performance were conducted. The sample included 153 middle-level managers from hospitals and health agencies in the United States. The sample consisted of 104 (68.0%) females and 49 (32.0%) males. Ninety-one (59.5%) respondents were white, 51 (33.3%) were African-American, and 11 (7.2%) were of other racial or ethnic origins. The hypotheses of the study were: (1) The variables of expectation of rewards, perceived criteria for promotion, and relations with supervisors and staff, will differentiate between black and white middle managers. (2) The greater perceived expectations the greater the job satisfaction. (3) The greater the perceived expectations the greater the satisfaction with rewards. (4) The greater the perceived expectations the greater the self-perceived job performance. The four hypotheses were confirmed by the data. Black managers tended to view management\u27s behavior relative to perceived expectations as less inclusive of staff, less fair, less concerned, and less competent than did white managers. Job satisfaction, extrinsic, intrinsic, social, and influence reward satisfactions were all related to perceived job-related expectations, with the sole variable of reward expectations being constant in each instance. The similarities among extrinsic, intrinsic, and influence reward satisfactions were their relationship to management allowance of staff involvement. Extrinsic and social rewards were related to management fairness; intrinsic and influence rewards were related to the perception that promotion was based on performance, and social and influence rewards were related to staff productivity. Social reward satisfactions were related to staff problem solving and staff concern. Job satisfaction was related to staff competence and staff problem solving behavior. Intrinsic reward satisfactions were related to staff participation, staff competence, management competence, management control and management orientation. Quality of work as perceived by the respondent was not strongly related to the perceived job-related expectation variables. However, it was related to the perception that promotion was based on performance