An Evolutionary Agent-based simulation model for the industry life cycle

In contrast to the usual approach taken in the literature, in which an Industry Life Cycle (ILC) is reproduced by aggregate functions, the model of this paper generates a self-organizing ILC. A general evolutionary agent-based simulation model is developed that can be adapted for specific branches of industry. The results enable conclusions to be drawn for competition policy with regard to the workability of competition in the various phases of the ILC. --Industry Life Cycle,Agent-Based Simulation Model,Evolutionary Economics

Data types

A Mathematical interpretation is given to the notion of a data type. The main novelty is in the generality of the mathematical treatment which allows procedural data types and circularly defined data types. What is meant by data type is pretty close to what any computer scientist would understand by this term or by data structure, type, mode, cluster, class. The mathematical treatment is the conjunction of the ideas of D. Scott on the solution of domain equations (Scott (71), (72) and (76)) and the initiality property noticed by the ADJ group (ADJ (75), ADJ (77)). The present work adds operations to the data types proposed by Scott and generalizes the data types of ADJ to procedural types and arbitrary circular type definitions. The advantages of a mathematical interpretation of data types are those of mathematical semantics in general : throwing light on some ill-understood constructs in high-level programming languages, easing the task of writing correct programs and making possible proofs of correctness for programs or implementations"

Spectrum Analysis of Bright Kepler late B- to early F- Stars

The Kepler satellite mission delivers single band-pass light curves of a huge number of stars observed in the Cygnus-Lyra region opening a new window for asteroseismology. In order to accomplish one of the preconditions for the asteroseismic modelling of the stars, we aim to derive fundamental parameters and individual abundances for a sample of 18 Gamma Dor (GD)/Delta Sct (DSct) and 8 SPB/beta Cep candidate stars in the Kepler satellite field of view. We use the spectral synthesis method to model newly obtained, high-resolution spectra of 26 stars in order to derive their fundamental parameters and individual abundances. The stars are then placed into the log(Teff)-log(g) diagram and the obtained spectroscopic classification is compared to the existing photometric one. For hot stars, the KIC temperatures appear to be systematically underestimated, in agreement with previous findings. We also find that the temperatures derived from our spectra agree reasonably well with those derived from the SED fitting. According to their position in the log(Teff)-log(g) diagram, two stars are expected GD stars, four stars are expected DSct stars, and four stars are possibly DSct stars at the blue edge of the instability strip. Two stars are confirmed SPB variables, and one star falls into the SPB instability region but its parameters might be biased by binarity. Two of the four stars that fall into the DSct instability region show GD-type oscillation in their light curves implying that GD-like oscillations are much more common among the DSct stars than is theoretically expected. Moreover, one of the stars located at the hot border of the DSct instability strip is classified as DSct-GD hybrid pulsator from its light curve analysis. Given that these findings are fully consistent with recent investigations, we conclude that a revision of the GD and DSct instability strips is essential.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables; accepted for publication in MNRA

Fluid thrust control system

A pure fluid thrust control system is described for a pump-fed, regeneratively cooled liquid propellant rocket engine. A proportional fluid amplifier and a bistable fluid amplifier control overshoot in the starting of the engine and take it to a predetermined thrust. An ejector type pump is provided in the line between the liquid hydrogen rocket nozzle heat exchanger and the turbine driving the fuel pump to aid in bringing the fluid at this point back into the regular system when it is not bypassed. The thrust control system is intended to function in environments too severe for mechanical controls

Diffractive charged meson pair production

We investigate the possibility to measure the nonforward gluon distribution function by means of diffractively produced \pi^+\pi^- and K^+K^- pairs in polarized lepton nucleon scattering. The resulting cross sections are small and are dominated by the gluonic contribution. We find relatively large spin asymmetries, both for \pi^+\pi^- and for K^+K^- pairs.Comment: 15 pages, version with changed kinematical cuts, to be pubished in Phys.Lett.

Two Perceptions of Change in Judeo-Spanish Rabbinic Literature

In this article, I analyze the brief references to the invention of the telegraph in Yeuda Papo's Judeo-Spanish version of the Pele Yo ´ets and Ben Tsion Rodeti's Sefer Ki Ze Kol ha-Adam, two Judeo-Spanish books of musar from the nineteenth century. These rather unlikely references permit us to study perceptions of present, future, and change held by two Sephardic rabbis from the Ottoman Empire in a period of accelerated technological progress and social transformation. Two different attitudes towards change can be described. While Papo's work announces important transformations in the semantics of understanding time, without stepping outside rabbinic tradition itself, Ben Tsion Rodeti denies the very fact of change and affirms that everything that has to be known already is included once and for all in the rabbinic literary tradition.En este artículo analizo las referencias a la introducción del telégrafo en dos libros de musar del siglo XIX publicados en ladino: el Pele Yo 'éŝ, cuyo versión judeoespañola preparó Yeudá Papo, y el Séfer Ki źe kol haadam, de Ben-Ŝiyón Binyamín Rodeti. Los pasajes nos permiten estudiar cómo entendieron estos dos rabinos sefardíes el tiempo presente y el futuro, así como los cambios en un período de avances técnicos y transformaciones sociales como los que se produjeron en el Imperio Otomano del siglo XIX. Podemos distinguir dos tendencias. Mientras que el libro de Papo anuncia importantes transformaciones semánticas en el entendimiento del tiempo -aunque él mismo nunca sale del margen de la tradición rabínica-, Ben-Ŝiyón Rodeti descarta que haya cambios y afirma que todo ya se ha dicho en la tradición literaria rabínica y que los tiempos actuales no cuestionan ni pueden cuestionar esta tradición

Authenticity, Care, and Relationships: Ethical Decision-Making in Criminal Justice Education

Many events in recent history have demonstrated the need for addressing the training of law enforcement and other public servants commonly referred to as criminal justice professionals in the United States. Reckoning with the imperfect history of the criminal justice system, specifically the history of problematic relations with marginalized people, and developing a system that is better equipped to meet the needs of an equitable and just society is at the forefront of many discussions of criminal justice reform. Improving ethical decision-making training in criminal justice education is one avenue to addressing these needs for current and future professionals. Conceptually, ethical decision-making education could start with community and cultural knowledge of those being served, creating meaningful, authentic relationships based on care, in order to make a “more whole decision” when faced with situations, especially critical situations. The focus of this study was a foundational rethinking of the approach to ethical decision-making in criminal justice education by introducing sociocultural theories that emphasize an ethic of care, authenticity, and a focus on the cultural importance of relations and the relationship. Individual, semi-structured interviews of university educators in criminal justice education who teach ethical decision-making courses in order to understand, in greater depth, concepts that are emphasized in their coursework, what systems are taught, and how they are taught. Non-traditional systems were explored and examined concepts of authenticity, care, and relationships impact on the coursework that were perceived to impact coursework by the educators. Findings show that there is a presence of the concepts in ethical decision-making in criminal justice. What emerged is a need for a future focus on humanization and suggestions regarding curriculum design and teaching methods when thinking about teaching ethics

Robot-Mediated Interviews with Children : What do potential users think?

Luke Wood, Hagen Lehmann, Kerstin Dautenhahn, Ben Robins, Austen Rayner, and Dag Syrdal, ‘Robot-Mediated Interviews with Children: What do potential users think?’, paper presented at the 50th Annual Convention of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour, 1 April 2014 – 4 April 2014, London, UK.When police officers are conducting interviews with children, some of the disclosures can be quite shocking. This can make it difficult for an officer to maintain their composure without subtly indicating their shock to the child, which can in turn impede the information acquisition process. Using a robotic interviewer could eliminate this problem as the behaviours and expressions of the robot can be consciously controlled. To date research investigating the potential of Robot-Mediated Interviews has focused on establishing whether children will respond to robots in an interview scenario and if so how well. The results of these studies indicate that children will talk to a robot in an interview scenario in a similar way to which they talk to a human interviewer. However, in order to test if this approach would work in a real world setting, it is important to establish what the experts (e.g. specialist child interviewers) would require from the system. To determine the needs of the users we conducted a user panel with a group of potential real world users to gather their views of our current system and find out what they would require for the system to be useful to them. The user group we worked with consisted of specialist child protection police officers based in the UK. The findings from this panel suggest that a Robot-Mediated Interviewing system would need to be more flexible than our current system in order to respond to unpredictable situations and paths of investigation. This paper gives an insight into what real world users would need from a Robot-Mediated Interviewing system