EC Maritime Transport Policy and Regulation

When designing robust controllers, H-infinity synthesis is a common tool touse. The controllers that result from these algorithms are typically of very high order, which complicates implementation. However, if a constraint on the maximum order of the controller is set, that is lower than the order of the (augmented) system, the problem becomes nonconvex and it is relatively hard to solve. These problems become very complex, even when the order of the system is low. The approach used in this work is based on formulating the constraint onthe maximum order of the controller as a polynomial (or rational) equation.This equality constraint is added to the optimization problem of minimizingan upper bound on the H-innity norm of the closed loop system subjectto linear matrix inequality (LMI) constraints. The problem is then solvedby reformulating it as a partially augmented Lagrangian problem where theequality constraint is put into the objective function, but where the LMIsare kept as constraints. The proposed method is evaluated together with two well-known methodsfrom the literature. The results indicate that the proposed method hascomparable performance in most cases, especially if the synthesized con-troller has many parameters, which is the case if the system to be controlledhas many input and output signals

Sometimes the Silence Can Be like the Thunder: Access to Pharmaceutical Data at the FDA

Those committed to the free exchange of scientific information have long complained about various restrictions on access to the FDA\u27s pharmaceutical data and the resultant restrictions on open discourse. A review of open-government procedures and litigation at the FDA demonstrates that the need for transparency at the agency extend well beyond the reach of any clinical trial registry

Unique Bernoulli g-measures

We improve and subsume the conditions of Johansson and \"Oberg [18] and Berbee [2] for uniqueness of a g-measure, i.e., a stationary distribution for chains with complete connections. In addition, we prove that these unique g-measures have Bernoulli natural extensions. In particular, we obtain a unique g-measure that has the Bernoulli property for the full shift on finitely many states under any one of the following additional assumptions. (1) \sum_{n=1}^\infty (\var_n \log g)^20$, \sum_{n=1}^\infty e^{-(\{1}{2}+\epsilon) (\var_1 \log g+...+\var_n \log g)}=\infty,$$(3)$$\var_n \log g=\ordo{\{1}{\sqrt{n}}}, \quad n\to \infty.$$ That the measure is Bernoulli in the case of (1) is new. In (2) we have an improved version of Berbee's condition (concerning uniqueness and Bernoullicity) [2], allowing the variations of log g to be essentially twice as large. Finally, (3) is an example that our main result is new both for uniqueness and for the Bernoulli property. We also conclude that we have convergence in the Wasserstein metric of the iterates of the adjoint transfer operator to the g-measure

Countable state shifts and uniqueness of g-measures

In this paper we present a new approach to studying g-measures which is based upon local absolute continuity. We extend the result in [11] that square summability of variations of g-functions ensures uniqueness of g-measures. The first extension is to the case of countably many symbols. The second extension is to some cases where $g \geq 0$, relaxing the earlier requirement in [11] that inf g>0.Comment: 11 page

Square summability of variations and convergence of the transfer operator

In this paper we study the one-sided shift operator on a state space defined by a finite alphabet. Using a scheme developed by Walters [13], we prove that the sequence of iterates of the transfer operator converges under square summability of variations of the g-function, a condition which gave uniqueness of a g-measure in [7]. We also prove uniqueness of so-called G-measures, introduced by Brown and Dooley [2], under square summability of variations.Comment: 8 page

A Toll for lupus

Toll-like receptor (TLR)-9 recognizes CpG motifs in microbial DNA. TLR9 signalling stimulates innate antimicrobial immunity and modulates adaptive immune responses including autoimmunity against chromatin, e.g., in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). This review summarizes the available data for a role of TLR9 signalling in lupus and discusses the following questions that arise from these observations: 1) Is CpG-DNA/TLR9 interaction involved in infection-induced disease activity of lupus? 2) What are the risks of CpG motifs in vaccine adjuvants for lupus patients? 3) Is TLR9 signalling involved in the pathogenesis of lupus by recognizing self DNA

Unemployment and Inflation Regimes

In this paper we study 2-state Markov switching VAR models of monthly unemployment and inflation for three countries: Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States. We find that such models seem to provide a better description of the data than single regime VARs and need fewer lags to account for serial correlation. To interpret the regimes the empirical results are compared with the predictions from a version of Rogoff's (1985) model of monetary policy. We find that both the theoretical and the empirical results suggest that an increase in central bank "conservativeness" can be associated with either a higher or a lower variance in unemployment. In the U.S. case we find that the variance of unemployment is lower in the low inflation regime than in the high inflation regime, while the Swedish case suggests that unemployment variability is higher in the low inflation regime. According to the theoretical model this may be explained by a higher labor supply elasticity in the U.S. than in Sweden.

Efficient Compilation of a Class of Variational Forms

We investigate the compilation of general multilinear variational forms over affines simplices and prove a representation theorem for the representation of the element tensor (element stiffness matrix) as the contraction of a constant reference tensor and a geometry tensor that accounts for geometry and variable coefficients. Based on this representation theorem, we design an algorithm for efficient pretabulation of the reference tensor. The new algorithm has been implemented in the FEniCS Form Compiler (FFC) and improves on a previous loop-based implementation by several orders of magnitude, thus shortening compile-times and development cycles for users of FFC.Comment: ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software 33(3), 20 pages (2007