The stochastic air traffic flow management rerouting problem

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 42-43).We formulate a model for planning the rerouting of aircraft to alleviate en-route congestion, with system capacity being modeled stochastically. To overcome problems with tractability, we apply a Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition and present an efficient method for solving it. The decomposed formulation is shown to be tractable for real-world problem, and it generates up to a ten percent reduction in cost when compared to an otherwise equivalent deterministic model. We show that even when the decomposed formulation fails to terminate within a reasonable time, a near-optimal solution can still be generated.by Joshua B. Marron.M.Eng

Motility of Colonial Choanoflagellates and the Statistics of Aggregate Random Walkers.

We illuminate the nature of the three-dimensional random walks of microorganisms composed of individual organisms adhered together. Such aggregate random walkers are typified by choanoflagellates, eukaryotes that are the closest living relatives of animals. In the colony-forming species Salpingoeca rosetta we show that the beating of each flagellum is stochastic and uncorrelated with others, and the vectorial sum of the flagellar propulsion manifests as stochastic helical swimming. A quantitative theory for these results is presented and species variability discussed.Work supported by the EPSRC and St. Johns College (JBK), ERC Advanced Investigator Grant 247333 and a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from American Physical Society via http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.03810

On Hirschman and log-Sobolev inequalities in mu-deformed Segal-Bargmann analysis

We consider a deformation of Segal-Bargmann space and its transform. We study L^p properties of this transform and obtain entropy-entropy inequalities (Hirschman) and entropy-energy inequalities (log-Sobolev) that generalize the corresponding known results in the undeformed theory.Comment: 42 pages, 3 figure

On the kinetic systems for simple reacting spheres : modeling and linearized equations

Series: Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics, Vol. 75In this work we present some results on the kinetic theory of chemically reacting gases, concerning the model of simple reacting spheres (SRS) for a gaseous mixture undergoing a chemical reaction of type A1 +A2 A3 +A4. Starting from the approach developed in paper [11], we provide properties of the SRS system needed in the mathematical and physical analysis of the model. Our main result in this proceedings provides basic properties of the SRS system linearized around the equilibrium, including the explicit representations of the kernels of the linearized SRS operators.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), PEst-C/MAT/UI0013/2011, SFRH/BD/28795/200

Smoke gets in your eyes:what is sociological about cigarettes?

Contemporary public health approaches increasingly draw attention to the unequal social distribution of cigarette smoking. In contrast, critical accounts emphasize the importance of smokers’ situated agency, the relevance of embodiment and how public health measures against smoking potentially play upon and exacerbate social divisions and inequality. Nevertheless, if the social context of cigarettes is worthy of such attention, and sociology lays a distinct claim to understanding the social, we need to articulate a distinct, positive and systematic claim for smoking as an object of sociological enquiry. This article attempts to address this by situating smoking across three main dimensions of sociological thinking: history and social change; individual agency and experience; and social structures and power. It locates the emergence and development of cigarettes in everyday life within the project of modernity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It goes on to assess the habituated, temporal and experiential aspects of individual smoking practices in everyday lifeworlds. Finally, it argues that smoking, while distributed in important ways by social class, also works relationally to render and inscribe it

A framework for orthology assignment from gene rearrangement data

Abstract. Gene rearrangements have successfully been used in phylogenetic reconstruction and comparative genomics, but usually under the assumption that all genomes have the same gene content and that no gene is duplicated. While these assumptions allow one to work with organellar genomes, they are too restrictive when comparing nuclear genomes. The main challenge is how to deal with gene families, specifically, how to identify orthologs. While searching for orthologies is a common task in computational biology, it is usually done using sequence data. We approach that problem using gene rearrangement data, provide an optimization framework in which to phrase the problem, and present some preliminary theoretical results.