The Pursuit of Proceeds by Plans, Participants and Plaintiffs\u27 Lawyers: Dissonant Solutions to an Alliterative Problem

With emphasis on developments in the Fourth Circuit, this Article first describes the pursuit\u27s origination in plan language and ERISA\u27s statutory provisions; it then explores ERISA preemption and cases in which injured participants invoke state statutory and common law to contradict plan terms. A review of the attorney\u27s role follows, including an inquiry into issues concerning attorney fees. With consideration of policies behind ERISA, the Article concludes that adherence to well-drafted plan terms legitimizes the parties\u27 bargain, avoids development of disparate federal common law, and facilitates the allocation of proceeds

The Pursuit of Proceeds by Plans, Participants and Plaintiffs\u27 Lawyers: Dissonant Solutions to an Alliterative Problem

With emphasis on developments in the Fourth Circuit, this Article first describes the pursuit\u27s origination in plan language and ERISA\u27s statutory provisions; it then explores ERISA preemption and cases in which injured participants invoke state statutory and common law to contradict plan terms. A review of the attorney\u27s role follows, including an inquiry into issues concerning attorney fees. With consideration of policies behind ERISA, the Article concludes that adherence to well-drafted plan terms legitimizes the parties\u27 bargain, avoids development of disparate federal common law, and facilitates the allocation of proceeds

LIGO End-to-End simulation Program

A time-domain simulation program has been developed to provide an accurate description of interferometric gravitational wave detectors. This is being utilized to build a model of LIGO with the aim of aiding in the shakedown and integration of the interferometer subsystems, and ultimately the optimization of detector sensitivity

Group Meritocratic Fairness in Linear Contextual Bandits

We study the linear contextual bandit problem where an agent has to select one candidate from a pool and each candidate belongs to a sensitive group. In this setting, candidates⧠rewards may not be directly comparable between groups, for example when the agent is an employer hiring candidates from different ethnic groups and some groups have a lower reward due to discriminatory bias and/or social injustice. We propose a notion of fairness that states that the agent* policy is fair when it selects a candidate with highest relative rank, which measures how good the reward is when compared to candidates from the same group. This is a very strong notion of fairness, since the relative rank is not directly observed by the agent and depends on the underlying reward model and on the distribution of rewards. Thus we study the problem of learning a policy which approximates a fair policy under the condition that the contexts are independent between groups and the distribution of rewards of each group is absolutely continuous. In particular, we design a greedy policy which at each round constructs a ridge regression estimate from the observed context-reward pairs, and then computes an estimate of the relative rank of each candidate using the empirical cumulative distribution function. We prove that, despite its simplicity and the lack of an initial exploration phase, the greedy policy achieves, up to log factors and with high probability, a fair pseudo-regret of order √dT after T rounds, where d is the dimension of the context vectors. The policy also satisfies demographic parity at each round when averaged over all possible information available before the selection. Finally, we use simulated settings and experiments on the US census data to show that our policy achieves sub-linear fair pseudo-regret also in practice

UAV BLOCK GEOREFERENCING and CONTROL by ON-BOARD GNSS DATA

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are established platforms for photogrammetric surveys in remote areas. They are lightweight, easy to operate and can allow access to remote sites otherwise difficult (or impossible) to be surveyed with other techniques. Very good accuracy can be obtained also with low-cost UAV platforms as far as a reliable ground control is provided. However, placing ground control points (GCP) in these contexts is time consuming and requires accessibility that, in some cases, can be troublesome. RTK-capable UAV platforms are now available at reasonable costs and can overcome most of these problems, requiring just few (or none at all) GCP and still obtaining accurate results. The paper will present a set of experiments performed in cooperation with ARPA VdA (the Environmental Protection Agency of Valle d'Aosta region, Italy) on a test site in the Italian Alps using a Dji Phantom 4 RTK platform. Its goals are: a) compare accuracies obtainable with different calibration procedures (pre- or on-the-job/self-calibration); b) evaluate the accuracy improvements using different number of GCP when the site allows for it; and c) compare alternative positioning modes for camera projection centres determination, (Network RTK, RTK, Post Processing Kinematic and Single Point Positioning)

A Swendsen-Wang update algorithm for the Symanzik improved sigma model

We study a generalization of Swendsen-Wang algorithm suited for Potts models with next-next-neighborhood interactions. Using the embedding technique proposed by Wolff we test it on the Symanzik improved bidimensional non-linear $\sigma$ model. For some long range observables we find a little slowing down exponent ($z \simeq 0.3$) that we interpret as an effect of the partial frustration of the induced spin model.Comment: Self extracting archive fil

Double Penguins and the Contribution of Vector Meson--like States to the Decays B→K∗γ, B→ργB \to K^* \gamma, \, B \to \rho \gamma

Using perturbative QCD, the contribution at the leading twist, leading $\alpha_s$ level, of charm and up quark loops to the decays $B \rightarrow K^* \gamma$ and $B \rightarrow \rho \gamma$ is presented. In the case of $B \rightarrow \rho \gamma$, the relative importance of these contributions depend upon the unknown CKM matrix elements $V_{bu}$ and $V_{td}$. Assuming that the ratio $r = V_{bc}V^*_{cd}/V_{bt}V^*_{td}$ is bounded between $-2.25 \le r \le -.5$ as is suggested by the Particle Data Group, the error in extracting $|V_{td}/V_{ts}|$ by these decays is estimated.Comment: 4 double column pages, revtex, 3 figures attached, 2 figures added indicating less optimism concerning the accuracy at which $|V_{td}/V_{ts}|$ can be extracted: to appear in PR

The b→sγγb\to s\gamma\gamma transition in softly broken supersymmetry

We study the effect of supersymmetric contributions to the effective quark transition $b\to s\gamma\gamma$, including leading order QCD effects. We apply the discussion to the decay $B_s\to\gamma\gamma$. Even though one-particle irreducible contributions could play a role, numerical cancelations make the amplitude for the two-photon emission strongly correlated to the $b\to s\gamma$ amplitude which is sharply constrained by experiment. A quite general statement follows: as long as non-standard physics effects appear only in the matching of the Wilson coefficients of the standard effective operator basis, the deviations from the standard model expectations of the decay rates induced by $b\to s\gamma\gamma$ are bound to follow closely the corresponding deviations on $b\to s\gamma$. Effects of new physics are therefore bound to be small.Comment: Latex2e, RevTex, 22 pages, 8 eps figures, comments and references adde