Videoconferencing via satellite. Opening Congress to the people: Technical report

The feasibility of using satellite videoconferencing as a mechanism for informed dialogue between Congressmen and constituents to strengthen the legislative process was evaluated. Satellite videoconferencing was defined as a two-way interactive television with the TV signals transmitted by satellite. With videoconferencing, one or more Congressmen in Washington, D. C. can see, hear and talk with groups of citizens at distant locations around the country. Simultaneously, the citizens can see, hear and talk with the Congressmen

SuperNeurons: Dynamic GPU Memory Management for Training Deep Neural Networks

Going deeper and wider in neural architectures improves the accuracy, while the limited GPU DRAM places an undesired restriction on the network design domain. Deep Learning (DL) practitioners either need change to less desired network architectures, or nontrivially dissect a network across multiGPUs. These distract DL practitioners from concentrating on their original machine learning tasks. We present SuperNeurons: a dynamic GPU memory scheduling runtime to enable the network training far beyond the GPU DRAM capacity. SuperNeurons features 3 memory optimizations, \textit{Liveness Analysis}, \textit{Unified Tensor Pool}, and \textit{Cost-Aware Recomputation}, all together they effectively reduce the network-wide peak memory usage down to the maximal memory usage among layers. We also address the performance issues in those memory saving techniques. Given the limited GPU DRAM, SuperNeurons not only provisions the necessary memory for the training, but also dynamically allocates the memory for convolution workspaces to achieve the high performance. Evaluations against Caffe, Torch, MXNet and TensorFlow have demonstrated that SuperNeurons trains at least 3.2432 deeper network than current ones with the leading performance. Particularly, SuperNeurons can train ResNet2500 that has $10^4$ basic network layers on a 12GB K40c.Comment: PPoPP '2018: 23nd ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programmin

Multilingual gendered identities: female undergraduate students in London talk about heritage languages

In this paper I explore how a group of female university students, mostly British Asian and in their late teens and early twenties, perform femininities in talk about heritage languages. I argue that analysis of this talk reveals ways in which the participants enact ‘culturally intelligible’ gendered subject positions. This frequently involves negotiating the norms of ‘heteronormativity’, constituting femininity in terms of marriage, motherhood and maintenance of heritage culture and language, and ‘girl power’, constituting femininity in terms of youth, sassiness, glamour and individualism. For these young women, I ask whether higher education can become a site in which they have the opportunities to explore these identifications and examine other ways of imagining the self and what their stories suggest about ‘doing being’ a young British Asian woman in London

Computations in non-commutative Iwasawa theory

We study special values of L-functions of elliptic curves over Q twisted by Artin representations that factor through a false Tate curve extension $Q(\mu_p^\infty,\sqrt[p^\infty]{m})/Q$. In this setting, we explain how to compute L-functions and the corresponding Iwasawa-theoretic invariants of non-abelian twists of elliptic curves. Our results provide both theoretical and computational evidence for the main conjecture of non-commutative Iwasawa theory.Comment: 60 pages; with appendix by John Coates and Ramdorai Sujath

Embodiment and the technologies of induction of labour

Objective To critically engage with the body project of induction of labour. Design A nested, qualitative study that formed part of a feasibility Random Controlled Trial investigating different methods of outpatient induction of labour. The data reported in this article were gathered via interview with women and midwives involved in the trial. All the participants who took part in the trial presented as cisgender women. Findings Analysis of 27 interview transcripts suggested that the expansion in choice of when, how and where to start labour can change the way decisions about labour onset is understood. The space needed for a new body project is emerging where distinctions between medicalised labour and spontaneous labour are less clear. Conclusion The embodiment of the new technologies of induction for those involved in this study was both a facet of increased freedom and autonomy and a gendered discourse where the normative function of routine intervention appeared more complete

Modelling silvicultural alternatives for conifer regeneration in boreal mixedwood stands (aspen/white spruce/balsam fir)

We model and compare the biological and financial constraints of four prescriptions that serve as alternatives to conventional clearcutting followed by planting in eastern and western boreal mixedwood stands. These alternative prescriptions for full or partial conifer stocking are (1) reliance on advance regeneration with or without augmentation by fill-planting; (2) understory scarification during a mast year; (3) direct seeding either aerially or with a scarifier-seeder; and (4) underplanting. Our main conclusions concerning the biological constraints are that (1) advance regeneration, mainly of balsam fir in the east and white spruce in the west, requires >26 000 and > 4000 trees/ha (because of different distributions), respectively, to achieve full conifer stocking; (2) reliance on a mast year requires at least 6 m2/ha of mature conifer basal area, but much less if some advance regeneration is present or only moderate stocking is desired; (3) aerial seeding with 35% scarification requires about a half-million seeds/ha to achieve full conifer stocking, while a scarifier-seeder would require only a third of this application rate; and (4) underplanting is constrained to aspen stands with >25% incident light at planting height. In all cases, alternative prescriptions become more feasible if only moderate or minimal stocking is the silvicultural objective. A costing exercise for the four prescriptions in comparison with a clearcut followed by planting shows that reliance on advance regeneration or understory planting are the cheapest alternatives to achieve full or partial conifer stocking. With the exception of full conifer stocking in situations where there is little advance regeneration (and where herbicides can be used), conventional plantations are never the cheapest approach. In such cases, fill planting and use of a scarifier-seeder become viable options. Aerial seeding and reliance on a mast year are the most expensive of the alternatives. We conclude, tentatively, that there is enough conifer basal area in most of the eastern boreal mixedwood of Canada to allow for the use of either or both a mast year and advance regeneration to achieve full or partial conifer stocking. By contrast, in the west conifer basal area will seldom be sufficient for natural seeding, and the density of advance regeneration is likewise often too low. Finally, because of light constraints, understory planting appears to have a much wider applicability in the west than in the east

Proposal of an FTIR Methodology to Monitor Oxidation Level in Used Engine Oils: Effects of Thermal Degradation and Fuel Dilution

This article describes a procedure, based on ASTM standards D7214 and E2412, that has been defined to improve quantification of oil oxidation in used engine oils. Taking into account typical problems that can be found in this type of sample, including thermal oxidation and fuel dilution, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra were analyzed also considering the effect of the oil formulation. Two zones were considered inside the typical wave number range for quantification of oxidation, where those problems can be detected and assessed more easily: zone A between 1725 and 1650 cm-1, where the main oxidation products, such as aldehydes, carboxylic acids, and ketones, occur due to thermal degradation of the oil; and zone B between 1770 and 1725 cm-1, where esters due to potential biodiesel dilution problems are detected. Copyright © Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers.The authors are grateful for Spanish Grant TRA2008-06508 (GLAUTO) from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion-Direccion General de Investigacion for supporting this work.Macian Martinez, V.; Tormos, B.; Gomez Estrada, YA.; Salavert Fernández, JM. (2012). Proposal of an FTIR Methodology to Monitor Oxidation Level in Used Engine Oils: Effects of Thermal Degradation and Fuel Dilution. Tribology Transactions. 55(6):872-882. https://doi.org/10.1080/10402004.2012.721921S87288255

Cassini observations of ion and electron beams at Saturn and their relationship to infrared auroral arcs

We present Cassini Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer observations of infrared auroral emissions from the noon sector of Saturn's ionosphere revealing multiple intense auroral arcs separated by dark regions poleward of the main oval. The arcs are interpreted as the ionospheric signatures of bursts of reconnection occurring at the dayside magnetopause. The auroral arcs were associated with upward field-aligned currents, the magnetic signatures of which were detected by Cassini at high planetary latitudes. Magnetic field and particle observations in the adjacent downward current regions showed upward bursts of 100–360 keV light ions in addition to energetic (hundreds of keV) electrons, which may have been scattered from upward accelerated beams carrying the downward currents. Broadband, upward propagating whistler waves were detected simultaneously with the ion beams. The acceleration of the light ions from low altitudes is attributed to wave-particle interactions in the downward current regions. Energetic (600 keV) oxygen ions were also detected, suggesting the presence of ambient oxygen at altitudes within the acceleration region. These simultaneous in situ and remote observations reveal the highly energetic magnetospheric dynamics driving some of Saturn's unusual auroral features. This is the first in situ identification of transient reconnection events at regions magnetically conjugate to Saturn's magnetopause

Standing in a Garden of Forking Paths

According to the Path Principle, it is permissible to expand your set of beliefs iff (and because) the evidence you possess provides adequate support for such beliefs. If there is no path from here to there, you cannot add a belief to your belief set. If some thinker with the same type of evidential support has a path that they can take, so do you. The paths exist because of the evidence you possess and the support it provides. Evidential support grounds propositional justification. The principle is mistaken. There are permissible steps you may take that others may not even if you have the very same evidence. There are permissible steps that you cannot take that others can even if your beliefs receive the same type of evidential support. Because we have to assume almost nothing about the nature of evidential support to establish these results, we should reject evidentialism