Domino: exploring mobile collaborative software adaptation

Social Proximity Applications (SPAs) are a promising new area for ubicomp software that exploits the everyday changes in the proximity of mobile users. While a number of applications facilitate simple file sharing between co–present users, this paper explores opportunities for recommending and sharing software between users. We describe an architecture that allows the recommendation of new system components from systems with similar histories of use. Software components and usage histories are exchanged between mobile users who are in proximity with each other. We apply this architecture in a mobile strategy game in which players adapt and upgrade their game using components from other players, progressing through the game through sharing tools and history. More broadly, we discuss the general application of this technique as well as the security and privacy challenges to such an approach

A Comparison of Blocking Methods for Record Linkage

Record linkage seeks to merge databases and to remove duplicates when unique identifiers are not available. Most approaches use blocking techniques to reduce the computational complexity associated with record linkage. We review traditional blocking techniques, which typically partition the records according to a set of field attributes, and consider two variants of a method known as locality sensitive hashing, sometimes referred to as "private blocking." We compare these approaches in terms of their recall, reduction ratio, and computational complexity. We evaluate these methods using different synthetic datafiles and conclude with a discussion of privacy-related issues.Comment: 22 pages, 2 tables, 7 figure

Force Chains, Microelasticity and Macroelasticity

It has been claimed that quasistatic granular materials, as well as nanoscale materials, exhibit departures from elasticity even at small loadings. It is demonstrated, using 2D and 3D models with interparticle harmonic interactions, that such departures are expected at small scales [below O(100) particle diameters], at which continuum elasticity is invalid, and vanish at large scales. The models exhibit force chains on small scales, and force and stress distributions which agree with experimental findings. Effects of anisotropy, disorder and boundary conditions are discussed as well.Comment: 4 pages, 11 figures, RevTeX 4, revised and resubmitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Shear-induced anisotropic decay of correlations in hard-sphere colloidal glasses

Spatial correlations of microscopic fluctuations are investigated via real-space experiments and computer simulations of colloidal glasses under steady shear. It is shown that while the distribution of one-particle fluctuations is always isotropic regardless of the relative importance of shear as compared to thermal fluctuations, their spatial correlations show a marked sensitivity to the competition between shear-induced and thermally activated relaxation. Correlations are isotropic in the thermally dominated regime, but develop strong anisotropy as shear dominates the dynamics of microscopic fluctuations. We discuss the relevance of this observation for a better understanding of flow heterogeneity in sheared amorphous solids.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

The Dynamics of Viral Marketing

We present an analysis of a person-to-person recommendation network, consisting of 4 million people who made 16 million recommendations on half a million products. We observe the propagation of recommendations and the cascade sizes, which we explain by a simple stochastic model. We analyze how user behavior varies within user communities defined by a recommendation network. Product purchases follow a 'long tail' where a significant share of purchases belongs to rarely sold items. We establish how the recommendation network grows over time and how effective it is from the viewpoint of the sender and receiver of the recommendations. While on average recommendations are not very effective at inducing purchases and do not spread very far, we present a model that successfully identifies communities, product and pricing categories for which viral marketing seems to be very effective

Stress response inside perturbed particle assemblies

The effect of structural disorder on the stress response inside three dimensional particle assemblies is studied using computer simulations of frictionless sphere packings. Upon applying a localised, perturbative force within the packings, the resulting {\it Green's} function response is mapped inside the different assemblies, thus providing an explicit view as to how the imposed perturbation is transmitted through the packing. In weakly disordered arrays, the resulting transmission of forces is of the double-peak variety, but with peak widths scaling linearly with distance from the source of the perturbation. This behaviour is consistent with an anisotropic elasticity response profile. Increasing the disorder distorts the response function until a single-peak response is obtained for fully disordered packings consistent with an isotropic description.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure captions To appear in Granular Matte

Sensitivity of the stress response function to packing preparation

A granular assembly composed of a collection of identical grains may pack under different microscopic configurations with microscopic features that are sensitive to the preparation history. A given configuration may also change in response to external actions such as compression, shearing etc. We show using a mechanical response function method developed experimentally and numerically, that the macroscopic stress profiles are strongly dependent on these preparation procedures. These results were obtained for both two and three dimensions. The method reveals that, under a given preparation history, the macroscopic symmetries of the granular material is affected and in most cases significant departures from isotropy should be observed. This suggests a new path toward a non-intrusive test of granular material constitutive properties.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, some numerical data corrected, to appear in J. Phys. Cond. Mat. special issue on Granular Materials (M. Nicodemi Editor

Dynamical Decoupling of Open Quantum Systems

We propose a novel dynamical method for beating decoherence and dissipation in open quantum systems. We demonstrate the possibility of filtering out the effects of unwanted (not necessarily known) system-environment interactions and show that the noise-suppression procedure can be combined with the capability of retaining control over the effective dynamical evolution of the open quantum system. Implications for quantum information processing are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, no figures; Plain ReVTeX. Final version to appear in Physical Review Letter