Regret in Dynamic Decision Problems

The paper proposes a framework to extend regret theory to dynamic contexts. The key idea is to conceive of a dynamic decision problem with regret as an intra-personal game in which the agent forms conjectures about the behaviour of the various counterfactual selves that he could have been. We derive behavioural implications in situations in which payoffs are correlated across either time or contingencies. In the first case, regret might lead to excess conservatism or a tendency to make up for missed opportunities. In the second case, behaviour is shaped by the agent’s self-conception. We relate our results to empirical evidence

Foodi - Automated Ordering System

We worked for BeSprout Technology to create an automated ordering system called Foodi. The Foodi system uses a combination of Java, IBM Watson, and MySQL to gather all the necessary information needed for the conversation, and is dynamic so it can be used in multiple restaurants. Many people still place orders via a phone call, so in an effort to streamline the ordering process, this project was created to enable automatic order placing so employees can focus on other tasks within the restaurant. When a customer calls a restaurant, Foodi will take care of any orders and answer questions the customer may have. The input from the user is sent to Watson, and is filtered through a conversation tree created with IBM’s Bluemix. Bluemix uses the user input to navigate to certain nodes. When a node in the conversation tree is hit, the user input is passed into Java code and parsed appropriately. After the input has been parsed in Java, Watson is told which node in the conversation tree to travel to next and how to respond to the user. This process is repeated until the user is finished ordering and the final order is repeated back to the customer. The restaurant receives the final order and begins preparing the food.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1181/thumbnail.jp

Solving the 1980s' velocity puzzle: a progress report

Money supply ; Velocity of money

Novel Viral Vector Systems for Gene Therapy

Over the last three decades, interest in the field of gene therapy seems to have fluctuated between hot and cold. Encouraging pre-clinical and clinical data has demonstrated the potential of genetic therapies and yet setbacks in clinical trials have cast doubts in some minds over the clinical future of gene therapy [1-3]. In the last two years, a number of studies have demonstrated therapeutic benefits in clinical trials aimed towards specific monogenetic disorders [4-6], and this has brought renewed optimism to the field. [...

Asynchronous and exponential based numerical schemes for porous media flow

A great many physical phenomena are modelled by partial di erential equations (PDEs), and numerical schemes often have to be employed to approximate the solutions to these equations where analytical solutions cannot be found. We develop and analyse here new schemes belonging to two broad classes, schemes that are asynchronous, and exponential integrators. We apply these schemes to test models of advection-di usion-reaction processes that occur in porous media ow. Asynchronous schemes allow di erent parts of the physical domain to evolve at different rates. We develop a class of asynchronous schemes that progress by discrete events, where a single event is the transfer of a unit of mass through the domain, according to the local ux. These schemes are intended to focus computational e ort where it is most needed, as a high local ux will cause the algorithm to automatically take more events in that part of the domain. We develop the simplest version of this scheme, and then develop further schemes by adding modi cations to address potential shortcomings. Numerical experiments indicate a number of interesting relations between the parameters of these schemes. Particularly, the error of the schemes seems to be rst order with respect to a control parameter we call the mass unit. Some analysis is conducted which can pave the way towards robust theoretical understanding of these schemes in the future. Exponential integrators are time stepping schemes which exactly solve the linear part of a semilinear ODE system. This class of schemes requires the approximation of a matrix exponential in every step, and one successful modern method is the Krylov subspace projection method. We investigate, through analysis and experiment, the e ect of breaking down a single timestep into multiple substeps, recycling the Krylov subspace to minimise costs. Our results indicate that this can increase accuracy and e ciency. We show the results of an investigation into developing a class of `semi-exponential' Runge-Kutta type schemes, which use an exponential integrator for the initial stage and then essentially ful l classical order conditions for the remaining stages. Finally, we return to the concept of asynchronicity in a di erent form. With the advent of massively parallel machines, there is increasing interest in developing domain-decomposition type schemes that are robust to random failures or delays in communication between processing elements. This is because in massively parallel machines, communication between processors is likely to be the signi cant bottleneck in execution time. Recently the e ect of such communication delay with a simple domain-decomposed Euler timestepping solver applied to a linear PDE has been investigated with promising results. Here, inspired by exponential integrators, we investigate the natural extension of this, by replacing the Euler timestepping with the evaluation of the appropriate matrix exponential on the sub-domain. We have performed experiments simulating the communication delay and the results are also promising

The Firms Speak: What the World Business Environment Survey Tells Us about Constraints on Private Sector Development

This chapter summarizes the salient results of the World Business Environment Survey (WBES). It shows that important dimensions of the climate for business operation and investment can be measured, analyzed, and compared across countries, and that governance is key to the business environment and investment climate. The survey findings suggest that key policy, institutional, and governance indicators affect the growth of a firm's sales and investment and the extent to which firms operate in the unofficial economy. Further, the paper provides empirical support for some commonly held notions, while challenging others. It suggests a link between taxation, financing, and corruption on the one hand, and growth and investment on the other, and it highlights the costs to economies where the state is captured by a narrow set of private interests.