A duality principle for selection games

A dinner table seats k guests and holds n discrete morsels of food. Guests select morsels in turn until all are consumed. Each guest has a ranking of the morsels according to how much he would enjoy eating them; these rankings are commonly known. A gallant knight always prefers one food division over another if it provides strictly more enjoyable collections of food to one or more other players (without giving a less enjoyable collection to any other player) even if it makes his own collection less enjoyable. A boorish lout always selects the morsel that gives him the most enjoyment on the current turn, regardless of future consumption by himself and others. We show the way the food is divided when all guests are gallant knights is the same as when all guests are boorish louts but turn order is reversed. This implies and generalizes a classical result of Kohler and Chandrasekaran (1971) about two players strategically maximizing their own enjoyments. We also treat the case that the table contains a mixture of boorish louts and gallant knights. Our main result can also be formulated in terms of games in which selections are made by groups. In this formulation, the surprising fact is that a group can always find a selection that is simultaneously optimal for each member of the group.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

"Longing in vain to climb into the ducal bed": gossip and rumor in Orderic Vitalis' Ecclesiastical History

For twelfth century Christians talk was an important tool and potential snare. The monastic chronicler Orderic Vitalis viewed talk as a potentially powerful tool and the EH reflected his belief that a sensible person, particularly a person whose duties required the maintenance of a good reputation, learned to effectively manage the information available. Chapter 1 surveyed important work in the talk studies field that analyzes gossip and rumor, Chapter 2 discussed Orderic Vitalis' background, the historical approach of his sources and his own historical approach, Chapter 3 applied theoretical work on talk to the EH, Chapter 4 analyzed the performance of information management, and Chapter 5 addressed possible gender issues

Using a Gridded Global Dataset to Characterize Regional Hydroclimate in Central Chile

Central Chile is facing dramatic projections of climate change, with a consensus for declining precipitation, negatively affecting hydropower generation and irrigated agriculture. Rising from sea level to 6000 m within a distance of 200 km, precipitation characterization is difficult because of a lack of long-term observations, especially at higher elevations. For understanding current mean and extreme conditions and recent hydroclimatological change, as well as to provide a baseline for downscaling climate model projections, a temporally and spatially complete dataset of daily meteorology is essential. The authors use a gridded global daily meteorological dataset at 0.25° resolution for the period 1948–2008, adjusted by monthly precipitation observations interpolated to the same grid using a cokriging method with elevation as a covariate. For validation, daily statistics of the adjusted gridded precipitation are compared to station observations. For further validation, a hydrology model is driven with the gridded 0.25° meteorology and streamflow statistics are compared with observed flow. The high elevation precipitation is validated by comparing the simulated snow extent to Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images. Results show that the daily meteorology with the adjusted precipitation can accurately capture the statistical properties of extreme events as well as the sequence of wet and dry events, with hydrological model results displaying reasonable agreement with observed streamflow and snow extent. This demonstrates the successful use of a global gridded data product in a relatively data-sparse region to capture hydroclimatological characteristics and extremes

Popular music, psychogeography, place identity and tourism: The case of Sheffield

Tourism and cultural agencies in some English provincial cities are promoting their popular music ‘heritage’ and, in some cases, contemporary musicians through the packaging of trails, sites, ‘iconic’ venues and festivals. This article focuses on Sheffield, a ‘post-industrial’ northern English city which is drawing on its associations with musicians past and present in seeking to attract tourists. This article is based on interviews with, among others, recording artists, promoters, producers and venue managers, along with reflective observational and documentary data. Theoretical remarks are made on the representations of popular musicians through cultural tourism strategies, programmes and products and also on the ways in which musicians convey a ‘psychogeographical’ sense of place in the ‘soundscape’ of the city

Nesting behaviour influences species-specific gas exchange across avian eggshells

Carefully controlled gas exchange across the eggshell is essential for the development of the avian embryo. Water vapour conductance (GH2O) across the shell, typically measured as mass loss during incubation, has been demonstrated to optimally ensure the healthy development of the embryo while avoiding desiccation. Accordingly, eggs exposed to sub-optimal gas exchange have reduced hatching success. We tested the association between eggshell GH2O and putative life-history correlates of adult birds, ecological nest parameters and physical characteristics of the egg itself to investigate how variation in GH2O has evolved to maintain optimal water loss across a diverse set of nest environments. We measured gas exchange through eggshell fragments in 151 British breeding bird species and fitted phylogenetically controlled, general linear models to test the relationship between GH2O and potential predictor parameters of each species. Of our 17 life-history traits, only two were retained in the final model: wet-incubating parent and nest type. Eggs of species where the parent habitually returned to the nest with wet plumage had significantly higher GH2O than those of parents that returned to the nest with dry plumage. Eggs of species nesting in ground burrows, cliffs and arboreal cups had significantly higher GH2O than those of species nesting on the ground in open nests or cups, in tree cavities and in shallow arboreal nests. Phylogenetic signal (measured as Pagel's λ) was intermediate in magnitude, suggesting that differences observed in the GH2O are dependent upon a combination of shared ancestry and species-specific life history and ecological traits. Although these data are correlational by nature, they are consistent with the hypothesis that parents constrained to return to the nest with wet plumage will increase the humidity of the nest environment, and the eggs of these species have evolved a higher GH2O to overcome this constraint and still achieve optimal water loss during incubation. We also suggest that eggs laid in cup nests and burrows may require a higher GH2O to overcome the increased humidity as a result from the confined nest microclimate lacking air movements through the nest. Taken together, these comparative data imply that species-specific levels of gas exchange across avian eggshells are variable and evolve in response to ecological and physical variation resulting from parental and nesting behaviours

Tracking the Position of an Ultrasonic Transmitter in a Room

Determination of the position of an acoustic transmitter in a room in three dimensions has multiple applications. We are designing a system that will track the position of a person in a room in two or three dimensions using techniques that could be expandable to multiple rooms. The transmitter emits an acoustic pulse that is detected by four or five receivers in the room. The receiver array sends the analog signal as it is received with noise to a signal conditioner. The signal conditioner consists of an active band-pass filter, an envelope detector and a comparator and its output is a digital signal corresponding to a time-delayed version of the original pulse. The rising edge of each receiver\u27s digital signal will trigger a microcontroller to capture the time of arrival of that signal. One of two location algorithms will be used. Either the initial start time of the emitted pulse and the Time of Arrival (TOA) of each rising edge pulse will yield the Time of Flight (TOF) for each received signal of the TOA of each signal will be used to calculate a series of Time Differences of Arrival (TDOA) of the signals. A matrix-based location algorithm will use wither the TOF or TDOA information to determine the two or three dimensional position of the ultrasonic transmitter in the room