998 research outputs found
A classification of mitigation strategies for natural hazards: implications for the understanding of interactions between mitigation strategies
The unexpectedly poor performances of complex mitigation systems in recent natural disasters demonstrate the need to reexamine mitigation system functionality, especially those combining multiple mitigation strategies. A systematic classification of mitigation strategies is presented as a basis for understanding how different types of strategy within an overall mitigation system can interfere destructively, to reduce the effectiveness of the system as a whole. We divide mitigation strategies into three classes according to the timing of the actions that they prescribe. Permanent mitigation strategies prescribe actions such as construction of tsunami barriers or land-use restrictions: they are frequently both costly and âbrittleâ in that the actions work up to a design limit of hazard intensity or magnitude and then fail. Responsive mitigation strategies prescribe actions after a hazard source event has occurred, such as evacuations, that rely on capacities to detect and quantify hazard events and to transmit warnings fast enough to enable at risk populations to decide and act effectively. Anticipatory mitigation strategies prescribe use of the interpretation of precursors to hazard source events as a basis for precautionary actions, but challenges arise from uncertainties in hazard behaviour. The NE Japan tsunami mitigation system and its performance in the 2011 Tohoku disaster provide examples of interactions between mitigation strategies. We propose that the classification presented here would enable consideration of how the addition of a new strategy to a mitigation system would affect the performance of existing strategies within that system, and furthermore aid the design of integrated mitigation systems
Engaging Hashima: Memory Work, Site-Based Affects, and the Possibilities of Interruption
How is memory embodied, narrated, interrupted, and reworked? Here, we take a postphenomenological approach to memory work that is attentive to how site-based affects prompt and ossify, but also transmogrify, memory of place. With reference to an intensely traumatized, but also domesticated and entropied, environmentâthe island of Hashima, off the coast from Nagasaki City in Japanâwe demonstrate the relevance and explanatory reach of culturally specific accounts of memory, time, and place; how an attentiveness to cultural context in the making of meaning helps mark out the epistemological violences that accrue around sites such as Hashima as objects of analysis in and of themselves; and the affective capacities of the materialities and forces that compose such sites, which can present a welter of surfaces and interiorities that are sensuously âfeltâ as memory
Approximate well-supported Nash equilibria in symmetric bimatrix games
The -well-supported Nash equilibrium is a strong notion of
approximation of a Nash equilibrium, where no player has an incentive greater
than to deviate from any of the pure strategies that she uses in
her mixed strategy. The smallest constant currently known for
which there is a polynomial-time algorithm that computes an
-well-supported Nash equilibrium in bimatrix games is slightly
below . In this paper we study this problem for symmetric bimatrix games
and we provide a polynomial-time algorithm that gives a
-well-supported Nash equilibrium, for an arbitrarily small
positive constant
New Deterministic Algorithms for Solving Parity Games
We study parity games in which one of the two players controls only a small
number of nodes and the other player controls the other nodes of the
game. Our main result is a fixed-parameter algorithm that solves bipartite
parity games in time , and general parity games in
time , where is the number of distinct
priorities and is the number of edges. For all games with this
improves the previously fastest algorithm by Jurdzi{\'n}ski, Paterson, and
Zwick (SICOMP 2008). We also obtain novel kernelization results and an improved
deterministic algorithm for graphs with small average degree
Approximate Well-supported Nash Equilibria below Two-thirds
In an epsilon-Nash equilibrium, a player can gain at most epsilon by changing
his behaviour. Recent work has addressed the question of how best to compute
epsilon-Nash equilibria, and for what values of epsilon a polynomial-time
algorithm exists. An epsilon-well-supported Nash equilibrium (epsilon-WSNE) has
the additional requirement that any strategy that is used with non-zero
probability by a player must have payoff at most epsilon less than the best
response. A recent algorithm of Kontogiannis and Spirakis shows how to compute
a 2/3-WSNE in polynomial time, for bimatrix games. Here we introduce a new
technique that leads to an improvement to the worst-case approximation
guarantee
Learning Convex Partitions and Computing Game-theoretic Equilibria from Best Response Queries
Suppose that an -simplex is partitioned into convex regions having
disjoint interiors and distinct labels, and we may learn the label of any point
by querying it. The learning objective is to know, for any point in the
simplex, a label that occurs within some distance from that point.
We present two algorithms for this task: Constant-Dimension Generalised Binary
Search (CD-GBS), which for constant uses queries, and Constant-Region Generalised Binary
Search (CR-GBS), which uses CD-GBS as a subroutine and for constant uses
queries.
We show via Kakutani's fixed-point theorem that these algorithms provide
bounds on the best-response query complexity of computing approximate
well-supported equilibria of bimatrix games in which one of the players has a
constant number of pure strategies. We also partially extend our results to
games with multiple players, establishing further query complexity bounds for
computing approximate well-supported equilibria in this setting.Comment: 38 pages, 7 figures, second version strengthens lower bound in
Theorem 6, adds footnotes with additional comments and fixes typo
The affinity purification and characterization of ATP synthase complexes from mitochondria.
The mitochondrial Fâ-ATPase inhibitor protein, IFâ, inhibits the hydrolytic, but not the synthetic activity of the F-ATP synthase, and requires the hydrolysis of ATP to form the inhibited complex. In this complex, the α-helical inhibitory region of the bound IFâ occupies a deep cleft in one of the three catalytic interfaces of the enzyme. Its N-terminal region penetrates into the central aqueous cavity of the enzyme and interacts with the Îł-subunit in the enzyme's rotor. The intricacy of forming this complex and the binding mode of the inhibitor endow IFâ with high specificity. This property has been exploited in the development of a highly selective affinity procedure for purifying the intact F-ATP synthase complex from mitochondria in a single chromatographic step by using inhibitor proteins with a C-terminal affinity tag. The inhibited complex was recovered with residues 1-60 of bovine IFâ with a C-terminal green fluorescent protein followed by a His-tag, and the active enzyme with the same inhibitor with a C-terminal glutathione-S-transferase domain. The wide applicability of the procedure has been demonstrated by purifying the enzyme complex from bovine, ovine, porcine and yeast mitochondria. The subunit compositions of these complexes have been characterized. The catalytic properties of the bovine enzyme have been studied in detail. Its hydrolytic activity is sensitive to inhibition by oligomycin, and the enzyme is capable of synthesizing ATP in vesicles in which the proton-motive force is generated from light by bacteriorhodopsin. The coupled enzyme has been compared by limited trypsinolysis with uncoupled enzyme prepared by affinity chromatography. In the uncoupled enzyme, subunits of the enzyme's stator are degraded more rapidly than in the coupled enzyme, indicating that uncoupling involves significant structural changes in the stator region
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