The Taiwan Consumer Protection Law: Attempt to Protect Consumers Proves Ineffective

Consumer protection is a relatively new social issue in Taiwan. With the passage of the Taiwan Consumer Protection Law ( CPL ), the government of Taiwan has taken a tremendous step towards the protection of its consumers\u27 rights. However, industry leaders as well as consumers have voiced concerns over many of the provisions and terms in the CPL. Consumers have not taken advantage of the CPL as a means of legal recourse for product-related injuries, and industry groups have asked the government to reexamine particular aspects of the CPL. Such reaction has essentially rendered the CPL an unproductive piece of legislation

Rules and Mutation - A Theory of How Efficiency and Rawlsian Egalitarianism/Symmetry May Emerge

For any game, we provide a justification for why in the long-run outcomes are mostly both efficient and egalitarian/symmetric in the Rawlsian sense. We do this by constructing an adaptive dynamic framework with four features. First, agents select rules to implement actions. Second, rule selection satisfies some minimal payoff monotonicity: rules that do best are chosen with a positive probability. Third, in choosing rules agents are subject to "small" random mutation. Fourth mutation is payoff-dependent with agents mutating more when they do badly than when they do well. Our main result is: if the set of feasible rules R is sufficiently rich then outcomes that survive maximise the payoff of the player that does least well. We also show that if R is restricted to those that do best-reply on uniform histories then outcomes that survive are efficient and egalitarian amongst the set of minimum weak CURB sets. Finally, we consider long-run outcomes assuming mutation is payoff-independent; in contrast to our strong selection result above, in this case we show indeterminacy: any outcome can survive if R is sufficiently rich

Reduced order models for control of fluids using the Eigensystem Realization Algorithm

In feedback flow control, one of the challenges is to develop mathematical models that describe the fluid physics relevant to the task at hand, while neglecting irrelevant details of the flow in order to remain computationally tractable. A number of techniques are presently used to develop such reduced-order models, such as proper orthogonal decomposition (POD), and approximate snapshot-based balanced truncation, also known as balanced POD. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses: for instance, POD models can behave unpredictably and perform poorly, but they can be computed directly from experimental data; approximate balanced truncation often produces vastly superior models to POD, but requires data from adjoint simulations, and thus cannot be applied to experimental data. In this paper, we show that using the Eigensystem Realization Algorithm (ERA) \citep{JuPa-85}, one can theoretically obtain exactly the same reduced order models as by balanced POD. Moreover, the models can be obtained directly from experimental data, without the use of adjoint information. The algorithm can also substantially improve computational efficiency when forming reduced-order models from simulation data. If adjoint information is available, then balanced POD has some advantages over ERA: for instance, it produces modes that are useful for multiple purposes, and the method has been generalized to unstable systems. We also present a modified ERA procedure that produces modes without adjoint information, but for this procedure, the resulting models are not balanced, and do not perform as well in examples. We present a detailed comparison of the methods, and illustrate them on an example of the flow past an inclined flat plate at a low Reynolds number.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure

Self-consistent approach for the quantum confined Stark effect in shallow quantum wells

A computationally efficient, self-consistent complex scaling approach to calculating characteristics of excitons in an external electric field in quantum wells is introduced. The method allows one to extract the resonance position as well as the field-induced broadening for the exciton resonance. For the case of strong confinement the trial function is represented in factorized form. The corresponding coupled self-consistent equations, which include the effective complex potentials, are obtained. The method is applied to the shallow quantum well. It is shown that in this case the real part of the effective exciton potential is insensitive to changes of external electric field up to the ionization threshold, while the imaginary part has non-analytical field dependence and small for moderate electric fields. This allows one to express the exciton quasi-energy at some field through the renormalized expression for the zero-field bound state.Comment: 13 pages, RevTeX4, 6 figure

HAM dan Politik Kriminal Pasca Orde Baru (Konstruksi Pelanggaran HAM pada Kasus Pembantaian Dukun Santet di Kabupaten Banyuwangi Tahun 1998)

This research is motivated by the case of human rights violations during the massacre witches in Banyuwangi in 1998. The central government that when it is exposed to many issues require a diversion issues in other areas to divert attention began when the reform era turn of the new order of oligarchs capitalist towards a democratic state. Therefore, this study will analyze the motives brutality of human rights violations that led to the massacre of the witches. The purpose of this research that examines how government as the dominant party using a various social control to a group that dominated the society. This study used qualitative methods - descriptive. The subjects were the victims and the community leaders who concern about the problems of this massacre case. By using the theory of hegemony to explore the phenomenon of the role of the state to a case that comes to the human rights violations like this. Namely data collection techniques with direct observation to the test site and the literature to comparison be empirical research results also snowball technique purposive sampling. Based on the analysis of cases of human rights violations during the massacre witches in Banyuwangi 1998 as a whole is a game the government on the transfer issue. Turbulent political force people to accept an issue to distract him from the turmoil in the capital but did not go according to the destination. The lack of public understanding about the violation of Human Rights to make the case - a case that concerned have not or even cannot be resolved properly, including cases of human rights violations in Banyuwangi 1998's

Quasiparticle dynamics and phonon softening in FeSe superconductors

Quasiparticle dynamics of FeSe single crystals revealed by dual-color transient reflectivity measurements ({\Delta}R/R) provides unprecedented information on Fe-based superconductors. The amplitude of fast component in {\Delta}R/R clearly tells a competing scenario between spin fluctuations and superconductivity. Together with the transport measurements, the relaxation time analysis further exhibits anomalous changes at 90 K and 230 K. The former manifests a structure phase transition as well as the associated phonon softening. The latter suggests a previously overlooked phase transition or crossover in FeSe. The electron-phonon coupling constant {\lambda} is found to be 0.16, identical to the value of theoretical calculations. Such a small {\lambda} demonstrates an unconventional origin of superconductivity in FeSe.Comment: Final published version; 5 pages; 4 figure

Segmental K-Means Learning with Mixture Distribution for HMM Based Handwriting Recognition

This paper investigates the performance of hidden Markov models (HMMs) for handwriting recognition. The Segmental K-Means algorithm is used for updating the transition and observation probabilities, instead of the Baum-Welch algorithm. Observation probabilities are modelled as multi-variate Gaussian mixture distributions. A deterministic clustering technique is used to estimate the initial parameters of an HMM. Bayesian information criterion (BIC) is used to select the topology of the model. The wavelet transform is used to extract features from a grey-scale image, and avoids binarization of the image.</p