Plus Ça Change, Plus C'est la Même Chose

The publication of Euan Sinclair and Ann Stewart, Conveyancing Practice in Scotland (6th edn, 2012) is a reminder of the enduring role of the WS Society's members in supporting best practice in property law for over 200 years. We look at how things began in the 18th century with the remarkable Robert Bell, WS (1760-1816). (Co-authored with Robert Pirrie.

Making Government Work

For a city or state government to be viable in the last decade of the 20th century, elected leaders must view modern management as a crusade. The work force must receive fair and equitable compensation, and all must be committed to constant quality improvement. Newspapers, magazines, radio and television must report the success stories and the failures. Taxpayers must understand that government services can improve, and the leaders must be held accountable. This is possible throughout the country but it will not happen unless an educated electorate demands it and the elected officials understand the stakes and urgency involved

Mound Systems: Pressure Distribution of Wastewater: Design and Construction in Ohio

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On the metric dimension of Grassmann graphs

The {\em metric dimension} of a graph $\Gamma$ is the least number of vertices in a set with the property that the list of distances from any vertex to those in the set uniquely identifies that vertex. We consider the Grassmann graph $G_q(n,k)$ (whose vertices are the $k$-subspaces of $\mathbb{F}_q^n$, and are adjacent if they intersect in a $(k-1)$-subspace) for $k\geq 2$, and find a constructive upper bound on its metric dimension. Our bound is equal to the number of 1-dimensional subspaces of $\mathbb{F}_q^n$.Comment: 9 pages. Revised to correct an error in Proposition 9 of the previous versio

Banks as real estate brokers -- letting free enterprise work

Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act

“This is the way ‘I’ create my passwords ...":does the endowment effect deter people from changing the way they create their passwords?

The endowment effect is the term used to describe a phenomenon that manifests as a reluctance to relinquish owned artifacts, even when a viable or better substitute is offered. It has been confirmed by multiple studies when it comes to ownership of physical artifacts. If computer users also "own", and are attached to, their personal security routines, such feelings could conceivably activate the same endowment effect. This would, in turn, lead to their over-estimating the \value" of their existing routines, in terms of the protection they afford, and the risks they mitigate. They might well, as a consequence, not countenance any efforts to persuade them to adopt a more secure routine, because their comparison of pre-existing and proposed new routine is skewed by the activation of the endowment effect.In this paper, we report on an investigation into the possibility that the endowment effect activates when people adopt personal password creation routines. We did indeed find evidence that the endowment effect is likely to be triggered in this context. This constitutes one explanation for the failure of many security awareness drives to improve password strength. We conclude by suggesting directions for future research to confirm our findings, and to investigate the activation of the effect for other security routines

Improving Receiver Performance of Diffusive Molecular Communication with Enzymes

This paper studies the mitigation of intersymbol interference in a diffusive molecular communication system using enzymes that freely diffuse in the propagation environment. The enzymes form reaction intermediates with information molecules and then degrade them so that they cannot interfere with future transmissions. A lower bound expression on the expected number of molecules measured at the receiver is derived. A simple binary receiver detection scheme is proposed where the number of observed molecules is sampled at the time when the maximum number of molecules is expected. Insight is also provided into the selection of an appropriate bit interval. The expected bit error probability is derived as a function of the current and all previously transmitted bits. Simulation results show the accuracy of the bit error probability expression and the improvement in communication performance by having active enzymes present.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, 1 table. To appear in IEEE Transactions on Nanobioscience (submitted January 22, 2013; minor revision October 16, 2013; accepted December 4, 2013

Using Dimensional Analysis to Assess Scalability and Accuracy in Molecular Communication

In this paper, we apply dimensional analysis to study a diffusive molecular communication system that uses diffusing enzymes in the propagation environment to mitigate intersymbol interference. The enzymes bind to information molecules and then degrade them so that they cannot interfere with the detection of future transmissions at the receiver. We determine when it is accurate to assume that the concentration of information molecules throughout the receiver is constant and equal to that expected at the center of the receiver. We show that a lower bound on the expected number of molecules observed at the receiver can be arbitrarily scaled over the environmental parameters, and generalize how the accuracy of the lower bound is qualitatively impacted by those parameters.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, will be presented at the 3rd IEEE International Workshop on Molecular and Nanoscale Communications (MoNaCom 2013) in Budapest, Hungar