LIFETIME LEVERAGE CHOICE FOR PROPRIETARY FARMERS IN A DYNAMIC STOCHASTIC ENVIRONMENT

This article reviews various models that may be used to explain optimal leverage choice for the proprietary farmer in a stochastic dynamic environment and develops a new model that highlights the risk of failure rather than the usual concept of risk as the variability of wealth. The model suggests that in addition to the usual factors, farm financial leverage is affected by age, wealth, and the opportunity cost of farming.Farm Management,

Product Integral Formalism and Non-Abelian Stokes Theorem

We make use of the properties of product integrals to obtain a surface product integral representation for the Wilson loop operator. The result can be interpreted as the non-abelian version of Stokes' theorem.Comment: Latex; condensed version of hep-th/9903221, to appear in Jour. Math. Phy

Deterministic and Probabilistic Binary Search in Graphs

We consider the following natural generalization of Binary Search: in a given undirected, positively weighted graph, one vertex is a target. The algorithm's task is to identify the target by adaptively querying vertices. In response to querying a node $q$, the algorithm learns either that $q$ is the target, or is given an edge out of $q$ that lies on a shortest path from $q$ to the target. We study this problem in a general noisy model in which each query independently receives a correct answer with probability $p > \frac{1}{2}$ (a known constant), and an (adversarial) incorrect one with probability $1-p$. Our main positive result is that when $p = 1$ (i.e., all answers are correct), $\log_2 n$ queries are always sufficient. For general $p$, we give an (almost information-theoretically optimal) algorithm that uses, in expectation, no more than $(1 - \delta)\frac{\log_2 n}{1 - H(p)} + o(\log n) + O(\log^2 (1/\delta))$ queries, and identifies the target correctly with probability at leas $1-\delta$. Here, $H(p) = -(p \log p + (1-p) \log(1-p))$ denotes the entropy. The first bound is achieved by the algorithm that iteratively queries a 1-median of the nodes not ruled out yet; the second bound by careful repeated invocations of a multiplicative weights algorithm. Even for $p = 1$, we show several hardness results for the problem of determining whether a target can be found using $K$ queries. Our upper bound of $\log_2 n$ implies a quasipolynomial-time algorithm for undirected connected graphs; we show that this is best-possible under the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH). Furthermore, for directed graphs, or for undirected graphs with non-uniform node querying costs, the problem is PSPACE-complete. For a semi-adaptive version, in which one may query $r$ nodes each in $k$ rounds, we show membership in $\Sigma_{2k-1}$ in the polynomial hierarchy, and hardness for $\Sigma_{2k-5}$

Host Selection of the giant willow aphid (Tuberolachnus salignus)

The giant willow aphid [Tuberolachnus salignus (Gmelin)] has recently become noteworthy as a potential pest species due to the increased uptake of willow, its host-plant, for use in growing biomass for energy production. In this paper we describe host selection studies of T. salignus on short rotation coppice (SRC) willow varieties in laboratory bioassays and field experiments. In laboratory olfactometry tests, T. salignus was significantly attracted to certain SRC willow varieties, but not to others. Field trials during 2007 and 2008 showed that T. salignus infestation levels varied significantly on different SRC willow varieties and that levels are highest on the varieties to which they are most strongly attracted in the laboratory bioassays

Quantum symmetries and exceptional collections

We study the interplay between discrete quantum symmetries at certain points in the moduli space of Calabi-Yau compactifications, and the associated identities that the geometric realization of D-brane monodromies must satisfy. We show that in a wide class of examples, both local and compact, the monodromy identities in question always follow from a single mathematical statement. One of the simplest examples is the Z_5 symmetry at the Gepner point of the quintic, and the associated D-brane monodromy identity

Government-Industry Cooperative Fisheries Research in the North Pacific under the MSFCMA

The National Marine Fisheries Service’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) has a long and successful history of conducting research in cooperation with the fishing industry. Many of the AFSC’s annual resource assessment surveys are carried out aboard chartered commercial vessels and the skill and experience of captains and crew are integral to the success of this work. Fishing companies have been contracted to provide vessels and expertise for many different types of research, including testing and evaluation of survey and commercial fishing gear and development of improved methods for estimating commercial catch quantity and composition. AFSC scientists have also participated in a number of industry-initiated research projects including development of selective fishing gears for bycatch reduction and evaluating and improving observer catch composition sampling. In this paper, we describe the legal and regulatory provisions for these types of cooperative work and present examples to illustrate the process and identify the requirements for successful cooperative research

A Full Characterization of Quantum Advice

We prove the following surprising result: given any quantum state rho on n qubits, there exists a local Hamiltonian H on poly(n) qubits (e.g., a sum of two-qubit interactions), such that any ground state of H can be used to simulate rho on all quantum circuits of fixed polynomial size. In terms of complexity classes, this implies that BQP/qpoly is contained in QMA/poly, which supersedes the previous result of Aaronson that BQP/qpoly is contained in PP/poly. Indeed, we can exactly characterize quantum advice, as equivalent in power to untrusted quantum advice combined with trusted classical advice. Proving our main result requires combining a large number of previous tools -- including a result of Alon et al. on learning of real-valued concept classes, a result of Aaronson on the learnability of quantum states, and a result of Aharonov and Regev on "QMA+ super-verifiers" -- and also creating some new ones. The main new tool is a so-called majority-certificates lemma, which is closely related to boosting in machine learning, and which seems likely to find independent applications. In its simplest version, this lemma says the following. Given any set S of Boolean functions on n variables, any function f in S can be expressed as the pointwise majority of m=O(n) functions f1,...,fm in S, such that each fi is the unique function in S compatible with O(log|S|) input/output constraints.Comment: We fixed two significant issues: 1. The definition of YQP machines needed to be changed to preserve our results. The revised definition is more natural and has the same intuitive interpretation. 2. We needed properties of Local Hamiltonian reductions going beyond those proved in previous works (whose results we'd misstated). We now prove the needed properties. See p. 6 for more on both point

Gauge-invariant gluon mass, infrared Abelian dominance and stability of magnetic vacuum

We give an argument for deriving analytically the infrared ``Abelian'' dominance in a gauge invariant way for the Wilson loop average in SU(2) Yang--Mills theory. In other words, we propose a possible mechanism for realizing the dynamical Abelian projection in the SU(2) gauge-invariant manner without breaking color symmetry. This supports validity of the dual superconductivity picture for quark confinement. We also discuss the stability of the vacuum with magnetic condensation as a by-product of this result.Comment: 25 pages, 3 figures (4 eps files); version accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.D; One paragraph is added at each end of sections 3,4 and 5 for comparing the analytical result with the lattice results of my group based on the new formulation, together with the results in the conventional MAG if available. footnote 4 is added, and a reference is added. A number of sentences and phrases are improve

The solution of a mixed boundary value problem in the theory of diffraction by a semi-infinite plane

A solution is obtained for the problem of the diffraction of a plane wave sound source by a semi-infinite half plane. One surface of the half plane has a soft (pressure release) boundary condition, and the other surface a rigid boundary condition. Two unusual features arise in this boundary value problem. The first is the edge field singularity. It is found to be more singular than that associated with either a completely rigid or a completely soft semi-infinite half plane. The second is that the normal Wiener-Hopf method (which is the standard technique to solve half plane problems) has to be modified to give the solution to the present mixed boundary value problem. The mathematical problem which is solved is an approximate model for a rigid noise barrier, one face of which is treated with an absorbing lining. It is shown that the optimum attenuation in the shadow region is obtained when the absorbing lining is on the side of the screen which makes the smallest angle to the source or the receiver from the edge

onlineFDR: an R package to control the false discovery rate for growing data repositories.

SUMMARY: In many areas of biological research, hypotheses are tested in a sequential manner, without having access to future P-values or even the number of hypotheses to be tested. A key setting where this online hypothesis testing occurs is in the context of publicly available data repositories, where the family of hypotheses to be tested is continually growing as new data is accumulated over time. Recently, Javanmard and Montanari proposed the first procedures that control the FDR for online hypothesis testing. We present an R package, onlineFDR, which implements these procedures and provides wrapper functions to apply them to a historic dataset or a growing data repository. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The R package is freely available through Bioconductor (http://www.bioconductor.org/packages/onlineFDR). SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online