Evolution of Conversations in the Age of Email Overload

Email is a ubiquitous communications tool in the workplace and plays an important role in social interactions. Previous studies of email were largely based on surveys and limited to relatively small populations of email users within organizations. In this paper, we report results of a large-scale study of more than 2 million users exchanging 16 billion emails over several months. We quantitatively characterize the replying behavior in conversations within pairs of users. In particular, we study the time it takes the user to reply to a received message and the length of the reply sent. We consider a variety of factors that affect the reply time and length, such as the stage of the conversation, user demographics, and use of portable devices. In addition, we study how increasing load affects emailing behavior. We find that as users receive more email messages in a day, they reply to a smaller fraction of them, using shorter replies. However, their responsiveness remains intact, and they may even reply to emails faster. Finally, we predict the time to reply, length of reply, and whether the reply ends a conversation. We demonstrate considerable improvement over the baseline in all three prediction tasks, showing the significant role that the factors that we uncover play, in determining replying behavior. We rank these factors based on their predictive power. Our findings have important implications for understanding human behavior and designing better email management applications for tasks like ranking unread emails.Comment: 11 page, 24th International World Wide Web Conferenc

The impossible regularization of the Nambu Jona-Lasinio model with vector interactions

We show that the procedure of regularizing the real part of the euclidean action, while leaving the imaginary part unregularized, leads to a non-analytic and highly singular functional of the fields. It is customary to work with an imaginary time component of the vector field, in order to avoid regularization of the anomalous processes. We show that this procedure is flawed by the fact that a stationary point of the action occurs for a real, not imaginary, time component of the vector field. Furthermore the action in the vicinity of the stationary point is singular. The regularized action is thus not suitable for an evaluation of the partition function using a saddle point method. We discuss proposed solutions to this problem, as well as other regularizations. They all lead to practical problems.Comment: 13 pages in Latex, available from [email protected]

Note on Strange Quarks in the Nucleon

Scalar matrix elements involving strange quarks are studied in several models. Apart from a critical reexamination of results obtained in the Nambu and Jona-Lasinio model we study a scenario, motivated by instanton physics, where spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking is induced by the flavor-mixing 't Hooft interaction only. We also investigate possible contributions of virtual kaon loops to the strangeness content of the nucleon.Comment: 12 pages, latex style. One figure, available from the author upon request. University of Regensburg TPR-94-0

'A Poet Early, and Always in his Soul': the eighteenth-century reception of Milton's Poems (1645)

This thesis explores the reception of Milton’s first volume of poetry, now known as the Poems (1645), during their first 150 or so years of life. It is a broadly chronological study of the Poems’ publication, citation, and critical appreciation both as a discrete volume and, more often, as broken up into its constituent parts in anthologies, miscellanies, adaptations, and translations. Running throughout this history is a thematic analysis of the eighteenth century’s changing critical approach to these early Miltonic works, including notable editions of the poems, especially those from 1673, 1695, 1752, and 1785. My project is occasioned by the absence to date of a sustained, book-length study of the reception of Milton’s Poems. Such reception studies of Milton as do exist either chronicle receptions of his entire oeuvre, or focus exclusively on Paradise Lost. My critical field encompasses these existing reception histories, as well as studies primarily devoted to analysis of the Poems (1645). It also pays attention to scholarship on eighteenth-century poetics and its main proponents, to books about miscellany and anthology culture, and to histories of the emerging concept of an English literary canon around the middle of the eighteenth century. The aim of my study is, first, to illuminate an area of Milton criticism that has not, proportionally at least, been much studied; secondly, to continue a relatively recent critical tendency towards privileging the Poems as a separate body of work, meriting scholarly attention not just as the prelude to Paradise Lost but as a collection in its own right, with its own themes, its own dilemmas, and its own preoccupations

The effect of the place of the match on the shooting success in handball.

Název: Vliv místa utkání na úspěšnost střelby v házené. Cíle: Hlavním cílem této práce je zjistit, zda místo, kde se utkání odehrává, ovlivňuje úspěšnost střelby z jednotlivých hráčských prostorů, a také celkovou úspěšnost střelby vybraného družstva. Dalším cílem bylo zjistit, zda má místo vliv na výsledek utkání. Metody: V naší práci jsme použili pro sběr dat metody přímého pozorování, nepřímého pozorování a analytickou metodu. Výsledky byly zpracovány pomocí Mann Whitneyho testu, Wilcoxonova testu a Mc Nemarova testu. Výsledky: Zjistili jsme, že místo ve kterém se utkání odehrává nemá vliv na celkovou procentuální úspěšnost střelby vybraného družstva. Také nebylo statisticky prokázáno, že místo ovlivňuje procentuální úspěšnost střelby ani z jedné ze základní prostor hráčských funkcí pro útok. Klíčová slova: házená, střelba, procentuální úspěšnost, místo, herní výkonTitle: The effect of the place of the match on the shooting success in handball. Objectives: The main objective of this work is to find out whether the place where the match is taking place affects the shooting success from individual player areas, and also the overall shooting success of the selected team. Another objective was to find out whether the place has got an effect on the result of the match. Methods: For data collection we used the methods of direct observation, indirect observation and analytical method in our work. The results were processed using the Mann Whitney test, Wilcoxon test and Mc Nemar test. Results: We found out that the place at which the match is taking place does not affect the overall percentage success rate of shooting of the selected team. Also it was not statistically proved, that the place affects the percentage success rate of shooting even from one of the basic areas of player functions for the attack. Keywords: handball, shooting, percentage success rate, place, game performanceSportovní hryFakulta tělesné výchovy a sportuFaculty of Physical Education and Spor

Quark Droplets in the NJL Mean Field

We study the conditions for the existence of stable quark matter in the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio mean field at zero temperature and discuss its interpretation.Comment: 6 pages, LaTeX, 4 eps-figures included, to appear in the Proc. of the workshop 'QCD at Finite Baryon Density', Bielefeld, April 27-30, 199

Design off-grid solar system for the PT detector

Tato diplomová práce se zabývá návrhem ostrovního fotovoltaického systému pro IR komunikační maják. Práce je rozdělena do čtyř hlavních částí. Teoretická část, technické řešení, testování a ekonomické zhodnocení. V první části jsou rozebrány teoretické znalosti potřebné pro správné rozhodování při zpracování technického návrhu. V druhé části je rozebráno samotné technické řešení rozdělené do dvou podkapitol – hardware a software. Třetí část popisuje testování, které je nezbytné pro správné dimenzování hlavních částí systému a poté i testování navrženého systému. Poslední část se věnuje ekonomickému zhodnocení nově navrženého systému v porovnání se stávajícím a dále i z pohledu investice do zavedení nového produktu.This thesis deals with the design of an off-grid photovoltaic system for the IR communication beacon. The thesis is divided into four main parts. Theoretical part, technical solution, testing and economic evaluation. The first part discusses the theoretical knowledge necessary for a correct decision-making in the compiling of technical design. The second part contains an analysis of the technical solution itself, and is divided into two subchapters – hardware and software. The third part is concerned with the description of the testing that is required for the correct sizing of the main system parts and subsequently description of the proposed system testing. The last part is dedicated to the economic evaluation of the newly designed system in comparison with the existing system. It also was made an economic evaluation of an investment in the introduction of a new product on the market

Spin content of constituent quarks and one-spin asymmetries in inclusive processes

We consider mechanism for one-spin asymmetries observed in inclusive hadron production. The main role belongs to the orbital angular momentum of the quark-antiquark cloud in the internal structure of constituent quarks. We argue that the origin of the asymmetries in pion production is a result of retaining of this internal angular orbital momentum by the perturbative phase of QCD under transition from the non-perturbative phase. The non-perturbative hadron structure is based on the results of chiral quark models. PACS number(s): 11.30.Qc, 12.40.Pp, 13.75.Ni, 13.88.+eComment: 21 pages LaTeX + 8 figures (not included