A histogram-free multicanonical Monte Carlo algorithm for the basis expansion of density of states

We report a new multicanonical Monte Carlo (MC) algorithm to obtain the density of states (DOS) for physical systems with continuous state variables in statistical mechanics. Our algorithm is able to obtain an analytical form for the DOS expressed in a chosen basis set, instead of a numerical array of finite resolution as in previous variants of this class of MC methods such as the multicanonical (MUCA) sampling and Wang-Landau (WL) sampling. This is enabled by storing the visited states directly in a data set and avoiding the explicit collection of a histogram. This practice also has the advantage of avoiding undesirable artificial errors caused by the discretization and binning of continuous state variables. Our results show that this scheme is capable of obtaining converged results with a much reduced number of Monte Carlo steps, leading to a significant speedup over existing algorithms.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures. Paper accepted in the Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing Conference (PASC '17), June 26 to 28, 2017, Lugano, Switzerlan

Understanding the Whistle-blowing Intention to Report Breach of Confidentiality

We examine the factors that encourage employees to whistle-blow wrongdoings in relation to confidentiality breaches. We investigate how their anticipated regret about remaining silent changes over time, how such changes influence their whistle-blowing intentions, and what employee characteristics and organizational policies moderate this relationship. Drawing on attribution theory, we develop three hypotheses. Our experiment findings show that: 1) employees’ perceptions of the controllability and intentionality (but not stability) of the wrongdoing act affect how their anticipated regret evolves, 2) anticipated regret increases employees’ whistle-blowing intentions, 3) anticipated regret has a stronger effect on whistle-blowing intentions when organizations implement policies that promote efforts to protect information confidentiality, and 4) employees with information technology knowledge have a stronger intention to whistle-blow. Theoretically, our study extends the organization security literature’s focus to individuals’ whistle-blowing and highlights an IS research agenda around whistle-blowing in relation to confidentiality breaches. Practically, it informs organizations about how to encourage employees to whistle-blow when they observe confidentiality breaches