Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority

The BFSA is a “corporate governmental agency” and an “instrumentality” of the State of New York. It is run by nine directors. Only one of these directors need be a citizen of the City of Buffalo. The governor designates two of the nine directors as “chairperson” and “vice-chairperson,” who preside over all meetings of the directors

Existing and Potential Remedies for Illegal Flipping in Buffalo, New York

The City of Buffalo should amend the documents used at the annual In Rem foreclosure auction to require more information from bidders and purchasers under penalty of perjury, thereby making it easier to detect, deter, and punish parties interested in purchasing properties to illegally flip them. There are already more abandoned houses in the City of Buffalo than it can even keep track of. These houses lower property values of surrounding homes in already distressed neighborhoods and in turn, lower tax revenues for the city. Abandoned houses also invite vandalism, drug users and squatters. They pose a threat in the form of potential instances of arson and cost the city millions of dollars in demolition expenses. Houses become abandoned for many reasons, but one is that they sometimes fall into the hands of illegal flippers

Not Lying About -ly Words

A poem

The potential of programmable logic in the middle: cache bleaching

Consolidating hard real-time systems onto modern multi-core Systems-on-Chip (SoC) is an open challenge. The extensive sharing of hardware resources at the memory hierarchy raises important unpredictability concerns. The problem is exacerbated as more computationally demanding workload is expected to be handled with real-time guarantees in next-generation Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). A large body of works has approached the problem by proposing novel hardware re-designs, and by proposing software-only solutions to mitigate performance interference. Strong from the observation that unpredictability arises from a lack of fine-grained control over the behavior of shared hardware components, we outline a promising new resource management approach. We demonstrate that it is possible to introduce Programmable Logic In-the-Middle (PLIM) between a traditional multi-core processor and main memory. This provides the unique capability of manipulating individual memory transactions. We propose a proof-of-concept system implementation of PLIM modules on a commercial multi-core SoC. The PLIM approach is then leveraged to solve long-standing issues with cache coloring. Thanks to PLIM, colored sparse addresses can be re-compacted in main memory. This is the base principle behind the technique we call Cache Bleaching. We evaluate our design on real applications and propose hypervisor-level adaptations to showcase the potential of the PLIM approach.Accepted manuscrip

Assessing the tilt of the solar magnetic field axis through Faraday rotation observations

Context: Faraday rotation measurements of extragalactic radio sources during coronal occultation allow assessment of both the electron density distribution and the three-dimensional magnetic field topology in the outer solar corona. Aims: We simulate the three-dimensional structure of both the coronal magnetic field and the electron density distribution in order to reproduce the excess Faraday rotation measures (RMs) of the occulted radio sources observed during solar activity minimum. In particular, we infer the tilt of the solar magnetic axis with respect to the rotation axis. Methods: We compare the output of the model with Very Large Array (VLA) radio polarimetric measurements of a sample of extragalactic sources observed in May 1997. Information on the magnetic field geometry can be retrieved by fine-tuning the set of model free parameters that best describe the observations. Results: We find that predicted and observed Faraday rotation measures are in excellent agreement, thus supporting the model. Our best-fitting model yields a tilt angle $\theta_{RB}=3.3^{\circ}$ of the solar magnetic axis with respect to the solar rotation axis around Carrington Rotation 1923. This result is consistent with analogous but independent estimates computed from the expansion coefficients of the photospheric field observed at the Wilcox Solar Observatory (WSO).Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in A&

Is Telecommunications Productivity Characterized by Steady State Conditions? Some Empirical Evidence for 13 OECD Countries

This paper studies the convergence process, or lack thereof, of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) for a panel of 13 OECD countries over the period 1979-2007, adding breadth and depth to the convergence debate in the telecommunications industry. TFP growth is examined through the Malmquist Index and decomposed in its main determinates. Absolute and conditional convergences are estimated. Fixed-effects estimates across countries convert the cross-section test of absolute convergence into a pooled test of conditional convergence. Our findings show a growth in TFP, mainly driven by technological process. It is boosted by an increase in production possibilities and lack of bias in input utilization. Inefficiency in scale is found. Convergence tests do not suggest support in favor of absolute convergence but do exhibit evidence of conditional convergenceTotal Factor Productivity (TFP), Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), conditional b-convergence; Fixed Effects Model.

A Survey on Device-to-Device Communication in Cellular Networks

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication was initially proposed in cellular networks as a new paradigm to enhance network performance. The emergence of new applications such as content distribution and location-aware advertisement introduced new use-cases for D2D communications in cellular networks. The initial studies showed that D2D communication has advantages such as increased spectral efficiency and reduced communication delay. However, this communication mode introduces complications in terms of interference control overhead and protocols that are still open research problems. The feasibility of D2D communications in LTE-A is being studied by academia, industry, and the standardization bodies. To date, there are more than 100 papers available on D2D communications in cellular networks and, there is no survey on this field. In this article, we provide a taxonomy based on the D2D communicating spectrum and review the available literature extensively under the proposed taxonomy. Moreover, we provide new insights to the over-explored and under-explored areas which lead us to identify open research problems of D2D communication in cellular networks.Comment: 18 pages; 8 figures; Accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial

Productivity change in Italian airports

This paper examines the total factor productivity of 28 Italian airports during 2000–2006 using non-parametric estimation methods. Moreover, non-parametric inference and hypothesis test on the Malmquist index and its two main components, efficiency and technological change, have been carried out. All the airports have been characterized by technological regress and only a minority of airports experienced an increase in productivity lead by the improvement of efficiency.Airport efficiency; bootstrap; Malmquist index; DEA

Dunkley\u27s Reset your child’s brain: A four-week plan to end meltdowns, raise grades, and boost social skills by reversing the effects of electronic screen-time (Book Review)

A review of Dunkley, V. (2015). Reset your child’s brain: A four-week plan to end meltdowns, raise grades, and boost social skills by reversing the effects of electronic screen-time. Novato, CA: New World Library, 384 pp. $18.95 ISBN: 978160868284