Disruptive Technology: Do Robots Want Your Job?

Keynote talk with Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots. Part of the “Deep Humanities,” One-Day Symposium: FrankenSTEM? Technology Ethics in Silicon Valley, organized by Dr. Revathi Krishnaswamy & Dr. Katherine D. Harris, Department of English and Comparative Literature, San Jose State University. May 1, 2018, 7pm, The Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose.https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/frankenstein200_flyers/1003/thumbnail.jp

The Partition Function for the Anharmonic Oscillator in the Strong-Coupling Regime

We consider a single anharmonic oscillator with frequency $\omega$ and coupling constant $\lambda$ respectively, in the strong-coupling regime. We are assuming that the system is in thermal equilibrium with a reservoir at temperature $\beta^{-1}$. Using the strong-coupling perturbative expansion, we obtain the partition function for the oscillator in the regime $\lambda>>\omega$, up to the order $\frac{1}{\sqrt{\lambda}}$. To obtain this result, we use of a combination of Klauder's independent-value generating functional (Acta Phys. Austr. {\bf 41}, 237 (1975)), and the generalized zeta-function method. The free energy and the mean energy, up to the order $\frac{1}{\sqrt{\lambda}}$, are also presented. We are showing that the thermodynamics quantities are nonanalytic in the coupling constant

The State, Democratic Transition and Employment Relations in Indonesia

Indonesia’s transition since 1998 from authoritarian developmentalism to democracy has had a fundamental effect on employment relations. Although the basic structure of the economy has not changed, the twin processes of democratisation and decentralisation have seen the return of a degree of political space not available in Indonesia since the 1950s. This transformation was underpinned by a shift in the balance between the primary logics of the state that has seen an enhanced emphasis on legitimation. It has reshaped expectations of workplace-level employment relations practice in the country’s small formal sector and of trade unions’ engagement with policy-making and electoral politics. This article traces the processes through which this transformation occurred and analyses both its successes and the ongoing challenges to more robust implementation of the country’s industrial relations framework

Africa has unique and urgent barriers to cleft care: lessons from practitioners at the Pan-African Congress on Cleft Lip and Palate

Background: The goals of this study were to delineate the protocols employed for managing patients with cleft lip and palate deformities, delineate the challenges facing practitioners and patients, and to determine the patient and physician barriers to cleft care delivery in the region. Methods: Survey questionnaires were administered to practitioners attending the second Pan-African Congress on Cleft Lip and Palate (PACCLIP), which took place in Ibadan, Nigeria, West Africa from February 4-7, 2007. The conference included 225 participants, representing 17 African countries. Results: Protocols for repair of cleft lip and palate deformities were varied, with Millard's and von Langenbeck's techniques being the preferred approach for the management of cleft lip and palate deformities, respectively. A large proportion of providers have limited access to core cleft care supporting teams, especially speech language pathologists, orthodontists, and audiologists. Several challenging barriers to cleft care were also identified at both the institutional and individual levels and are reported. Conclusion: Geographic separation in Africa presents a similar challenge due to isolationism as it does to surgeons in Europe. Specific to Africa are the increased barriers to care, and economic and financial hardship at various levels. A focus on funding, team building, infrastructural support, and patient education appear to be crucial in improving the care and lives of children with facial clefts in Africa. Pan African Medical Journal 2012; 12:1

Using electronic health records to support clinical trials: a report on stakeholder engagement for EHR4CR

Background. The conduct of clinical trials is increasingly challenging due to greater complexity and governance requirements as well as difficulties with recruitment and retention. Electronic Health Records for Clinical Research (EHR4CR) aims at improving the conduct of trials by using existing routinely collected data, but little is known about stakeholder views on data availability, information governance, and acceptable working practices. Methods. Senior figures in healthcare organisations across Europe were provided with a description of the project and structured interviews were subsequently conducted to elicit their views. Results. 37 structured interviewees in Germany, UK, Switzerland, and France indicated strong support for the proposed EHR4CR platform. All interviewees reported that using the platform for assessing feasibility would enhance the conduct of clinical trials and the majority also felt it would reduce workloads. Interviewees felt the platform could enhance trial recruitment and adverse event reporting but also felt it could raise either ethical or information governance concerns in their country. Conclusions. There was clear support for EHR4CR and a belief that it could reduce workloads and improve the conduct and quality of trials. However data security, privacy, and information governance issues would need to be carefully managed in the development of the platform

Stochastic Spacetime and Brownian Motion of Test Particles

The operational meaning of spacetime fluctuations is discussed. Classical spacetime geometry can be viewed as encoding the relations between the motions of test particles in the geometry. By analogy, quantum fluctuations of spacetime geometry can be interpreted in terms of the fluctuations of these motions. Thus one can give meaning to spacetime fluctuations in terms of observables which describe the Brownian motion of test particles. We will first discuss some electromagnetic analogies, where quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field induce Brownian motion of test particles. We next discuss several explicit examples of Brownian motion caused by a fluctuating gravitational field. These examples include lightcone fluctuations, variations in the flight times of photons through the fluctuating geometry, and fluctuations in the expansion parameter given by a Langevin version of the Raychaudhuri equation. The fluctuations in this parameter lead to variations in the luminosity of sources. Other phenomena which can be linked to spacetime fluctuations are spectral line broadening and angular blurring of distant sources.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures. Talk given at the 9th Peyresq workshop, June 200

Effective action of beta-deformed N = 4 SYM theory: Farewell to two-loop BPS diagrams

Within the background field approach, all two-loop sunset vacuum diagrams, which occur in the Coulomb branch of N = 2 superconformal theories(including N = 4 SYM), obey the BPS condition m_3 = m_1 + m_2, where the masses are generated by the scalars belonging to a background N = 2 vector multiplet. These diagrams can be evaluated exactly, and prove to be homogeneous quadratic functions of the one-loop tadpoles J(m_1^2), J(m_2^2) and J(m_3^2), with the coefficients being rational functions of the squared masses. We demonstrate that, if one switches on the beta-deformation of the N = 4 SYM theory, the BPS condition no longer holds, and then generic two-loop sunset vacuum diagrams with three non-vanishing masses prove to be characterized by the following property: 2(m_1^2 m_2^2 +m_1^2 m_3^2 +m_2^2 m_3^2) > m_1^4 +m_2^4 +m_3^4. In the literature, there exist several techniques to compute such diagrams. For the beta-deformed N = 4 SYM theory, we carry out explicit two-loop calculations of the Kahler potential and F^4 term. Our considerations are restricted to the case of beta real.Comment: 42 pages, latex, 1 eps figure; V2: references adde

Hypergeometric representation of the two-loop equal mass sunrise diagram

A recurrence relation between equal mass two-loop sunrise diagrams differing in dimensionality by 2 is derived and it's solution in terms of Gauss' 2F1 and Appell's F_2 hypergeometric functions is presented. For arbitrary space-time dimension d the imaginary part of the diagram on the cut is found to be the 2F1 hypergeometric function with argument proportional to the maximum of the Kibble cubic form. The analytic expression for the threshold value of the diagram in terms of the hypergeometric function 3F2 of argument -1/3 is given.Comment: 10 page

Two-loop parameter relations between dimensional regularization and dimensional reduction applied to SUSY-QCD

The two-loop relations between the running gluino-quark-squark coupling, the gluino and the quark mass defined in dimensional regularization (DREG) and dimensional reduction (DRED) in the framework of SUSY-QCD are presented. Furthermore, we verify with the help of these relations that the three-loop beta-functions derived in the minimal subtraction scheme combined with DREG or DRED transform into each other. This result confirms the equivalence of the two schemes through three-loops, if applied to SUSY-QCD.Comment: 14 pages, Latex; v2 matches published versio