8 research outputs found
Wages and Utilities in a Closed Economy
The broad objective of this paper is to propose a mathematical model for the
study of causes of wage inequality and relate it to choices of consumption, the
technologies of production, and the composition of labor in an economy. The
paper constructs a Simple Closed Model, or an SCM, for short, for closed
economies, in which the consumption and the production parts are clearly
separated and yet coupled. The model is established as a specialization of the
Arrow-Debreu model and its equilibria correspond directly with those of the
general Arrow-Debreu model. The formulation allows us to identify the
combinatorial data which link parameters of the economic system with its
equilibria, in particular, the impact of consumer preferences on wages. The SCM
model also allows the formulation and explicit construction of the consumer
choice game, where expressed utilities of various labor classes serve as
strategies with total or relative wages as the pay-offs. We illustrate, through
examples, the mathematical details of the consumer choice game. We show that
consumer preferences, expressed through modified utility functions, do indeed
percolate through the economy, and influence not only prices but also
production and wages. Thus, consumer choice may serve as an effective tool for
wage redistribution
Load Balancing in Multiprocessor Systems
Coordinated Science Laboratory was formerly known as Control Systems LaboratoryOffice of Naval Research / N00014-85-K-057
Clustering of protein structural fragments reveals modular building block approach of nature
Structures of peptide fragments drawn from a protein can potentially occupy a vast conformational continuum. We co-ordinatize this conformational space with the help of geometric invariants and demonstrate that the peptide conformations of the currently available protein structures are heavily biased in favor of a finite number of conformational types or structural building blocks. This is achieved by representing a peptides' backbone structure with geometric invariants and then clustering peptides based on closeness of the geometric invariants. This results in 12,903 clusters, of which 2207 are made up of peptides drawn from functionally and/or structurally related proteins. These are termed “functional” clusters and provide clues about potential functional sites. The rest of the clusters, including the largest few, are made up of peptides drawn from unrelated proteins and are termed “structural” clusters. The largest clusters are of regular secondary structures such as helices and beta strands as well as of beta hairpins. Several categories of helices and strands are discovered based on geometric differences. In addition to the known classes of loops, we discover several new classes, which will be useful in protein structure modeling. Our algorithm does not require assignment of secondary structure and, therefore, overcomes the limitations in loop classification due to ambiguity in secondary structure assignment at loop boundaries.© Elsevie