Book review: Lee Kuan Yew: the grand master’s insights onChina, the United States, and the world

Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of modern Singapore and its prime minister from 1959 to 1990, has seem more than fifty years on the world stage. This book gathers key insights from interviews, speeches, and Lee’s voluminous published writings, and covers Lee’s assessment of China’s future, the impact of technology of our economy, and how Singapore successfully opened itself to the world. Of interest for those studying power, life, and culture in any part of the world, finds Stephen Minas

Towards rule-based visual programming of generic visual systems

This paper illustrates how the diagram programming language DiaPlan can be used to program visual systems. DiaPlan is a visual rule-based language that is founded on the computational model of graph transformation. The language supports object-oriented programming since its graphs are hierarchically structured. Typing allows the shape of these graphs to be specified recursively in order to increase program security. Thanks to its genericity, DiaPlan allows to implement systems that represent and manipulate data in arbitrary diagram notations. The environment for the language exploits the diagram editor generator DiaGen for providing genericity, and for implementing its user interface and type checker.Comment: 15 pages, 16 figures contribution to the First International Workshop on Rule-Based Programming (RULE'2000), September 19, 2000, Montreal, Canad

On the action of the complete Brans-Dicke theory

Recently the most general completion of Brans-Dicke theory was appeared with energy exchanged between the scalar field and ordinary matter, given that the equation of motion for the scalar field keeps the simple wave form of Brans-Dicke. This class of theories contain undetermined functions, but there exist only three theories which are unambiguously determined from consistency. Here, for the first such theory, it is found the action of the vacuum theory which arises as the limit of the full matter theory. A symmetry transformation of this vacuum action in the Jordan frame is found which consists of a conformal transformation of the metric together with a redefinition of the scalar field. Since the general family of vacuum theories is parametrized by an arbitrary function of the scalar field, the action of this family is also found. As for the full matter theory it is only found the action of the system when the matter Lagrangian vanishes on-shell, as for example for pressureless dust. Due to the interaction, this matter Lagrangian is non-minimally coupled either in the Jordan or the Einstein frame.Comment: To appear in EPJC; minor change

A Union-Oligopoly Model of Endogenous Discrimination:Should it be wage discrimination taxed or discriminated employment subsidized?

In the context of a homogenous good industry with Cournot rivalry and technological asymmetries among firms, equally skilled workers can be grouped according to their different reservation wages. Under decentralized firm-union bargaining, we show that unions may offer to firms the option to discriminate wages across such groups of employees and, by that, to achieve cost sub-additivity in the equilibrium. We subsequently propose that to combat the emerging wage discrimination a benevolent policy maker may activate either taxation, or subsidization, policy. Interestingly, while the former policy always entails a welfare loss, a welfare gain may emerge under the latter policy, relative to the no policy-wage discrimination status quo. Thus our findings suggest that the E.U- antidiscrimination directives may prove to be effective on both egalitarian and efficiency grounds.Unions, Oligopoly, Discriminatory Wage Contracts, Antidiscrimination Policy

2.5K-Graphs: from Sampling to Generation

Understanding network structure and having access to realistic graphs plays a central role in computer and social networks research. In this paper, we propose a complete, and practical methodology for generating graphs that resemble a real graph of interest. The metrics of the original topology we target to match are the joint degree distribution (JDD) and the degree-dependent average clustering coefficient ($\bar{c}(k)$). We start by developing efficient estimators for these two metrics based on a node sample collected via either independence sampling or random walks. Then, we process the output of the estimators to ensure that the target properties are realizable. Finally, we propose an efficient algorithm for generating topologies that have the exact target JDD and a $\bar{c}(k)$ close to the target. Extensive simulations using real-life graphs show that the graphs generated by our methodology are similar to the original graph with respect to, not only the two target metrics, but also a wide range of other topological metrics; furthermore, our generator is order of magnitudes faster than state-of-the-art techniques

Theoretical Study of Dust in RF Discharges and Tokamak Plasmas

Dusty plasma systems are common in all aspects of plasma physics, from space, to our Earth's atmosphere, to low temperature discharges and fusion devices. In this work the basic plasma dust interactions are studied, with the main focus being on RF discharges and tokamak plasmas. One very important physical characteristic of a dust grain immersed in a plasma environment, which plays a central role in the study of its dynamical behaviour, is its charge. It determines the ion and electron fluxes on the dust and through that, one can calculate the forces exerted on the solid particle and the energy fluxes onto it. In this work an overview of the basic charging theory used in dusty plasma, the Orbital Motion Limited (OML) approach, will be presented, and its implications will be studied in the context of RF discharges and tokamak plasmas. In the case of RF discharges, modifications of the OML approach will be explored for the accommodation of time varying phenomena. This will have two directions. The first, concerning the presence of time varying electric fields in a uniform plasma background and the second, the presence of different forms of time dependent current carrying electron distributions. In the tokamak case, the work is focused on the modelling of the dynamical behaviour of dust particles in a tokamak plasma environment. An improved version of the existing Dust in TOKamakS (DTOKS) code has been developed. Results for the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) and ITER are presented, as well as an assessment of the importance of the various aspects of the physical model from the plasma background, the dust grain charge, the forces on the particle and the dust heating model. Furthermore, the first basic comparison between DTOKS and the DUST Transport (DUSTT) code, the only other similar code available at the moment, is being presented