Dollars, Defense, and the Desert: Southern Nevada’s Military Economy and the Second World War

Modern Las Vegas has come to inhabit a unique place in the American imagination. A neon mirage glittering amid the desolate Mojave Desert, “Sin City” is both celebrated and scorned as an oasis of gambling, nightlife, and entertainment. Consistently ranked among the nation’s fastest-growing metropolitan areas, Las Vegas has experienced sensational economic, infrastructural, and demographic growth in recent years. The dizzying pace of this development makes it difficult to imagine that the city was once anything other than the bustling urban playground it is today. Like many great western cities, Las Vegas came of age during the World War Two era. A mere hamlet of 8,422 residents in 1940, it had nearly tripled in size by 1950. Many believe Las Vegas to be synonymous with its gambling economy, but war, not wagering, triggered the city’s first period of dramatic growth. A sizeable military presence, established during World War Two and sustained by the Cold War, took root in southern Nevada. Though never as visible as the area’s high-profile gambling industry, this military economy was a vital factor in the development of the nascent metropolis

Note on an Auction Procedure for a Matching Game in Polynomial Time

We derive a polynomial time algorithm to compute a stable solution in a mixed matching market from an auction procedure as presented by Eriksson and Karlander. As a special case we derive an O(nm) algorithm for bipartite matching that does not seem to have appeared in the literature yet

The Hungarian Method for a Mixed Matching Market

We present an algorithm that computes a stable matching in a common generalization of the marriage and the assignment in mathcal{O}(n^4) time

A Transient Initiator for Polypeptoids Postpolymerization alpha-Functionalization via Activation of a Thioester Group

Here, a postpolymerization modification method for an alpha-terminal functionalized poly-(N-methyl-glycine), also known as polysarcosine, is introduced. 4-(Methylthio)phenyl piperidine-4-carboxylate as an initiator for the ring-opening polymerization of N-methyl-glycine-N-carboxyanhydride followed by oxidation of the thioester group to yield an alpha-terminal reactive 4-(methylsulfonyl)phenyl piperidine-4-carboxylate polymer is utilized. This represents an activated carboxylic acid terminus, allowing straightforward modification with nucleophiles under mild reaction conditions and provides the possibility to introduce a wide variety of nucleophiles as exemplified using small molecules, fluorescent dyes, and model proteins. The new initiator yielded polymers with well-defined molar mass, low dispersity, and high end-group fidelity, as observed by gel permeation chromatography, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectroscopy. The introduced method can be of great interest for bioconjugation, but requires optimization, especially for protein conjugation.Peer reviewe