The speed of sequential asymptotic learning

In the classical herding literature, agents receive a private signal regarding a binary state of nature, and sequentially choose an action, after observing the actions of their predecessors. When the informativeness of private signals is unbounded, it is known that agents converge to the correct action and correct belief. We study how quickly convergence occurs, and show that it happens more slowly than it does when agents observe signals. However, we also show that the speed of learning from actions can be arbitrarily close to the speed of learning from signals. In particular, the expected time until the agents stop taking the wrong action can be either finite or infinite, depending on the private signal distribution. In the canonical case of Gaussian private signals we calculate the speed of convergence precisely, and show explicitly that, in this case, learning from actions is significantly slower than learning from signals

Coming into the Anthropocene

This essay reviews Professor Jonathan Cannon’s Environment in the Balance. Cannon’s book admirably analyzes the Supreme Court’s uptake of, or refusal of, the key commitments of the environmental-law revolution of the early 1970s. In some areas the Court has adapted old doctrines, such as Standing and Commerce, to accommodate ecological insights; in other areas, such as Property, it has used older doctrines to restrain the transformative effects of environmental law. After surveying Cannon’s argument, this review diagnoses the historical moment that has made the ideological division that Cannon surveys especially salient: a time of stalled legislation, political deadlock, and highly contested regulatory and judicial interpretation. This analysis, however, does not limit the interest of Cannon’s analysis to this political moment. Rather, Cannon’s integration of legal and cultural analysis has great promise for the Anthropocene, the dawning era when human decisions and values will be among the most important forces shaping the planet. In the future, it will be necessary to think of environmental law as both reflecting and producing ideas of the value and meaning of the natural world. Cannon’s analysis is an excellent starting point for an Anthropocene approach

Exploring Blockchain Adoption Supply Chains: Opportunities and Challenges

Acquisition Management / Grant technical reportAcquisition Research Program Sponsored Report SeriesSponsored Acquisition Research & Technical ReportsIn modern supply chains, acquisition often occurs with the involvement of a network of organizations. The resilience, efficiency, and effectiveness of supply networks are crucial for the viability of acquisition. Disruptions in the supply chain require adequate communication infrastructure to ensure resilience. However, supply networks do not have a shared information technology infrastructure that ensures effective communication. Therefore decision-makers seek new methodologies for supply chain management resilience. Blockchain technology offers new decentralization and service delegation methods that can transform supply chains and result in a more flexible, efficient, and effective supply chain. This report presents a framework for the application of Blockchain technology in supply chain management to improve resilience. In the first part of this study, we discuss the limitations and challenges of the supply chain system that can be addressed by integrating Blockchain technology. In the second part, the report provides a comprehensive Blockchain-based supply chain network management framework. The application of the proposed framework is demonstrated using modeling and simulation. The differences in the simulation scenarios can provide guidance for decision-makers who consider using the developed framework during the acquisition process.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

The Quantitative Significance of the Transsulfuration Enzymes for H2S Production in Murine Tissues

The enzymes of the transsulfuration pathway, cystathionine --synthase (CBS) and cystathionine --lyase (CSE), are important for the endogenous production of hydrogen sulfide (H2S), a gaseous signaling molecule. The relative contributions of CBS and CSE to H2S generation in different tissues are not known. In this study, we report quantification of CBS and CSE in murine liver and kidney and their contribution to H2S generation in these tissues and in brain at saturating substrate concentrations. We show that CBS protein levels are significantly lower than those of CSE; 60-fold and 20-fold in liver and kidney, respectively. Each enzyme is more abundant in liver compared with kidney, twofold and sixfold for CBS and CSE, respectively. At high substrate concentrations (20-mM each cysteine and homocysteine), the capacity for liver H2S production is approximately equal for CBS and CSE, whereas in kidney and brain, CBS constitutes the major source of H2S, accounting for -80% and -95%, respectively, of the total output. At physiologically relevant concentrations of substrate, and adjusting for the differences in CBS versus CSE levels, we estimate that CBS accounts for only 3% of H2S production by the transsulfuration pathway enzymes in liver. Antioxid. Redox Signal. 15, 363-372.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90506/1/ars-2E2010-2E3781.pd

Toward sustainable serverless computing

Although serverless computing generally involves executing short-lived “functions,” the increasing migration to this computing paradigm requires careful consideration of energy and power requirements. serverless computing is also viewed as an economically-driven computational approach, often influenced by the cost of computation, as users are charged for per-subsecond use of computational resources rather than the coarse-grained charging that is common with virtual machines and containers. To ensure that the startup times of serverless functions do not discourage their use, resource providers need to keep these functions hot, often by passing in synthetic data. We describe the real power consumption characteristics of serverless, based on execution traces reported in the literature, and describe potential strategies (some adopted from existing VM and container-based approaches) that can be used to reduce the energy overheads of serverless execution. Our analysis is, purposefully, biased toward the use of machine learning workloads because: (1) workloads are increasingly being used widely across different applications; (2) functions that implement machine learning algorithms can range in complexity from long-running (deep learning) versus short-running (inference only), enabling us to consider serverless across a variety of possible execution behaviors. The general findings are easily translatable to other domains.PostprintPeer reviewe

Continuous Processing and Efficient in Situ\textit{in Situ} Reaction Monitoring of a Hypervalent Iodine(III) Mediated Cyclopropanation Using Benchtop NMR Spectroscopy

Real-time NMR spectroscopy has proven to be a rapid and an effective monitoring tool to study the hypervalent iodine(III) mediated cyclopropanation. With the ever increasing number of new synthetic methods for carbon−carbon bond formation, the NMR $\textit{in situ}$ monitoring of reactions is becoming a highly desirable enabling method. In this study, we have demonstrated the versatility of benchtop NMR using inline and online real-time monitoring methods to access mutually complementary information for process understanding, and we developed new approaches for real-time monitoring addressing challenges associated with better integration into continuous processes.University of Cambridge (Daphne Jackson Fellowship), iCON through CMAC (Grant ID: RG74817), Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Critical Mass grant (Grant ID: EP/K009494K/1), Core Capability grant (Grant ID: EP/K039520/1

3D virtual planning of temporomandibular joint ankylosis using computed tomography a case report in a 4-year-old female patient

Ankylosis is a Greek word meaning a stiff joint. Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) ankylosis is the development of complete or incomplete limitation of movement of the TMJ by bone or fi brous tissue. The etiology and treatment of TMJ ankylosis have been well documented in the literature, with trauma and infection being the leading causes.Radiographically, ankylosis presents features that facilitate the diagnosis. However, its visualization is not precise involving conventional radiographic technique. With the evolution of radiographic techniques, computed tomography (CT) became an essential tool in the diagnosis of the ankylosis of TMJ and presented a valid reconstructed image of an ankylosis. The aim of this paper is to report a case of TMJ ankylosis in a 4-year-old girl and describe the importance tomographic images related ankylosis of TMJ by threedimensional (3D) CT, using several slices as axial, coronal, and 3D reformatted images as a guide for presurgical treatment planning of an ankylosis

The Impact of Human Assurance on Satellite Operations

Mission assurance is a method to guarantee mission success against a known set of risks; mission assurance is generally represented as a probability against a threshold of acceptable performance. Human assurance can be considered as the likelihood of acceptable operator performance given a set of conditions that include the operator, the system, and the environment. Standard mission assurance models tend to assume a qualified crew, but do not include other aspects of the internal or external environment that may impact the reliability of the human operator. A human assurance model can be created that allows the exploration of the variability in operator performance due to the likelihood of different risks. An example human assurance model has been created for the detection of adverse trending satellite data and the need to modify the existing mission schedule to address the satellite emergency. The model leverages the Human Viewpoint framework to capture the human-focused data within the mission context. From this data, sources of risk can be identified for the socio-technical system and a risk framework developed. The resulting risk model allows exploration of the characteristics of both the operator and the operating environment, as well as the impact of organizational mitigations, on the likelihood that the socio-technical system will meet mission assurance thresholds. The method provided can be used to identify the limitations of human system performance against the established criteria

Induced spawning and larviculture of grey mullet, Mugil cephalus (Linnaeus 1758) in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi

Grey mullet, Mugil cephalus, is one of the most widely distributed food fi shes in the world (McDonough et al., 2003). In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the fi sh, locally known as Biah or Wagena, is considered as one of the most highly demanded fi sh. However, it was recently recognized that the landings of this species have drastically decreased and its presence in the local fi sh markets became rare (MAF, 2003). In captivity, grey mullets do not spawn spontaneously and that could be achieved successfully by hormone administration (Lee and Tamaru, 1988, El-Gharabawy and Assem, 2006). This has lead to increasing interest by the Aquaculture Center, Abu Al Abyad Island (ACAAB), Emirate of Abu Dhabi, UAE to propagate the fi sh. The ACAAB is situated in Abu Al Abyad Island which is the major island of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi covering an area of 490 km2. The island is characterised by its harsh environmental conditions where water temperature and salinity during summer time reach as high as 36 ºC and 58 ppt, respectively (Al Abdessalaam and Yousif, 2002).The results of the fi rst induced spawning and larviculture trials of this species under the environmental conditions of Abu Al Abyad Island (50 -55 ppt) are presented in this article