The Bowl Championship Series: A Mathematical Review

We discuss individual components of the college football Bowl Championship Series, compare with a simple algorithm defined by random walks on a biased graph, attempt to predict whether the proposed changes will truly lead to increased BCS bowl access for non-BCS schools, and conclude by arguing that the true problem with the BCS Standings lies not in the computer algorithms, but rather in misguided addition.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Notices of the AM

Whistle Before You Work: Defining Paid Labor in the New Deal State, 1938-1947

This thesis traces the conceptualization of work from the passage of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) through the Portal-To-Portal Pay Act of 1947. I argue that the FLSA created a new framework for industrial laborers to define what constituted work. This enables an understanding of work as defined by those in mines and on the industrial plants floor, allowing those who were closest to toil and exertion to create their own definitions. By 1946, Congress heeded to the complaints of the military and capitalists and codified their definition of work and the work week. This restricted the broadly interpreted FLSA. I argue that with the implementation of the FLSA, industrial workers created projected their own definitions of work onto the law. As the FLSA was defined though the court system, industrial workers gained formal rights through the federal government. To show this, I look at “non-productive” labor, understood as the necessary steps taken by workers before they began or after they concluded “face-to-labor,” to ensure they could fulfill their job’s requirements. This includes but is not limited to exertion such as travel time, tool set up, dressing and showers after contact with hazardous materials. I also show that organized labor did create a uniform definition of work but was instead determined by union federations. Additionally, this research shows how capitalists and the federal government defined labor during this same time period

Development of Quantum Dots as Biosensing Probes

Appendix E Movie 1: Nanoassembly transport around a microdisc. Control is demonstrated by magnetic trapping of the nanoassembly. A reverse motion around the disk is shown from 11-16 seconds, and then the particle continues its clockwise trajectory. After 33 seconds the nanoassembly is released from the microdisc.Appendix E Movie 2: Nanoassembly transport on nanowires via vertex-to-vertex hopping.Appendix E Movie 3: Simultaneous magnetic transport of red protein (avidin) and green DNA (p53 ssDNA) nanoassemblies via vertex to vertex hopping on magnetic nanowire arrays.Appendix E Movie 4: Red, magnetic protein nanoassemblies (i.e., avidin as the molecular target, containing SPIONs) are trapped and transported from vertex-to-vertex, whereas green, non-magnetic DNA nanoassemblies (p53 ssDNA as the molecular target, containing no SPIONs) are not trapped and display motion resulting from Brownian motion or liquid flow.Appendix E Movie 5: Following addition of DNA-targeting SPION micelles, green, magnetic DNA nanoassemblies (p53 ssDNA as the molecular target, containing QDs and SPIONs) are transported, showing rapid conjugation of SPIONs to green micelle structures.Appendix E Movies 1 - 5 reproduced from: K. D. Mahajan, G. Ruan, G. Vieira, T. Porter, J. J. Chalmers, R. Sooryakumar and J. O. Winter, J. Mater. Chem. B, 2020, Advance Article, https://doi.org/10.1039/C9TB02481F - Reproduced by permission of The Royal Society of Chemistry.Quantum dots (QDs) are semiconductor nanoparticles that exhibit size-dependent optical properties. Compared to other common fluorophores such as dyes and fluorescent proteins, QDs possess higher photon emission rates. Additionally, they have broad absorption spectra and narrow, size-tunable emission spectra that enable color multiplexing. Their resistance to photobleaching also makes them suitable for tracking over long periods of time. Thus, QDs possess numerous properties that make them attractive for biosensing applications. However, several concerns must be addressed for their widespread implementation in sensing applications. For instance, the most common QDs contain cadmium, raising concerns of toxicity. Additionally, several groups anecdotally report decreases in fluorescence intensity during QD processing. The research described in this document explores several aspects of these difficulties, including a toxicity characterization of QDs made of alternative nontoxic materials with various surface chemistries. Further, a systematic analysis of QD colloidal stability and fluorescence loss during common processing steps such as dilution, centrifugal filtration, and buffer exchange is discussed. After addressing these difficulties, the utility of QDs are demonstrated in a novel magneto-fluorescent detection and separation platform used on protein and DNA analytes. Finally, the development of novel QD-DNA conjugates and the wide-reaching potential applications of these QD-DNA conjugates are discussed.NSF DBI-1555470NSF CMMI-0900377DMR-1206745EEC-0914790DMR-0820414U. S. Army Research Office under Contract W911NF-10-1-053Ohio State University Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for Affordable Nanoengineering of Polymeric Biomedical DevicesMaterials Science and Engineering Research Center for Emergent MaterialsInstitute for Materials Research; a "Thousand Young Global Talents" award from the Chinese Central Government"Tian-Di" Foundation, College of Modern Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, ChinaCollege of Engineering Undergraduate Research ScholarshipNo embargoAcademic Major: Chemical Engineerin

Radio Spectrum and the Disruptive Clarity OF Ronald Coase.

In the Federal Communications Commission, Ronald Coase (1959) exposed deep foundations via normative argument buttressed by astute historical observation. The government controlled scarce frequencies, issuing sharply limited use rights. Spillovers were said to be otherwise endemic. Coase saw that Government limited conflicts by restricting uses; property owners perform an analogous function via the "price system." The government solution was inefficient unless the net benefits of the alternative property regime were lower. Coase augured that the price system would outperform the administrative allocation system. His spectrum auction proposal was mocked by communications policy experts, opposed by industry interests, and ridiculed by policy makers. Hence, it took until July 25, 1994 for FCC license sales to commence. Today, some 73 U.S. auctions have been held, 27,484 licenses sold, and $52.6 billion paid. The reform is a textbook example of economic policy success. We examine Coase‘s seminal 1959 paper on two levels. First, we note the importance of its analytical symmetry, comparing administrative to market mechanisms under the assumption of positive transaction costs. This fundamental insight has had enormous influence within the economics profession, yet is often lost in current analyses. This analytical insight had its beginning in his acclaimed early article on the firm (Coase 1937), and continued into his subsequent treatment of social cost (Coase 1960). Second, we investigate why spectrum policies have stopped well short of the property rights regime that Coase advocated, considering rent-seeking dynamics and the emergence of new theories challenging Coase‘s property framework. One conclusion is easily rendered: competitive bidding is now the default tool in wireless license awards. By rule of thumb, about$17 billion in U.S. welfare losses have been averted. Not bad for the first 50 years of this, or any, Article appearing in Volume II of the Journal of Law & Economics.

A Method Based on Total Variation for Network Modularity Optimization using the MBO Scheme

The study of network structure is pervasive in sociology, biology, computer science, and many other disciplines. One of the most important areas of network science is the algorithmic detection of cohesive groups of nodes called "communities". One popular approach to find communities is to maximize a quality function known as {\em modularity} to achieve some sort of optimal clustering of nodes. In this paper, we interpret the modularity function from a novel perspective: we reformulate modularity optimization as a minimization problem of an energy functional that consists of a total variation term and an $\ell_2$ balance term. By employing numerical techniques from image processing and $\ell_1$ compressive sensing -- such as convex splitting and the Merriman-Bence-Osher (MBO) scheme -- we develop a variational algorithm for the minimization problem. We present our computational results using both synthetic benchmark networks and real data.Comment: 23 page

Contracts of Agency without Stipulations as to Duration

The Restatement of Agency by the American Law Institute provides that A contract of agency, or a contract of service, is the contract, when one exists, which determines the existence, duration, terms or conditions of the [agency] relation. But what is the duration of the relation when this so-called contract of agency contains no stipulation as to how long the employment is to continue? And how does the so-called contract of agency determine the duration in such cases? It is the purpose of this comment to discuss the West Virginia cases on this point

The Development of the Creole Society of Freetown, Sierra Leone

Thesis (Ph.D)--Boston UniversityThe study is concerned with an analysis of the social stratification system of Freetown society from 1787 onwards in terms of Max Weber's three orders of the economic, (to which he limited the term 'class'), the social (which is composed of status groups based on differential honor), and political power (which Weber associated with parties or power-seeking groups). The study is also interested in the degree of consistency or crystallization between these three criteria at different phases in Freetown's history. The methodology employed is the historical procedure. An analysis is made of mission societies' reports, Government publications, loyal newspapers and printed works of travellers for the light they throw on styles of life of the different groups in Freetown with particular reference to Weber's criteria. [truncated