4,177 research outputs found
The Pursuit of Proceeds by Plans, Participants and Plaintiffs\u27 Lawyers: Dissonant Solutions to an Alliterative Problem
With emphasis on developments in the Fourth Circuit, this Article first describes the pursuit\u27s origination in plan language and ERISA\u27s statutory provisions; it then explores ERISA preemption and cases in which injured participants invoke state statutory and common law to contradict plan terms. A review of the attorney\u27s role follows, including an inquiry into issues concerning attorney fees. With consideration of policies behind ERISA, the Article concludes that adherence to well-drafted plan terms legitimizes the parties\u27 bargain, avoids development of disparate federal common law, and facilitates the allocation of proceeds
The Pursuit of Proceeds by Plans, Participants and Plaintiffs\u27 Lawyers: Dissonant Solutions to an Alliterative Problem
With emphasis on developments in the Fourth Circuit, this Article first describes the pursuit\u27s origination in plan language and ERISA\u27s statutory provisions; it then explores ERISA preemption and cases in which injured participants invoke state statutory and common law to contradict plan terms. A review of the attorney\u27s role follows, including an inquiry into issues concerning attorney fees. With consideration of policies behind ERISA, the Article concludes that adherence to well-drafted plan terms legitimizes the parties\u27 bargain, avoids development of disparate federal common law, and facilitates the allocation of proceeds
LIGO End-to-End simulation Program
A time-domain simulation program has been developed to provide an accurate description of interferometric gravitational wave detectors. This is being utilized to build a model of LIGO with the aim of aiding in the shakedown and integration of the interferometer subsystems, and ultimately the optimization of detector sensitivity
Group Meritocratic Fairness in Linear Contextual Bandits
We study the linear contextual bandit problem where an agent has to select one candidate from a pool and each candidate belongs to a sensitive group. In this setting, candidates⧠rewards may not be directly comparable between groups, for example when the agent is an employer hiring candidates from different ethnic groups and some groups have a lower reward due to discriminatory bias and/or social injustice. We propose a notion of fairness that states that the agent* policy is fair when it selects a candidate with highest relative rank, which measures how good the reward is when compared to candidates from the same group. This is a very strong notion of fairness, since the relative rank is not directly observed by the agent and depends on the underlying reward model and on the distribution of rewards. Thus we study the problem of learning a policy which approximates a fair policy under the condition that the contexts are independent between groups and the distribution of rewards of each group is absolutely continuous. In particular, we design a greedy policy which at each round constructs a ridge regression estimate from the observed context-reward pairs, and then computes an estimate of the relative rank of each candidate using the empirical cumulative distribution function. We prove that, despite its simplicity and the lack of an initial exploration phase, the greedy policy achieves, up to log factors and with high probability, a fair pseudo-regret of order √dT after T rounds, where d is the dimension of the context vectors. The policy also satisfies demographic parity at each round when averaged over all possible information available before the selection. Finally, we use simulated settings and experiments on the US census data to show that our policy achieves sub-linear fair pseudo-regret also in practice
UAV BLOCK GEOREFERENCING and CONTROL by ON-BOARD GNSS DATA
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are established platforms for photogrammetric surveys in remote areas. They are lightweight, easy to operate and can allow access to remote sites otherwise difficult (or impossible) to be surveyed with other techniques. Very good accuracy can be obtained also with low-cost UAV platforms as far as a reliable ground control is provided. However, placing ground control points (GCP) in these contexts is time consuming and requires accessibility that, in some cases, can be troublesome. RTK-capable UAV platforms are now available at reasonable costs and can overcome most of these problems, requiring just few (or none at all) GCP and still obtaining accurate results. The paper will present a set of experiments performed in cooperation with ARPA VdA (the Environmental Protection Agency of Valle d'Aosta region, Italy) on a test site in the Italian Alps using a Dji Phantom 4 RTK platform. Its goals are: a) compare accuracies obtainable with different calibration procedures (pre- or on-the-job/self-calibration); b) evaluate the accuracy improvements using different number of GCP when the site allows for it; and c) compare alternative positioning modes for camera projection centres determination, (Network RTK, RTK, Post Processing Kinematic and Single Point Positioning)
A Swendsen-Wang update algorithm for the Symanzik improved sigma model
We study a generalization of Swendsen-Wang algorithm suited for Potts models
with next-next-neighborhood interactions. Using the embedding technique
proposed by Wolff we test it on the Symanzik improved bidimensional non-linear
model. For some long range observables we find a little slowing down
exponent () that we interpret as an effect of the partial
frustration of the induced spin model.Comment: Self extracting archive fil
Double Penguins and the Contribution of Vector Meson--like States to the Decays
Using perturbative QCD, the contribution at the leading twist, leading
level, of charm and up quark loops to the decays and is presented. In the case of , the relative importance of these contributions depend
upon the unknown CKM matrix elements and .
Assuming that the ratio is bounded
between as is suggested by the Particle Data Group, the
error in extracting by these decays is estimated.Comment: 4 double column pages, revtex, 3 figures attached, 2 figures added
indicating less optimism concerning the accuracy at which
can be extracted: to appear in PR
The transition in softly broken supersymmetry
We study the effect of supersymmetric contributions to the effective quark
transition , including leading order QCD effects. We apply
the discussion to the decay . Even though one-particle
irreducible contributions could play a role, numerical cancelations make the
amplitude for the two-photon emission strongly correlated to the
amplitude which is sharply constrained by experiment. A quite general statement
follows: as long as non-standard physics effects appear only in the matching of
the Wilson coefficients of the standard effective operator basis, the
deviations from the standard model expectations of the decay rates induced by
are bound to follow closely the corresponding deviations
on . Effects of new physics are therefore bound to be small.Comment: Latex2e, RevTex, 22 pages, 8 eps figures, comments and references
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