World Wide Web Technology in Support of Negotiation and Communication

With the advent of the mass use of the Internet involving the classic use of e-mail, file transfer and now the more recent use of www applications, such as home pages, chat, Internet phone, audio and video and web broadcast systems, business transactions over the net are increasing dramatically. An important, yet relatively undeveloped component for electronic commerce is the negotiation of contracts and the resolution of disputes. We discuss Web-based technology and practice in supporting business negotiations and communication. The focus of the paper is on the present and the future promises of such technology

Multiple Issue Action and Market Algorithms for the World Wide Web

The Internet is quickly changing the way business-to-consumer and business-to-business commerce is conducted in the world. The Electronic Revolution has also spawned a trend of price wars and, in some instances, chaos because of the zero-sum nature of the electronic channel. The technology has created an opportunity to get beyond the lose-lose nature of single issue price wars by determining sellers' and buyers' preferences across multiple issues and encouraging negotiations, thereby creating possible joint gains for all parties. We develop simple multiple issue algorithms and heuristics that could be used in electronic auctions and electronic markets, to match business to business and consumers based on dovetailing underlying interests and preferences. We provide arguments that such dovetailed matches should help stabilize markets and make them more efficient

Selection in Zea mays L. by inbred line appearance and testcross performance in low and high plant densities

The development of inbred lines and the search for their best hybrid combinations are the main bases of corn improvement in the United States. The most commonly used method for inbred development is to enforce self fertilization for several generations while practicing visual selection for the more highly heritable characteristics. During these generations, surviving stocks maintained on an ear-to-row basis become highly homozygous and highly homogeneous. Because\u27 evaluation for combining ability by using test-cross procedures is expensive, it is usually delayed until after three to five generations of visual selection. Visual selection for combining ability among inbred progenies is rarely emphasized because of the commonly held opinion that it is relatively ineffective. Regardless of the effectiveness of visual selection, total genetic variability will be reduced following each selection cycle, according to the principle that the variability of a sample is less than the variability of a population. If selection is effective, the reduction will be even greater because of the removal of undesired genes, but the mean of the selected lines will exceed the mean of the original population. Early testing, as proposed by Jenkins ( 1935 ), takes advantage of evaluation for combining ability in the So generation of a maize population, or the F2 of a hybrid, before genes have been eliminated by selection and, therefore, when the genetic variability among individuals is at a maximum. Superior germ plasm, identified by early testing, need not face the hazard of several generations of random sampling as in visual selection. However, the considerable expense of testing restricts the size and, therefore, the genetic base of the original population

Simple model for 1/f noise

We present a simple stochastic mechanism which generates pulse trains exhibiting a power law distribution of the pulse intervals and a $1/f^\alpha$ power spectrum over several decades at low frequencies with $\alpha$ close to one. The essential ingredient of our model is a fluctuating threshold which performs a Brownian motion. Whenever an increasing potential $V(t)$ hits the threshold, $V(t)$ is reset to the origin and a pulse is emitted. We show that if $V(t)$ increases linearly in time, the pulse intervals can be approximated by a random walk with multiplicative noise. Our model agrees with recent experiments in neurobiology and explains the high interpulse interval variability and the occurrence of $1/f^\alpha$ noise observed in cortical neurons and earthquake data.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Single Cooper pair tunneling induced by non-classical microwaves

A mesoscopic Josephson junction interacting with a mode of non-classical microwaves with frequency $\omega$ is considered. Squeezing of the electromagnetic field drastically affects the dynamics of Cooper tunneling. In particular, Bloch steps can be observed even when the microwaves are in the squeezed vacuum state with {\em zero} average amplitude of the field $\langle E(t) \rangle = 0$. The interval between these steps is double in size in comparison to the conventional Bloch steps.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures are available upon request to: [email protected]

Dynamics of a Quantum Control-Not Gate for an Ensemble of Four-Spin Molecules at Room Temperature

We investigate numerically a single-pulse implementation of a quantum Control-Not (CN) gate for an ensemble of Ising spin systems at room temperature. For an ensemble of four-spin ``molecules'' we simulate the time-evolution of the density matrix, for both digital and superpositional initial conditions. Our numerical calculations confirm the feasibility of implementation of quantum CN gate in this system at finite temperature, using electromagnetic $\pi$-pulse.Comment: 7 pages 3 figure

Conditional Quantum Dynamics and Logic Gates

Quantum logic gates provide fundamental examples of conditional quantum dynamics. They could form the building blocks of general quantum information processing systems which have recently been shown to have many interesting non--classical properties. We describe a simple quantum logic gate, the quantum controlled--NOT, and analyse some of its applications. We discuss two possible physical realisations of the gate; one based on Ramsey atomic interferometry and the other on the selective driving of optical resonances of two subsystems undergoing a dipole--dipole interaction.Comment: 5 pages, RevTeX, two figures in a uuencoded, compressed fil