Fair Correlation Clustering in General Graphs

We consider the family of Correlation Clustering optimization problems under fairness constraints. In Correlation Clustering we are given a graph whose every edge is labeled either with a + or a -, and the goal is to find a clustering that agrees the most with the labels: + edges within clusters and - edges across clusters. The notion of fairness implies that there is no over, or under, representation of vertices in the clustering: every vertex has a color and the distribution of colors within each cluster is required to be the same as the distribution of colors in the input graph. Previously, approximation algorithms were known only for fair disagreement minimization in complete unweighted graphs. We prove the following: (1) there is no finite approximation for fair disagreement minimization in general graphs unless P = NP (this hardness holds also for bicriteria algorithms); and (2) fair agreement maximization in general graphs admits a bicriteria approximation of ? 0.591 (an improved ? 0.609 true approximation is given for the special case of two uniformly distributed colors). Our algorithm is based on proving that the sticky Brownian motion rounding of [Abbasi Zadeh-Bansal-Guruganesh-Nikolov-Schwartz-Singh SODA\u2720] copes well with uncut edges

Impact of lawyers' invisible disabilities on their professional challenges and their perception of their performance

The aim of the current study was to learn about the difficulties stemming from invisible disorders in the practice of law, what do lawyers with invisible disorders do to cope with their disorders, what are their considerations in choosing their job specialty, what is their motivation to choose law as their profession and practice it, and how do they define their professional success and failure. Practicing law is challenging in many aspects. First, one is at a position to be knowledgeable about legislation, which has a dynamic nature. There is a constant need for recognizing the issues at hand, while acting fast to find proper legislative solutions to represent the client as best as possible. To do this, a lawyer is ought to be able to properly analyze the case, be knowledgeable about relevant laws and legislation, be detail-oriented, be able to multi-task and manage large amount of information, to properly assess what the main issue at hand is, and efficiently manage the case. Practicing law also requires proper communication and having the ability to connect between details - all of which must be accomplished within a strict timeline. Therefore, to succeed as a lawyer, one should be focused, be able concentrate on a high level, and have good organizational and time management skills. Some lawyers are struggling with invisible disabilities, such as attention deficits and hyperactivity disorders, as well as learning disabilities, and for them practicing law is a double-challenge. Similarly to their colleagues, they are required to practice law as demanded by their profession, but (and mainly) cope with their invisible disorder to professionally succeed. Often individuals with invisible disabilities are unaware of their situation and to the fact that these may have been the source for their difficulties in school or at work. For example, they may have difficulties to carry through assignments from beginning to end, to focus on one task, and they may unsuccessfully try to concurrently engage in many tasks. During school they may overcome their disorder by creating coping mechanisms, such as studying in groups, rewriting assignments, and reading class' notes taken by classmates, to compensate for their disabilities. Usually such coping strategies masked their disorder from them and their surroundings. Nevertheless, other individuals with sucfh disorders are aware of their situation, thereby they have been getting accommodations to their disabilities while in school (e.g. time-adjustment during exams, fitting the type of exams to their capabilities, and tutoring). Like other students with invisible disabilities, law students with these kinds of difficulties may eventually do very well in school. The main challenge for these lawyers is in the workforce. Practicing law is a very competitive occupation. The institution of law, the clients and colleagues, and the community – all have high expectation from lawyers. In Israel there is not enough awareness for the possibility that professionals who practice law may be struggling with invisible disabilities

Impact of lawyers' invisible disabilities on their professional challenges and their perception of their performance

The aim of the current study was to learn about the difficulties stemming from invisible disorders in the practice of law, what do lawyers with invisible disorders do to cope with their disorders, what are their considerations in choosing their job specialty, what is their motivation to choose law as their profession and practice it, and how do they define their professional success and failure. Practicing law is challenging in many aspects. First, one is at a position to be knowledgeable about legislation, which has a dynamic nature. There is a constant need for recognizing the issues at hand, while acting fast to find proper legislative solutions to represent the client as best as possible. To do this, a lawyer is ought to be able to properly analyze the case, be knowledgeable about relevant laws and legislation, be detail-oriented, be able to multi-task and manage large amount of information, to properly assess what the main issue at hand is, and efficiently manage the case. Practicing law also requires proper communication and having the ability to connect between details - all of which must be accomplished within a strict timeline. Therefore, to succeed as a lawyer, one should be focused, be able concentrate on a high level, and have good organizational and time management skills. Some lawyers are struggling with invisible disabilities, such as attention deficits and hyperactivity disorders, as well as learning disabilities, and for them practicing law is a double-challenge. Similarly to their colleagues, they are required to practice law as demanded by their profession, but (and mainly) cope with their invisible disorder to professionally succeed. Often individuals with invisible disabilities are unaware of their situation and to the fact that these may have been the source for their difficulties in school or at work. For example, they may have difficulties to carry through assignments from beginning to end, to focus on one task, and they may unsuccessfully try to concurrently engage in many tasks. During school they may overcome their disorder by creating coping mechanisms, such as studying in groups, rewriting assignments, and reading class' notes taken by classmates, to compensate for their disabilities. Usually such coping strategies masked their disorder from them and their surroundings. Nevertheless, other individuals with sucfh disorders are aware of their situation, thereby they have been getting accommodations to their disabilities while in school (e.g. time-adjustment during exams, fitting the type of exams to their capabilities, and tutoring). Like other students with invisible disabilities, law students with these kinds of difficulties may eventually do very well in school. The main challenge for these lawyers is in the workforce. Practicing law is a very competitive occupation. The institution of law, the clients and colleagues, and the community – all have high expectation from lawyers. In Israel there is not enough awareness for the possibility that professionals who practice law may be struggling with invisible disabilities

Optimizing the sensitivity of high repetition rate broadband transient optical spectroscopy with modified shot-to-shot detection

A major limitation of transient optical spectroscopy is that relatively high laser fluences are required to enable broadband, multichannel detection with acceptable signal-to-noise levels. Under typical experimental conditions, many condensed phase and nanoscale materials exhibit fluence dependent dynamics, including higher order effects such as carrier-carrier annihilation. With the proliferation of commercial laser systems, offering both high repetition rates and high pulse energies, has come new opportunities for high sensitivity pump-probe measurements at low pump fluences. However, experimental considerations needed to fully leverage the statistical advantage of these laser systems has not been fully described. Here we demonstrate a high repetition rate, broadband transient spectrometer capable of multichannel shot-to-shot detection at 90 kHz. Importantly, we find that several high-speed cameras exhibit a time-domain fixed pattern noise resulting from interleaved analog-to-digital converters that is particularly detrimental to the conventional "ON/OFF" modulation scheme used in pump-probe spectroscopy. Using a modified modulation and data processing scheme, we achieve a noise level of $10^{-5}$ OD for an integration time of four seconds, an order of magnitude lower than for commercial 1 kHz transient spectrometers. We leverage the high sensitivity of this system to measure the differential transmission of monolayer graphene at low pump fluence. We show that signals on the order of $10^{-6}$ OD can be measured, enabling a new data acquisition regime for low dimensional materials

A channel for ion irradiation of materials at the accelerator “Sokol”

At the accelerator “Sokol” a channel for ion irradiation of materials is constructed. The channel comprising a beamline system, a slit device, an electrostatic scanning system with power and control modules, and an irradiation chamber is placed behind the analyzing magnet. The main technical parameters of the channel are the following: ions used – H, He, N, Ar; ion energy – 0.2…2 MeV; ion beam current – 2 µA; target zone being irradiated – from 2 ×2 mm up to 40×40 mm; target holder temperature – 80…450 K. Irradiation channel tests are performed together with experiments on polyimide films irradiation with hydrogen ions with an energy of 400 keV.На ускорителе «Сокол» создан канал ионного облучения материалов. Канал установлен после анализирующего магнита и состоит из ионопровода, щелевого прибора, электростатической сканирующей системы с блоком питания и управления, камеры облучения. Основные технические параметры разработанного устройства следующие: используемые ионы Н, He, N, Ar; энергия ионов 0,2…2 МэВ; ток пучка до 2 мкА; площадь облучения образца ─ от 2×2 мм до 40×40 мм; температура держателя образца ─ от 80 до 450 K. Проведены испытания канала облучения и выполнены эксперименты по облучению полиимидных пленок ионами водорода с энергий 400 кэВ.На прискорювачі «Сокіл» створений канал іонного опромінювання матеріалів. Канал встановлений після аналізуючого магніту і складається з іонопроводу, щілинного пристрою, електростатичної скануючої системи з блоком живлення і управління, камери опромінювання. Основні технічні параметри розробленого пристрою наступні: іони, що використовуються, ─ Н, He, N, Ar; енергія іонів ─ 0,2...2 МеВ; струм пучка ─ до 2 мкА; площа опромінювання зразка ─ від 2×2 мм до 40×40 мм; температура утримувача зразка ─ від 80 до 450 K. Проведені випробування каналу опромінювання та експерименти по опромінюванню поліімідних плівок іонами водню з енергією 400 кеВ

FastLane: Making Short Flows Shorter with Agile Drop Notification

The drive towards richer and more interactive web content places increasingly stringent requirements on datacenter network performance. Applications running atop these networks typically partition an incoming query into multiple subqueries, and generate the final result by aggregating the responses for these subqueries. As a result, a large fraction -as high as 80% -of the network flows in such workloads are short and latency-sensitive. The speed with which existing networks respond to packet drops limits their ability to meet high-percentile flow completion time SLOs. Indirect notifications indicating packet drops (e.g., duplicates in an end-to-end acknowledgement sequence) are an important limitation to the agility of response to packet drops. This paper proposes FastLane, an in-network drop notification mechanism. FastLane enhances switches to send high-priority drop notifications to sources, thus informing sources as quickly as possible. Consequently, sources can retransmit packets sooner and throttle transmission rates earlier, thus reducing high-percentile flow completion times. We demonstrate, through simulation and implementation, that FastLane reduces 99.9 th percentile completion times of short flows by up to 81%. These benefits come at minimal cost -safeguards ensure that FastLane consume no more than 1% of bandwidth and 2.5% of buffers

Cardiac involvement in Beagle-based canine X-linked muscular dystrophy in Japan (CXMD(J)): electrocardiographic, echocardiographic, and morphologic studies

BACKGROUND: Cardiac mortality in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) has recently become important, because risk of respiratory failure has been reduced due to widespread use of the respirator. The cardiac involvement is characterized by distinctive electrocardiographic abnormalities or dilated cardiomyopathy, but the pathogenesis has remained obscure. In research on DMD, Golden retriever-based muscular dystrophy (GRMD) has attracted much attention as an animal model because it resembles DMD, but GRMD is very difficult to maintain because of their severe phenotypes. We therefore established a line of dogs with Beagle-based canine X-linked muscular dystrophy in Japan (CXMD(J)) and examined the cardiac involvement. METHODS: The cardiac phenotypes of eight CXMD(J )and four normal male dogs 2 to 21 months of age were evaluated using electrocardiography, echocardiography, and histopathological examinations. RESULTS: Increases in the heart rate and decreases in PQ interval compared to a normal littermate were detected in two littermate CXMD(J )dogs at 15 months of age or older. Distinct deep Q-waves and increase in Q/R ratios in leads II, III, and aVF were detected by 6–7 months of age in all CXMD(J )dogs. In the echocardiogram, one of eight of CXMD(J )dogs showed a hyperechoic lesion in the left ventricular posterior wall at 5 months of age, but the rest had not by 6–7 months of age. The left ventricular function in the echocardiogram indicated no abnormality in all CXMD(J )dogs by 6–7 months of age. Histopathology revealed myocardial fibrosis, especially in the left ventricular posterobasal wall, in three of eight CXMD(J )dogs by 21 months of age. CONCLUSION: Cardiac involvement in CXMD(J )dogs is milder and has slower progression than that described in GRMD dogs. The distinct deep Q-waves have been ascribed to myocardial fibrosis in the posterobasal region of the left ventricle, but our data showed that they precede the lesion on echocardiogram and histopathology. These findings imply that studies of CXMD(J )may reveal not only another causative mechanism of the deep Q-waves but also more information on the pathogenesis in the dystrophin-deficient heart

Achieving Consistent Latencies in Datacenter Networks

In this thesis, we begin by analyzing the increasing trend of running large-scale services on Warehouse Scale Computers to provide user functionality. We see that user demands for interactivity place stringent requirements on these services, compelling them to consistently meet tight deadlines. To provide users a rich experience while meeting these deadlines, services typically parallelize requests, dividing tasks among many servers to speed-up computation. Consequently, services depend on the network to provide consistent, low-latency communication so that servers can coordinate and deliver their results in a timely manner.We explain why current networks are poorly suited for delivering consistent, low-latency performance. These networks typically run the TCP/IP stack, which explicitly trades consistent performance for generality and interoperability. This decision was appropriate for the Internet, which was designed to interconnect heterogeneous networks. However, given the new stringent requirements that these networks must support, we hypothesize that they can no longer accept this design decision. Instead, they must employ a series of tightly-integrated layers to deliver the consistent latencies services depend on.To understand the benefits of foregoing generality, we design and implement two approaches DeTail and FastLane. DeTail is a network stack that employs a series of tightly integrated layers. Each layer in the DeTail stack depends on, and overcomes the limitations of, others, reducing the latency spikes that often plague networks. FastLane employs an alternate approach, where network components directly communicate with transports, helping them respond more agilely to events that drive up latencies.To evaluate these approaches, we employ both simulation and implementation platforms. Based on these platforms, we see that both DeTail and FastLane are able to dramatically reduce latencies by foregoing generality and having the layers of the network stack directly depend on the functionality of others. We argue that this approach is a fruitful one and will become increasingly important as network requirements become increasingly stringent