Electronic Library Collections and Users with Visual Impairments: Challenges, Developments, and the State of Collections Policies in Academic and Public Libraries

Academic and public library collections are developed based on the needs of the communities that surround them. Technology has increased the way users access information, and the way libraries offer information to their users. However, the accessibility of electronic resources for users with print disabilities remains an issue that has yet to have an equitable remedy. This paper identifies the challenges of visually impaired users, the developments in law, the current state of accessibility in academic and public library collections policies, and the current formats and products that are leading the way

Commitment games with conditional information revelation

The conditional commitment abilities of mutually transparent computer agents have been studied in previous work on commitment games and program equilibrium. This literature has shown how these abilities can help resolve Prisoner's Dilemmas and other failures of cooperation in complete information settings. But inefficiencies due to private information have been neglected thus far in this literature, despite the fact that these problems are pervasive and might also be addressed by greater mutual transparency. In this work, we introduce a framework for commitment games with a new kind of conditional commitment device, which agents can use to conditionally reveal private information. We prove a folk theorem for this setting that provides sufficient conditions for ex post efficiency, and thus represents a model of ideal cooperation between agents without a third-party mediator. Connecting our framework with the literature on strategic information revelation, we explore cases where conditional revelation can be used to achieve full cooperation while unconditional revelation cannot. Finally, extending previous work on program equilibrium, we develop an implementation of conditional information revelation. We show that this implementation forms program $\epsilon$-Bayesian Nash equilibria corresponding to the Bayesian Nash equilibria of these commitment games.Comment: Accepted at the Games, Agents, and Incentives Workshop at AAMAS 202

Balancing Adaptability and Non-exploitability in Repeated Games

We study the problem of guaranteeing low regret in repeated games against an opponent with unknown membership in one of several classes. We add the constraint that our algorithm is non-exploitable, in that the opponent lacks an incentive to use an algorithm against which we cannot achieve rewards exceeding some "fair" value. Our solution is an expert algorithm (LAFF) that searches within a set of sub-algorithms that are optimal for each opponent class and uses a punishment policy upon detecting evidence of exploitation by the opponent. With benchmarks that depend on the opponent class, we show that LAFF has sublinear regret uniformly over the possible opponents, except exploitative ones, for which we guarantee that the opponent has linear regret. To our knowledge, this work is the first to provide guarantees for both regret and non-exploitability in multi-agent learning.Comment: Accepted at Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence 202

Micromechanics of deformation in porous liquid phase sintered alumina under hertzian contact

A series of fine-grained porous alumina samples, with and without a liquid phase, were fabricated in compositions matched closely to commercially available alumina used as a microelectronic substrates. Hertzian indentation on monolithic specimens of the glass-containing samples produced a greater quasi-ductile stress-strain response compared to that observed in the pure alumina. Maximum residual indentation depths, determined from surface profilometry, correlated with the stress-strain results. Moreover, microstructural observations from bonded interface specimens revealed significantly more damage in the form of microcracking and under extreme loading, pore collapse, in the glass-containing specimens. The absence of the typical twin faulting mechanism observed for larger-grained alumina suggests that the damage mechanism for quasi-ductility in these fine-grained porous alumina derived from the pores acting as a stress concentrator and the grain boundary glass phase providing a weak path for short crack propagation

Micromechanics of Compaction in an Analogue Reservoir Sandstone

Energy production, deformation, and fluid transport in reservoirs are linked closely. Recent field, laboratory, and theoretical studies suggest that, under certain stress conditions, compaction of porous rocks may be accommodated by narrow zones of localized compressive deformation oriented perpendicular to the maximum compressive stress. Triaxial compression experiments were performed on Castlegate, an analogue reservoir sandstone, that included acoustic emission detection and location. Initially, acoustic emissions were focused in horizontal bands that initiated at the sample ends (perpendicular to the maximum compressive stress), but with continued loading progressed axially towards the center. This paper describes microscopy studies that were performed to elucidate the micromechanics of compaction during the experiments. The microscopy revealed that compaction of this weakly-cemented sandstone proceeded in two phases: an initial stage of porosity decrease accomplished by breakage of grain contacts and grain rotation, and a second stage of further reduction accommodated by intense grain breakage and rotation

Safety of inhaled glycopyrronium in patients with COPD: a comprehensive analysis of clinical studies and post-marketing data

Chronic use of inhaled anticholinergics by patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has raised long-term safety concerns, particularly cardiovascular. Glycopyrronium is a once-daily anticholinergic with greater receptor selectivity than previously available agents.status: publishe