An Investigation of Philadelphia's Youth Aid Panel: A Community-Based Diversion Program for First-Time Youthful Offenders

The formal justice system currently does not have the resources to effectively deal with nonviolent first-time offending youth, oftentimes leaving them with little punishment aside from a criminal record. This report offers a close examination of Philadelphia's Youth Aid Panels (YAP), which seeks to provide alternative sentencing for this high-risk population through the collaboration of volunteer community members, victims, parent(s)/guardian and a law enforcement official. YAP offers victims a better sense of restitution while also providing the youth with the real opportunity to reintegrate into society without a record. Our initial exploratory evaluation shows promising results, and we offer a several recommendations to strengthen YAP programs

Trial factors for the look elsewhere effect in high energy physics

When searching for a new resonance somewhere in a possible mass range, the significance of observing a local excess of events must take into account the probability of observing such an excess anywhere in the range. This is the so called "look elsewhere effect". The effect can be quantified in terms of a trial factor, which is the ratio between the probability of observing the excess at some fixed mass point, to the probability of observing it anywhere in the range. We propose a simple and fast procedure for estimating the trial factor, based on earlier results by Davies. We show that asymptotically, the trial factor grows linearly with the (fixed mass) significance

A management architecture for active networks

In this paper we present an architecture for network and applications management, which is based on the Active Networks paradigm and shows the advantages of network programmability. The stimulus to develop this architecture arises from an actual need to manage a cluster of active nodes, where it is often required to redeploy network assets and modify nodes connectivity. In our architecture, a remote front-end of the managing entity allows the operator to design new network topologies, to check the status of the nodes and to configure them. Moreover, the proposed framework allows to explore an active network, to monitor the active applications, to query each node and to install programmable traps. In order to take advantage of the Active Networks technology, we introduce active SNMP-like MIBs and agents, which are dynamic and programmable. The programmable management agents make tracing distributed applications a feasible task. We propose a general framework that can inter-operate with any active execution environment. In this framework, both the manager and the monitor front-ends communicate with an active node (the Active Network Access Point) through the XML language. A gateway service performs the translation of the queries from XML to an active packet language and injects the code in the network. We demonstrate the implementation of an active network gateway for PLAN (Packet Language for Active Networks) in a forty active nodes testbed. Finally, we discuss an application of the active management architecture to detect the causes of network failures by tracing network events in time

Optimal sequential fingerprinting: Wald vs. Tardos

We study sequential collusion-resistant fingerprinting, where the fingerprinting code is generated in advance but accusations may be made between rounds, and show that in this setting both the dynamic Tardos scheme and schemes building upon Wald's sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) are asymptotically optimal. We further compare these two approaches to sequential fingerprinting, highlighting differences between the two schemes. Based on these differences, we argue that Wald's scheme should in general be preferred over the dynamic Tardos scheme, even though both schemes have their merits. As a side result, we derive an optimal sequential group testing method for the classical model, which can easily be generalized to different group testing models.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure

Sufficient conditions for the anti-Zeno effect

The ideal anti-Zeno effect means that a perpetual observation leads to an immediate disappearance of the unstable system. We present a straightforward way to derive sufficient conditions under which such a situation occurs expressed in terms of the decaying states and spectral properties of the Hamiltonian. They show, in particular, that the gap between Zeno and anti-Zeno effects is in fact very narrow.Comment: LatEx2e, 9 pages; a revised text, to appear in J. Phys. A: Math. Ge

Network delay tomography using flexicast experiments

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73739/1/j.1467-9868.2006.00567.x.pd

Error Exponent in Asymmetric Quantum Hypothesis Testing and Its Application to Classical-Quantum Channel coding

In the simple quantum hypothesis testing problem, upper bound with asymmetric setting is shown by using a quite useful inequality by Audenaert et al, quant-ph/0610027, which was originally invented for symmetric setting. Using this upper bound, we obtain the Hoeffding bound, which are identical with the classical counter part if the hypotheses, composed of two density operators, are mutually commutative. Our upper bound improves the bound by Ogawa-Hayashi, and also provides a simpler proof of the direct part of the quantum Stein's lemma. Further, using this bound, we obtain a better exponential upper bound of the average error probability of classical-quantum channel coding