Analysis of Multilateral Agreements, Public- Private Partnerships, and Tax Incentives Driving International Trade in Clean Technology

International trade in clean technology is still a nascent market and requires encouragement from multilateral agreements, public-private partnerships, and tax incentives. This article will survey various drivers of North-South and North-North cleantech trade including the Clean Development Mechanism, the Private Financing Advisory Network, and tax incentives, and explore potential issues involved in their implementation

Analysis of a hadron beam in five-dimensional phase space

We conduct a detailed measurement and analysis of a hadron beam in five-dimensional phase space at the Spallation Neutron Source Beam Test Facility. The measurement's resolution and dynamic range are sufficient to image sharp, high-dimensional features in low-density regions of phase space. To facilitate the complex task of feature identification in the five-dimensional phase space, we develop several analysis and visualization techniques, including non-planar slicing. We use these techniques to examine the transverse dependence of longitudinal hollowing and longitudinal dependence of transverse hollowing in the distribution. This analysis strengthens the claim that low-dimensional projections do not adequately characterize high-dimensional phase space distributions in low-energy hadron acceleratorsComment: 13 pages; 15 figures; submitted to Physical Review Accelerators and Beams (PRAB

From Pacemaker to Vortex Ring: Modeling Jellyfish Propulsion and Turning

Jellyfish represent one of the earliest and simplest examples of swimming by a macroscopic organism. Through a process of elastic deformation and recoil, jellyfish propulsion is generated via the coordinated contraction of its elastic bell by its coronal swimming muscles and a complementary re-expansion that is passively driven by stored elastic energy. In this thesis, I begin by first examining the role of mechanical resonance in producing faster or more efficient locomotion. I then examine the mechanics of oblate jellyfish swimming by incorporating material models that are informed by the musculature present in jellyfish into a model of an elastic bell in three dimensions. I then examine the effects of scaling on oblate bell forward swimming by examining the work of the musculature and the cost of transport involved. Lastly, I then shift my focus onto how the underlying acephalic neuromuscular organization of their bell allows for complicated swimming behaviors, such as steering and maneuvering.Doctor of Philosoph

Very Hard Electoral Control Problems

It is important to understand how the outcome of an election can be modified by an agent with control over the structure of the election. Electoral control has been studied for many election systems, but for all studied systems the winner problem is in P, and so control is in NP. There are election systems, such as Kemeny, that have many desirable properties, but whose winner problems are not in NP. Thus for such systems control is not in NP, and in fact we show that it is typically complete for $\Sigma_2^p$ (i.e., ${\rm NP}^{\rm NP}$, the second level of the polynomial hierarchy). This is a very high level of complexity. Approaches that perform quite well for solving NP problems do not necessarily work for $\Sigma_2^p$-complete problems. However, answer set programming is suited to express problems in $\Sigma_2^p$, and we present an encoding for Kemeny control.Comment: A version of this paper will appear in the Proceedings of AAAI-201

Half-Duplex Communication Complexity

Suppose Alice and Bob are communicating in order to compute some function f, but instead of a classical communication channel they have a pair of walkie-talkie devices. They can use some classical communication protocol for f where in each round one player sends a bit and the other one receives it. The question is whether talking via walkie-talkie gives them more power? Using walkie-talkies instead of a classical communication channel allows players two extra possibilities: to speak simultaneously (but in this case they do not hear each other) and to listen at the same time (but in this case they do not transfer any bits). The motivation for this kind of a communication model comes from the study of the KRW conjecture. We show that for some definitions this non-classical communication model is, in fact, more powerful than the classical one as it allows to compute some functions in a smaller number of rounds. We also prove lower bounds for these models using both combinatorial and information theoretic methods

Time-Sliced Quantum Circuit Partitioning for Modular Architectures

Current quantum computer designs will not scale. To scale beyond small prototypes, quantum architectures will likely adopt a modular approach with clusters of tightly connected quantum bits and sparser connections between clusters. We exploit this clustering and the statically-known control flow of quantum programs to create tractable partitioning heuristics which map quantum circuits to modular physical machines one time slice at a time. Specifically, we create optimized mappings for each time slice, accounting for the cost to move data from the previous time slice and using a tunable lookahead scheme to reduce the cost to move to future time slices. We compare our approach to a traditional statically-mapped, owner-computes model. Our results show strict improvement over the static mapping baseline. We reduce the non-local communication overhead by 89.8\% in the best case and by 60.9\% on average. Our techniques, unlike many exact solver methods, are computationally tractable.Comment: Appears in CF'20: ACM International Conference on Computing Frontier

A novel method for RNA extraction from FFPE samples reveals significant differences in biomarker expression between orthotopic and subcutaneous pancreatic cancer patient-derived xenografts.

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) can identify and validate new biomarkers of cancer onset, progression and therapy resistance. Substantial archives of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) cancer samples from patients represent a rich resource for linking molecular signatures to clinical data. However, performing NGS on FFPE samples is limited by poor RNA purification methods. To address this hurdle, we developed an improved methodology for extracting high-quality RNA from FFPE samples. By briefly integrating a newly-designed micro-homogenizing (mH) tool with commercially available FFPE RNA extraction protocols, RNA recovery is increased by approximately 3-fold while maintaining standard A260/A280 ratios and RNA quality index (RQI) values. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the mH-purified FFPE RNAs are longer and of higher integrity. Previous studies have suggested that pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) gene expression signatures vary significantly under in vitro versus in vivo and in vivo subcutaneous versus orthotopic conditions. By using our improved mH-based method, we were able to preserve established expression patterns of KRas-dependency genes within these three unique microenvironments. Finally, expression analysis of novel biomarkers in KRas mutant PDAC samples revealed that PEAK1 decreases and MST1R increases by over 100-fold in orthotopic versus subcutaneous microenvironments. Interestingly, however, only PEAK1 levels remain elevated in orthotopically grown KRas wild-type PDAC cells. These results demonstrate the critical nature of the orthotopic tumor microenvironment when evaluating the clinical relevance of new biomarkers in cells or patient-derived samples. Furthermore, this new mH-based FFPE RNA extraction method has the potential to enhance and expand future FFPE-RNA-NGS cancer biomarker studies