The Case for an Intermediate Exchange Rate Regime with Endogenizing Market Structures and Capital Mobility

Set in the context of the recent theoretical and policy debates on appropriate exchange rate regimes for emerging market economies in a world of free capital mobility, the paper attempts to present the case for an intermediate exchange rate regime, drawing on recent theoretical and empirical literatures on behavioural finance and currency market structures; and to examine empirically the experiences and evolution of Brazil.s foreign exchange market under different exchange rate regimes.exchange rate management, emerging markets, Brazil

Modeling the structure and evolution of discussion cascades

We analyze the structure and evolution of discussion cascades in four popular websites: Slashdot, Barrapunto, Meneame and Wikipedia. Despite the big heterogeneities between these sites, a preferential attachment (PA) model with bias to the root can capture the temporal evolution of the observed trees and many of their statistical properties, namely, probability distributions of the branching factors (degrees), subtree sizes and certain correlations. The parameters of the model are learned efficiently using a novel maximum likelihood estimation scheme for PA and provide a figurative interpretation about the communication habits and the resulting discussion cascades on the four different websites.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure

Not all paths lead to Rome: Analysing the network of sister cities

This work analyses the practice of sister city pairing. We investigate structural properties of the resulting city and country networks and present rankings of the most central nodes in these networks. We identify different country clusters and find that the practice of sister city pairing is not influenced by geographical proximity but results in highly assortative networks.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

The Drawings and Papers of Alan Dunn and Mary Petty at Syracuse University

Alan Dunn and Mary Petty were cartoonists whose wit and humor enlivened the pages of The New Yorker from 1926 to 1974. Though they were man and wife as well as teacher and student, their output was distinctively separate in style, mood, and content. Their work has been recognized internationally as providing incisive commentary on the social conventions, the values, and the arts of their New York contemporaries. The bulk of their roughs and finished cartoons are held in the Syracuse University Art Collections and their papers, including correspondence and diaries, are in the George Arents Research Library at Syracuse University. Unless otherwise indicated, all references are to materials held at Syracuse University

An Abstraction Framework for Tangible Interactive Surfaces

This cumulative dissertation discusses - by the example of four subsequent publications - the various layers of a tangible interaction framework, which has been developed in conjunction with an electronic musical instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Based on the experiences that have been collected during the design and implementation of that particular musical application, this research mainly concentrates on the definition of a general-purpose abstraction model for the encapsulation of physical interface components that are commonly employed in the context of an interactive surface environment. Along with a detailed description of the underlying abstraction model, this dissertation also describes an actual implementation in the form of a detailed protocol syntax, which constitutes the common element of a distributed architecture for the construction of surface-based tangible user interfaces. The initial implementation of the presented abstraction model within an actual application toolkit is comprised of the TUIO protocol and the related computer-vision based object and multi-touch tracking software reacTIVision, along with its principal application within the Reactable synthesizer. The dissertation concludes with an evaluation and extension of the initial TUIO model, by presenting TUIO2 - a next generation abstraction model designed for a more comprehensive range of tangible interaction platforms and related application scenarios