Commercial Law—Uniform Commercial Code—Bank May Cancel Letter of Credit Without Verifying Accuracy of Customer’s Affidavit

Fair Pavilions, Inc. v. First Nat\u27l City Bank, 24 A.D.2d 109, 264 N.Y.S.2d 255 (1st Dep\u27t 1965)

A Comparative Sustainability Study for Treatment of Domestic Wastewater: Conventional Concrete and Steel Technology vs. Vegetated Sand Beds (VSB’s) and Their Relative Differences in CO2 Production

Conventional wastewater treatment in the U.S. is an energy dependent and carbon dioxide emitting process. Typical mechanical systems consume copious amounts of energy, which is most commonly produced from fossil fuel combustion that results in the production of CO2. The associated organic load is also metabolized by microorganisms into CO2 and H2O. As the desire to reduce CO2 output becomes more prominent, it is logical to assess the costs of conventional treatment methods and to compare them to alternative, more sustainable technology. Vegetated Sand Bed (VSB) and Reed Bed (RB) systems are green technologies that provide environmentally superior treatment to conventional systems at a fraction of the cost both environmentally and economically. Using mass balance equations the net CO2 produced from wastewater treatment at 3 conventional facilities, (Amherst, MA, Ithaca, NY and Shelburne-Buckland, MA) and 3 VSBs, (Lloyd, NY, Shushufindi Slaughterhouse, Ecuador and Shushufindi Municipal Facility, Ecuador), will be estimated. Carbon dioxide sources considered are BOD5 microbial respiration, power demand, and sludge treatment. Using the BOD5 reduction and the average daily flow from each of the conventional facilities, hypothetical VSB and RB systems will be sized for the 3 conventional systems. The land area for each hypothetical VSB and RB and the CO2 reduction for equal treatment are estimated for each conventional facility. Estimates of annual CO2 production for Amherst, Ithaca, and Shelburne-Buckland, are 3,021 metric tons, 5,575 metric tons, and 158 metric tons of, respectively. The annual CO2 reduction potential for the conventional facilities Amherst, Ithaca, and Shelburne-Buckland, when compared to VSB and RB technology is estimated to be 74.0%, 83.2%, and 86.3% respectively. VSB and RB technology also provide promising results for sustainable wastewater treatment and reuse. Ammonium and nitrate reduction at the Joseph Troll Turf Plot VSBs were 72% and 88% respectively. The mean ammonium microbial growth rate constant was – 0.14 d-1 and the mean nitrate microbial growth rate constant was – 0.23 d-1. The implications are ammonium and nitrate reduction is possible with VSB and RB technology. Further investigation to understand the processes and fate of nitrogen including separate testing of ammonium and nitrate reduction are recommended

Constitutional Law—Price Regulation of Liquor Industry Not Violative of Due Process of Law

Joseph E. Seagram and Sons, Inc. v. Hostetter, 16 N.Y. 47, 209 N.E.2d 701, 262 N.Y.S.2d 75, cert. granted, 34 U.S.L. Week 3179 (U.S. Nov. 23, 1965)

Ignorable Information in Multi-Agent Scenarios

In some multi-agent scenarios, identifying observations that an agent can safely ignore reduces exponentially the size of the agent's strategy space and hence the time required to find a Nash equilibrium. We consider games represented using the multi-agent influence diagram (MAID) framework of Koller and Milch [2001], and analyze the extent to which information edges can be eliminated. We define a notion of a safe edge removal transformation, where all equilibria in the reduced model are also equilibria in the original model. We show that existing edge removal algorithms for influence diagrams are safe, but limited, in that they do not detect certain cases where edges can be removed safely. We describe an algorithm that produces the "minimal" safe reduction, which removes as many edges as possible while still preserving safety. Finally, we note that both the existing edge removal algorithms and our new one can eliminate equilibria where agents coordinate their actions by conditioning on irrelevant information. Surprisingly, in some games these "lost" equilibria can be preferred by all agents in the game

Lower Complexity Bounds for Lifted Inference

One of the big challenges in the development of probabilistic relational (or probabilistic logical) modeling and learning frameworks is the design of inference techniques that operate on the level of the abstract model representation language, rather than on the level of ground, propositional instances of the model. Numerous approaches for such "lifted inference" techniques have been proposed. While it has been demonstrated that these techniques will lead to significantly more efficient inference on some specific models, there are only very recent and still quite restricted results that show the feasibility of lifted inference on certain syntactically defined classes of models. Lower complexity bounds that imply some limitations for the feasibility of lifted inference on more expressive model classes were established early on in (Jaeger 2000). However, it is not immediate that these results also apply to the type of modeling languages that currently receive the most attention, i.e., weighted, quantifier-free formulas. In this paper we extend these earlier results, and show that under the assumption that NETIME =/= ETIME, there is no polynomial lifted inference algorithm for knowledge bases of weighted, quantifier- and function-free formulas. Further strengthening earlier results, this is also shown to hold for approximate inference, and for knowledge bases not containing the equality predicate.Comment: To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP

Discrete orthogonal polynomials and difference equations of several variables

The goal of this work is to characterize all second order difference operators of several variables that have discrete orthogonal polynomials as eigenfunctions. Under some mild assumptions, we give a complete solution of the problem.Comment: minor typos correcte