Italian center for Astronomical Archives publishing solution: modular and distributed

The Italian center for Astronomical Archives tries to provide astronomical data resources as interoperable services based on IVOA standards. Its VO expertise and knowledge comes from active participation within IVOA and VO at European and international level, with a double-fold goal: learn from the collaboration and provide inputs to the community. The first solution to build an easy to configure and maintain resource publisher conformant to VO standards proved to be too optimistic. For this reason it has been necessary to re-think the architecture with a modular system built around the messaging concept, where each modular component speaks to the other interested parties through a system of broker-managed queues. The first implemented protocol, the Simple Cone Search, shows the messaging task architecture connecting the parametric HTTP interface to the database backend access module, the logging module, and allows multiple cone search resources to be managed together through a configuration manager module. Even if relatively young, it already proved the flexibility required by the overall system when the database backend changed from MySQL to PostgreSQL+PgSphere. Another implementation test has been made to leverage task distribution over multiple servers to serve simultaneously: FITS cubes direct linking, cubes cutout and cubes positional merging. Currently the implementation of the SIA-2.0 standard protocol is ongoing while for TAP we will be adapting the TAPlib library. Alongside these tools a first administration tool (TASMAN) has been developed to ease the build up and maintenance of TAP_SCHEMA-ta including also ObsCore maintenance capability. Future work will be devoted at widening the range of VO protocols covered by the set of available modules, improve the configuration management and develop specific purpose modules common to all the service components.Comment: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2018, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy V, pre-publishing draft proceeding (reduced abstract

How Has NAFTA Affected the Business Relationship Between the United States and Mexico?

This paper researches the effects NAFTA has had on the relationship between Mexico and the United States. It positions the question of why Mexico chose to enter the agreement within a larger historical context, debating the economic and social effects on the country as a whole. This study shows how economic trends have changed prior to and since Mexico joined NAFTA. It elaborates on the specific dynamics of what it means for the two countries to interact with each other on a cultural level, under the framework explained by Geert Hofstede\u27s cultural dimensions. Then, it poses recommendations for ways that managers and executives from the United States can use these cultural understandings to avoid corporate-level miscommunications and missteps. Because NAFTA is currently being renegotiated, this paper also discusses the current state of affairs in regards to that process. With updates from as recently as May 4, 2018, the paper weighs possible outcomes of the renegotiations, taking into consideration variables such as the elections occurring in both the United States and Mexico before the end of the year. Finally, this paper concludes that the business relationship between the two countries would not be as developed or as interdependent as it is today without NAFTA

Retention

Employee retention in the 21th century reflects how companies keep their employees motivated and well prepared for the challenges in the workplace. In this paper, I apply the concepts of motivation and how employers keep their employees. I also emphasize the costly effects of a employee leaving the organization, both as a dollar and emotional standpoint

Diphoton Resonances at the LHC

We review the current status of searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model in the diphoton channel at the LHC and estimate the reach with future collected data. We perform a model independent analysis based on an effective field theory approach and different production mechanisms. As an illustrative example, we apply our results to a scenario of minimal composite dynamics.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures; invited review for MPLA; journal versio

How the Experts Algorithm Can Help Solve LPs Online

We consider the problem of solving packing/covering LPs online, when the columns of the constraint matrix are presented in random order. This problem has received much attention and the main focus is to figure out how large the right-hand sides of the LPs have to be (compared to the entries on the left-hand side of the constraints) to allow $(1+\epsilon)$-approximations online. It is known that the right-hand sides have to be $\Omega(\epsilon^{-2} \log m)$ times the left-hand sides, where $m$ is the number of constraints. In this paper we give a primal-dual algorithm that achieve this bound for mixed packing/covering LPs. Our algorithms construct dual solutions using a regret-minimizing online learning algorithm in a black-box fashion, and use them to construct primal solutions. The adversarial guarantee that holds for the constructed duals helps us to take care of most of the correlations that arise in the algorithm; the remaining correlations are handled via martingale concentration and maximal inequalities. These ideas lead to conceptually simple and modular algorithms, which we hope will be useful in other contexts.Comment: An extended abstract appears in the 22nd European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2014