Recent Developments in Trade Between the U.S. and the P.R.C.: A Legal and Economic Perspective

This paper presents the life story of a single small-business owner of immigrant background who wants his companyto grow. His business strategies are analysed both as a part of his own biographical work, and as they wereinfluenced and framed by broader political, economic and social processes. It is shown how his own personalqualities in combination with opportunity structures in the local market provided favourable conditions for hisbreak-in. Breaking out, however, seems to be presented with different types of barriers, such as lack of access tocapital, discrimination, and the fact that new markets may consist of different sorts of network that are in its turnmore difficult for new actors to enter. But even if newcomers often find these barriers difficult for to overcome,individuals are not just passive objects but also have the opportunity to realize their lives according to their own lifeplans

Stability of 2pi domain walls in ferromagnetic nanorings

The stability of 2pi domain walls in ferromagnetic nanorings is investigated via calculation of the minimum energy path that separates a 2pi domain wall from the vortex state of a ferromagnetic nanoring. Trapped domains are stable when they exist between certain types of transverse domain walls, i.e., walls in which the edge defects on the same side of the magnetic strip have equal sign and thus repel. Here the energy barriers between these configurations and vortex magnetization states are obtained using the string method. Due to the geometry of a ring, two types of 2pi walls must be distinguished that differ by their overall topological index and exchange energy. The minimum energy path corresponds to the expulsion of a vortex. The energy barrier for annihilation of a 2pi wall is compared to the activation energy for transitions between the two ring vortex states.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Trade with the People\u27s Republic of China: Current Status and Future Prospects

Since the normalization of diplomatic relations with the People\u27s Republic of China (PRC) in 1979, U.S. trade with China has developed rapidly. In particular, 1980 saw significant developments in the institutional framework of U.S.-China trade relations, with the signing of several new trade-related bilateral agreements and a number of high-level visits in both directions.2 At the same time, China has begun to update its domestic legal system as it plans to integrate more fully into the international economic order.3 The last year has also witnessed the cancellation of certain large development projects, and delay in the implementation of others, as the Chinese readjust their economic plans and priorities. This Perspective will first discuss the current status of U.S.-China trade relations, with an emphasis on the developments of 1980. It will then present our view of the Chinese economy and prospects for the future development of China\u27s foreign trade. Changes in the Chinese legal system will be mentioned only briefly, as those matters are treated in detail elsewhere in this issue

The Pulmonary Component of the Second Sound in Right Ventricular Failure

Sound within the pulmonary artery was measured in 24 patients to determine if right ventricular failure modifies the amplitude of the pulmonary component of the second sound (P2). The amplitude of P2 in eight patients with right ventricular failure secondary to pulmonary hypertension (2610 ± 370 dynes/cm2) did not differ from P2 in eight patients with pulmonary hypertension not accompanied by right ventricular failure (3120 ± 710 dynes/cm2). In both groups, the amplitude of P2 exceeded control subjects (520 ± 70 dynes/cm2) (P \u3c .001 and P \u3c .01, respectively). The maximal rate of development of the pressure gradient across the closed pulmonary valve was higher in patients with right ventricular failure (580 ± 100 mm Hg/sec) than in control subjects (150 ± 30 mm Hg/sec) (P \u3c .001) and maximal negative dp/dt was also higher in patients with failure (750 ± 70 mm Hg/sec vs 190 ± 20 mm Hg/sec) (P \u3c .001). The maximal rate of change of the diastolic pressure gradient correlated linearly with maximal negative dp/dt (r=.89). These observations indicate that P2 is accentuated in patients with right ventricular failure secondary to pulmonary hypertension. The accentuation results from the augmented rate of development of the diastolic pressure gradient, which reflects an augmented right ventricular negative dp/dt. Therefore, an accentuated P2 remains valid as a clinical sign of pulmonary hypertension whether or not right ventricular failure occurs

Exchangeable equilibria

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-188).The main contribution of this thesis is a new solution concept for symmetric games (of complete information in strategic form), the exchangeable equilibrium. This is an intermediate notion between symmetric Nash and symmetric correlated equilibrium. While a variety of weaker solution concepts than correlated equilibrium and a variety of refinements of Nash equilibrium are known, there is little previous work on "interpolating" between Nash and correlated equilibrium. Several game-theoretic interpretations suggest that exchangeable equilibria are natural objects to study. Moreover, these show that the notion of symmetric correlated equilibrium is too weak and exchangeable equilibrium is a more natural analog of correlated equilibrium for symmetric games. The geometric properties of exchangeable equilibria are a mix of those of Nash and correlated equilibria. The set of exchangeable equilibria is convex, compact, and semi-algebraic, but not necessarily a polytope. A variety of examples illustrate how it relates to the Nash and correlated equilibria. The same ideas which lead to the notion of exchangeable equilibria can be used to construct tighter convex relaxations of the symmetric Nash equilibria as well as convex relaxations of the set of all Nash equilibria in asymmetric games. These have similar mathematical properties to the exchangeable equilibria. An example game reveals an algebraic obstruction to computing exact exchangeable equilibria, but these can be approximated to any degree of accuracy in polynomial time. On the other hand, optimizing a linear function over the exchangeable equilibria is NP-hard. There are practical linear and semidefinite programming heuristics for both problems. A secondary contribution of this thesis is the computation of extreme points of the set of correlated equilibria in a simple family of games. These examples illustrate that in finite games there can be factorially many more extreme correlated equilibria than extreme Nash equilibria, so enumerating extreme correlated equilibria is not an effective method for enumerating extreme Nash equilibria. In the case of games with a continuum of strategies and polynomial utilities, the examples illustrate that while the set of Nash equilibria has a known finite-dimensional description in terms of moments, the set of correlated equilibria admits no such finite-dimensional characterization.by Noah D. Stein.Ph.D

Deliverable D4.5 Content and Concept Filter v2

Content annotation and enrichment within LinkedTV produces arbitrarily large amounts of quality links to the web, which on the one hand shows the potential of the involved algorithms, but on the other hand can be overwhelming for a single user if not filtered and priorized beforehand. In this deliverable, we present our approaches to rank and filter these links based on a user’s interest. We offer solutions for implicitly learned interests, and for explicitely given preferences, by exploiting the user-centered ontologies as defined in Deliverable D4.4. Further, we explore ranking mechanisms directly based on the entities derived in the annotation and enrichment process. Finally, we offer quantitative and qualitative experiments and assessments on data drawn from the news broadcast scenario