Land Law – The fight against gazumping

Professor M.P. Thompson (University of Leicester) considers the background and needs for the government review of conveyancing procedures in England and Wales which has focussed on stamping out the practice of gazumping. Note published in Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and its Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London

Women-led Fisheries Management: A Case Study From Bangladesh

This is a case study of a women-led fishery in Bangladesh. Although women constitute 50% of the total population of Asia (Southern)-Bangladesh; only 18% are economically involved inthe total labor force. They are involved in diversified work within their homesteads. However, during times offamily needs and economic crisis, women are involved in non-traditional jobs. In the fisheries sector, Muslimwomen are traditionally not involved in fishing but they are involved in fish drying and salting. In the Hindudominated areas such as Goakhola-Hatiara, women are involved in fish catch as well as the collection of otheraquatic resources as one of their livelihood strategies. Women and subsistence fishers are taking the lead inmanaging a common capture fishery resource in Goakhola-Hatiara with the support from an NGO for perhapsthe first time in Bangladesh. However, the role of women in the Beel Management Committee is not well defined.Under the leadership of women the socio-economic conditions have changed and the social capital has increased

A modified R1 X R1 method for helioseismic rotation inversions

We present an efficient method for two dimensional inversions for the solar rotation rate using the Subtractive Optimally Localized Averages (SOLA) method and a modification of the R1 X R1 technique proposed by Sekii (1993). The SOLA method is based on explicit construction of averaging kernels similar to the Backus-Gilbert method. The versatility and reliability of the SOLA method in reproducing a target form for the averaging kernel, in combination with the idea of the R1 X R1 decomposition, results in a computationally very efficient inversion algorithm. This is particularly important for full 2-D inversions of helioseismic data in which the number of modes runs into at least tens of thousands.Comment: 12 pages, Plain TeX + epsf.tex + mn.te

Understanding livelihoods dependent on inland fisheries in Bangladesh and Southeast Asia: final technical report

Inland fisheries, Wetlands, Livelihoods

Asymptotic Eigenstructures

The behavior of the closed loop eigenstructure of a linear system with output feedback is analyzed as a single parameter multiplying the feedback gain is varied. An algorithm is presented that computes the asymptotically infinite eigenstructure, and it is shown how a system with high gain, feedback decouples into single input, single output systems. Then a synthesis algorithm is presented which uses full state feedback to achieve a desired asymptotic eigenstructure

Women-led fisheries management - a case study from Bangladesh

Role of women, Fisheries, Bangladesh,

A Personalized System for Conversational Recommendations

Searching for and making decisions about information is becoming increasingly difficult as the amount of information and number of choices increases. Recommendation systems help users find items of interest of a particular type, such as movies or restaurants, but are still somewhat awkward to use. Our solution is to take advantage of the complementary strengths of personalized recommendation systems and dialogue systems, creating personalized aides. We present a system -- the Adaptive Place Advisor -- that treats item selection as an interactive, conversational process, with the program inquiring about item attributes and the user responding. Individual, long-term user preferences are unobtrusively obtained in the course of normal recommendation dialogues and used to direct future conversations with the same user. We present a novel user model that influences both item search and the questions asked during a conversation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our system in significantly reducing the time and number of interactions required to find a satisfactory item, as compared to a control group of users interacting with a non-adaptive version of the system

Searching for Globally Optimal Functional Forms for Inter-Atomic Potentials Using Parallel Tempering and Genetic Programming

We develop a Genetic Programming-based methodology that enables discovery of novel functional forms for classical inter-atomic force-fields, used in molecular dynamics simulations. Unlike previous efforts in the field, that fit only the parameters to the fixed functional forms, we instead use a novel algorithm to search the space of many possible functional forms. While a follow-on practical procedure will use experimental and {\it ab inito} data to find an optimal functional form for a forcefield, we first validate the approach using a manufactured solution. This validation has the advantage of a well-defined metric of success. We manufactured a training set of atomic coordinate data with an associated set of global energies using the well-known Lennard-Jones inter-atomic potential. We performed an automatic functional form fitting procedure starting with a population of random functions, using a genetic programming functional formulation, and a parallel tempering Metropolis-based optimization algorithm. Our massively-parallel method independently discovered the Lennard-Jones function after searching for several hours on 100 processors and covering a miniscule portion of the configuration space. We find that the method is suitable for unsupervised discovery of functional forms for inter-atomic potentials/force-fields. We also find that our parallel tempering Metropolis-based approach significantly improves the optimization convergence time, and takes good advantage of the parallel cluster architecture

Hybrid operator models for digitally implemented control systems

A method of analysis for digitally implemented (hybrid) control systems based on conic sector concepts from functional analysis was established. Data sampling is addressed

Flow of evaporating, gravity-driven thin liquid films over topography

The effect of topography on the free surface and solvent concentration profiles of an evaporating thin film of liquid flowing down an inclined plane is considered. The liquid is assumed to be composed of a resin dissolved in a volatile solvent with the associated solvent concentration equation derived on the basis of the well-mixed approximation. The dynamics of the film is formulated as a lubrication approximation and the effect of a composition-dependent viscosity is included in the model. The resulting time-dependent, nonlinear, coupled set of governing equations is solved using a full approximation storage multigrid method. The approach is first validated against a closed-form analytical solution for the case of a gravity-driven, evaporating thin film flowing down a flat substrate. Analysis of the results for a range of topography shapes reveal that although a full-width, spanwise topography such as a step-up or a step-down does not affect the composition of the film, the same is no longer true for the case of localized topography, such as a peak or a trough, for which clear nonuniformities of the solvent concentration profile can be observed in the wake of the topography