A ROOT/IO Based Software Framework for CMS

The implementation of persistency in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Software Framework uses the core I/O functionality of ROOT. We will discuss the current ROOT/IO implementation, its evolution from the prior Objectivity/DB implementation, and the plans and ongoing work for the conversion to "POOL", provided by the LHC Computing Grid (LCG) persistency project

Testing for Yield Persistency: Is It Skill or is It Luck?

This study uses corn yield data from McLean County, Illinois to test whether farmer skill influences yields. This analysis is conducted by performing persistency tests on unadjusted, soil productivity adjusted (PA), and productivity and input intensity adjusted (PIA) yields. Correlation analysis and winner/loser tables indicate that unadjusted, PA, and PIA yields exhibit persistency across time. PIA yields exhibiting persistency is consistent with farmer skill influencing yield. Hence, our results support the hypothesis that farmer skill influences yields.Crop Production/Industries,

Maximum Persistency in Energy Minimization

We consider discrete pairwise energy minimization problem (weighted constraint satisfaction, max-sum labeling) and methods that identify a globally optimal partial assignment of variables. When finding a complete optimal assignment is intractable, determining optimal values for a part of variables is an interesting possibility. Existing methods are based on different sufficient conditions. We propose a new sufficient condition for partial optimality which is: (1) verifiable in polynomial time (2) invariant to reparametrization of the problem and permutation of labels and (3) includes many existing sufficient conditions as special cases. We pose the problem of finding the maximum optimal partial assignment identifiable by the new sufficient condition. A polynomial method is proposed which is guaranteed to assign same or larger part of variables than several existing approaches. The core of the method is a specially constructed linear program that identifies persistent assignments in an arbitrary multi-label setting.Comment: Extended technical report for the CVPR 2014 paper. Update: correction to the proof of characterization theore

Production and persistency of red clover (Trifolium pratense) varieties when grown in mixtures

In the Netherlands organic and conventional dairy farmers are taking an increasing interest in grass and red clover mixtures for ley pastures (cutting only). A constraint to the adoption of such mixtures is the persistency of the red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) varieties presently used in the Netherlands; Rotra, Barfiola, Violetta and Merviot. The latter being the most persistent under practical circumstances. Testing of red clover varieties in Switzerland showed a high degree of persistency of the so-called ‘mattenklee’ varieties such as Astur and Pica (Suter et al., 2004). We compared eight red clover varieties including 2 ‘mattenklee’ varieties in mixtures with perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) and white clover (Trifolium repens L.), and a mixture containing white clover and perennial ryegrass only. Red clover mixtures out yielded the white clover mixtures by 5.4 t dry matter (DM) ha -1 . ULC 1715186 and Astur were the most productive red clover varieties. The development of the clover content of Astur showed that this variety scored highest on persistency

Combinatorial persistency criteria for multicut and max-cut

In combinatorial optimization, partial variable assignments are called persistent if they agree with some optimal solution. We propose persistency criteria for the multicut and max-cut problem as well as fast combinatorial routines to verify them. The criteria that we derive are based on mappings that improve feasible multicuts, respectively cuts. Our elementary criteria can be checked enumeratively. The more advanced ones rely on fast algorithms for upper and lower bounds for the respective cut problems and max-flow techniques for auxiliary min-cut problems. Our methods can be used as a preprocessing technique for reducing problem sizes or for computing partial optimality guarantees for solutions output by heuristic solvers. We show the efficacy of our methods on instances of both problems from computer vision, biomedical image analysis and statistical physics

Transparent Persistence with Java Data Objects

Flexible and performant Persistency Service is a necessary component of any HEP Software Framework. The building of a modular, non-intrusive and performant persistency component have been shown to be very difficult task. In the past, it was very often necessary to sacrifice modularity to achieve acceptable performance. This resulted in the strong dependency of the overall Frameworks on their Persistency subsystems. Recent development in software technology has made possible to build a Persistency Service which can be transparently used from other Frameworks. Such Service doesn't force a strong architectural constraints on the overall Framework Architecture, while satisfying high performance requirements. Java Data Object standard (JDO) has been already implemented for almost all major databases. It provides truly transparent persistency for any Java object (both internal and external). Objects in other languages can be handled via transparent proxies. Being only a thin layer on top of a used database, JDO doesn't introduce any significant performance degradation. Also Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) makes possible to treat persistency as an orthogonal Aspect of the Application Framework, without polluting it with persistence-specific concepts. All these techniques have been developed primarily (or only) for the Java environment. It is, however, possible to interface them transparently to Frameworks built in other languages, like for example C++. Fully functional prototypes of flexible and non-intrusive persistency modules have been build for several other packages, as for example FreeHEP AIDA and LCG Pool AttributeSet (package Indicium).Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003. PSN TUKT00

Persistence of Profitability and the Dynamics of Competition in Turkey, 1985-2004

The existing empirical literature on the intensity of competition in developing countries shows that the persistence of profitability is smaller in developing than in advanced economies. To solve this controversy, Glen, Lee and Singh (2003) propose to look into the underlying sources of the persistency, namely persistency of monopoly power and of economic efficiency. This paper reports on time series analysis of the persistence of corporate profitability and its constituent parts for the largest 114 manufacturing firms in Turkey. Its central result is that the observed persistency of profits in the markets is due to persistency of productivity rather than the persistency of profit margins suggesting that pro-competitive characteristics of markets overweigh the inimical competition characteristics in Turkey.Persistence of profitability,Economic efficiency

A Multivariate measure of lactation persistency for dairy sheep

The persistency of lactation, i.e. the ability of animals to maintain a rconstant level of production after the lactation peak, represents an interesting trait for animal breeding strategies, allowing for the increase of profitability of animal husbandry via the reduction of production costs. Dairy cattle with flatter curves show a higher reproductive efficiency, a better metabolic status and have their nutritional requirements more constantly spread throughout lactation, allowing for the use of cheaper feeds (Dekkers et al., 1998; Solkner and Fucks, 1987). Also in dairy sheep the persistency could represent an interesting trait for breeding purposes. A main problem for the introduction of this trait in an aggregate genotype is represented by the difficulty in finding an objective measure: several measurements of lactation persistency have been proposed but none of them is widely accepted (Gengler, 1996). Recently a new index of the persistency based on multivariate Factor analysis, has been proposed for dairy cattle (Macciotta et al., 2002). Aim of the present work is to check the suitability of this index to discriminate lactation curves with different persistency and to analyse the effect of some environmental factor on this trait