Rigorous scaling law for the heat current in disordered harmonic chain

We study the energy current in a model of heat conduction, first considered in detail by Casher and Lebowitz. The model consists of a one-dimensional disordered harmonic chain of n i.i.d. random masses, connected to their nearest neighbors via identical springs, and coupled at the boundaries to Langevin heat baths, with respective temperatures T_1 and T_n. Let EJ_n be the steady-state energy current across the chain, averaged over the masses. We prove that EJ_n \sim (T_1 - T_n)n^{-3/2} in the limit n \to \infty, as has been conjectured by various authors over the time. The proof relies on a new explicit representation for the elements of the product of associated transfer matrices.

Complete framework for efficient characterisation of non-Markovian processes

A non-Markovian process is one that retains `memory' of its past. A systematic understanding of these processes is necessary to fully describe and harness a vast range of complex phenomena; however, no such general characterisation currently exists. This long-standing problem has hindered advances in understanding physical, chemical and biological processes, where often dubious theoretical assumptions are made to render a dynamical description tractable. Moreover, the methods currently available to treat non-Markovian quantum dynamics are plagued with unphysical results, like non-positive dynamics. Here we develop an operational framework to characterise arbitrary non-Markovian quantum processes. We demonstrate the universality of our framework and how the characterisation can be rendered efficient, before formulating a necessary and sufficient condition for quantum Markov processes. Finally, we stress how our framework enables the actual systematic analysis of non-Markovian processes, the understanding of their typicality, and the development of new master equations for the effective description of memory-bearing open-system evolution.

The Guardian Reportage of the UK MP Expenses Scandal: a Case Study of Computational Journalism

The Guardian reportage of the United Kingdom Member of Parliament (MP) expenses scandal of 2009 used crowdsourcing and computational journalism techniques. Computational journalism can be broadly defined as the application of computer science techniques to the activities of journalism. Its foundation lies in computer assisted reporting techniques and its importance is increasing due to the: (a) increasing availability of large scale government datasets for scrutiny; (b) declining cost, increasing power and ease of use of data mining and filtering software; and Web 2.0; and (c) explosion of online public engagement and opinion.. This paper provides a case study of the Guardian MP expenses scandal reportage and reveals some key challenges and opportunities for digital journalism. It finds journalists may increasingly take an active role in understanding, interpreting, verifying and reporting clues or conclusions that arise from the interrogations of datasets (computational journalism). Secondly a distinction should be made between information reportage and computational journalism in the digital realm, just as a distinction might be made between citizen reporting and citizen journalism. Thirdly, an opportunity exists for online news providers to take a ‘curatorial’ role, selecting and making easily available the best data sources for readers to use (information reportage). These activities have always been fundamental to journalism, however the way in which they are undertaken may change. Findings from this paper may suggest opportunities and challenges for the implementation of computational journalism techniques in practice by digital Australian media providers, and further areas of research.

The Guardian reportage of the UK MP expenses scandal: a case study of computational journalism

The Guardian reportage of the United Kingdom Member of Parliament (MP) expenses scandal of 2009 used crowdsourcing and computational journalism techniques. Computational journalism can be broadly defined as the application of computer science techniques to the activities of journalism. Its foundation lies in computer assisted reporting techniques and its importance is increasing due to the: (a) increasing availability of large scale government datasets for scrutiny; (b) declining cost, increasing power and ease of use of data mining and filtering software; and Web 2.0; and (c) explosion of online public engagement and opinion.. This paper provides a case study of the Guardian MP expenses scandal reportage and reveals some key challenges and opportunities for digital journalism. It finds journalists may increasingly take an active role in understanding, interpreting, verifying and reporting clues or conclusions that arise from the interrogations of datasets (computational journalism). Secondly a distinction should be made between information reportage and computational journalism in the digital realm, just as a distinction might be made between citizen reporting and citizen journalism. Thirdly, an opportunity exists for online news providers to take a ‘curatorial’ role, selecting and making easily available the best data sources for readers to use (information reportage). These activities have always been fundamental to journalism, however the way in which they are undertaken may change. Findings from this paper may suggest opportunities and challenges for the implementation of computational journalism techniques in practice by digital Australian media providers, and further areas of research.

‘Wanna do more math’: engaging underachieving Indigenous learners the YuMi Deadly way.

The Accelerating Indigenous Mathematics (AIM) Program offered by the YuMi Deadly Centre from QUT accelerates the mathematics learning of underperforming students in Years 8 - 10 by a) apportioning Years 2-10 Australian Curriculum: Mathematics content into three years, and b) provides a teaching approach that accelerates the mathematical learning. The philosophy of the YuMi Deadly teaching approach for mathematics is one that requires a ‘body’, ‘hand’, ‘mind’ pedagogy. This presentation will provide examples of the “‘body’, ‘hand’, ‘mind’” mathematics pedagogy. In AIM classrooms, mathematics is presented this approach is having a positive impact. Students are willing ‘to have a go’ without shame; and they develop the desire to learn and improve their numeracy.

Heb. U. (Hebrew University) - Einstein Math.

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Discovering Math APIs by Mining Unit Tests

In today's API-rich world, programmer productivity depends heavily on the programmer's ability to discover the required APIs. In this paper, we present a technique and tool, called MATHFINDER, to discover APIs for mathematical computations by mining unit tests of API methods. Given a math expression, MATHFINDER synthesizes pseudo-code to compute the expression by mapping its subexpressions to API method calls. For each subexpression, MATHFINDER searches for a method such that there is a mapping between method inputs and variables of the subexpression. The subexpression, when evaluated on the test inputs of the method under this mapping, should produce results that match the method output on a large number of tests. We implemented MATHFINDER as an Eclipse plugin for discovery of third-party Java APIs and performed a user study to evaluate its effectiveness. In the study, the use of MATHFINDER resulted in a 2x improvement in programmer productivity. In 96% of the subexpressions queried for in the study, MATHFINDER retrieved the desired API methods as the top-most result. The top-most pseudo-code snippet to implement the entire expression was correct in 93% of the cases. Since the number of methods and unit tests to mine could be large in practice, we also implement MATHFINDER in a MapReduce framework and evaluate its scalability and response time.

Mining Unit Tests for Discovery and Migration of Math APIs

Today's programming languages are supported by powerful third-party APIs. For a given application domain, it is common to have many competing APIs that provide similar functionality. Programmer productivity therefore depends heavily on the programmer's ability to discover suitable APIs both during an initial coding phase, as well as during software maintenance. The aim of this work is to support the discovery and migration of math APIs. Math APIs are at the heart of many application domains ranging from machine learning to scientific computations. Our approach, called MATHFINDER, combines executable specifications of mathematical computations with unit tests (operational specifications) of API methods. Given a math expression, MATHFINDER synthesizes pseudo-code comprised of API methods to compute the expression by mining unit tests of the API methods. We present a sequential version of our unit test mining algorithm and also design a more scalable data-parallel version. We perform extensive evaluation of MATHFINDER (1) for API discovery, where math algorithms are to be implemented from scratch and (2) for API migration, where client programs utilizing a math API are to be migrated to another API. We evaluated the precision and recall of MATHFINDER on a diverse collection of math expressions, culled from algorithms used in a wide range of application areas such as control systems and structural dynamics. In a user study to evaluate the productivity gains obtained by using MATHFINDER for API discovery, the programmers who used MATHFINDER finished their programming tasks twice as fast as their counterparts who used the usual techniques like web and code search, IDE code completion, and manual inspection of library documentation. For the problem of API migration, as a case study, we used MATHFINDER to migrate Weka, a popular machine learning library. Overall, our evaluation shows that MATHFINDER is easy to use, provides highly precise results across several math APIs and application domains even with a small number of unit tests per method, and scales to large collections of unit tests.

Inconsistências orçamentárias e financeiras na MP n. 481/2010

Nome do autor na página de rosto: Salvador Roque Batita Júnior.

Projeto de lei de conversão à MP 1956, que altera o Código florestal

Consultoria Legislativa - Área XI - Meio Ambiente e Direito Ambiental, Organização Territorial e Desenvolvimento Urbano e Regional.

Proposta do Conama sobre a MP 1956, que altera o Código florestal

Consultoria Legislativa - Área XI - Meio Ambiente e Direito Ambiental, Organização Territorial, Desenvolvimento Urbano e Regional.

MP 453, de 2009 : emendas

Consultoria Legislativa - Área IV - Finanças Públicas.

MP 2.175-29 e projeto de lei de conversão : comparação

Consultoria Legislativa - Área IV - Matéria Orçamentária Pública.

Remuneração, por subsídio, dos servidores da Polícia Civil do Distrito Federal (MP 308/2006)

Consultoria Legislativa - Área XVII - Segurança Pública e Defesa Nacional.

Sobre as alterações no crédito imobiliário e outras referentes à política habitacional contidas na MP 2.212 de 30/8/01 e nas MPs 2.221 e 2.223 de 4/9/01

Consultoria Legislativa - Área VII - Finanças, Direito Comercial, Direito Econômico, Defesa do Consumidor - Área XI - Meio Ambiente, Geografia, Urbanismo, Arquitetura.