On Bayes and unbiased estimators of loss

We consider estimation of loss for generalized Bayes or pseudo-Bayes estimators of a multivariate normal mean vector, θ. In 3 and higher dimensions, the MLEX is UMVUE and minimax but is inadmissible. It is dominated by the James-Stein estimator and by many others. Johnstone (1988, On inadmissibility of some unbiased estimates of loss,Statistical Decision Theory and Related Topics, IV (eds. S. S. Gupta and J. O. Berger), Vol. 1, 361–379, Springer, New York) considered the estimation of loss for the usual estimatorX and the James-Stein estimator. He found improvements over the Stein unbiased estimator of risk. In this paper, for a generalized Bayes point estimator of θ, we compare generalized Bayes estimators to unbiased estimators of loss. We find, somewhat surprisingly, that the unbiased estimator often dominates the corresponding generalized Bayes estimator of loss for priors which give minimax estimators in the original point estimation problem. In particular, we give a class of priors for which the generalized Bayes estimator of θ is admissible and minimax but for which the unbiased estimator of loss dominates the generalized Bayes estimator of loss. We also give a general inadmissibility result for a generalized Bayes estimator of loss. Research supported by NSF Grant DMS-97-04524.     

On effectiveness of wiretap programs in mapping social networks

Snowball sampling methods are known to be a biased toward highly connected actors and consequently produce core-periphery networks when these may not necessarily be present. This leads to a biased perception of the underlying network which can have negative policy consequences, as in the identification of terrorist networks. When snowball sampling is used, the potential overload of the information collection system is a distinct problem due to the exponential growth of the number of suspects to be monitored. In this paper, we focus on evaluating the effectiveness of a wiretapping program in terms of its ability to map the rapidly evolving networks within a covert organization. By running a series of simulation-based experiments, we are able to evaluate a broad spectrum of information gathering regimes based on a consistent set of criteria. We conclude by proposing a set of information gathering programs that achieve higher effectiveness then snowball sampling, and at a lower cost. Maksim Tsvetovat is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Social Complexity and department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University, Fairfax, VA. He received his Ph.D. from the Computation, Organizations and Society program in the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. His dissertation was centered on use of artificial intelligence techniques such as planning and semantic reasoning as a means of studying behavior and evolution of complex social networks, such as these of terrorist organizations. He received a Master of Science degree from University of Minnesota with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence and design of Multi-Agent Systems, and has also extensively studied organization theory and social science research methods. His research is centered on building high-fidelity simulations of social and organizational systems using concepts from distributed artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems. Other projects focus on social network analysis for mapping of internal corporate networks or study of covert and terrorist orgnaizations. Maksim’s vita and publications can be found on Kathleen M. Carley is a professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and the director of the center for Compuational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS) which has over 25 members, both students and research staff. Her research combines cognitive science, social networks and computer science to address complex social and organizational problems. Her specific research areas are dynamic network analysis, computational social and organization theory, adaptation and evolution, text mining, and the impact of telecommunication technologies and policy on communication, information diffusion, disease contagion and response within and among groups particularly in disaster or crisis situations. She and her lab have developed infrastructure tools for analyzing large scale dynamic networks and various multi-agent simulation systems. The infrastructure tools include ORA, a statistical toolkit for analyzing and visualizing multi-dimensional networks. ORA results are organized into reports that meet various needs such as the management report, the mental model report, and the intelligence report. Another tool is AutoMap, a text-mining systems for extracting semantic networks from texts and then cross-classifying them using an organizational ontology into the underlying social, knowledge, resource and task networks. Her simulation models meld multi-agent technology with network dynamics and empirical data. Three of the large-scale multi-agent network models she and the CASOS group have developed in the counter-terrorism area are: BioWar a city-scale dynamic-network agent-based model for understanding the spread of disease and illness due to natural epidemics, chemical spills, and weaponized biological attacks; DyNet a model of the change in covert networks, naturally and in response to attacks, under varying levels of information uncertainty; and RTE a model for examining state failure and the escalation of conflict at the city, state, nation, and international as changes occur within and among red, blue, and green forces. She is the founding co-editor with Al. Wallace of the journal Computational Organization Theory and has co-edited several books and written over 100 articles in the computational organizations and dynamic network area. Her publications can be found at: http://www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/bios/carley/publications.php     

A new stochastic method of reconstructing porous media

We present a new stochastic method of reconstructing porous medium from limited morphological information obtained from two-dimensional micro- images of real porous medium. The method is similar to simulated annealing method in the capability of reconstructing both isotropic and anisotropic structures of multi-phase but differs from the latter in that voxels for exchange are not selected completely randomly as their neighborhood will also be checked and this new method is much simpler to implement and program. We applied it to reconstruct real sandstone utilizing morphological information contained in porosity, two-point probability function and linear-path function. Good agreement of those references verifies our developed method’s powerful capability. The existing isolated regions of both pore phase and matrix phase do quite minor harm to their good connectivity. The lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is used to compute the permeability of the reconstructed system and the results show its good isotropy and conductivity. However, due to the disadvantage of this method that the connectivity of the reconstructed system’s pore space will decrease when porosity becomes small, we suggest the porosity of the system to be reconstructed be no less than 0.2 to ensure its connectivity and conductivity.     

A model study for the steady state error of numerical approximations of inviscid flow equations on Cartesian grid

The widely used locally adaptive Cartesian grid methods involve a series of abruptly refined interfaces. In this paper we consider the influence of the refined interfaces on the steady state errors for second‐order three‐point difference approximations of flow equations. Since the various characteristic components of the Euler equations should behave similarly on such grids with regard to refinement‐induced errors, it is sufficient enough to conduct the analysis on a scalar model problem. The error we consider is a global error, different to local truncation error, and reflects the interaction between multiple interfaces. The steady state error will be compared to the errors on smooth refinement grids and on uniform grids. The conclusion seems to support the numerical findings of Yamaleev and Carpenter (J. Comput. Phys. 2002; 181: 280–316) that refinement does not necessarily reduce the numerical error. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance modeling and evaluation of data/voice services in wireless networks

Application-level performance is a key to the adoption and success of the CDMA 2000. To predict this performance in advance, a detailed end-to-end simulation model of a CDMA network is built to include application traffic characteristics, network architecture, network element details using the proposed simulation methodology. We assess the user-perceived application performance when a RAN and a CN adopt different transport architectures such as ATM and IP. To evaluate the user-perceived quality of voice service, we compare the end-to-end packet delay for different vocoder schemes such as G.711, G.726 (PCM), G.726 (ADPCM), and vocoder bypass scheme. By the simulation results, the vocoder bypass scenario shows 30% performance improvement over the others. We also compare the quality of voice service with and without DPS scheduling scheme. We know that DPS scheme keep the voice delay bound even if the service traffic is high. For data packet performance, HTTP v.1.1 shows better performance than that of HTTP v.1.0 due to the pipelining and TCP persistent connection. We may conclude that IP transport technology is better solution for higher FER environment since the packet overhead of IP is smaller than that of ATM for web browsing data traffic, while it shows opposite effect to the small size voice packet in RAN architecture. We show that the 3G-1X EV-DO system gives much better packet delay performance than 3G-1X RTT. The main conclusion is that end-to-end application-level performance is affected by various elements and layers of the network and thus it must be considered in all phases of the development process. Jae-Hyun Kim He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees, all in computer science and engineering, from Hanyang University, Ansan, Korea, in 1991, 1993, and 1996 respectively. In 1996, he was with the Communication Research Laboratory, Tokyo, Japan, as a Visiting Scholar. From April 1997 to October 1998, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the department of electrical engineering, University of California, Los Angeles. From November 1998 to February 2003, he worked as a member of technical staff in Performance Modeling and QoS management department, Bell laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Holmdel, NJ. He has been with the department of electrical engineering, Ajou University, Suwon, Korea, as an assistant professor since 2003. His research interests include QoS issues and cross layer optimization for high-speed wireless communication. Dr. Kim was the recipient of the LGIC Thesis Prize and Samsung Human-Tech Thesis Prize in 1993 and 1997, respectively. He is a member of the Korean Institute of Communication Sciences (KICS), Korea Institute of Telematics and Electronis (KITE), Korea Information Science Society (KISS), and IEEE. Hyun-Jin Lee received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Ajou University, Suwon, Korea, in 2004, and is working toward the M.S. degree and Ph. D. degree in electrical engineering at Ajou University. He has been awarded Samsung Human-Tech Thesis Prize in 2004. His research interests QoS, especially network optimization and wireless packet scheduling. He is a member of the KICS. Sung-Min Oh received the B.S. and M. S. degrees in electrical engineering form Ajou University, Suwon, Korea, in 2004, and is working toward the Ph. D. degree in electrical engineering at Ajou University. His research interests QoS performance analysis and 4G network. He is a member of the KICS. Sung-Hyun Cho received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from Hanyang University, Korea, in 1995, 1997, and 2001, respectively. From 2001 to 2005, he has been with Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, where he has been engaged in the design and standardization of MAC and upper layers of B3G, IEEE 802.16e, and WiBro systems. He is currently a MAC part leader in the telecommunication R&D center of Samsung Electronics. His research interests include 4G air interface design, radio resource management, cross layer design, and handoff in wireless systems.     

cos πρ theorems for δ-subharmonic functions

For ϕ a δ-subharmonic function, sharp results are obtained that connectA(r, ϕ), B(r, ϕ) andT(r, ϕ), whereA(r, ϕ)=inf_|z|=r ϕ(z),B(r, ϕ)=sup_|z|=r ϕ(z), andT(r, ϕ) is the Nevanlinna characteristics.     

Investigations of low- and high-spin states of <Superscript>132</Superscript>La

The fusion evaporation reaction ¹²²Sn(¹⁴N, 4n)¹³²La was used to populate the high-spin states of ¹³²La at the beam energy of 60 MeV. A new band consisting of mostly E2 transitions has been discovered. This band has the interesting links to the ground state 2^- and the isomeric state 6^-. A new transition of energy 351 keV connecting the low-spin states of the positive-parity band based on the πh _11/2 ⊗ νh _11/2 particle configuration, has been found. This has played a very important role in resolving the existing ambiguities and inconsistencies in the spin assignment of the band head. Received: 12 August 2002 / Accepted: 18 March 2003 / Published online: 7 May 2003     

Numerical study of the effects of the rupture process of a secondary diaphragm in expansion tubes

The results of a numerical study are described in which the interactions of a primary shock wave with a secondary diaphragm in expansion tubes are taken into account. The developing wave pattern in the interacting process of the shock with a secondary diaphragm are visualized by many kinds of figures (e.g., the time-distance diagrams of the wave phenomena on the axis, the acoustic impedance contours, and the time histories of the pitot pressure on the axis), and the influences of the shape and rupture process of the diaphragm on the quality of the test gas are explored.     

An algorithm to locate perinatal facilities in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro

In order to reduce infant mortality in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro it is desired to encourage all mothers-to-be to attend the appropriate health care facilities. A 3-level hierarchical prenatal–neonatal health care system is described together with a basic model for optimising accessibility to facilities. A genetic algorithm to solve the basic model is developed and some numerical experience reported. Extensions to the basic model and planned future research are briefly indicated.