The Accidental Optimization Booster

Training-Time Optimization of a Budgeted Booster

We consider the problem of feature-efficient prediction – a setting where features have costs and the learner is limited by a budget constraint on the total cost of the features it can examine in test time. We focus on solving this problem with boosting by optimizing the choice of base learners in the training phase and stopping the boosting process when the learner’s budget runs out. We experi...

Booster - 1

Cogging in the Fermilab Booster∗

The Fermilab Booster is a rapid-cycling synchrotron which accelerates 84 bunches of protons from 401 MeV to 8 GeV for injection into the Fermilab Main Injector. The entire circumference, ie., all RF buckets, of the Booster is filled. At extraction, a kicker deflects the beam into the extraction channel. The kicker risetime is long enough so that several of the bunches do not receive the full ki...

The Accidental Immune System

Immunologists have wrestled with the origin of GOD for several decades. This spiritual-sounding acronym stands for “generation of diversity” and emerged in the jargon of scientists after their realization in the 1970s that the human immune system manufactures tens of millions of distinct antibodies. These elaborate, Y-shaped molecules latch onto and help destroy infectious microorganisms. Since...

The accidental plant pathologist.

This article presents the experiences of a woman in academic plant pathology from the 1950s to today. Topics include the social climate for women in science, personal and professional developments and research discoveries, public policy issues in agriculture and biotechnology affecting plant pathology, and projections for the future of plant pathology.