In the classic knights and knaves problem, there are n people in a room each of whom is a knight or a knave. Knights always tell the truth while knaves always lie. Everyone in the room knows each other’s identity. You are allowed to ask questions of the form “Person i, is person j a knight?” and you are told that there are more knights than knaves. What is the fewest number of questions you can...

We present a variation of James Propp’s generalized domino shuffling, which provides an efficient way to obtain perfect matchings of weighted Aztec diamonds. Our modification is specially tailored to deal with cases when some of the weights are zero. This allows us to tile efficiently a large class of planar graphs, by embedding them in a large enough Aztec diamond. We also give a sufficient co...

We have exact formulas for the number of tilings of only a small number of regions: Aztec Diamonds, Fortresses, and regions composed of Lozenge Tiles. However, these regions, particularly aztec diamonds and lozenge tilings are fundamental, and numerous other regions types can be reduced to weighted versions of these graphs using urban renewal techniques. This paper will illustrate the process b...

Economist Frank H. Knight (1885–1972) is commonly credited with defining the distinction between decisions under “risk” (known chance) and decisions under “uncertainty” (unmeasurable probability) in his 1921 book Risk, Uncertainty and Profit. A closer reading of Knight (1921) reveals a host of psychological insights beyond this risk-uncertainty distinction, many of which foreshadow revolutionar...

—In this paper, we discuss the likely modes of introduction of the Knight Anole (Anolis equestris) into and around Florida, provide data on its current geographic distribution, and summarize life history data in both its native and introduced Florida range. Our field data consist of collections made from 1992 through 2008 and locality data taken from the literature and systematic collections th...

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In this paper, we present an automated wide area surveillance system that detects, tracks, classifies moving objects across multiple cameras. In addition, it detects unusual activities carried out by objects in the area under observation. At the single camera level, objects are detected using a robust background subtraction approach, then tracking is performed using a voting scheme that utilize...