Solving decentralized partially observable Markov decision processes (DEC-POMDPs) is a difficult task. Exact solutions are intractable in all but the smallest problems and approximate solutions provide limited optimality guarantees. As a more principled alternative, we present a novel formulation of an optimal fixed-size solution of a DEC-POMDP as a nonlinear program. We discuss the benefits of...

Because the abundance of functional molecules in RNA sequence space has many unexplored aspects, we compared the outcome of 11 independent selections, performed using the same affinity selection protocol and contiguous randomized regions of 16, 22, 26, 50, 70, and 90 nucleotides. All affinity selections targeted the simplest isoleucine aptamer, an asymmetric internal loop. This loop should be a...

Generalized Second Price (GSP) mechanism is widely used in ad auctions and reserve price is an effective tool for revenue maximization. The optimal reserve price depends on bidders’ value distribution, which, however, is generally unknown to auctioneers. A common practice for auctioneers is to first collect information about the value distribution by a sampling procedure and then apply the rese...

We develop a model of repeated microcredit lending to study how group size affects optimal group-lending contracts with joint liability. In the setting being studied, a benevolent lender provides microcredit to a group of borrowers to invest in projects. The outcome of each risky project is not observable by the lender; therefore, if some of the borrowers default on their loan repayments, the l...

A class of parallel algorithms solving the prefix problem on the circuit model are presented. These prefix circuits are problem-size independent, and can be faster than other prefix circuits when the problem size is greater than the circuit width. The prefix circuits are compared analytically with other prefix circuits to show how fast they are.

Introduction Residential mortgage loans are the major instrument of housing finance. A mortgage arrangement is equivalent to an exchange of a loan today for a stream of future payments. In general, a household or investor will borrow whenever the marginal cost of borrowing is less than the marginal utility or benefit derived from the asset. Mortgage loans are secured by the real property, and p...

This paper discusses the optimal firm size in the presence of internal rent seeking. Since firm size has a discouragement effect on the level of individual rent-seeking but also a quantity effect as the number of rent-seekers increases, the interplay of both effects — together with technological considerations — determines whether the employer chooses an inefficiently small or large firm size. ...

BACKGROUND Lack of conduit growth potential and thrombogenicity are the main drawbacks of the extracardiac Fontan operation (ECFO). Optimal size of the conduit according to the patients age and inferior vena cava diameter has not been established. OBJECTIVES We set out to ascertain whether the optimal dimensions of the conduit could be determined before an ECFO. METHODS Actual and expected ...

The stability of the bound states of the magnetic flux in a Josephson resistive lattices is investigated numerically. It is shown that for a simple relationship between the geometrical parameters of the lattice the range of bias current is the widest. Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Sofia, 5, James Bourchier Blvd., 1163 Sofia, Bulgaria. E-mail: [email protected]...

In this correspondence, we propose some new designs of 2 2 unitary space-time codes of sizes 6; 32; 48; 64 with best known diversity products (or product distances) by partially using sphere packing theory. In particular, we present an optimal 2 2 unitary space-time code of size 6 in the sense that it reaches the maximal possible diversity product for 22 unitary space-time codes of size 6. The ...