With a simple mathematical model, we explored the antiterrorist effectiveness of airport passenger prescreening systems. Supporters of these systems often emphasize the need to identify the most suspicious passengers, but they ignore the point that such identification does little good unless dangerous items can actually be detected. Critics often focus on terrorists’ ability to probe the system...

We argue that asymptotically linear static potential is built in into the common procedure of extracting it from lattice Wilson loop measurements. To illustrate the point, we extract the potential by the standard lattice method in a model vacuum made of instantons. A beautiful infinitely rising linear potential is obtained in the case where the true potential is actually flattening. We argue th...

The development of seismic vulnerability evaluation standards for reinforced concrete buildings in Japan is briefly reviewed. Damage statistics are shown to indicate that severe damage was observed in a relatively small percentage of existing buildings even after damaging earthquakes in the world. Therefore, a simple screening procedure is necessary to identify such vulnerable buildings out of ...

Many say the market for the shares of smaller companies—so called small-cap and mid-cap stocks—offers greater opportunity for active management to add value than does the large-cap market. The underlying notion is that the market for small and medium caps is less efficient than the large-cap market, and, therefore, security mispricing is more prevalent there. It is true that fewer securities an...

Inappropriate disclosure and use of personal health information could have severe adverse consequences for the individual to whom it pertains, but non-disclosure could adversely affect other individuals or the society. In Australia efforts are under way to develop legislation that will address the protection of confidential health information. Development of large-scale health information repos...

A brief overview of the important theoretical issues in neutrino physics is presented and some of the current ideas for addressing them in the framework of the seesaw mechanism of neutrino masses are discussed. Among the topics discussed are ways to understand maximal mixing pattern among the three neutrino species, both unimaximal and bimaximal kinds. Constraints from baryogenesis on mixing pa...

The paper studies the class SC ̂ ' of cooperative games with player set N which have the semiconvexity property. SC u is decomposed into an algebraic sum of convex cones of games for which generating sets are available. The union of these sets thus forms a generating set for SC ~. Special attention is paid to one of the considered cones in the decomposition ofSC u. In particular, the so called a...

We devise a model for security investment that reflects dynamic interaction between a defender, who faces uncertainty, and an attacker, who repeatedly targets the weakest link. Using the model, we derive and compare optimal security investment over multiple periods, exploring the delicate balance between proactive and reactive security investment. We show how the best strategy depends on the de...