Homogenization results for a linear dynamics in random Glauber type environment

We consider an energy conserving linear dynamics that we perturb by a Glauber dynamics with random site dependent intensity. We prove hydrodynamic limits for this non-reversible system in random media. The diffusion coefficient turns out to depend on the random field only by its statistics. The diffusion coefficient defined through the Green-Kubo formula is also studied and its convergence to some homogenized diffusion coefficient is proved

'He's dead but he won't lie down!' Posthumous characterisation: the symbiosis of ghost and man, of spirit and flesh

In the case of some Shakespearian characters (e.g.Richard II and Julius Caesar) their postmortal presence influences our reading of their characters when they were alive. The past being is morally nourished by his postmortality. Of course, Shakespeare himself is magnified by his postmortal reputation

A Stable Fountain Code Mechanism for Peer-to-Peer Content Distribution

Most peer-to-peer content distribution systems require the peers to privilege the welfare of the overall system over greedily maximizing their own utility. When downloading a file broken up into multiple pieces, peers are often asked to pass on some possible download opportunities of common pieces in order to favor rare pieces. This is to avoid the missing piece syndrome, which throttles the download rate of the peer-to-peer system to that of downloading the file straight from the server. In other situations, peers are asked to stay in the system even though they have collected all the file's pieces and have an incentive to leave right away. We propose a mechanism which allows peers to act greedily and yet stabilizes the peer-to-peer content sharing system. Our mechanism combines a fountain code at the server to generate innovative new pieces, and a prioritization for the server to deliver pieces only to new peers. While by itself, neither the fountain code nor the prioritization of new peers alone stabilizes the system, we demonstrate that their combination does, through both analytical and numerical evaluation.Comment: accepted to IEEE INFOCOM 2014, 9 page