Right-handed sneutrinos as asymmetric DM and neutrino masses from neutrinophilic Higgs bosons

We consider an extension of the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model by three right-handed neutrinos and a pair of neutrinophilic Higgs superfields. The small neutrino masses arise naturally from a small vacuum expectation value of the additional Higgs fields (hence without lepton number violation), while the lightest right-handed sneutrinos can constitute asymmetric Dark Matter. The right-handed sneutrino and baryon asymmetries are connected through equilibrium processes in the early universe, explaining the coincidence of the DM and baryon abundances. We show that particle physics and astrophysical constraints are satisfied.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures, references adde

Learning Under Little Information: An Experiment on Mutual Fate Control

Reinforcement learning has proved quite successful in predicting subjects' adjustment behaviour in repeatedly played simple games. However, reinforcement learning does not predict convergence to the efficient cell in the minimal information game of mutual fate control, while earlier psychologists' experiments show some tendency to convergence. Our rivalling learning rule, a modification of win-stay lose-change, does predict convergence. We perform an experiment using modern economic methodology and compare these two learning rules. Our results are unfavourable for both reinforcement learning as well as win- stay lose-change. The data rather support the view that subjects search by using patterns.mutual fate control, learning, coordination, experimental economics, coordination failure

Little Information, Efficiency, and Learning - An Experimental Study

Earlier experiments have shown that under little information subjects are hardly able to coordinate even though there are no conflicting interests and subjects are organised in fixed pairs. This is so, even though a simple adjustment process would lead the subjects into the efficient, fair and individually payoff maximising outcome. We draw on this finding and design an experiment in which subjects re-peatedly play 4 simple games within 4 sets of 40 rounds under little information. This way we are able to investigate (i) the coordination abilities of the subjects depending on the underlying game, (ii) the resulting efficiency loss, and (iii) the adjustment of the learning rule.mutual fate control, matching pennies, fate-control behaviour- control, learning, coordination, little information

Relative indicators of default risk among UK residential mortgages

We have assembled a unique loan-level performance dataset for mortgages originated in the UK to study the differences in default likelihood between loans of varying borrower and loan characteristics. We can broadly confirm the relevance of most commonly known riskfactors and find that most drivers of default for prime are also relevant for non-conforming, drivers of repossessions are largely similar to drivers of arrears and information on adverse borrower information dominates any other risk factor. Our study provides many more details and compares results with recent studies for the US and other European countries.residential mortgages; loan defaults; consumer behaviour; logistic regression; United Kingdom

Identifying Bugs in Make and JVM-Oriented Builds

Incremental and parallel builds are crucial features of modern build systems. Parallelism enables fast builds by running independent tasks simultaneously, while incrementality saves time and computing resources by processing the build operations that were affected by a particular code change. Writing build definitions that lead to error-free incremental and parallel builds is a challenging task. This is mainly because developers are often unable to predict the effects of build operations on the file system and how different build operations interact with each other. Faulty build scripts may seriously degrade the reliability of automated builds, as they cause build failures, and non-deterministic and incorrect build results. To reason about arbitrary build executions, we present buildfs, a generally-applicable model that takes into account the specification (as declared in build scripts) and the actual behavior (low-level file system operation) of build operations. We then formally define different types of faults related to incremental and parallel builds in terms of the conditions under which a file system operation violates the specification of a build operation. Our testing approach, which relies on the proposed model, analyzes the execution of single full build, translates it into buildfs, and uncovers faults by checking for corresponding violations. We evaluate the effectiveness, efficiency, and applicability of our approach by examining hundreds of Make and Gradle projects. Notably, our method is the first to handle Java-oriented build systems. The results indicate that our approach is (1) able to uncover several important issues (245 issues found in 45 open-source projects have been confirmed and fixed by the upstream developers), and (2) orders of magnitude faster than a state-of-the-art tool for Make builds

Προφορική Ιστορία “Μνήμες πολέμου, κατοχής, τρομοκρατίας, εμφυλίου”

Please note: this article is in Greek. Oral History: “Memories of war, Italian & German occupation, terrorism, civil war”: In this work we attempt to analyse the significance of oral history as well as the reasons why it has developed and been publicised in recent times. In Greece, the development of oral history is due to political and age-related influences that make its development interesting and revealing. Oral history is important as it unfolds and reveals the “significant” but also the “insignificant” aspects in peoples’ lives and the silences of written history. At the same time we attempt to group the people that responded to our call and recorded their experience during the decade 1940. The above analysis will help the contemporary researcher to conceive that the past does not appear unchanged in the present. The oral testimonies describe a specific choice of visits to the past through the experience of historical subjects, the meaning those subjects give to their experience and the way that they comprehend their existence

Detecting Missing Dependencies and Notifiers in Puppet Programs

Puppet is a popular computer system configuration management tool. It provides abstractions that enable administrators to setup their computer systems declaratively. Its use suffers from two potential pitfalls. First, if ordering constraints are not specified whenever an abstraction depends on another, the non-deterministic application of abstractions can lead to race conditions. Second, if a service is not tied to its resources through notification constructs, the system may operate in a stale state whenever a resource gets modified. Such faults can degrade a computing infrastructure's availability and functionality. We have developed an approach that identifies these issues through the analysis of a Puppet program and its system call trace. Specifically, we present a formal model for traces, which allows us to capture the interactions of Puppet abstractions with the file system. By analyzing these interactions we identify (1) abstractions that are related to each other (e.g., operate on the same file), and (2) abstractions that should act as notifiers so that changes are correctly propagated. We then check the relationships from the trace's analysis against the program's dependency graph: a representation containing all the ordering constraints and notifications declared in the program. If a mismatch is detected, our system reports a potential fault. We have evaluated our method on a large set of Puppet modules, and discovered 57 previously unknown issues in 30 of them. Benchmarking further shows that our approach can analyze in minutes real-world configurations with a magnitude measured in thousands of lines and millions of system calls

Exploring the feasibility of an exercise programme including aerobic and resistance training in people with limited cutaneous systemic sclerosis.

OBJECTIVES: It is suggested that exercise can improve the vascular function and quality of life (QoL) in people with systemic sclerosis (SSc), potentially offering clinical benefits to this population. Yet the feasibility of such an intervention remains untested. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the feasibility of a combined exercise protocol (aerobic and resistance training) in people with limited cutaneous SSc (lcSSc). METHODS: Thirty-two lcSSc patients (66.5 ± 12 years old) were randomly allocated in two groups (exercise and control group). The exercise group underwent a 12-week exercise programme, twice per week. All patients performed the baseline, three- and six-month follow-up measurements where functional ability, body composition and QoL were assessed. Participants' experiences were explored through interviews. RESULTS: Compliance was 92.6% with no dropouts. The individuals' confidence to participate in the study's exercise protocol for twice per week was 95%. The average value for the physical activity enjoyment scale was 103 ± 10 out of 119 (highest score). The mean values for the intention to engage in exercise twice per week were 6.4 ± 1 (likely) out of 7 (very likely). QoL for the exercise group showed to have a better life satisfaction, less anxiety and Raynaud's phenomenon-accompanied pain. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that a combined exercise protocol was feasible for people with lcSSc, with no adverse events, resulting in high adherence and low attrition rates, high enjoyment levels and intentions for future engagement to this exercise. Thus, the specific protocol is a safe adjunct therapy for people with lcSSc. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT number): NCT03058887, February 23, 2017, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03058887?term=NCT03058887&rank=1Key Points• High-intensity interval training in combination with resistance training constitutes a feasible exercise protocol for people with lcSSc.• Overall, the exercise programme demonstrated high adherence and enjoyment levels and low attrition rates.• The exercise protocol was proved to be safe with no adverse events for people with lcSSc

Impossible protest: noborders in Calais

Since the closure of the Red Cross refugee reception centre in Sangatte, undocumented migrants in Calais hoping to cross the border to Britain have been forced to take refuge in a number of squatted migrant camps, locally known by all as ‘the jungles.’ Unauthorised shanty-like residences built by the migrants themselves, living conditions in the camps are very poor. In June 2009, European ‘noborder’ activists set up a week-long protest camp in the area with the intention of confronting the authorities over their treatment of undocumented migrants. In this article, we analyse the June 2009 noborder camp as an instance of ‘immigrant protest.’ Drawing on ethnographic materials and Jacques Rancière's work on politics and aesthetics, we construct a typology of forms of border control through which to analyse the different ways in which the politics of the noborder camp were staged, performed and policed. Developing a critique of policing practices which threatened to make immigrant protest ‘impossible’, we highlight moments of protest which, through the affirmation of an ‘axiomatic’ equality, disrupted and disarticulated the borders between citizens and non-citizens, the political and non-political

Improving the quality of APIs through the analysis of software crash reports

Modern programs depend on APIS to implement a significant part of their functionality. Apart from the way developers use APIS to build their software, the stability of these programs relies on the APIS design and implementation. In this work, we evaluate the reliability of APIS, by examining software telemetry data, in the form of stack traces, coming from Android application crashes. We got 4.9 GB worth of crash data that thousands of applications send to a centralized crash report management service. We processed that data to extract approximately a million stack traces, stitching together parts of chained exceptions, and established heuristic rules to draw the border between applications and API calls. We examined 80% of the stack traces to map the space of the most common application failure reasons. Our findings show that the top ones can be attributed to memory exhaustion, race conditions or deadlocks, and missing or corrupt resources. At the same time, a significant number of our stack traces (over 10%) remains unclassified due to generic unchecked exceptions, which do not highlight the problems that lead to crashes. Finally, given the classes of crash causes we found, we argue that API design and implementation improvements, such as specific exceptions, non-blocking algorithms, and default resources, can eliminate common failures