Eternal Inflation with alpha'-Corrections

Higher-order alpha'-corrections are a generic feature of type IIB string compactifications. In KKLT-like models of moduli stabilization they provide a mechanism of breaking the no-scale structure of the volume modulus. We present a model of inflation driven by the volume modulus of flux compactifications of the type IIB superstring. Using the effects of gaugino condensation on D7-branes and perturbative alpha'-corrections the volume modulus can be stabilized in a scalar potential which simultaneously contains saddle points providing slow-roll inflation with about 130 e-foldings. We can accommodate the 3-year WMAP data with a spectral index of density fluctuations n_s=0.93. Our model allows for eternal inflation providing the initial conditions of slow-roll inflation.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures, LaTeX, v4: includes comparison with 3-year WMAP data and values for the tensor ratio r and the running of n_

Philanthropic Foundations: Growing Funders of the News

Updates April 2008 discussions on the role of foundations in supporting journalism, including creating journalism units within NGOs, collaborations with for-profit news organizations, and investment in local news sites and news and information nonprofits

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

Public Policy and Funding the News

Illustrates how declining government support and recent regulatory decisions have affected the viability of periodicals and other news outlets. Proposes a policy framework for indirect, content-neutral funding and investment in innovation and new models

The Other Pathway To The Boardroom: Interpersonal Influence Behavior As A Substitute For Elite Credentials And Majority Status In Obtaining Board Appointments

Using survey data on interpersonal influence behavior from a large sample of managers and chief executive officers (CEOs) at Forbes 500 companies, we examine how ingratiatory behavior directed at individuals who control access to board positions can provide an alternative pathway to the boardroom for managers who lack the social and educational credentials associated with the power elite. Findings show that top managers who engage in ingratiatory behavior toward their CEO, with ingratiation comprising flattery, opinion conformity, and favor-rendering, will be more likely to receive board appointments at other firms where their CEO serves as director and at boards to which the CEO is indirectly connected in the board interlock network. Further results suggest that interpersonal influence behavior substitutes to some degree for the advantages of an elite background or demographic majority status. Our findings help explain why norms of director deference to CEOs have persisted despite increased diversity in the corporate elite and have implications for research on corporate governance, social networks in the corporate elite, and for the sociological question of whether demographic minorities and individuals who lack privileged backgrounds have equal access to positions of leadership in large U.S. companies. Our study ultimately suggests that such individuals face a rather subtle and perhaps unexpected form of social discrimination, in that they must engage in a higher level of interpersonal influence behavior in order to have the same chance of obtaining a board appointment.Managemen

Non-Equilibrium Random Matrix Theory : Transition Probabilities

In this letter we present an analytic method for calculating the transition probability between two random Gaussian matrices with given eigenvalue spectra in the context of Dyson Brownian motion. We show that in the Coulomb gas language, in large $N$ limit, memory of the initial state is preserved in the form of a universal linear potential acting on the eigenvalues. We compute the likelihood of any given transition as a function of time, showing that as memory of the initial state is lost, transition probabilities converge to those of the static ensemble.Comment: REVTeX, 5 pages, 2 figure