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Loretta Latronico Poulain

Behavioural Economics? Try Biological Economics - 2 views

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    The "Biological Economics" thing is a hyping (or misunderstanding) of the BBC article. The work it refers to seems to be an application of Complex Networks theory to financial networks. I found what appear to be some of the related publications: Andrew G. Haldane (April 2009) Rethinking the financial network (further references in the footnote to page 10) Erlend Nier, Jing Yang, Tanju Yorulmazer and Amadeo Alentorn (April 2008) Network models and financial stability Funny how these issues have been repeatedly popping up at the ACT in recent weeks. This connects both with the discussions on information spreading in networks, and with roadmaps' robustness.
nikolas smyrlakis

Why We Love to Hate Awards - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    [spam] Obama expressed his disappointment recently when rapper Kanye West stormed the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards to protest singer Taylor Swift's win of the "Best Female Video" trophy. Soon after, Obama himself was Swifted by critics who felt he was undeserving of his Nobel Prize win. It is obviously connected to the study of the Journal of Wine Economics that wine gold awards are given randomly http://www.wine-economics.org/journal/content/Volume4/number1/Full%20Texts/1_wine%20economics_vol%204_1_Robert%20Hodgson.pdf which also raised some controversy
ESA ACT

Nature article on economics and physics - 0 views

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    nice nature article on the need for economics to use more physics in their approach to model markets - LS
nikolas smyrlakis

DIME | Dynamics of Institutions and Markets in Europe - 4 views

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    an active and open community for whoever interested and the new YGTs RFs in Innovation/ Economics/ CMS etc.
jcunha

Exploring gambles reveals foundational difficulty behind economic theory - 3 views

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    In the wake of the financial crisis, many started questioning different aspects of the economic formalism. Here a mathematical "dynamic" alternative to economic utility theory (which has also been the target of some famous recent attacks, see prospect theory) is developed and applied to the St. Petersburg coin tossing paradox. A good read at http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/chaos/26/2/10.1063/1.4940236
jcunha

The Economics of Star Wars: How the Empire collapses - 1 views

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    Simulating the economic state of the Galaxy after the resistance has blown up the Death Stars. See the paper here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.09054.pdf
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    Love this type of friday afternoon research questions. There is also a now famous scene in the movie Clerks discussing the loss of independent contractors lives as the Death Star was being build.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQdDRrcAOjA
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    That analysis is quite crappy and is easily demolished in the video's comments.
pacome delva

[1107.5728] The network of global corporate control - 1 views

  • Abstract: The structure of the control network of transnational corporations affects global market competition and financial stability. So far, only small national samples were studied and there was no appropriate methodology to assess control globally. We present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player. We find that transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. This core can be seen as an economic "super-entity" that raises new important issues both for researchers and policy makers.
LeopoldS

Enhanced Oil Recovery Powered by Solar - 0 views

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    instead of using the solar generated steam to generate electricity, it seems to make economic sense to use it to pump more oil out of the ground ...
Francesco Biscani

STLport: An Interview with A. Stepanov - 2 views

  • Generic programming is a programming method that is based in finding the most abstract representations of efficient algorithms.
  • I spent several months programming in Java.
  • for the first time in my life programming in a new language did not bring me new insights
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  • it has no intellectual value whatsoever
  • Java is clearly an example of a money oriented programming (MOP).
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    One of the authors of the STL (C++'s Standard Template Library) explains generic programming and slams Java.
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    "Java is clearly an example of a money oriented programming (MOP)." Exactly. And for the industry it's the money that matters. Whatever mathematicians think about it.
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    It is actually a good thing that it is "MOP" (even though I do not agree with this term): that is what makes it inter-operable, light and easy to learn. There is no point in writing fancy codes, if it does not bring anything to the end-user, but only for geeks to discuss incomprehensible things in forums. Anyway, I am pretty sure we can find a Java guy slamming C++ ;)
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    Personally, I never understood what the point of Java is, given that: 1) I do not know of any developer (maybe Marek?) that uses it for intellectual pleasure/curiosity/fun whatever, given the possibility of choice - this to me speaks loudly on the objective qualities of the language more than any industrial-corporate marketing bullshit (for the record, I argue that Python is more interoperable, lighter and easier to learn than Java - which is why, e.g., Google is using it heavily); 2) I have used a software developed in Java maybe a total of 5 times on any computer/laptop I owned over 15 years. I cannot name of one single Java project that I find necessary or even useful; for my usage of computers, Java could disappear overnight without even noticing. Then of course one can argue as much as one wants about the "industry choosing Java", to which I would counterargue with examples of industry doing stupid things and making absurd choices. But I suppose it would be a kind of pointless discussion, so I'll just stop here :)
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    "At Google, python is one of the 3 "official languages" alongside with C++ and Java". Java runs everywhere (the byte code itself) that is I think the only reason it became famous. Python, I guess, is more heavy if it were to run on your web browser! I think every language has its pros and cons, but I agree Java is not the answer to everything... Java is used in MATLAB, some web applications, mobile phones apps, ... I would be a bit in trouble if it were to disappear today :(
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    I personally do not believe in interoperability :)
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    Well, I bet you'd notice an overnight disappearance of java, because half of the internet would vanish... J2EE technologies are just omnipresent there... I'd rather not even *think* about developing a web application/webservice/web-whatever in standard C++... is it actually possible?? Perhaps with some weird Microsoft solutions... I bet your bank online services are written in Java. Certainly not in PHP+MySQL :) Industry has chosen Java not because of industrial-corporate marketing bullshit, but because of economics... it enables you develop robustly, reliably, error-prone, modular, well integrated etc... software. And the costs? Well, using java technologies you can set-up enterprise-quality web application servers, get a fully featured development environment (which is better than ANY C/C++/whatever development environment I've EVER seen) at the cost of exactly 0 (zero!) USD/GBP/EUR... Since many years now, the central issue in software development is not implementing algorithms, it's building applications. And that's where Java outperforms many other technologies. The final remark, because I may be mistakenly taken for an apostle of Java or something... I love the idea of generic programming, C++ is my favourite programming language (and I used to read Stroustroup before sleep), at leisure time I write programs in Python... But if I were to start a software development company, then, apart from some very niche applications like computer games, it most probably would use Java as main technology.
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    "I'd rather not even *think* about developing a web application/webservice/web-whatever in standard C++... is it actually possible?? Perhaps with some weird Microsoft solutions... I bet your bank online services are written in Java. Certainly not in PHP+MySQL :)" Doing in C++ would be awesomely crazy, I agree :) But as I see it there are lots of huge websites that operate on PHP, see for instance Facebook. For the banks and the enterprise market, as a general rule I tend to take with a grain of salt whatever spin comes out from them; in the end behind every corporate IT decision there is a little smurf just trying to survive and have the back covered :) As they used to say in the old times, "No one ever got fired for buying IBM". "Industry has chosen Java not because of industrial-corporate marketing bullshit, but because of economics... it enables you develop robustly, reliably, error-prone, modular, well integrated etc... software. And the costs? Well, using java technologies you can set-up enterprise-quality web application servers, get a fully featured development environment (which is better than ANY C/C++/whatever development environment I've EVER seen) at the cost of exactly 0 (zero!) USD/GBP/EUR... Since many years now, the central issue in software development is not implementing algorithms, it's building applications. And that's where Java outperforms many other technologies." Apart from the IDE considerations (on which I cannot comment, since I'm not a IDE user myself), I do not see how Java beats the competition in this regard (again, Python and the huge software ecosystem surrounding it). My impression is that Java's success is mostly due to Sun pushing it like there is no tomorrow and bundling it with their hardware business.
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    OK, I think there is a bit of everything, wrong and right, but you have to acknowledge that Python is not always the simplest. For info, Facebook uses Java (if you upload picture for instance), and PHP is very limited. So definitely, in company, engineers like you and me select the language, it is not a marketing or political thing. And in the case of fb, they come up with the conclusion that PHP, and Java don't do everything but complement each other. As you say Python as many things around, but it might be too much for simple applications. Otherwise, I would seriously be interested by a study of how to implement a Python-like system on-board spacecrafts and what are the advantages over mixing C, Ada and Java.
LeopoldS

Internal Research Fellow (post-doc) in Innovation Dynamics and Computational Economics ... - 3 views

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    not sure where they got the "industry" from but otherwise our text indeed
LeopoldS

ACT - Opportunities - 3 views

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    spread the news - we have re-opened the RF position in innovation dynamics and computational economics ...
LeopoldS

THEORY OF GAMES AND ECONOMIC MISBEHAVIOR Edge 295 - 0 views

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    very nice article - though a bit long but I am sure that you will also enjoy reading it ....
LeopoldS

University Funds offers new VC model to commercialize technology | Technology Transfer ... - 0 views

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    a bit too economics oriented but still an interesting approach to start-ups ...
Dario Izzo

The SpaceShaft, a new Space Elevator concept - 0 views

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    Combined method of construction and transportation for access to space of distributed heavyweight cargo and personnel with safe, economical and renewable characteristics.
ESA ACT

Technology Review: Cheaper Fuel Cells - 0 views

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    Carbon nanotubes could replace expensive platinum catalysts and help finally make fuel cells economical
santecarloni

[1107.0392] Emergence of good conduct, scaling and Zipf laws in human behavioral sequen... - 3 views

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    ... proof that humanity is good?
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    "The dataset contains practically all actions of all players of the MMOG Pardus since the game went online in 2004 [18]. Pardus is an open-ended online game with a world- wide player base of currently more than 370,000 people. Play- ers live in a virtual, futuristic universe in which they interact with others in a multitude of ways to achieve their self-posed goals [22]. Most players engage in various economic activities typically with the (self-posed) goal to accumulate wealth and status. Social and economical decisions of players are often strongly influenced and driven by social factors such as friend- ship, cooperation, and conflict." quite impressive ...
LeopoldS

Risky Business | The Economic Risk of Climate Change in the US | Risky Business - 2 views

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    interesting report on the cost of climate change for the US ... coming from Bloomberg and financed by him might not give it its utmost credibility but still
Luzi Bergamin

First circuit breaker for high voltage direct current - 2 views

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    Doesn't really sound sexy, but this is of utmost importance for next generation grids for renewable energy.
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    I agree on the significance indeed - a small boost also for my favourite Desertec project ... Though their language is a bit too "grandiose": "ABB has successfully designed and developed a hybrid DC breaker after years of research, functional testing and simulation in the R&D laboratories. This breaker is a breakthrough that solves a technical challenge that has been unresolved for over a hundred years and was perhaps one the main influencers in the 'war of currents' outcome. The 'hybrid' breaker combines mechanical and power electronics switching that enables it to interrupt power flows equivalent to the output of a nuclear power station within 5 milliseconds - that's as fast as a honey bee takes per flap of its wing - and more than 30 times faster than the reaction time of an Olympic 100-meter medalist to react to the starter's gun! But its not just about speed. The challenge was to do it 'ultra-fast' with minimal operational losses and this has been achieved by combining advanced ultrafast mechanical actuators with our inhouse semiconductor IGBT valve technologies or power electronics (watch video: Hybrid HVDC Breaker - How does it work). In terms of significance, this breaker is a 'game changer'. It removes a significant stumbling block in the development of HVDC transmission grids where planning can start now. These grids will enable interconnection and load balancing between HVDC power superhighways integrating renewables and transporting bulk power across long distances with minimal losses. DC grids will enable sharing of resources like lines and converter stations that provides reliability and redundancy in a power network in an economically viable manner with minimal losses. ABB's new Hybrid HVDC breaker, in simple terms will enable the transmission system to maintain power flow even if there is a fault on one of the lines. This is a major achievement for the global R&D team in ABB who have worked for years on the challeng
johannessimon81

Asteroid mining could lead to self-sustaining space stations - VIDEO!!! - 5 views

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    Let's all start up some crazy space companies together: harvest hydrogen on Jupiter, trap black holes as unlimited energy supplies, use high temperatures close to the sun to bake bread! Apparently it is really easy to do just about anything and Deep Space Industries is really good at it. Plus: in their video they show Mars One concepts while referring to ESA and NASA.
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    I really wonder what they wanna mine out there? Is there such a high demand on... rocks?! And do they really think they can collect fuel somewhere?
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    Well they want to avoid having to send resources into space and rather make it all in space. The first mission is just to find possible asteroids worth mining and bring some asteroid rocks to Earth for analysis. In 2020 they want to start mining for precious metals (e.g. nickel), water and such.They also want to put up a 3D printer in space so that it would extract, separate and/or fuse asteroidal resources together and then print the needed structures already in space. And even though on earth it's just rocks, in space a tonne of them has an estimated value of 1 million dollars (as opposed to 4000 USD on Earth). Although I like the idea, I would put DSI in the same basket as those Mars One nutters 'cause it's not gonna happen.
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    I will get excited once they demonstrate they can put a random rock into their machine and out comes a bicycle (then the obvious next step is a space station).
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    hmm aside from the technological feasibility, their approach still should be taken as an example, and deserve a little support. By tackling such difficult problems, they will devise innovative stuffs. Plus, even if this doom-to-fail endeavour may still seem you useless, it creates jobs and make people think... it is already a positive! Final word: how is that different from what Planetary Resources plan to do? It is founded by a bunch of so-called "nuts" ... (http://www.planetaryresources.com/team/) ! a little thought: "We must never be afraid to go too far, for success lies just beyond" - Proust
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    I don't think that this proposal is very different from the one by Planetary Resources. My scepticism is rooted in the fact that - at least to my knowledge - fully autonomous mining technology has not even been demonstrated on Earth. I am sure that their proposition is in principle (technically) feasible but at the same time I do not believe that a privately funded company will find enough people to finance a multi-billion dollar R&D project that may or may not lead to an economically sensible outcome, i.e. generate profit (not income - you have to pay back the R&D cost first) within the next 25 years. And on that timescale anything can happen - for all we know we will all be slaves to the singularity by the time they start mining. I do think that people who tackle difficult problems deserve support - and lots of it. It seems however that up till now they have only tackled making a promotional video... About job creation (sorry for the sarcasm): if usefulness is not so important my proposal would be to give shovels to two people - person A digs a hole and person B fills up the same hole at the same time. The good thing about this is that you can increase the number of jobs created simply by handing out more shovels.
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