I consider two issues concerning how to monitor global poverty for the Millennium Development Goals, the selection of poverty lines, and the data sources for monitoring poverty over time. I discuss the choice of a single international line, converted using purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates, versus the use of country-specific poverty lines. I note the difficulties in constructing PPP ...

During the design of ABR tra c management at the ATM Forum, we performed several analyses to ensure that the ABR service will operate e ciently over satellite links. In the cases where the performance was unacceptable, we suggested modi cations to the tra c management speci cations. This paper describes one such issue related to the count of missing resource management cells (Crm) parameter of ...

We tested whether the reduction of metabolic rate (MR) in hibernating Cercartetus nanus (Marsupialia, 36 g) is better explained by the reduction of body temperature (Tb), the differential (ΔT) between Tb and air temperature (Ta), or thermal conductance (C). Above the critical Ta during torpor (Ttc) of 4.8 ± 0.7°C, where the Tb was not regulated, the steady-state MR was an exponential function o...

network expansion studies normally offer new power lines, new substations or expansion of existing substations. they are generally proposed based on technical requirements, but financial restrictions are not considered. because of financial restrictions, ranking of network expansion plans is required. in this paper an algorithm for such ranking, based on technical and financial view points and ...

Many animal-pollinated plant species have been introduced to non-native regions without their usual pollinators. Nevertheless, some of these alien species managed to establish reproducing naturalized populations, which might negatively affect native plants. Recent studies have shown that many naturalized alien species can readily attract native pollinators. However, it is not known whether alie...

We analyze the accuracy of four methods for measuring e ective bandwidths (EBs). We also seek to point out advantages and drawbacks of the four estimators. We nd that for nite time realizations of a process the measured e ective bandwidth di ers considerably from its analytical counterpart. We also show that increasing the trace length has little impact on the accuracy of the measurements. We e...

We analyze the effects of founding conditions on the survival of new firms. We allow the effects of founding conditions to be transitory and estimate how long such effects last. Our findings indicate that founding effects are important determinants of exit rates. Moreover, in most cases, their effect on survival seems to persist without much of an attenuation for several years after the foundin...

This article describes a new system for induction of oblique decision trees. This system, OC1, combines deterministic hill-climbing with two forms of randomization to nd a good oblique split (in the form of a hyperplane) at each node of a decision tree. Oblique decision tree methods are tuned especially for domains in which the attributes are numeric, although they can be adapted to symbolic or...

We consider a call center model with multiple customer classes and multiple server pools. Calls arrive randomly over time, and the instantaneous arrival rates are allowed to vary both temporally and stochastically in an arbitrary manner. The objective is to minimize the sum of personnel costs and expected abandonment penalties by selecting an appropriate staffing level for each server pool. We ...