We count the number of alignments of N ≥ 1 sequences when match-up types are from a specified set S ⊆ N . Equivalently, we count the number of nonnegative integer matrices whose rows sum to a given fixed vector and each of whose columns lie in S. We provide a new asymptotic formula for the case S = {(s1, . . . , sN ) | 1 ≤ si ≤ 2}.

A simple procedure to tighten the Lagrangian bounds is proposed. The approach is interpreted in two ways. First, it can be seen as a reformulation of the original problem aimed to split the resulting Lagrangian problem into two subproblems. Second, it can be considered as a search for a tighter estimation of the penalty term arising in the Lagrangian problem. The new bounds are illustrated by a...

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There are lots of problems with security education. The most serious, of course, is that we’re teaching security to the wrong people; we spend our time educating security specialists, rather than the application and system builders who are quite inadvertently creating the security holes that plague us. But there are problems even with what we teach specialists: we spend too much time on things ...

There are many lawyers and policymakers now engaged in debating laws concerning high speed broadband connections to the Internet. What do they mean by “the Internet”? Does it matter what they mean? This essay suggests that how “the Internet” is understood has substantial legal, social, and cultural consequences. In particular, what is meant by “the Internet” determines which actors’ voices will...

While AMN-3 clearly had other impacts on me, the conference had major benefi ts in terms of advancing one particular area of my research. I was extraordinarily fortunate to have in the audience during the talk I was giving focused on the work of Conrad Lendrum, one of my past PhD students, Michael Toney. Mike hails from SSRL (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory), which is part of SLAC (St...

Welcome to the latest issue of Publications, a journal for studies and opinion on all aspects of scholarly publishing and communication. A specific welcome from me too, as the new Editor-in-Chief. Our journal is fully “peer reviewed” or “refereed”. These expressions are synonymous although, despite modest research, I’ve not discovered the origin of the word “referee” in this context—if any of y...

Purpose – In MIP, Vol. 25 No. 1, Mike Saren argued that academic marketers need to move beyond our “traditional managerial and business confines”. This paper aims to suggest that the discipline is already on the move in that direction, and that social marketing is in the vanguard. Design/methodology/approach – Commissioned as a viewpoint, with permission to “think aloud”. Findings – The paper s...