Achieving timely and comprehensive functional design verifi-cation is a ubiquitous problem in electronics. This panel offers per-spectives on verification from designers of cardiac pacemakers,communications satellites, compute servers, networking equip-ment, and IP. The panelists will begin by dissecting the bottlenecks in theirverification processes. For example, are simula...

When should a new instrumental technique or analytical method be adopted for use in clinical chemical analyses? Many clinical methods are approved by the FDA based on the 510 k process, which requires demonstration that a new test is at least as good as those already in the marketplace. This is justified from both a scientific and free-market regulatory perspective when replacement of a sound m...

Digital imager sensor responses must be transformed to calibrated (human) color representations for display or print reproduction. Errors in these color rendering transformations can arise from a variety of sources, including (a) noise in the acquisition process (including photon noise and sensor noise) and (b) sensor spectral responsivities inconsistent with those of the human cones. These err...

The last few years have seen a number of new and important publications in moral theory. Arguably none more important than Larry S. Temkin’s Rethinking the Good: Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical Reasoning. This fascinating work highlights and explores in depth a seemingly fundamental inconsistency in our own axiological beliefs. Put roughly, the inconsistency arises given our general wi...

Encrypted search — performing queries on protected data — is a well researched problem. However, existing solutions have inherent inefficiency that raises questions of practicality. Here, we step back from the goal of achieving maximal privacy guarantees in an encrypted search scenario to consider efficiency as a priority. We propose a privacy framework for search that allows tuning and optimiz...

An important modern goal of plant science research is to develop tools for agriculturalists effective at curbing yield losses to insect herbivores, but resistance evolution continuously threatens the efficacy of pest management strategies. The high-dose/refuge strategy has been employed with some success to curb pest adaptation, and has been shown to be most effective when fitness costs (fitnes...

The genetic conflict between parents and their offspring is a cornerstone of kin selection theory and the gene-centred view of evolution, but whether it actually occurs in natural systems remains an open question. Conflict operates only if parenting is driven by genetic trade-offs between offspring performance and the parent's ability to raise additional offspring, and its expression critically...

There is a growing recognition that conservation often entails trade-offs. A focus on trade-offs can open the way to more complete consideration of the variety of positive and negative effects associated with conservation initiatives. In analyzing and working through conservation trade-offs, however, it is important to embrace the complexities inherent in the social context of conservation. In ...

Trade-offs between traits such as fecundity or survival are fundamental to much of our understanding of the evolution of life histories. There has been much renewed interest and controversy concerning methods for estimating trade-offs, in the wild or in captivity, and with or without experimental manipulations. In this paper, we assess the general question of the utility of modern capture ± rec...

Competition and predation are fundamental interactions structuring food webs. However, rather than always following these neat theoretical categories, mixed interactions are ubiquitous in nature. Of particular importance are omnivorous species, such as intra-guild predators that can both compete with and predate on their prey. Here, we examine trade-offs between competitive and predatory capaci...