Optimization of quinacridone magenta,Cu-phthalocyanine cyan,and arylide yellow ink films formulated for maximum color gamut

Investigation of ink formulation options with the purpose to obtain color-gamut-optimal set of Cyan Magenta and Yellow CMY inks is reported. Implementation of the thickness dependent Kubelka-Munk model on multiple ink layers having different and well-defined thicknesses, provides characteristic absorption and scattering (K, S ) spectra of the ink ingredients. These data enable accurate computation of the reflectance spectrum and thus the L*a*b* color coordinates for any given ink thickness or substrate. Pigment materials investigated are quinacridone as magenta, copper-phthalocyanine as cyan, and arylide yellow. Scaling the peak of the absorption band to the number of molecules per unit area for the specific pigments studied in this article provides the molar extinction coefficients, 1.21 × 10⁴ , 4.7 × 10⁴ , and 3.3 × 10⁴ cm²/millimole respectively, regardless of the different ink formulations used, in accord with Avogadro's principle. Having a set of three pairs of K, S spectra is used to compute the color gamut of any CMY color combination in the L*a*b* space as a function of ink layer thickness and formulation. Using an iterative algorithm, a color-gamut-optimal set of CMY inks is obtained.     

On the hardness of approximating label-cover

The Label-Cover problem, defined by S. Arora, L. Babai, J. Stern, Z. Sweedyk [Proceedings of 34th IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, 1993, pp. 724-733], serves as a starting point for numerous hardness of approximation reductions. It is one of six ‘canonical’ approximation problems in the survey of Arora and Lund [Hardness of Approximations, in: Approximation Algorithms for NP-Hard Problems, PWS Publishing Company, 1996, Chapter 10]. In this paper we present a direct combinatorial reduction from low error-probability PCP [Proceedings of 31st ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, 1999, pp. 29-40] to Label-Cover showing it NP-hard to approximate to within 2^{(logn)1−o(1)}. This improves upon the best previous hardness of approximation results known for this problem.We also consider the Minimum-Monotone-Satisfying-Assignment (MMSA) problem of finding a satisfying assignment to a monotone formula with the least number of 1's, introduced by M. Alekhnovich, S. Buss, S. Moran, T. Pitassi [Minimum propositional proof length is NP-hard to linearly approximate, 1998]. We define a hierarchy of approximation problems obtained by restricting the number of alternations of the monotone formula. This hierarchy turns out to be equivalent to an AND/OR scheduling hierarchy suggested by M.H. Goldwasser, R. Motwani [Lecture Notes in Comput. Sci., Vol. 1272, Springer-Verlag, 1997, pp. 307-320]. We show some hardness results for certain levels in this hierarchy, and place Label-Cover between levels 3 and 4. This partially answers an open problem from M.H. Goldwasser, R. Motwani regarding the precise complexity of each level in the hierarchy, and the place of Label-Cover in it.     

Induction of favism-like symptoms in the rat: Effects of vicine and divicine in normal and buthionine sulphoximine-treated rats

Rats were fed an adequate or a deficient diet and offered water or buthionine sulphoximine (BSO) solution for 2 weeks, and then the same diets with vicine for another week in experiment 1. BSO in combination with the deficient diet caused a marked decrease in blood glutathione (GSH) and growth retardation but failed to show any effects resulting from supplementation with vicine. In experiment 2 the rats were given an adequate diet and BSO as before, and injected intravenously with divicine (DV). Here again, BSO depressed rat growth, and so did DV. Each of the insults also caused haematological changes, especially a fall in GSH, but the most severe changes appeared in the group treated with both BSO and DV. A decrease in haematocrit and increases in adrenal and spleen weight were also noted. In experiment 3 the rats were injected with different doses of DV, without pretreatment with BSO. The main effect was a drop in blood GSH and haematocrit, and an increase in adrenal and spleen weights, all of which were dose-related. Administration of the higher doses of DV resulted in a severe cyanosis followed by death within a relatively short period of time.     

Multiway merge with constant delay in Concurrent Prolog

Multiway dynamic mergers with constant delay are an essential component of a parallel logic programming language. Previous attempts to defined efficient mergers have required complex optimising compilers and run-time support. This paper proposes a simple technique to implement mergers efficiently. The technique requires an additional data type and the definition of an operation on it. The operation allows multiple processes to access a stream without incurring the cost of searching for the end of stream. It is specified in Concurrent Prolog and is used to define multiple assignment variables using a monitor. The technique forms the basis for stream merging in Logix, a practical programming environment written in Flat Concurrent Prolog.     

The role of charcoal on DTA curves of organo-clay complexes: an overview

DTA of organo-clay complexes supplemented by other thermal analysis methods supplies information on the thermal reactions, properties and stability of the complex, the amount and properties of the adsorbed water in the organo-clay and on the bonding between the organic species and the clay. It is used to identify the mineral to differentiate between various complexes composed of the same clay and the same organic ligand and to establish their composition. During the gradual heating in oxidizing atmospheres the adsorbed organic material is oxidized, giving rise to significant exothermic peaks. DTA curves of organo-clays are divided into three regions: (1) the dehydration of the clay, (2) the thermal oxidation of the organic material and (3) the dehydroxylation of the clay. The exothermic oxidation reaction occurring during the gradual heating of the sample takes place in two steps, in the range 200–500 °C, oxidation of organic hydrogen and formation of water and charcoal, and 400–750 °C, oxidation of charcoal and formation of CO₂. The exothermic peak temperatures depend on the mineral and on the organic compound and on the types of bonding between these two components of the organo-clay complex. The present communication concentrates in the role of the combustion of charcoal in the study of the fine structure of the complex and of the type of associations between the organic compound and the clay.     

Accelerating Boyer–Moore searches on binary texts

The Boyer and Moore (BM) pattern matching algorithm is considered as one of the best, but its performance is reduced on binary data. Yet, searching in binary texts has important applications, such as compressed matching. The paper shows how, by means of some pre-computed tables, one may implement the BM algorithm also for the binary case without referring to bits, and processing only entire blocks such as bytes or words, thereby significantly reducing the number of comparisons. Empirical comparisons show that the new variant performs better than regular binary BM and even than BDM.     

On the complexity of approximating k-set packing

Given a k-uniform hypergraph, the Maximum k -Set Packing problem is to find the maximum disjoint set of edges. We prove that this problem cannot be efficiently approximated to within a factor of unless P = NP. This improves the previous hardness of approximation factor of by Trevisan. This result extends to the problem of k-Dimensional-Matching.     

Using a Stochastic Complexity Measure to Check the Efficient Market Hypothesis

The weak form of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) states that current market price reflects fully the information from past prices and rules out prediction based on price data alone. No recent test of time series of stock returns rejects this weak-form hypothesis. This research offers another test of the weak form of the EHM that leads to different conclusions for some time series.The stochastic complexity of a time series is a measure of the number of bits needed to represent and reproduce the information in the time series. In an efficient market, compression of the time series is not possible, because there are no patterns and the stochastic complexity is high. In this research, Rissanen's context tree algorithm is used to identify recurring patterns in the data, and use them for compression. The weak form of the EMH is tested for 13 international stock indices and for all the stocks that comprise the Tel-Aviv 25 index (TA25), using sliding windows of 50, 75, and 100 consecutive daily returns. Statistically significant compression is detected in ten of the international stock index series. In the aggregate, 60% to 84% of the TA25 stocks tested demonstrate compressibility beyond randomness. This indicates potential market inefficiency.