Birth order and family size of homosexual men and women.

Systematically compared the birth order and family size of 150 male and 99 female homosexuals with those of 108 male and 97 female heterosexuals. Results show that neither birth order nor family size represented distinct or meaningful contrasts between male or female homosexuals or heterosexuals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Optimal information dispersal for probabilistic latency targets

The goal of this work is to provide a framework for applications to probabilistically meet latency targets using redundancy and multipath routing. It investigates the amount of redundancy necessary to maximize the probability of constructing a copy of a file F no later than a given delay bound Δ without any reservations. Redundancy is obtained from the information dispersal algorithm (IDA) of Rabin. Specifically, F is broken into b pieces, each of size s, and each piece is sent on one of the several (disjoint) paths from source to destination. Each piece contains some redundant information in such a way that any m≡|F|/s pieces are enough to reconstruct the file. This work presents both analytical and computational results to determine the optimal values of b and s to maximize the success probability. It also examines the impact of various parameters such as the file size, delay bound, loss rate, distance from the destination, on the probabilistic quality of service (QoS) guarantee. This is a novel approach to QoS routing since it does not require any reservations or extra overhead at intermediate nodes and effectively shifts the burden from nodes to links.     

Simultaneous Detection of Positive and Negative Ions From Single Airborne Particles by Real-time Laser Mass Spectrometry

ABSTRACT

The instrumental setup used for simultaneous bipolar ion detection in on-line single-particle analysis by laser mass spectrometry is described. Particle size calibration has been performed using aerodynamic time-of-flight techniques. Mass spectra of several hundred ambient particles with aerodynamic diameters of 0.8 μm have been evaluated for statistical classification (Principal Components Analysis [PCA]) in order to identify main chemical components of the prominent particle classes.     

Rechtsprechung zum Datenschutz 2006 — Teil 1

Neben den Kontroversen um die Vorratsdatenspeicherung, den personenbezogenen Daten aus der Mautüberwachung und den Reaktionsm?glichkeiten gegenüber dem Terrorismus herrschte auch in der Judikatur zum Datenschutz rege Bewegung. Die davon betroffenen Rechtsgebiete waren mannigfaltig, was abermals unterstreicht, dass das Datenschutzrecht eine Querschnittmaterie darstellt. Dies ist der Anlass, die wichtigsten Entscheidungen des vergangenen Jahres kurz darzustellen.     

Rechtsprechung zum Datenschutz 2006 — Teil 2

Nachdem sich der erste Teil der Rechtsprechungsübersicht insbesondere der Judikatur des BVerfG und des BGH gewidmet hat, befasst sich der zweite Teil vornehmlich mit Entscheidungen aus dem Zeitraum Januar bis Anfang November 2006, die im Arbeitsrecht und dem Internetrecht sowie auf den Gebieten der Werbung und des Marketing ergangen sind.     

The empirical investigation of Perspective-Based Reading

We consider reading techniques a fundamental means of achieving high quality software. Due to the lack of research in this area, we are experimenting with the application and comparison of various reading techniques. This paper deals with our experiences with a family of reading techniques known as Perspective-Based Reading (PBR), and its application to requirements documents. The goal of PBR is to provide operational scenarios where members of a review team read a document from a particular perspective, e.g., tester, developer, user. Our assumption is that the combination of different perspectives provides better coverage of the document, i.e., uncovers a wider range of defects, than the same number of readers using their usual technique.To test the effectiveness of PBR, we conducted a controlled experiment with professional software developers from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration/Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA/GSFC) Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL). The subjects read two types of documents, one generic in nature and the other from the NASA domain, using two reading techniques, a PBR technique and their usual technique. The results from these experiments, as well as the experimental design, are presented and analyzed. Teams applying PBR are shown to achieve significantly better coverage of documents than teams that do not apply PBR.We thoroughly discuss the threats to validity so that external replications can benefit from the lessons learned and improve the experimental design if the constraints are different from those posed by subjects borrowed from a development organization.     

Routing in Polygons Without Rectilinearly Visible Corners

In this paper we present an algorithm for the routing problem in a routing region which is bordered by a simple polygonal line, such that there are no rectilinearly visible corners. The routing problem consists in finding pairwise edge-disjoint paths in the grid for the nets connecting some given pairs of boundary vertices. Whenever a solution exists our algorithm finds it in time O(U log²U), where U is the size of the boundary. This is a generalization of the algorithm for rectangle routing by Mehlhorn and Preparata (1986, J. Assoc. Comput. Mach.33, 60-85), which up to now has been the only method with sublinear running time in respect of the routing area.