TY - JOUR AB - We report on the magnetic properties of a hot-pressed FeSb 2 sample. We find a significant increase in the magnetic susceptibility in our sample when compared with the values previously reported for the polycrystalline sample. The pronounced Curie tail at low temperature corresponds to 0.2% of Fe 2+ impurities per mole. In the intrinsic conductivity region, the susceptibility due to free carriers shows thermally activated behavior and is consistent with the data reported for single crystal FeSb 2 . Based on our data and analysis, while the enhanced magnetic susceptibility in our sample comes mainly from a small amount of unreacted Fe, the contribution from the enhanced carrier density due to lattice and strain defects arising from the ball milling process is also significant. Existence of an unreacted Fe phase is evidenced by small coercivity values of ~100 observed at 50 and 300 K. AU - Pokharel, Mani AU - Zhao, Huaizhou AU - Modic, Kimberly A AU - Ren, Zhifeng AU - Opeil, Cyril ID - 11750 IS - 5 JF - IEEE Transactions on Magnetics SN - 0018-9464 TI - Magnetic properties of hot-pressed FeSb2 VL - 50 ER - TY - CONF AB - We study a weighted online bipartite matching problem: G(V 1, V 2, E) is a weighted bipartite graph where V 1 is known beforehand and the vertices of V 2 arrive online. The goal is to match vertices of V 2 as they arrive to vertices in V 1, so as to maximize the sum of weights of edges in the matching. If assignments to V 1 cannot be changed, no bounded competitive ratio is achievable. We study the weighted online matching problem with free disposal, where vertices in V 1 can be assigned multiple times, but only get credit for the maximum weight edge assigned to them over the course of the algorithm. For this problem, the greedy algorithm is 0.5-competitive and determining whether a better competitive ratio is achievable is a well known open problem. We identify an interesting special case where the edge weights are decomposable as the product of two factors, one corresponding to each end point of the edge. This is analogous to the well studied related machines model in the scheduling literature, although the objective functions are different. For this case of decomposable edge weights, we design a 0.5664 competitive randomized algorithm in complete bipartite graphs. We show that such instances with decomposable weights are non-trivial by establishing upper bounds of 0.618 for deterministic and 0.8 for randomized algorithms. A tight competitive ratio of 1 − 1/e ≈ 0.632 was known previously for both the 0-1 case as well as the case where edge weights depend on the offline vertices only, but for these cases, reassignments cannot change the quality of the solution. Beating 0.5 for weighted matching where reassignments are necessary has been a significant challenge. We thus give the first online algorithm with competitive ratio strictly better than 0.5 for a non-trivial case of weighted matching with free disposal. AU - Charikar, Moses AU - Henzinger, Monika H AU - Nguyễn, Huy L. ID - 11789 SN - 0302-9743 T2 - 22nd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms TI - Online bipartite matching with decomposable weights VL - 8737 ER - TY - CONF AB - Assume a seller wants to sell a digital product in a social network where a buyer’s valuation of the item has positive network externalities from her neighbors that already have the item. The goal of the seller is to maximize his revenue. Previous work on this problem [7] studies the case where clients are offered the item in sequence and have to pay personalized prices. This is highly infeasible in large scale networks such as the Facebook graph: (1) Offering items to the clients one after the other consumes a large amount of time, and (2) price-discrimination of clients could appear unfair to them and result in negative client reaction or could conflict with legal requirements. We study a setting dealing with these issues. Specifically, the item is offered in parallel to multiple clients at the same time and at the same price. This is called a round. We show that with O(logn) rounds, where n is the number of clients, a constant factor of the revenue with price discrimination can be achieved and that this is not possible with o(logn) rounds. Moreover we show that it is APX-hard to maximize the revenue and we give constant factor approximation algorithms for various further settings of limited price discrimination. AU - Cigler, Luděk AU - Dvořák, Wolfgang AU - Henzinger, Monika H AU - Starnberger, Martin ID - 11790 SN - 0302-9743 T2 - 10th International Conference of Web and Internet Economics TI - Limiting price discrimination when selling products with positive network externalities VL - 8877 ER - TY - JOUR AB - While the penetration of objects into granular media is well-studied, there is little understanding of how objects settle in gravities, geff, different from that of Earth - a scenario potentially relevant to the geomorphology of planets and asteroids and also to their exploration using man-made devices. By conducting experiments in an accelerating frame, we explore geff ranging from 0.4 g to 1.2 g. Surprisingly, we find that the rest depth is independent of geff and also that the time required for the object to come to rest scales like geff-1/2. With discrete element modeling simulations, we reproduce the experimental results and extend the range of geff to objects as small as asteroids and as large as Jupiter. Our results shed light on the initial stage of sedimentation into dry granular media across a range of celestial bodies and also have implications for the design of man-made, extraterrestrial vehicles and structures. Key Points The settling depth in granular media is independent of gravity The settling time scales like g-1/2 Layering driven by granular sedimentation should be similar. AU - Altshuler, Ernesto AU - Torres, H AU - González_Pita, A AU - Sánchez, Colina G AU - Pérez Penichet, Carlos AU - Waitukaitis, Scott R AU - Hidalgo, Rauól ID - 118 IS - 9 JF - Geophysical Research Letters TI - Settling into dry granular media in different gravities VL - 41 ER - TY - CONF AB - The decremental single-source shortest paths (SSSP) problem concerns maintaining the distances between a given source node s to every node in an n-node m-edge graph G undergoing edge deletions. While its static counterpart can be easily solved in near-linear time, this decremental problem is much more challenging even in the undirected unweighted case. In this case, the classic O(mn) total update time of Even and Shiloach (JACM 1981) has been the fastest known algorithm for three decades. With the loss of a (1 + ε)-approximation factor, the running time was recently improved to O(n 2+o(1) ) by Bernstein and Roditty (SODA 2011), and more recently to O(n 1.8+o(1) + m 1+o(1) ) by Henzinger, Krinninger, and Nanongkai (SODA 2014). In this paper, we finally bring the running time of this case down to near-linear: We give a (1 + ε)-approximation algorithm with O(m 1+o(1) ) total update time, thus obtaining near-linear time. Moreover, we obtain O(m 1+o(1) log W) time for the weighted case, where the edge weights are integers from 1 to W. The only prior work on weighted graphs in o(mn log W) time is the O(mn 0.986 log W)-time algorithm by Henzinger, Krinninger, and Nanongkai (STOC 2014) which works for the general weighted directed case. In contrast to the previous results which rely on maintaining a sparse emulator, our algorithm relies on maintaining a so-called sparse (d, ε)-hop set introduced by Cohen (JACM 2000) in the PRAM literature. A (d, ε)-hop set of a graph G = (V, E) is a set E' of weighted edges such that the distance between any pair of nodes in G can be (1 + ε)-approximated by their d-hop distance (given by a path containing at most d edges) on G'=(V, E∪E'). Our algorithm can maintain an (n o(1) , ε)-hop set of near-linear size in near-linear time under edge deletions. It is the first of its kind to the best of our knowledge. To maintain the distances on this hop set, we develop a monotone bounded-hop Even-Shiloach tree. It results from extending and combining the monotone Even-Shiloach tree of Henzinger, Krinninger, and Nanongkai (FOCS 2013) with the bounded-hop SSSP technique of Bernstein (STOC 2013). These two new tools might be of independent interest. AU - Henzinger, Monika H AU - Krinninger, Sebastian AU - Nanongkai, Danupon ID - 11855 SN - 0272-5428 T2 - 55th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science TI - Decremental single-source shortest paths on undirected graphs in near-linear total update time ER -