IBM

About: IBM is a company organization based out in Armonk, New York, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Layer (electronics) & Signal. The organization has 134567 authors who have published 253905 publications receiving 7458795 citations. The organization is also known as: International Business Machines Corporation & Big Blue.

Knowledge and common knowledge in a distributed environment

Abstract: Reasoning about knowledge seems to play a fundamental role in distributed systems. Indeed, such reasoning is a central part of the informal intuitive arguments used in the design of distributed protocols. Communication in a distributed system can be viewed as the act of transforming the system's state of knowledge. This paper presents a general framework for formalizing and reasoning about knowledge in distributed systems. We argue that states of knowledge of groups of processors are useful concepts for the design and analysis of distributed protocols. In particular, distributed knowledge corresponds to knowledge that is ``distributed'' among the members of the group, while common knowledge corresponds to a fact being ``publicly known''. The relationship between common knowledge and a variety of desirable actions in a distributed system is illustrated. Furthermore, it is shown that, formally speaking, in practical systems common knowledge cannot be attained. A number of weaker variants of common knowledge that are attainable in many cases of interest are introduced and investigated.

Templating and structural engineering in organic–inorganic perovskites

Abstract: Hybrid perovskites provide the possibility of integrating useful organic and inorganic characteristics within a single crystalline molecular-scale composite, enabling unique electronic, magnetic and optical properties. The ability to understand and control the organic and inorganic structural attributes of these hybrids is important for being able to engineer the physical characteristics, both for fundamental studies as well as potential applications. Recently, a number of new and interesting perovskite structures have been reported and a better understanding has begun to emerge with respect to crystal design considerations. This contribution will review several of these new developments and will provide a more general discussion of structural engineering within this diverse family of compounds. p

Distillation of secret key and entanglement from quantum states

Abstract: We study and solve the problem of distilling a secret key from quantum states representing correlation between two parties (Alice and Bob) and an eavesdropper (Eve) via oneway public discussion: we...

Technical terminology: some linguistic properties and an algorithm for identification in text

Abstract: This paper identifies some linguistic properties of technical terminology, and uses them to formulate an algorithm for identifying technical terms in running text. The grammatical properties discussed are preferred phrase structures: technical terms consist mostly of noun phrases containing adjectives, nouns, and occasionally prepositions; rerely do terms contain verbs, adverbs, or conjunctions. The discourse properties are patterns of repetition that distinguish noun phrases that are technical terms, especially those multi-word phrases that constitute a substantial majority of all technical vocabulary, from other types of noun phrase.The paper presents a terminology indentification algorithm that is motivated by these linguistic properties. An implementation of the algorithm is described; it recovers a high proportion of the technical terms in a text, and a high proportaion of the recovered strings are vaild technical terms. The algorithm proves to be effective regardless of the domain of the text to which it is applied.

First-Principles Calculation of Transport Properties of a Molecular Device

Abstract: We report first-principles calculations of the current-voltage ( $I\ensuremath{-}V$) characteristics of a molecular device and compare with experiment. We find that the shape of the $I\ensuremath{-}V$ curve is largely determined by the electronic structure of the molecule, while the presence of single atoms at the molecule-electrode interface play a key role in determining the absolute value of the current. The results show that such simulations would be useful for the design of future microelectronic devices for which the Boltzmann-equation approach is no longer applicable.