Algorithmics, Social choice, Market Design, and Other Topics

The Guardian profiles the upcoming movie 'The Social Network' which depicts how Facebook started.

OR2010 is starting this week in Munich [ map ]. Game theory sessions include the following:  Contributions to Cooperative Game Theory [TA-14 Thursday, 8:30-10:00 3101] A Value for Games with a Coalition Structure (Francesc Carreras)    On the Use of Generating Functions to Compute Power Indices based on Minimal Winning Coalitions (Josep Freixas)     Data Cost Games: The 1-Concavity and Core Properties (Theodorus S.H. Driessen)    Theoretical Contributions to Game Theory [TD-14 Thursday, 14:00-15:30 3101] A Fresh Look on the Battle of Sexes Paradigm (Rudolf Avenhaus)     Non-negativity of Information Value in Games, Symmetry and Invariance (Sigifredo Laengle)  Algorithmic Aspects of Equilibria of Stable Marriage Model with Complete Preference Lists (Tomomi Matsui)   

The COMSOC 2010 program is up . PAMAS has a decent showing with four papers: On the Fixed-Parameter Tractability of Composition-Consistent Tournament Solutions Felix Brandt, Markus Brill, and Hans Georg Seedig Bypassing Combinatorial Protections: Polynomial-Time Algorithms for Single-Peaked Electorates Felix Brandt, Markus Brill, Edith Hemaspaandra, and Lane A. Hemaspaandra Optimal Partitions in Additively Separable Hedonic Games Haris Aziz, Felix Brandt, and Hans Georg Seedig Group-Strategyproof Irresolute Social Choice Functions Felix Brandt 

The NYT looks at how the web may be changing the dynamics of how academic work is reviewed.

Daniel Spielman of Yale University, USA, has been chosen for the 2010 Rolf Nevanlinna Prize for smoothed analysis of Linear Programming, algorithms for graph-based codes and applications of graph theory to Numerical Computing. More details on the website of ICM (International Congress of Mathematicians) where the prize will be awarded. Previous winners include Robert Tarjan , Leslie Valiant , Alexander Razborov , Avi Wigderson , Peter Shor,    Madhu Sudan,  and Jon Kleinberg.

Wired magazine profiles Prabhakar Raghavan who is not only the head of Yahoo Labs but is now the senior vice president of Yahoo. Raghavan is of course well-known in the theoretical computer science community.

BBC coverage of the  P vs NP  question: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10938302 Meanwhile, a more expert discussion on Deolalikar's ideas is live on Richard Lipton's blog  and this wiki page.