Coherence Framework Research Articles

The Alignment between Institutions and Technology in Network Industries

Network industries, such as electricity, railways and air transport, are very complex technical, economic, and political systems in which the alignment between technology and institutions has a significant impact on performance. This alignment has been studied based on the coherence framework which aims to measure the alignment between technology and institutions in the case of network industries. It can be stated that technology has to be supported by institutions aligned with them (and vice versa) in order to deliver a given performance. This leads to a co-evolution between institutions and technology in network industries. This paper reviews the literature on the coherence framework, identifies its weaknesses, and contributes to the further development of the framework. It concludes with challenges for further research.

Real estate markets and the macroeconomy: A dynamic coherence framework

This paper analyzes the dynamic interactions between real estate markets, in the US and the UK and their macroeconomic environments. We apply a new approach based on a dynamic coherence function (DCF) to study these interactions bringing together different real estate markets (the securitized market, the commercial market and the residential market). The results suggest that there is a common trend that drives the different real estate markets in the UK and the US, particularly in the long run, since they have a similar shape of the DCF. We also find that, in the US, wealth and housing expenditure channels are very conductive during real estate crises. However, in the UK, only the wealth effect is significant as a transmission channel during real estate market downturns. In addition, real estate markets in the UK and the US react differently to institutional shocks. This brings some insights on the conduct of monetary policy in order to avoid disturbances in real estate markets.

Aligning Technological and Institutional Change: Maritime Transport in West Mediterranean Sea

Within the field of study of infrastructure, several works have addressed the issue of the coherence between technology and institutions of network industries. In a dynamic perspective, issues arise about how technology and institutions co-evolve, what stimulates improvement of infrastructure performance, and how formal institutions should be designed in order to facilitate technical and institutional co-evolution and the improvement of infrastructure performance. Through the study of the case of maritime transport industry in West Mediterranean Sea, this paper aims to contribute to the refinement of the technical-institutional coherence framework by suggesting that more attention should be placed on the role played by perceptions of current and expected performance of infrastructure, on the process through which higher coherence between the technical and institutional systems is achieved, and on the conditions that make agents more likely to exert efforts to improve the coherence between technical and institutional systems of infrastructure.

Aligning Technological and Institutional Change: Maritime Transport in the West Mediterranean Sea

Within the area of study of infrastructure, various works have addressed the issue of the development of technological and institutional systems of network industries. In a dynamic perspective, issues arise about how technology and institutions co-evolve, what stimulates improvement of infrastructure performance, and how formal institutions should be designed in order to facilitate technological and institutional co-evolution. Building on the coherence framework for performance in network industries, this study aims to contribute to the development of an improved theory of technological and institutional change in network industries. The theoretical developments are illustrated through the case of technological and institutional changes of the maritime transport industry in the West Mediterranean Sea. The results suggest that more attention should be placed on the variety of private and public dimensions of performance of the network industry and by the mutual interaction between status quo conditions in the technological and institutional systems.

Leadership coherence: An application of personality coherence theory to the study of leadership

The purpose of the current work was to extend recent developments in basic personality theory to the leadership domain. Accordingly, we introduce a new construct labeled leadership coherence, which refers to the notion that a leader’s behavior fluctuates in a consistent, reliable, and predictable idiographic manner across situations, thus capturing the purposeful and systematic variability in a leader’s behavior and decisions. Data were obtained from a diverse managerial sample ( n = 109) employed in a variety of work settings. Stable and replicable intraindividual cross-situational profiles were found providing initial empirical support for the concept of leadership coherence. As the understanding of the ways in which leaders react and behave within and across situations is central to most leadership theories, examination of leadership behavior from an intraindividual cross-situational or coherence framework is a logical progression of leadership theory. This study provides the first step in this direction.

Deductive coherence and norm adoption

This paper is a contribution to the formalisation of Thagard’s coherence theory. The term coherence is defined as the quality or the state of cohering, especially a logical, orderly, and aesthetically consistent relationship of parts. A coherent set is interdependent such that every element in it contributes to the coherence. We take Thagard’s proposal of a coherence set as that of maximising satisfaction of constraints between elements and explore its use in normative multiagent systems. In particular, we interpret coherence maximisation as a decision-making criterion for norm adoption. We first provide a general coherence framework with the necessary computing tools. Later we introduce a proof-theoretic characterisation of a particular type of coherence, namely the deductive coherence based on Thagard’s principles, and derive a mechanism to compute coherence values between elements in a deductive coherence graph. Our use of graded logic helps us to incorporate reasoning under uncertainty, which is more realistic in the context of multiagent systems. We then conduct a case study where agents deliberate about norm adoption in a multiagent system where there is competition for a common resource. We show how a coherence-maximising agent decides to violate a norm guided by its coherence.

Neural Spike Train Synchronisation Indices: Definitions, Interpretations and Applications.

A comparison of previously defined spike train syncrhonization indices is undertaken within a stochastic point process framework. The second order cumulant density (covariance density) is shown to be common to all the indices. Simulation studies were used to investigate the sampling variability of a single index based on the second order cumulant. The simulations used a paired motoneurone model and a paired regular spiking cortical neurone model. The sampling variability of spike trains generated under identical conditions from the paired motoneurone model varied from 50% { 160% of the estimated value. On theoretical grounds, and on the basis of simulated data a rate dependence is present in all synchronization indices. The application of coherence and pooled coherence estimates to the issue of synchronization indices is considered. This alternative frequency domain approach allows an arbitrary number of spike train pairs to be evaluated for statistically significant differences, and combined into a single population measure. The pooled coherence framework allows pooled time domain measures to be derived, application of this to the simulated data is illustrated. Data from the cortical neurone model is generated over a wide range of firing rates (1 - 250 spikes/sec). The pooled coherence framework correctly characterizes the sampling variability as not significant over this wide operating range. The broader applicability of this approach to multi electrode array data is briefly discussed.

Reducing Network Traffic of Token Protocol Using Sharing Relation Cache

Token protocol provides a new coherence framework for shared-memory multiprocessor systems. It avoids indirections of directory protocols for common cache-to-cache transfer misses, and achieves higher interconnect bandwidth and lower interconnect latency compared with snooping protocols. However, the broadcasting increases network traffic, limiting the scalability of token protocol. This paper describes an efficient technique to reduce the token protocol network traffic, called sharing relation cache. This cache provides destination set information for cache-to-cache miss requests by caching directory information for recent shared data. This paper introduces how to implement the technique in a token protocol. Simulations using SPLASH-2 benchmarks show that in a 16-core chip multiprocessor system, the cache reduced the network traffic by 15% on average.

Post/Imperial Encounters: Anglo-Hispanic Cultural Relations (review)

Reviewed by: Post/Imperial Encounters: Anglo-Hispanic Cultural Relations Fernanda Peñaloza (bio) Juan E. Tazón Salces and Isabel Carrera Suárez (eds.), Post/Imperial Encounters: Anglo-Hispanic Cultural Relations (Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2005). ISBN 90-420-1992-1. The intricate web of cultural encounters between the Anglophone and Hispanophone 'worlds' is frequently analysed from either the context of the different articulations of the British and Spanish colonial systems in the Americas or the so-called Hispanic experience in the U.S. This volume, comprised of twelve markedly different essays, is a welcome addition to cross-cultural studies precisely because it departs from the most obvious topics in the field. According to the editors, the origins of this book 'started from a completely open topic, "Anglo-Hispanic relations"' (p. 9). As a result, this collection of articles follows a chronological order that spans five centuries and explores transcultural links not only between England and Spain, but also with the U.S., Latin America, the Caribbean, and less predictably, Ireland. In a disappointingly short introduction, the editors justify the range of topics and perspectives included in their selection by situating the articles within three temporal categories: 'the historical interventions of Britain and Spain in the Americas; the period around the Spanish Civil War; the present with its global culture tinged with neocolonialism' (p. 9). Although this selective periodization is relatively evenly represented, one can only guess why both editors and contributors seem to agree that these historical moments were more significant than others. There is a lack of clarity as to how the editors validate their chronological selection. For example, it is puzzling that the nineteenth century, a period in which Spanish and British relations in the Americas underwent profound shifts, is heavily underrepresented in these cross-cultural readings. Notwithstanding these omissions, this volume has its merits. One of the most significant contributions of this book is that it recuperates material often neglected or ignored by non-specialists. This certainly applies to Jacqueline A. Hurtley's analysis of the travel narratives of Irish-born scholar Walter Starkie, which she situates in the context of his work as a British Council representative in post-Civil War Spain. There are [End Page 459] inspiring and to some extent innovative comparative readings as well, such as D. Gareth Walters's article on thematic parallelisms in the poetry of Federico García Lorca and Dylan Thomas; María Elena Soliño's comparative study of two Catalan writers, Ana María Matute and Esther Tusquets, which highlights the intertextual dialogues between the authors' best-known novels and the Peter Pan story; and Guillermo Iglesias Díaz's reflection on border-crossing of genre in the works of iconic directors Woody Allen and Pedro Almodóvar. Additionally, albeit perhaps pushing the boundaries of the 'Anglo-Hispanic' too far, Isabel Carrera Suárez offers a very accomplished analysis of articulations of gender and colonial discourse in an enlightening article that compares Maryse Condé's and Lucía Guerra's work while engaging with current debates on postcolonial theory and the Americas. The very important subject of literary translation is superbly tackled here by Carmen Bobes Naves who explores the crossing of cultural boundaries in Leandro Fernández de Moratín's translation of Shakespeare's Hamlet. As the above examples show, essays on history, literature and even film interweave in this volume linking a wide range of texts, approaches and geographical locations. However, due to the lack of a solid introduction, the reader is left with the impression that many assumptions need to be made without knowing exactly where the editors stand in relation to key concepts such as language, culture, colonialism, imperialism and globalization that reverberate throughout the essays, and which, in turn, are strongly connected to the 'Anglo-Hispanic' realm. This lack of thematic coherence and conceptual framework in part explains the conflicting perspectives that emerge in this book which seems to have gone unnoticed by the editors. So for example, on the one hand the reader will find Francisco J. Borge's tropological study of Richard Hakluyt's narratives reproducing colonial discourse by failing to see the connections between the rhetoric of...

Neural Spike Train Synchronization Indices: Definitions, Interpretations, and Applications

A comparison of previously defined spike train syncrhonization indices is undertaken within a stochastic point process framework. The second-order cumulant density (covariance density) is shown to be common to all the indices. Simulation studies were used to investigate the sampling variability of a single index based on the second-order cumulant. The simulations used a paired motoneurone model and a paired regular spiking cortical neurone model. The sampling variability of spike trains generated under identical conditions from the paired motoneurone model varied from 50% to 160% of the estimated value. On theoretical grounds, and on the basis of simulated data a rate dependence is present in all synchronization indices. The application of coherence and pooled coherence estimates to the issue of synchronization indices is considered. This alternative frequency domain approach allows an arbitrary number of spike train pairs to be evaluated for statistically significant differences, and combined into a single population measure. The pooled coherence framework allows pooled time domain measures to be derived, application of this to the simulated data is illustrated. Data from the cortical neurone model is generated over a wide range of firing rates (1-250 spikes/s). The pooled coherence framework correctly characterizes the sampling variability as not significant over this wide operating range. The broader applicability of this approach to multielectrode array data is briefly discussed.

Token coherence: a new framework for shared-memory multiprocessors

Commercial workload and technology trends are pushing existing shared-memory multiprocessor coherence protocols in divergent directions. Token coherence provides a framework for new coherence protocols that can reconcile these opposing trends. The token coherence framework directly enforces the coherence invariant by counting tokens (requiring all of a block's tokens to write and at least one token to read). This token-counting approach enables more obviously correct protocols that do not rely on request ordering and can operate with alternative policies that seek to improve the performance of future multiprocessors.

Token coherence

Many future shared-memory multiprocessor servers will both target commercial workloads and use highly-integrated "glueless" designs. Implementing low-latency cache coherence in these systems is difficult, because traditional approaches either add indirection for common cache-to-cache misses (directory protocols) or require a totally-ordered interconnect (traditional snooping protocols). Unfortunately, totally-ordered interconnects are difficult to implement in glueless designs. An ideal coherence protocol would avoid indirections and interconnect ordering; however, such an approach introduces numerous protocol races that are difficult to resolve.We propose a new coherence framework to enable such protocols by separating performance from correctness. A performance protocol can optimize for the common case (i.e., absence of races) and rely on the underlying correctness substrate to resolve races, provide safety, and prevent starvation. We call the combination Token Coherence, since it explicitly exchanges and counts tokens to control coherence permissions.This paper develops TokenB, a specific Token Coherence performance protocol that allows a glueless multiprocessor to both exploit a low-latency unordered interconnect (like directory protocols) and avoid indirection (like snooping protocols). Simulations using commercial workloads show that our new protocol can significantly outperform traditional snooping and directory protocols.

The salutogenic model as a theory to guide health promotion

This paper provides a critical look at the challenges facing the field of health promotion. Pointing to the persistence of the disease orientation and the limits of risk factor approaches for conceptualizing and conducting research on health, the salutogenic orientation is presented as a more viable paradigm for health promotion research and practice. The Sense of Coherence framework is offered as a useful theory for taking a salutogenic approach to health research.