Set Of Contracts Research Articles

The Failure of 'Notice and Consent' as Effective Consumer Policy

Over the past several decades, the preferred model for consumer protection in most countries has emphasized a notice and consent (or choice) approach with less emphasis on normative laws that prohibit or mandate certain contract terms, acts or practices. In this essay, I argue that it is time for consumer advocates and policy makers to recognize that a notice and consent approach to standard contract terms and conditions is not likely to protect consumer interests in modern day contractual settings. Indeed, policy makers are doing more harm than good by continuing to focus on notice and consent, thereby giving a misleading impression that consumer interests are being protected when they are not. Moreover, by adhering to a notice and consent regime, they avoid discussing the more difficult yet most fundamental questions about what commercial practices should be permitted and which should be banned.

A Distributed Autonomous Organization for Internet Address Management

The current system to manage the global pool of IP addresses is centralized in five transnational organizations, known as regional internet registries (RIRs). Each of them manages the address pool for many countries. In this paper, we present InBlock, a distributed autonomous organization that provides the decentralized management of IP addresses. The InBlock also fulfills the same objectives as those fulfilled by the current IP address allocation organizations, i.e., uniqueness, fairness, conservation, aggregation, registration, and minimized overhead. The InBlock is implemented as a set of blockchain's smart contracts in Ethereum, and it implements all the functions needed for the management of a global pool of addresses without any human intervention. Any entity may request an allocation of addresses to the InBlock registry by performing a (crypto)currency transfer to the InBlock. The fee required, along with the annual renewal fee, serves as a mechanism to deter stockpiling and other wasteful practices. As with any novel technology, there are many open questions about the usage of blockchains to build an IP address registry. For this reason, we believe that practical experimentation is required in order to have hands-on experience, so we propose to conduct an experiment on the InBlock as a starting point to inform about the future directions in this space.

The Usage of What Country: A Critical Analysis of Legal Ethics in Transnational Legal Practice

AbstractThis article maintains that the standard conception of legal ethics – the so-called ‘theory of amorality’ – is highly dependent on context and cannot be consistently applied to transnational legal practice. After defining in some detail the basic tenets of the standard conception, I identify its main assumptions, namely, (i) that a legal relation is an agency relation in which both lawyer and client are individual moral agents, (ii) that such relation is connected to a litigation process, and (iii) that such relation takes place within the framework of a decently well-functioning rule of law system. Using as a paradigmatic example the BTC pipeline case– a set of contracts and international treaties signed by a consortium of private companies and several sovereign states during the first decade of the 21st century to regulate the building and operation of a transnational oil pipeline – I analyze one by one these three assumptions to conclude that they are at the very least highly problematic in the context of global legal practice. Additionally, I consider the counter-argument that a lawyer who moves beyond the standard conception is actually usurping the role of the judge, an argument that loses much of its appeal on the transnational context. In a brief concluding remark I inscribe these problems within the more general post-Westphalian paradigm shift in law and jurisprudence.

Compression suits with and without films and their effects on EMG during isokinetic exercise

This study aimed to determine the differences in the EMG of thigh among film-welded compression suits (WCS), film-free compression suit (CS) and a loose sportswear during knee joint exercise. To differentiate the effect of clothing variable accurately, two types of compression suits were made elaborately using the same material and 3D pattern. Difference in two compression suits is only whether film was welded or not. EMG was observed during isokinetic exercise of flexion and extension, comprising four sets of maximum contraction of thigh at the angular velocity of 60, 180 and 240°/s using Cybex 660. When the WCS was worn, the mean muscle activities of the anterior thigh was generally higher during extension, especially in the left rectus femoris (RF) and right vastus oblique medialis (VMO) throughout the exercise. Wearing WCS enhanced mean muscle activities and decreased muscle fatigue of VL and VMO at each angular velocity, however, it did not support the mean muscle activity nor the fatigue of the hamstrings in almost all conditions of exercise. Muscle-specific EMG implies that film-welded compression suit designed in this study is beneficial to VMO, inducing high muscle activity with less fatigue during knee extension.

Acute effect of multiple sets of fatiguing resistance exercise on muscle thickness, echo intensity, and extracellular-to-intracellular water ratio.

Resistance exercise (RE) causes an acute increase of the muscle thickness (MT) considered to relate to an increase in tissue water content. Segmental bioelectrical impedance spectroscopy (S-BIS) is a tool used to noninvasively assess intra- and extra-cellular water (ICW and ECW, respectively) of a given limb segment. The purpose of the present study was to examine the change of MT, ultrasound echo intensity (EI), ICW, and ECW after 3 sets of exhaustive RE. Eighteen untrained young males (age, 25.4 ± 4.1 years) performed RE consisting of 3 sets of knee extension concentric and eccentric contractions with 80% of 1-repetition maximum to failure. The MT and EI of the quadriceps measured by ultrasonography, and ECW/ICW ratio of the thigh assessed by S-BIS before (baseline) and after each set of RE (PostEx1, 2, and 3). The changes (Δ) in MT, EI, and ECW/ICW ratio were calculated as values of PostEx minus baseline values. The values of MT, EI, and ECW/ICW ratio at PostEx3 were significantly higher than baseline (effect size: MT, 1.11; EI, 0.47; and ECW/ICW ratio, 0.45). In addition, ΔMT was significantly and moderately correlated with ΔECW/ICW ratio (r = 0.61). Integrated data showed weak but significant correlation between ΔEI and ΔECW/ICW ratio as well (r = 0.31). The present results suggest multiple sets of exhaustive knee extension RE induce the acute increase of EI and ECW/ICW ratio as well as MT. The acute increase of muscle size after exercise can be at least partly explained by relative ECW increase.

A Blockchain Platform in Connected Medical-Device Environments: Trustworthy technology to guard against cyberthreats

For consumer-oriented medical devices, the issues of rising cybersecurity threats and the need of end users to maintain control lead to a search for effective solutions. This article presents a blockchain framework for consumer-oriented medical devices aiming at added value, including immutability, auditability, and accountability in processes such as user-device binding, registration, maintenance, and alerting. The proposed solution implements a set of smart contracts (SC) to deliver more secure services in smart-home environments.

Neuromuscular Factors Contributing to Reductions in Muscle Force After Repeated, High-Intensity Muscular Efforts

Multiple neuromuscular processes contribute to the loss of force production following repeated, high-intensity muscular efforts; however, the relative contribution of each process is unclear. In Experiment 1, 16 resistance trained men performed six sets of unilateral isometric plantar flexor contractions of the right leg (3 s contraction/2 s rest; 85% maximal voluntary contraction torque; 90-s inter-set rest) until failure with and without caffeine ingestion (3 mg kg-1) on two separate days. Corticospinal excitability and cortical silent period (cSP) were assessed before and immediately, 10 and 20 min after the exercise. In Experiment 2, electrically evoked tetanic force and persistent inward current (PIC)-mediated facilitation of the motor neuron pool (estimated using neuromuscular electrical stimulation with tendon vibration) were assessed before and after the same exercise intervention in 17 resistance trained men. Results showed decreases in peak plantar flexion torque (Experiment 1: -12.2%, Experiment 2: -16.9%), electrically evoked torque (20 Hz -15.3%, 80 Hz -15.3%, variable-frequency train -17.9%), and cSP (-3.8%; i.e., reduced inhibition) post-exercise which did not recover by 20 min. Electromyographic activity (EMG; -6%), corticospinal excitability (-9%), and PIC facilitation (-24.8%) were also reduced post-exercise but recovered by 10 min. Caffeine ingestion increased torque and EMG but did not notably affect corticospinal excitability, PIC amplification, or electrically evoked torque. The data indicate that a decrease in muscle function largely underpins the loss of force after repeated, high-intensity muscular efforts, but that the loss is exacerbated immediately after the exercise by simultaneous decreases in corticospinal excitability and PIC amplitudes at the motor neurons.

On the Existence of Stable Allocations in Matching Games with Infinite Contracts: Leveraging the Deferred Acceptance Algorithm

In classic matching games, individuals choose their partners and each pair chooses a contract from a finite set of feasible contracts; the existence of stable allocations then follows from the (generalized) Deferred Acceptance algorithm. We consider an extension where the contract set is a compact subset of a Banach space (e.g., R^k or C[0, 1]) and establish, using only elementary methods, that this algorithm continues to ensure the existence of stable allocations.

Far-field strain transmission and contractional step-overs

In contractional (subduction/collisional) settings, convergence is accommodated by the formation of thin- and thick-skinned thrust and fold belts. The transmission of such deformation over larger distances into orogenic foreland areas is influenced by the inherited rheological characteristics of continental lithosphere. Lateral rheological variations parallel to the strike of continental foreland areas creates contrasting geometries and sequences of deformation that interact during orogenic build-up. We investigate the far-field transmission of strain within a continental lithosphere characterized by a laterally variable rheology through physical analogue modelling. Rheological weak crustal zones were introduced at distance from an advancing backstop to study the progressive along strike linkage and interference of structures during contraction. The results reveal that rheologically weak crustal zones localise far-field contractional deformation. When the size of weak zones, by means of their horizontal extend to depth ratio, is large, deformation localises at the boundaries of the weak zone where they lead to the formation of large-offset faults. Subsequently the faults migrate along-strike into areas that are rheologically stronger. When the size of the weak zone is reduced, a large-scale contractional step-over forms in orogenic forelands, where rheologically contrasting domains transmit out-of-sequence deformation by a gradual migration of thrust offsets and fold amplitudes along their strike. These results show that crustal scale orogenic step-overs do not always reflect variations in the geometry of the plate boundary (indenter) or along-strike gradients in shortening rates. Such features may also form in response to variations in rheology, as the ones created by inherited extensional basins situated at large distances from plate boundaries in the orogenic foreland.

Proactive Retention Management in Retail: Field Experiment Evidence for Lasting Effects

The vast amount of data that is now available allows retailers to make marketing decisions at the customer level and thus to manage customer defection proactively. Although there is an extensive literature that focuses on developing models to predict customer churn'' in contractual settings, few studies have addressed managing customer defection in the noncontractual context. Using data supplied by a large German grocery retailer, we address this gap in the literature for noncontractual settings as follows. First, we develop a definition of churn that distinguishes between random short-term volatility and true defection. Second, we compare various prediction algorithms in terms of their ability to predict customer churn from data available to the retailer; this analysis enables us to devise an approach for identifying the customers most likely to defect and for targeting them proactively. Third, our approach is tested in a large-scale field experiment involving 400,000 customers for whom we estimate defection probabilities. In particular, potential churners are targeted with a series of marketing campaigns over six months. We find that weekly revenue from this treatment group increases by 3% and that, in comparison with the control group, the number of churners declines by 6%. Lastly, we show that the effects of proactive churn management last for at least two months after the end of the field experiment.

Debt contract strictness and auditor specialization

AbstractThe conflicts of interest among managers, shareholders and creditors resulting in agency costs, can be mitigated by restricting managers’ adverse behavior, through financial covenants to better align the various stakeholder interests. Thus, debt contract strictness represents an important aspect of agency costs between creditors, shareholders, and management that is not always captured by interest rates. The contract setting provides a unique opportunity to investigate how creditors may rely on auditors to alleviate information uncertainty stemming from reliance on management's financial reporting and thus alleviate the creditor's potential loss of invested capital. After controlling for borrower risks, loan characteristics, and audit factors, we show that auditor industry specialization is significantly associated with a reduction in the strictness of debt contracts, consistent with creditors viewing certain industry expert auditors as effective monitors against financial reporting manipulation aimed at the avoidance of debt covenant triggers that protect creditors against potential loss. Further, we find that the association between loan strictness and auditor specialization is attenuated by stronger corporate governance systems, external monitors, and prior lender relationships.

Alternating contraction and extension in the Southern Central Andes (35°–37°S)

The Andes are thought to be formed through discrete contractional stages separated by periods of little to no orogenic construction. This paper analyzes the intervals between the main contractional phases that built the Southern Central Andes between 35° and 37°S in order to determine whether they were characterized by neutral, contractional or extensional conditions. During an interruption in orogenesis between the Late Cretaceous and the Miocene shortening phases, two extensional stages are recorded through the opening of a series of intra- and retro-arc basins. U-Pb dating of detrital zircons in a sample collected from the Los Angeles unit, a syn-extensional volcano-sedimentary succession located at ∼35°409S along the Chile and Argentina international border, provided a maximum depositional age of 67.1 +2.4/−0.9 Ma. This age, in association with evidence of regional crustal thinning, suggests a previously unrecognized extensional phase during latest Cretaceous times. Limited shortening succeeded this extensional event and was followed by a second extensional episode during late Oligocene and earliest Miocene times. While the first extensional event was restricted to the core of the Late Cretaceous orogen, the second episode affected a wide area ranging between the present forearc and retroarc areas. A structural section across the Malargue fold-thrust belt at ∼36°S indicates inversion of normal faults where extension was focused and new thrust generation in areas not affected by extensional deformation. Our data reveal that the growth of the Southern Central Andes is the product of a complex alternation of contractional and extensional phases, with inherited structures playing a role in their tectonic evolution. A comparison with other Cordilleran orogenic systems such as the Puna-Altiplano plateau, the northern Peruvian Andes and the North American Sevier-Laramide orogenic belt, suggests that extensional deformation in the Southern Central Andes responds better to changes in plate kinematics, rather than to localized events within a continuous contractional setting.

Effective and necessary: Individual supplier behavior in revenue sharing and wholesale contracts

We consider under what conditions a revenue sharing contract is most effective at improving system efficiency relative to a simple wholesale price contract. We find that a complex coordinating contract is not always necessary because the wholesale price contract may perform sufficiently well; and coordinating contracts are not always effective if decision makers are strongly risk averse. Using a behavioral laboratory approach, we investigate how a supplier's risk aversion and fairness concerns influence how they set the pricing parameter(s) of a contract. We find that risk-neutral self-interested suppliers were able to improve the system and their own profits significantly under revenue sharing compared to wholesale pricing. However, individual behavioral factors of risk aversion or fairness preferences often made the more complicated revenue sharing contract either ineffective or unnecessary. Specifically, given a fairness-seeking supplier, the simple wholesale price contract is comparably efficient to the revenue sharing contract set by a risk-neutral supplier and we find the coordinating contract is unnecessary. Conversely, given a strongly risk-averse supplier with no concerns for fairness a revenue sharing contract is ineffective in overcoming double marginalization.

JOINT LIFE INSURANCE PRICING USING EXTENDED MARSHALL–OLKIN MODELS

AbstractIn this paper we suggest a modeling of joint life insurance pricing via Extended Marshall–Olkin (EMO) models and related copulas. These models are based on the combination of two approaches: the absolutely continuous copula approach, where the copula is used to capture dependencies due to environmental factors shared by the two lives, and the classical Marshall–Olkin model, where the association is given by accounting for a fatal event causing the simultaneous death of the two lives. New properties of the EMO model are established and applied to a sample of censored residual lifetimes of couples of insureds extracted from a data set of annuities contracts of a large Canadian life insurance company. Finally, some joint life insurance products are analyzed.

A profit-maximization heuristic for combinatorial bid construction with pre-existing network restrictions

This paper proposes a heuristic approach for constructing combinatorial bids in TL transportation services procurement auctions. It considers the case where the carrier has already engaged on a set of transportation contracts before participating in the auction. The proposed heuristic identifies profitable new contracts and efficiently integrates them in the carrier exiting routes, and/or builds new routes for unused vehicles. Experimental results prove the efficiency of the proposed heuristic in terms of computing times and solutions quality.

Factory optima: a web-based system for composition and analysis of manufacturing service networks based on a reusable model repository

ABSTRACT This paper reports on the development of Factory Optima, a web-based system that allows manufacturing process engineers to compose, optimise and perform trade-off analysis of manufacturing and contract service networks based on a reusable repository of performance models. Performance models formally describe process feasibility constraints and metrics of interest, such as cost, throughput and CO 2 emissions, as a function of fixed and control parameters, such as equipment and contract properties and settings. The repository contains performance models representing (1) unit manufacturing processes, (2) base contract services and (3) a composite steady-state service network. The proposed framework allows process engineers to hierarchically compose model instances of service networks, which can represent production cells, lines, factory facilities and supply chains, and perform deterministic optimisation based on mathematical programming and Pareto-optimal trade-off analysis. Factory Optima is demonstrated using a case study of a service network for a heat sink product which involves contract vendors and manufacturing activities, including cutting, shearing, Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machining with milling and drilling operations, quality inspection, finishing, and assembly.

Integrated System for Monitoring Muscular States during Elbow Flexor Resistance Training in Bedridden Patients.

To improve or maintain the physical function of bedridden patients, appropriate and effective exercises are required during the patient's bed rest. Resistance training (RT) is an effective exercise for improving the physical function of bedridden patients, and the improvement of the physical function is caused by mechanical stimuli associated with RT. Currently, the measured mechanical stimuli are external variables which represent the synthetic effect of multiple muscles and body movements. Important features of stimuli experienced by muscles are of crucial importance in explaining muscular strength and power adaptation. This study describes an integrated system for assessing muscular states during elbow flexor resistance training in bedridden patients, and some experiments were carried out to test and evaluate this system. The integrated system incorporates an elbow joint angle estimation model (EJAEM), a musculoskeletal model (MSM), and a muscle-tendon model. The EJAEM enables real-time interaction between patient and MSM. The MSM is a three-dimensional model of the upper extremity, including major muscles that make up the elbow flexor and extensor, and was built based on public data. One set of concentric and eccentric contraction was performed by a healthy subject, and the results of the calculations were analyzed to show important features of mechanical stimuli experienced by muscles during the training. The integrated system provides a considerable method to monitor the body-level and muscle-level mechanical stimuli during elbow flexor resistance training in bedridden patients.

Pelvic floor muscle training for prevention and treatment of urinary incontinence during pregnancy and after childbirth and its effect on urinary system and supportive structures assessed by objective measurement techniques.

During the second and the third trimesters of pregnancy and in the first 3months following childbirth, about one-third of women experience urinary incontinence (UI). During pregnancy and after delivery, the strength of the pelvic floor muscles may decrease following hormonal and anatomical changes, facilitating musculoskeletal alterations that could lead to UI. Pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) consists in the repetition of one or more sets of voluntary contractions of the pelvic muscles. By building muscles volume, PFMT elevates the pelvic floor and the pelvic organs, closes the levator hiatus, reduces pubovisceral length and elevates the resting position of the bladder. Objective of this review is to evaluate the efficacy of PFMT for prevention and treatment of UI during pregnancy and after childbirth and its effect on urinary system and supportive structures assessed by objective measurement techniques. The largest medical information databases (Medline-Pubmed, EMBASE, Lilacs, Cochrane Library and Physiotherapy Evidence Database) were searched using the medical subject heading terms "pelvic floor muscle training", "prevention", "urinary incontinence", "urinary stress incontinence", "objective measurement techniques", "pregnancy, "exercise", "postpartum" and "childbirth" in different combinations. Overall, the quality of the studies was low. At the present time, there is insufficient evidence to state that PFMT is effective in preventing and treating UI during pregnancy and in the postpartum. However, based on the evidence provided by studies with large sample size, well-defined training protocols, high adherence rates and close follow-up, a PFMT program following general strength-training principles can be recommended both during pregnancy and in the postnatal period.

On optimal reinsurance treaties in cooperative game under heterogeneous beliefs

In this paper, we study the optimal reinsurance policies as the result of a two-person cooperative game. We assume that both the insurer and the reinsurer are risk averse and expected-utility maximizers. In addition, we assume that they “agree to disagree” on the distribution of the underlying losses in the contract negotiation.In our analysis, we consider two scenarios. In the first one, the reinsurance premium is fully negotiable, whereas in the second one, the premium is determined by the reinsurer using the expected value premium principle. For both scenarios, we first derive the set of Pareto-optimal reinsurance contracts and then identify the reinsurance contract corresponding to the Nash bargaining solution as well as that corresponding to the Kalai–Smorodinsky bargaining solution.

Novel qLPV MPC Design with Least-Squares Scheduling Prediction

The design of a Model Predictive Control (MPC) algorithm for quasi Linear Parameter Varying (qLPV) systems is developed herein. An online Least-Squares procedure that computes the future evolution of the qLPV scheduling parameters is at the core of the proposed method, which enables the replacement of a complex nonlinear optimization by a (much simpler) Quadratic Programming Problem (QP) one. The method also uses contractive terminal set constraints and a Lyapunov-associated terminal cost to the MPC QP, so that the domain of attraction of this controller is enlarged and feasibility is guaranteed. This paper ends with a successful simulation of this technique applied to the control of vehicular suspensions.