Eventual Convergence Research Articles

Season 3: Product Governance. Rethinking Retail Customer Protection in the EU Insurance Market

AbstractThe regulation of all traditional branches - banking, securities and insurance - of financial law is going through a change in retail customer protection: in this area of the law, an eventual convergence of solutions in client protection initiatives may be found. In a context oriented towards acting in accordance with the best interest of customers, EU legislator currently seeks a new “frontier” in the protection of retail customers and tends to develop new tools and strategies in addition to the disclosure of information and conduct of business rules, in order to remove potentially detrimental products from the market. This contribution examines the “product oversight and governance” principle intended to remedy problems associated with products misselling. In the details, this trend is analyzed with reference to the upcoming insurance distribution directive.

Assembling the forest herb community after abandonment from agriculture: Long‐term successional dynamics differ with land‐use history

Abstract Cultivation and pasturing, both historically common forms of agriculture in eastern North America, differ in their long‐term environmental legacies. We ask whether successional reassembly of the forest herb community differs between second‐growth stands with contrasting agricultural histories. We predicted that herb communities would diverge through a process of environmental filtering as colonist species responded to the agricultural histories of individual sites and to underlying edaphic gradients. Thirty‐five second‐growth stands were grouped into a replicated chronosequence of formerly cultivated and pastured sites spanning 80 years after canopy closure. Five long‐established stands without signs of agricultural history were included as controls. Herbaceous vegetation and soil and environmental variables were recorded at each site. Forest herb species accumulated through the chronosequence. Community composition changed through successional time, transitioning from open‐forest species to shade‐tolerant perennial herbs, and differed significantly between pastured and cultivated sites. A high degree of similarity among control sites suggests eventual convergence, although chronosequence sites at 80 years had not yet reached the richness and composition observed in the controls. Agricultural practices were initially distinguishable in species richness, evenness, and composition but agricultural influence receded as the stands approached 80 years. Synthesis. Community assembly in post‐agricultural forests appears to be a process of site‐level convergence driven by gradual accumulation of species from the regional species pool, relatively rapid conformity to soil gradients and growth of the forest stand. This result is scale‐dependent; distributions are controlled by topographic filtering at coarser and finer scales.

Distinct transition in flow statistics and vortex dynamics between low- and high-extent turbulent drag reduction in polymer fluids

Flexible polymer additives are known to reduce the energy dissipation and friction drag in turbulent flows. As the fluid elasticity increases, the flow undergoes several stages of transitions. Much attention in the area has been focused on the onset of drag reduction (DR) and the eventual convergence to the maximum drag reduction (MDR) asymptote. Between the onset and MDR, recent experimental and numerical observations prompted the need to further distinguish the low- and high-extent drag reduction (LDR and HDR). Fundamental knowledge of this transition will be important for understanding turbulent dynamics in the presence of polymers, as well as for inspiring new flow control strategies for efficient friction reduction. We use direct numerical simulation (DNS) to explore all these transitions in the parameter space and, in particular, demonstrate that the LDR–HDR transition is not merely a quantitative effect of the level of drag reduction, but a qualitative transition into a different stage of turbulence. A number of sharp changes in flow statistics are found to accompany the transition and at HDR, turbulence becomes localized with vortices forming clusters. These observations suggest that polymer-induced drag reduction follows two distinct stages. The first starts at the onset of drag reduction, where the coil-stretch transition of polymers causes an overall suppression of turbulent fluctuations. The second starts at the LDR–HDR transition, where flow statistics become fundamentally changed in the log-law layer and turbulence localization is observed. A mechanism is then proposed for the latter based on the changing vortex regeneration dynamics between LDR and HDR.

The microbiota of traumatic, open fracture wounds is associated with mechanism of injury.

Open fractures are characterized by disruption of the skin and soft tissue, which allows for microbial contamination and colonization. Preventing infection-related complications of open fractures and other acute wounds remains an evolving challenge due to an incomplete understanding of how microbial colonization and contamination influence healing and outcomes. Culture-independent molecular methods are now widely used to study human-associated microbial communities without introducing culture biases. Using such approaches, the objectives of this study were to (1) define the long-term temporal microbial community dynamics of open fracture wounds and (2) examine microbial community dynamics with respect to clinical and demographic factors. Fifty-two subjects with traumatic open fracture wounds (32 blunt and 20 penetrating injuries) were enrolled prospectively and sampled longitudinally from presentation to the emergency department (ED) and at each subsequent inpatient or outpatient encounter. Specimens were collected from both the wound center and adjacent skin. Culture-independent sequencing of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene was employed to identify and characterize microbiota. Upon presentation to the ED and time points immediately following, sample collection site (wound or adjacent skin) was the most defining feature discriminating microbial profiles. Microbial composition of adjacent skin and wound center converged over time. Mechanism of injury most strongly defined the microbiota after initial convergence. Further analysis controlling for race, gender, and age revealed that mechanism of injury remained a significant discriminating feature throughout the continuum of care. We conclude that the microbial communities associated with open fracture wounds are dynamic in nature until eventual convergence with the adjacent skin community during healing, with mechanism of injury as an important feature affecting both diversity and composition of the microbiota. A more complete understanding of the factors influencing microbial contamination and/or colonization in open fractures is a critical foundation for identifying markers indicative of outcome and deciphering their respective contributions to healing and/or complication.

At the boundaries of linguistic convergence: Variation in presentational haber / haver-hi

Abstract In this paper, we focus on an eventual convergence outcome (the pluralization of presentational haber/haver-hi) in the grammar of two Romance languages, Spanish and Catalan, which have been living side-by-side for centuries in Eastern Spain. Taking into account the sociolinguistic comparative method and on the basis of several representative corpora of the two languages in contact, the data from this research offer evidence that points to a notable congruence between the underlying grammars of both languages, which would, at least partially, account for a similar diffusion of these vernacular pluralizations. Moreover, some of the few cases of disagreement found can be explained on the basis of both internal (such as the existence of points of structural conflict in some verbal paradigms) and external factors (such as hypercorrection), which certain social groups particularly sensitive to normative pressure are more receptive to.

Sizing the pool of online users: a dynamic pricing model for online travel agencies

In the modern travel market, online travel agencies (OTAs) compete intensively for online users who are valuable resources that support the OTAs’ long-term development. To expand their pool of online users, a few OTAs use aggressive pricing strategies (e.g., providing extremely low price for newly enlisted customers). However, such approach can create other management issues (e.g., financial burden). Noting that pricing strategies for sizing the pool of online users are less addressed by current literature, this paper considers a dynamic pricing problem in which an OTA actively optimizes entrance prices for newly enlisted customers to encourage them to join the pool. The essence of this problem is how to achieve an adequately sized pool supporting long-term profit through dynamic pricing. By analysing this problem, several findings on the interplay between price choosing and pool sizing are obtained. First, we proved the monotonicity of the optimal entrance price relative to the pool size, which demonstrates the positive effect of pool size on pricing decisions. Second, we showed that the optimal entrance price would be lower than operational cost, resulting in negative profits from newly enlisted customers when the pool size is smaller than a breakeven point. Third, we characterised the steady-state pool size and revealed the eventual convergence of the pool size and the pricing decisions. This result implies that the OTA has two pricing strategies, namely, penetration and constant.

Delta state replicated data types

Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) are distributed data types that make eventual consistency of a distributed object possible and non ad-hoc. Specifically, state-based CRDTs ensure convergence through disseminating the entire state, that may be large, and merging it to other replicas. We introduce Delta State Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types (δ-CRDT) that can achieve the best of both operation-based and state-based CRDTs: small messages with an incremental nature, as in operation-based CRDTs, disseminated over unreliable communication channels, as in traditional state-based CRDTs. This is achieved by defining δ-mutators to return a delta-state, typically with a much smaller size than the full state, that to be joined with both local and remote states. We introduce the δ-CRDT framework, and we explain it through establishing a correspondence to current state-based CRDTs. In addition, we present an anti-entropy algorithm for eventual convergence, and another one that ensures causal consistency. Finally, we introduce several δ-CRDT specifications of both well-known replicated datatypes and novel datatypes, including a generic map composition.

Unsustainability of Sustainability: Cognitive Frames and Tensions in Bottom of the Pyramid Projects

Existing research posits that decision makers use specific cognitive frames to manage tensions in sustainability. However, we know less about how the cognitive frames of individuals at different levels in organization interact and what these interactions imply for managing sustainability tensions, such as in Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) projects. To address this omission, we ask do organizational and project leaders differ in their understanding of tensions in a BOP project, and if so, how? We answer this question by drawing on a 5-year study of a BOP project of a global pharmaceutical company in India. In line with the existing research, we found three kinds of frames—paradoxical, business case, and business—held differently across organizational levels and over time. We also found that the shift in frames of both project and organizational leaders was mediated by the decision-making horizon. The initial divergence across organizational levels, seen in paradoxical and business frames, was mediated by long-term decision-making horizon. However, there was an eventual convergence toward business frames associated with the shift from long- to shorter-term decision-making horizons and one that led to the project’s closure. We contribute by proposing a dynamic model of cognitive frames in sustainability, where the research has either alluded to top-down or bottom-up understanding.

Wicksell on Pareto: Efficiency, Welfare, and Distribution

No individual in the history of public economics has been subject to more contentious discussion than Knut Wicksell – and perhaps no concept subjected to more diverse interpretation than Wicksell’s unanimity rule. The story begins in 1896 with the publication of Wicksell’s public finance treatise, Finanztheoretische Untersuchungen, and starts to take shape in 1906 with the publication of Pareto’s Manual of Political Economy. The crux of the matter hinges on the relationship between Wicksell’s unanimity rule and Pareto’s optimality. This article examines Wicksell’s one-sided debate with Pareto in sociological, economic, and methodological terms, and evaluates Pareto’s influence on Wicksell’s subsequent analysis of collective economic welfare. Also considered is the trajectory of their economic ideas that led to an eventual convergence in public choice.

Intersecting Itineraries Beyond the Strada Novissima: The Converging Authorship of Critical Regionalism

While the 1980 Venice Biennale is usually understood as the exhibition that crystallised postmodernism as a style of historicist eclecticism, the event also acted as a catalyst for the eventual convergence of alternative architectural sensibilities and ideas. This article shows how critical regionalism emerged when the physical and intellectual trajectories of British historian Kenneth Frampton and the Greek architects Suzana Antonakaki and Dimitris Antonakakis intersected in the aftermath of the Biennale. Offering an alternative way out of the contemporaneous crisis of modernism, this open-ended and extrovert regionalism that opposed static cultural insularities is thus the discursive footprint of architectural sensibilities travelling through cultures.

A model of nonautonomous dynamics driven by repeated harmonic interaction

We consider an exactly soluble W *-dynamical system driven by repeated harmonic interactions. Although dynamics is Hamiltonian and quasi-free, it leads in the large-time limit to relaxation of initial states to a steady state. We found explicitly the rate of the entropy production which accompanies this relaxation. Besides, we study evolution of subsystems to elucidate their eventual correlations and convergence to equilibrium states. Finally we prove a universality of dynamics driven by repeated harmonic perturbations in a short-time interaction limit.

Local Linear Convergence of the ADMM/Douglas--Rachford Algorithms without Strong Convexity and Application to Statistical Imaging

We consider the problem of minimizing the sum of a convex function and a convex function composed with an injective linear mapping. For such problems, subject to a coercivity condition at fixed points of the corresponding Picard iteration, iterates of the alternating directions method of multipliers converge locally linearly to points from which the solution to the original problem can be computed. Our proof strategy uses duality and strong metric subregularity of the Douglas--Rachford fixed point mapping. Our analysis does not require strong convexity and yields error bounds to the set of model solutions. We show in particular that convex piecewise linear-quadratic functions naturally satisfy the requirements of the theory, guaranteeing eventual linear convergence of both the Douglas--Rachford algorithm and the alternating directions method of multipliers for this class of objectives under mild assumptions on the set of fixed points. We demonstrate this result on quantitative image deconvolution and deno...

Wicksell, Pareto and Public Choice

No individual in the history of public economics has been subject to more contentious discussion than Knut Wicksell – and perhaps no concept subjected to more diverse interpretation than Wicksell’s unanimity rule. The story begins in 1896 with the publication of Wicksell’s public finance treatise, Finanztheoretische Untersuchungen, and starts to take shape in 1906 with the publication of Pareto’s Manual of Political Economy. The crux of the matter hinges on the relationship between Wicksell’s unanimity rule and Pareto’s optimality. This article examines Knut Wicksell’s one-sided debate with Vilfredo Pareto on issues in welfare economics and considers the trajectory of their economic ideas that led to an eventual convergence in public choice.

Robust Output Feedback Consensus for Networked Negative-Imaginary Systems

A robust output feedback consensus problem for networked homogeneous negative-imaginary (NI) systems is investigated in this technical note. By virtue of NI systems theory, a set of reasonable yet elegant conditions are derived for output consensus under ${\Fraktur{L}}_{2}$ external disturbances as well as NI model uncertainty. As a byproduct, this technical note also reaffirms a previous result by Li et al. which shows the robustness of networked systems is always worse than that of single agent systems. Furthermore, the eventual convergence sets are also characterized for several special NI systems that are commonly studied in the literature. It is shown how the results in this work embed and generalize earlier results for these classes of systems. We show that the natural convergence set boils down to the centroid of the initial pattern when the initial conditions of the controllers are zero. Numerical examples are given to showcase the main results.

Eventual linear convergence of the Douglas-Rachford iteration for basis pursuit

We provide a simple analysis of the Douglas-Rachford splitting algorithm in the context of $\ell^1$ minimization with linear constraints, and quantify the asymptotic linear convergence rate in terms of principal angles between relevant vector spaces. In the compressed sensing setting, we show how to bound this rate in terms of the restricted isometry constant. More general iterative schemes obtained by $\ell^2$-regularization and over-relaxation including the dual split Bregman method are also treated, which answers the question how to choose the relaxation and soft-thresholding parameters to accelerate the asymptotic convergence rate. We make no attempt at characterizing the transient regime preceding the onset of linear convergence.

Multi‐tenancy authorization models for collaborative cloud services

SummaryThe cloud service model intrinsically caters to multiple tenants, most obviously not only in public clouds but also in private clouds for large organizations. Currently, most cloud service providers isolate user activities and data within a single tenant boundary with no or minimum cross‐tenant interaction. It is anticipated that this situation will evolve soon to foster cross‐tenant collaboration supported by Authorization as a Service. At present, there is no widely accepted model for cross‐tenant authorization. Recently, Calero et al. informally presented a multi‐tenancy authorization system (MTAS), which extends the well‐known role‐based access control model by building trust relations among collaborating tenants. In this paper, we formalize this MTAS model and propose extensions for finer‐grained cross‐tenant trust. We also develop an administration model for MTAS. We demonstrate the utility and practical feasibility of MTAS by means of an example policy specification in extensible access control markup language. To further test the metrics of the model, we develop a prototype system and conduct experiments on it. The result shows that the prototype has 12‐ms policy decision overhead on average and is scalable. We anticipate that researchers will develop additional multi‐tenant authorization models before eventual consolidation and convergence to standard industry practice. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Historical Memory in Post-Cold War Europe

This article examines European memory and memory politics. Taking as my starting point the deepening divisions between the “old” and “new” members of the European Union since the 2004 and 2007 enlargements, I investigate whether differences in official memory concerning World War II on the one hand and communism on the other should be regarded as permanent. Using examples from the development of West-European postwar memory-regimes and comparing them to the current state in postcommunist Europe I suggest that with respect to historical memory the two parts of Europe underwent similar developments, crises and debates, thus making eventual convergence and consensus possible. However, there are various factors that complicate progress in this area: postcommunist countries have to contend not only with their wartime history but also with the experience of communism, which latter colours the assessment of the former.

Analysis and Control of Beliefs in Social Networks

In this paper, we investigate the problem of how beliefs diffuse among members of social networks. We propose an information flow model (IFM) of belief that captures how interactions among members affect the diffusion and eventual convergence of a belief. The IFM model includes a generalized Markov Graph (GMG) model as a social network model, which reveals that the diffusion of beliefs depends heavily on two characteristics of the social network characteristics, namely degree centralities and clustering coefficients. We apply the IFM to both converged belief estimation and belief control strategy optimization. The model is compared with an IFM including the Barabasi-Albert model, and is evaluated via experiments with published real social network data.

A Robust Output Feedback Consensus Protocol for Networked Negative-Imaginary Systems

The robust output feedback consensus problem for homogeneous networked Negative-Imaginary (NI) systems is investigated in this paper. By virtue of the NI systems stability theorem, a set of reasonable yet elegant conditions are derived for guaranteeing consensus under L2 disturbances and NI model uncertainty. Furthermore, the eventual convergence sets of several special NI systems that are commonly studied in the literature are also presented. It is shown how the results in this work embed and generalise earlier results to these classes of systems. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the results of this paper.

Economic Development in the Western Balkans: On the Road to Competitive Market Economies?

IntroductionToday, more than ever, economic security is the main challenge facing the Western Balkans.1 Poverty, unemployment and inequality threaten the everyday security of average citizens in the region. Indirectly affected by the world economic recession through trade and finance spillover channels and strong dependence linkages with European Union markets, this region became highly vulnerable, falling into a double dip recession.2 The economic downturn has worsened socio-economic conditions, diminishing consumers' confidence in markets, socially dividing the societies in terms of income and wealth levels, declining living standards and shaking social foundations, and threatening the hopes of eventual convergence with advanced countries. To reverse the downhill slide, the Western Balkans need to change gears, revising the model of growth by accelerating socio-economic reforms and speeding up measures to develop its economy. In desperate need of modernization, institutional transformation and sustained economic growth, countries should rely on deeper regional cooperation and integration with the EU as the foremost option for positive development. The most important driver of growth will be the catch up with technologies and market-friendly institutions of the advanced countries.State of Play in the Western BalkansThe rapid growth of a decade ago and the catching-up process of the Western Balkans' economies came to an abrupt end in 2009, with a GDP contraction of an average of 3.9 percent. Continuing to struggle with another recession in 2012, the GDP shrank again by 1.2 percent.3 It appears the region exited the recession only in 2013, with anemic growth reflecting the prolonged recession in the Euro zone and particularly the weak economies of Greece and Italy. Also, the prospects ahead show weak growth rates and a sluggish recovery, as shown in Figure 1.The lagging reaction of the Euro zone crisis still continues to burden the fragile transitioning economies of the Western Balkans, which are battling a sluggish recovery, weak economic output, unemployment and dangerous high public debts.The main negative contagion channels have been the fall of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Western Balkans, experiencing the sharpest decline of any emerging market in 2009 with a contraction of more than 30 percent on average;4 the decline in exports and trade in general; and the fall of remittances from expatriate works. The ongoing credit crunch in the Western Balkans is perpetuated by foreign ownership of the banking system and the serious impact of the Greek economic crisis, the latter being a strategic investor in the region and one of the main trading partners.Western Balkan economies lag behind the rest of Europe with very low incomes and living standards. The average income levels in the region are as low as 36 percent of the EU-27, varying from Kosovo, with only 22 percent of the EU 27 average, to 61 percent in Croatia.5At the same time, unemployment in the Western Balkans is the highest in Europe, with an average of 24 percent, twice the West European average. The economic crisis worsened this picture, with more plunging incomes, rising poverty and unemployment.Although GDP per capita almost doubled in the last decade, unfortunately it was a jobless growth that did not translate into increased employment. Western Balkan countries suffer comparatively low participation rates and a lack of opportunities for young workers. Simultaneously, the incidence of informal unemployment continues to remain large in the still transitioning economies of the Balkans, with estimated levels to be between 30 and 40 percent.The most devastating consequence of the high incidence of joblessness is poverty.6 Levels of poverty are highly persistent in the neighboring region of Western Europe. The incidence of poverty is extremely high in Albania and FYROM with 58.5 percent and 40.6 percent, respectively, of the population living with less than $ 5 a day. …