High Level Of Fairness Research Articles

Seeking a pathway towards a more sustainable human-water relationship by coupled model – From a perspective of socio-hydrology

It is essential to systematically consider social, economic, and natural endowments in managing and allocating water resources. However, few studies have comprehensively quantitatively evaluated the allocation of regional water resources from a socio-hydrology perspective and provided recommendations. To explore this research gap, we have constructed a tightly coupled framework that integrates system dynamics models and optimization algorithms to carry out an innovative redistribution of water resources in Shaanxi Province. The system dynamics model simulation results showed that the error was almost always within 10% over the research period, indicating robust simulation capability and laying a solid foundation for subsequent model coupling. The coupled model achieves convergence in approximately 30 generations by formulating the optimization problem with four individual objectives. Optimizing four objectives concurrently results in convergence around the 150th generation. The optimized Pareto solution sets visually demonstrate the trade-offs between different objectives. In the optimized water allocation schedule, the water consumption in Yulin exhibits a change of 1.22 ×108m3, reflecting the most significant optimization effects on agricultural and domestic water allocation. The results indicated that the comprehensive Gini coefficient typically ranged between 0.2 and 0.3. Over the period from the year 2010–2021, the Gini coefficient exhibited a declining trend, signifying a positive trajectory in water resource allocation throughout the research period and a high level of fairness. The annual total green WF of grain in Weinan was the highest at 14.26 ×108m3, followed by Xianyang at 9.52 ×108m3, and the lowest in Tongchuan at 0.54 ×108m3. The annual average amount of blue WF of grain is the highest in Hanzhong, at 11.33 ×108m3, followed by Weinan at 9.60 ×108m3, and the lowest in Tongchuan at 0.14 ×108m3. The coupled framework proposed in this study exhibits significant innovation, scalability, and practical efficiency. It can inspire future research and decision-making and holds the potential for application in other regions.

KGFlex: Efficient Recommendation with Sparse Feature Factorization and Knowledge Graphs

Collaborative filtering models have undoubtedly dominated the scene of recommender systems in recent years. However, due to the little use of content information, they narrowly focus on accuracy, disregarding a higher degree of personalization. Meanwhile, knowledge graphs are arousing considerable interest in recommendation models thanks to their ability to enrich the system with content features that captures subtle user-item relations. Nevertheless, with many high-quality features, the models become more complex and challenging to train. We extend KGFlex [ 16 ], a hybrid model that analyzes historical data to understand the semantic features the user decisions depend on. KGFlex represents item features as embeddings, and it models user-item interactions as a factorized entropy-driven combination of the item attributes relevant to the user, thus reducing the complexity and raising the degree of personalization. The method does not neglect long tail items, reducing the popularity bias and ensuring a high level of fairness. The user-item prediction is mediated by the user’s personal views of the embeddings that grant a high degree of expressiveness. This extension analyzes different entropy measurement strategies, an enhanced user negative decision modeling, and assesses the fairness of KGFlex and the impact of its hyperparameters. KGFlex is available at https://split.to/kgflex .

Reputation update of responders efficiently promotes the evolution of fairness in the ultimatum game

Recently, exploration on how to sustain cooperation based on indirect reciprocity has obtained considerable concern. However, thus far few studies have investigated the effects of indirect reciprocity with shared social norms on fairness in the ultimatum game (UG), which has been a prominent paradigm for studying the evolution of fairness. In this paper, we introduce indirect reciprocity with social norms into the UG. We consider three scenarios, (1) reputation of proposers updates alone, (2) reputation of responders updates alone, and (3) reputation of both proposers and responders updates. By a two-timescale theoretical analysis, we find that reputation update of proposers alone leads to a higher level of fairness than the one without reputation under lots of social norms, and that reputation update of responders alone generates a very high level of fairness under image scoring. For the majority of the third-order social norms, the effect of proposers’ reputation update on fairness can be enhanced when it is combined with reputation update of responders. The excellent positive effect of responders’ reputation update on fairness cannot be enhanced when it is combined with reputation update of proposers under all social norms. The key factor for the high level of fairness is up to the dominance of the strategies with rejecting unfair offers in the pairwise competition, suggesting the behavior of altruistic punishment can emerge in the population.

Rolling Deck to Repository: Supporting the marine science community with data management services from academic research expeditions

Direct observations of the oceans acquired on oceanographic research ships operated across the international community support fundamental research into the many disciplines of ocean science and provide essential information for monitoring the health of the oceans. A comprehensive knowledge base is needed to support the responsible stewardship of the oceans with easy access to all data acquired globally. In the United States, the multidisciplinary shipboard sensor data routinely acquired each year on the fleet of coastal, regional and global ranging vessels supporting academic marine research are managed by the Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R, rvdata.us) program. With over a decade of operations, the R2R program has developed a robust routinized system to transform diverse data contributions from different marine data providers into a standardized and comprehensive collection of global-ranging observations of marine atmosphere, ocean, seafloor and subseafloor properties that is openly available to the international research community. In this article we describe the elements and framework of the R2R program and the services provided. To manage all expeditions conducted annually, a fleet-wide approach has been developed using data distributions submitted from marine operators with a data management workflow designed to maximize automation of data curation. Other design goals are to improve the completeness and consistency of the data and metadata archived, to support data citability, provenance tracking and interoperable data access aligned with FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) recommendations, and to facilitate delivery of data from the fleet for global data syntheses. Findings from a collection-level review of changes in data acquisition practices and quality over the past decade are presented. Lessons learned from R2R operations are also discussed including the benefits of designing data curation around the routine practices of data providers, approaches for ensuring preservation of a more complete data collection with a high level of FAIRness, and the opportunities for homogenization of datasets from the fleet so that they can support the broadest re-use of data across a diverse user community.

Social norms of fairness with reputation-based role assignment in the dictator game.

A vast body of experiments share the view that social norms are major factors for the emergence of fairness in a population of individuals playing the dictator game (DG). Recently, to explore which social norms are conducive to sustaining cooperation has obtained considerable concern. However, thus, far few studies have investigated how social norms influence the evolution of fairness by means of indirect reciprocity. In this study, we propose an indirect reciprocal model of the DG and consider that an individual can be assigned as the dictator due to its good reputation. We investigate the "leading eight" norms and all second-order social norms by a two-timescale theoretical analysis. We show that when role assignment is based on reputation, four of the "leading eight" norms, including stern judging and simple standing, lead to a high level of fairness, which increases with the selection intensity. Our work also reveals that not only the correct treatment of making a fair split with good recipients but also distinguishing unjustified unfair split from justified unfair split matters in elevating the level of fairness.

다중 파라메트릭 변환곡선 기반 선수 선형 변환기법 연구

In this paper, we propose a systematic hull form variation technique which automatically satisfies the displacement constraint and guarantees a high level of fairness. This method is possible through multiple parameter correction curves. The present method is to improve the hull form variation method based on parametric modification function and consists of two sub-categories: SAC variation and section lines modification. For SAC variation, the utilization of two B-Spline curves satisfying GC¹ condition led to the satisfaction of displacement constraint and high level of fairness at the same time. Section lines modification methods involves in using two fuctions: the first is the waterplane modification function combining two cubic splines. the other function is the sectional area modification function consisting of 2nd order polynomial over the DLWL(Design Load Waterline) and 3rd order polynomial below the DLWL, This function enables not only the fundamental U-V section shape variation but also systematically modified section lines. The present method is expected to be more useful in the hull form optimization process using CFD compared to the existing method.

Developmental Tasks During the Childrearing Stage and Second Birth Intentions among Chinese Married Women: Parenting Adaptation, Division of Childcare, and Marital Adjustment

Although the globally known one-child policy in China was abolished in 2016, the overall fertility rate in the country declined to 1.3 in 2020. In this study, we examined whether the achievement of major developmental tasks during the childrearing stage was associated with intentions to have a second child among Chinese married women. Based on family development theory, we included parenting adaptation, division of childcare responsibilities with the partner, and marital adjustment as key developmental tasks during the childrearing stage. The participants of this study were 315 married Chinese women who lived with a spouse and a child who had not yet entered elementary school. Data were collected through an online survey in February and March 2021. A multiple regression analysis of the data revealed that a lower level of economic parenting stress, a higher level of fairness in dividing childcare responsibilities with the partner, and a more positive change in their marital relationship after having the first child were associated with greater intentions to have a second child.

Game Theory-Based Power Allocation Strategy for NOMA in 5G Cooperative Beamforming

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a Fifth Generation (5G) technique that allows many users to simultaneously access the same time–frequency separating channels via successive interference cancellation (SIC) receiver. Cooperative NOMA (CNOMA) is an effective tool to prevent performance degradation of far users by allocating minimal power to users with good channel conditions. In this paper, we proposed a fair power and channel allocation scheme based on the Nash bargaining solution (NBS) game solution in full-duplex, cooperative beamforming (BF) for multicarrier (MC) NOMA. The proposed NBS scheme assigns optimal power and channel allocation according to channel conditions while maintaining a fair rate amongst cooperative users. NBS provides a fair and optimum approach for maximizing the total rate of CNOMA. The signal-to-leakage (SLR) ratio precoding technique is considered as a design performance criterion for beamforming vector towards achieving power domain CNOMA players. Simulation results show that at BER = $${10}^{-5}$$ , the NBS power allocation (proposed scheme) improved by 2 dB in terms of Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), compared with the non-cooperative scheme, and 3 dB compared with the multiple-input multiple-output NOMA (MIMO-NOMA). Both improvements were as a result of interference reduction and information sharing in the network. In terms of fairness, the proposed NBS scheme shown a high level of fairness at 0.8401, compared to the other similar approaches in the literature.

Realization of the Benefits from the Functioning of Municipal Electric Transport in the Taxation of the Property of Individuals

The problem of introducing the benefit principle into local taxation for the implementation of investment projects for the development of municipal public transport is extremely relevant. Today, however, such projects are financed by the lump-sum method, which creates prerequisites for an even greater distortion of the benefit principle. Public transport being as an element of local public goods, there is a strict binding to the locality, which makes it difficult for taxpayers living outside such zones to use it. The purpose of the study is to substantiate the possibility of introducing the benefit principle into the taxation of property owned by private individuals in the case of the city of Yekaterinburg by establishing the dependence of the availability of tram stops on the capitalization of the cost of residential real estate. In this study, we intend to confirm the hypothesis about the possibility of using a differentiated property tax rate, which will allow us to introduce various tax instruments for a fairer and fiscally more efficient tax model that provides for additional taxation of residents who benefit the most from electric municipal transport. Calculations were carried out by comparing the homogeneity of the price reaction to the proximity of tram stops when zoning by type of real estate and without such zoning. The calculations have shown that the capitalization of the proximity of tram stops in the cost of housing in Yekaterinburg fits both into the static and dynamic equilibrium model. At the same time, the model with zones previously combined by type of real estate showed more uniform results in terms of the degree of influence of the proximity of tram stops on the cost of housing. As a result of the study, it was possible to identify geographically isolated zones in Yekaterinburg with the most smoothed effect of the interaction between the objects of the proximity of tram stops on the price of real estate. These zones are also ready-made fiscal zones with an increased property tax, the protected proceeds from which should become a source for the creation of new transport infrastructure of the zone. The hypothesis of the study is confirmed. This model of taxation provides a high level of fairness; at the same time it is practically applicable in the conditions of Yekaterinburg.

Novel Bee Colony Optimization with Update Quantities for OFDMA Resource Allocation

In recent years, large usage of wireless networks puts forward challenge to the utilization of spectrum resources, and it is significant to improve the spectrum utilization and the system sum data rates in the premise of fairness. However, the existing algorithms have drawbacks in efficiency to maximize the sum data rates of orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems in the premise of fairness threshold. To address the issue, a novel artificial bee colony algorithm with update quantities of nectar sources is proposed for OFDMA resource allocation in this paper. Firstly, the population of nectar sources is divided into several groups, and a different update quantity of nectar sources is set for each group. Secondly, based on the update quantities of nectar sources set for these groups, nectar sources are initialized by a greedy subcarrier allocation method. Thirdly, neighborhood searches and updates are performed on dimensions of nectar sources corresponding to the preset update quantities. The proposed algorithm can not only make the initialized nectar sources maintain high levels of fairness through the greedy subcarrier allocation but also use the preset update quantities to reduce dimensions of the nectar sources to be optimized by the artificial bee colony algorithm, thereby making full use of both the local optimization of the greedy method and the global optimization of the artificial bee colony algorithm. The simulation results show that, just in the equal‐power subcarrier allocation stage, the proposed algorithm can achieve the required fairness threshold and effectively improve the system sum data rates.

Perceived Organisational Support as a Moderator in the Relationship Between Organisational Justice and Affective Organisational Commitment

Abstract Purpose. This study aimed to explore the relationship between organisational justice and commitment and how the combined influence of organisational justice and perceived organisational support (POS) impacts on commitment. Research Methodology. Data were obtained through questionnaires administered to 124 teaching and non-teaching staff, who were conveniently selected by the researchers from Ghanaian public universities. Descriptive survey design was adopted for this study. Findings. The results from regression analysis of data collected showed a significant positive relationship among the dimensions of organisational justice and affective commitment. Furthermore, POS was found to moderate the relationship between organisational justice and commitment, as the effect of justice on commitment increased when POS was added to the model. Practical Implications. The present study supported the expected relationship among justice, POS and organisational commitment and implied that higher level of fairness and support from the organisation can favourably influence the commitment level of employees. Originality. The current research examines the moderating role of POS on organisational justice–commitment link using samples from the Ghanaian higher education institutions. Thus, it makes relevant contribution to the existing literature by modelling both organisational justice and support and analysing its effect on organisational commitment.

Examining the Effects of Overtime Work on Subjective Social Status and Social Inclusion in the Chinese Context.

Although researchers have argued that long work hours have been shown to threaten individual health, lead to work-family conflict, and reduce job performance, the effect of overtime work on social-related outcomes has received little attention. Based on the framework of relative deprivation, we attempt to address this important issue by exploring whether, why, and when individuals’ overtime work influences their social attitudes. By using the data of 400 Chinese employees from the China Labor-Force Dynamics Survey (CLD), we found that overtime work was associated with a low level of subjective social status and social inclusion. In addition, we found that the time type of overtime work (work overtime on weekdays or on weekends and holidays) has a moderating effect on the relationship between overtime work and social inclusion. That is, employees who work overtime on weekdays are unlikely to have a sense of social inclusion. Furthermore, the negative relationship between overtime work and subjective social status was stronger at a low level of fairness rather than a high level of fairness. In contrast, the negative relationship between overtime work and social inclusion was stronger at a high level of fairness rather than a low level of fairness. These findings highlight the critical role of overtime work in social life and also provide novel insights into social intervention aimed at the happiness and harmony of a society.

Evolution of egalitarian social norm by resource management.

Social organizations, especially human society, rely on egalitarian social norm, which can be characterized by high levels of fairness, empathy and collective conformity. Nevertheless, the evolution of egalitarian social norm remains a conundrum, as it suffers the persistent challenge from individual self-interest. To address this issue, we construct an evolutionary game theoretical model by employing the Ultimatum Game, in which rational individuals are able to perform resource management. We show that resource management drives a population evolving into an oscillatory state with high equilibrium degrees of fairness, empathy and collective conformity and thus constitutes a key mechanism for the evolution of egalitarian social norm in social dilemma situations. Specifically, it results in (1) the formation of egalitarian social norm from diverse individual norms, (2) the emergence of egalitarian social norm in a selfish and unfair world, and (3) the maintenance of egalitarian social norm despite the presence of norm violators. The constructive role of resource management is explained by a mean-field analysis revealing that resource management can effectively enlarge the attraction basin of egalitarian norms or even change the dynamical property of the mini Ultimatum Game from bistability between egalitarian norms and less egalitarian norms to complete-dominance of egalitarian norms over less egalitarian norms. Furthermore, we find that the capacity of resource management can be evolutionarily selected by a coevolution between egalitarian social norm and resource management. Our study suggests that efficiency and equity are linked to each other.

The FAIR Funding Model: Providing a Framework for Research Funders to Drive the Transition toward FAIR Data Management and Stewardship Practices

A growing number of research funding organizations (RFOs) are taking responsibility to increase the scientific and social impact of research output. Also reusable research data are recognized as relevant output for gaining impact. RFOs are therefore promoting FAIR research data management and stewardship (RDM) in their research funding cycle. However, the implementation of FAIR RDM still faces important obstacles and challenges. To solve these, stakeholders work together to develop innovative tools and practices. Here we elaborate on the role of RFOs in developing a FAIR funding model to support the FAIR RDM in the funding cycle, integrated with research community specific guidance, criteria and metadata, and enabling automatic assessments of progress and output from RDM. The model facilitates to create research data with a high level of FAIRness that are meaningful for a research community. To fully benefit from the model, RFOs, research institutions and service providers need to implement machine actionability in their FAIR RDM tools and procedures. As many stakeholders still need to get familiar with “human actionable” FAIR data practices, the introduction of the model will be stepwise, with an active role of the RFOs in driving FAIR RDM processes as effectively as possible.

СВОБОДА ДІЙ УСТАНОВИ

The article considers discretion enjoyed by institutions. Discretion enjoyed by institutions implies that law grants а right to choose between various legal implications for the person who applies the law. Discretion is а legislative tool which helps achieve а high level of fairness in an individual case. Discretion of institutions provided by lawmakers enables an institution to consider the specific circumstances of а specific situation and reach а fairer result. However, even such “freedom” imposes an obligation on the institution to apply it in а responsible and correct manner. Discretion does not mean that the institution is granted absolute “freedom” or arbitrariness. The scope of control of discretion in а higher institution and а court differs. А higher institution independently carries out all feasibility assessments for а second time based on merit, ultimately reaching а similar or different result. The courts can verify the validity of the activities undertaken by the public administration: a) failure to use discretion; b) abuse of discretion; c) misuse of discretion. The courts do not have the right to take а decision on the most appropriate result since it leads to violation of the principle of separation of powers.

Efficient and Fair Network Selection for Integrated Cellular and Drone-Cell Networks

This paper is concerned with the network selection for heterogeneous networks. Although many network selection approaches have been developed for heterogeneous networks, few of them explore the network selection problem for integrated cellular and drone-cell networks. Furthermore, most of the existing designs may be unsuitable for the integrated cellular and drone-cell networks owing to the high dynamic drone-cell-user association and the relatively limited drone-cell network capacity. In this paper, we investigate a network selection problem for the integrated cellular and drone-cell networks with a goal of maximizing a proportional fairness function of time average utilities across users under coarse correlated equilibrium constraints and minimum time average utility constraints. To mitigate this challenging problem, we first convert it into a non-linear integer programming (NLIP) problem based on our derived theoretical results. Next, we propose a repeated-stochastic-game-based efficient and fair network selection (RSG-EF) algorithm to alleviate the NLIP problem by leveraging a linear approximation mechanism. Simulation results show that the RSG-EF algorithm can achieve the highest total utility and a high level of fairness across users compared with three benchmark algorithms.

Trust-Based Shard Distribution Scheme for Fault-Tolerant Shard Blockchain Networks

Blockchains guarantee data integrity through consensus of distributed ledgers based on multiple validation nodes called miners. For this reason, any blockchain system can be critically disabled by a malicious attack from a majority of the nodes (e.g., 51% attack). These attacks are more likely to succeed as the number of nodes required for consensus is smaller. Recently, as blockchains are becoming too large (making them difficult to store, send, receive, and manage), sharding is being considered as a technology to help improve the transaction throughput and scalability of blockchains. Sharding distributes block validators to disjoint sets to process transactions in parallel. Therefore, the number of validators of each shard group is smaller, which makes shard-based blockchains more vulnerable to 51% attacks than blockchains that do not use sharding. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a trust-based shard distribution (TBSD) scheme that assigns potential malicious nodes in the network to different shards, preventing malicious nodes from gaining a dominating influence on the consensus of a single shard. TBSD uses a trust-based shard distribution scheme to prevent malicious miners from gathering in on one shard by integration of a trust management system and genetic algorithm (GA). First, the trust of all nodes is computed based on the previous consensus result. Then, a GA is used to compute the shard distribution set to prevent collusion of malicious miners. The performance evaluation shows that the proposed TBSD scheme results in a shard distribution with a higher level of fairness than existing schemes, which provides an improved level of protection against malicious attacks.

Adaptive Centralized Random Access for Collision Free Wireless Local Area Networks

Packet collisions caused by the standard Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) protocol in wireless local area networks (WLANs) have been a challenging problem leading to congestion and reduced throughput. To solve this problem, we propose a novel backoff state generation algorithm, called adaptive virtual backoff algorithm (AVBA), operating in an access point. The virtual contention window size in the algorithm is automatically adjusted based on the number of synchronized active nodes in a cell. Backoff counts generated by AVBA operating in the access point are sent by the access point to each active node in the cell to try to synchronize transmissions and minimize packet collisions. The evaluation results show that the AVBA improves the throughput performance compared to the existing collision resolution techniques, such as the deterministic backoff and centralized random backoff (CRB), when the number of active nodes is large. Moreover, the results show that it maintains a high level of fairness in terms of channel access opportunities between nodes using AVBA and nodes using the DCF protocol when they coexist in a mixed wireless network scenario.

Profit-fairness trade-off in project selection

Allocating the overall budget to projects is a major decision for an organization. Taking that decision by looking at the overall profit only may result in an unfair treatment of departments, with some departments overloaded and others underemployed (and dissatisfied). We consider an alternative approach, where the budget allocation is accomplished by aiming at fairness as well as profit. We adopt a knapsack-type Integer Linear Programming formulation to optimize both quality indicators of budget allocation, employing a fairly wide selection of fairness measures. The resulting optimization routines are applied to a representative selection of instances generated through Monte Carlo simulation. We show that high levels of fairness can be achieved for realistic scenarios with only a moderate loss of profit. Large companies appear to be able to achieve a better trade-off between fairness and profit. Striving for fairness also leads to funding more projects, thus increasing the usage level of the organization's human and material resources.

Rate selection based medium access control for full-duplex asymmetric transmission

The realization of full-duplex wireless communication is predictable. And asymmetric transmission is a practical and low-cost application scenario, where full-duplex access point (FD_AP) can communicate with two users simultaneously to receive and send packets. While, in an asymmetric transmission, the transmit power of uplink sender decides the uplink and downlink rates because of the inter-client interference, which accordingly restricts the throughput. Besides, the size of packets in uplink and downlink is generally unequal. Therefore, a WIFI network with a FD_AP and half-duplex users is studied in this paper, and a medium access control (MAC) protocol based on power control and rate selection (PCRS) is proposed. PCRS MAC employs a received signal strength based rate selection strategy to select different rates and power for uplink and downlink transmission. Then, FD_AP can establish efficient and reliable full-duplex asymmetric transmission. Simulation results show that PCRS can improve the throughput and the probability of successful asymmetric communication as compared to the distributed coordination function (DCF) and a simple full-duplex MAC protocol without PCRS. Besides, PCRS MAC also maintains a high level of fairness.