High Level Of Fairness Research Articles

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.

Scheduling nurses’ shifts at PGI Cikini Hospital

Hospitals play an essential role in the community by providing medical services to the public. In order to provide high quality medical services, hospitals must manage their resources (including nurses) effectively and efficiently. Scheduling of nurses’ work shifts, in particular, is crucial, and must be conducted carefully to ensure availability and fairness. This research discusses the job scheduling system for nurses in PGI Cikini Hospital, Jakarta with Goal Programming approach. The research objectives are to identify nurse scheduling criteria and find the best schedule that can meet the criteria. The model has hospital regulations (including government regulations) as hard constraints, and nurses’ preferences as soft constraints. We gather primary data (hospital regulations and nurses’ preferences) through interviews with three Head Nurses and distributing questionnaires to fifty nurses. The results show that on the best schedule, all hard constraints can be satisfied. However, only two out of four soft constraints are satisfied. Compared to current scheduling practice, the resulting schedule ensures the availability of nurses as it satisfies all hospital’s regulations and it has a higher level of fairness as it can accommodate some of the nurses’ preferences.

Weighted Proportional Fair Scheduling for Downlink Nonorthogonal Multiple Access

A weighted proportional fair (PF) scheduling method is proposed in the context of nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) with successive interference cancellation (SIC) at the receiver side. The new scheme introduces weights that adapt the classical PF metric to the NOMA scenario, improving performance indicators and enabling new services. The distinguishing value of the proposal resides in its ability to improve long‐term fairness and total system throughput while achieving a high level of fairness in every scheduling slot. Finally, it is shown that the additional complexity caused by the weight calculation has only a limited impact on the overall scheduler complexity, while simulation results confirm the claimed improvements, making the proposal an appealing alternative for resource allocation in a cellular downlink system.

Waterfilling-Based Proportional Fairness Scheduler for Downlink Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access

In this letter, a low-complexity waterfilling-based power allocation (PA) technique, incorporated within the proportional fairness scheduler, is proposed and applied to a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme in a cellular downlink system. The aim of the proposed joint PA and scheduling scheme is to maximize the achieved average throughput through a quasi-optimal repartition of the transmit power among subbands, while guaranteeing a high level of fairness in resource allocation. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed technique enhances both system capacity and user fairness, when compared to either orthogonal signaling or NOMA with static PA.

Siblings' Perceptions of Differential Treatment, Fairness, and Jealousy and Adolescent Adjustment: A Moderated Indirect Effects Model.

Youth's perception of parents' differential treatment (PDT) are associated with maladjustment during adolescence. Although the direct relations between PDT and youth's maladjustment have been well established, the mechanisms underlying these associations remain unclear. We addressed this gap by examining whether sibling jealousy accounted for the links between PDT and youth's depressive symptoms, self-worth, and risky behaviors. Additionally, we examined whether youth's perceptions of fairness regarding their treatment as well as the gender constellation of the dyad moderated these indirect relations (i.e., moderated-indirect effects). Participants were first- and second-born adolescent siblings (M = 15.96, SD = .72 years for older siblings, M = 13.48, SD = 1.02 years for younger siblings) and their parents from 197 working and middle class European American families. Data were collected via home interviews. A series of Conditional Process Analyses revealed significant indirect effects of PDT through sibling jealousy to all three adjustment outcomes. Furthermore, perceptions of fairness moderated the relations between PDT and jealousy, such that the indirect effects were only significant at low (-1 SD) and average levels of fairness. At high levels of fairness (+1 SD) there was no association between PDT, jealousy, and youth adjustment. Taken together, results indicate that youth and parents would benefit from engaging in clear communication regarding the reasoning for the occurrence of differential treatment, likely maximizing youth and parent perceptions of that treatment as being fair, and in turn mitigating sibling jealousy and maladjustment.

A-Duplex: Medium Access Control for Efficient Coexistence Between Full-Duplex and Half-Duplex Communications

As full-duplex wireless communication evolves into a practical technique, it will be built into communication nodes in many application scenarios. However, it is difficult to do so for legacy communication nodes. Thus, full-duplex communication nodes will coexist with half-duplex communication nodes in the same application environment. In this paper, a wireless local area network with a full-duplex access point (AP) and half-duplex clients is studied, and a media access control (MAC) protocol called asymmetrical duplex (A-Duplex) is developed to support efficient coexistence between half-duplex clients and the full-duplex AP. A-Duplex explores packet-alignment-based capture effect to establish dual links between the AP and two different clients. In this way, the capability of a full-duplex AP can be utilized by half-duplex clients, which leads to much improved network throughput. Moreover, to ensure fairness of the MAC protocol, a virtual deficit round-robin algorithm is proposed for the AP to select appropriate half-duplex clients for dual-link setup. A-Duplex does not require any change in the physical layer of half-duplex clients; only an update of MAC driver is necessary. Thus, it is well suited for coexistence between half-duplex clients and a full-duplex AP. Both analysis and simulations are conducted to evaluate performance of A-Duplex. Results show that it improves the throughput by 48% and 188% and reduces the average packet delay by 26% and 22%, as compared to the IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function with and without RTS/CTS, respectively. Moreover, the throughput remains steady as the number of clients grows. A-Duplex also maintains a high level of fairness.

Hospital employees' perceptions of fairness and job satisfaction at a time of transformational change.

Objective This study examines the relationships between job satisfaction and organisational justice during a time of transformational change. Methods Data collection occurred immediately before a major regional hospital's move to a greenfield site. Existing measures of job satisfaction and organisational justice were used. Data were analysed (n=316) using descriptive, correlation and regression methods together with interactions between predictor variables. Results Correlation coefficients for satisfaction and organisational justice variables were high and significant at the P<0.001 level. Results of a robust regression model (adjusted R(2)=0.568) showed all three components of organisational justice contributed significantly to employee job satisfaction. Interactions between the predictor variables showed that job satisfaction increased as the interactions between the predictor variables increased. Conclusions The finding that even at a time of transformational change staff perceptions of fair treatment will in the main result in high job satisfaction extends the literature in this area. In addition, it was found that increasing rewards for staff who perceive low levels of organisational justice does not increase satisfaction as much as for staff who perceive high levels of fairness. If people feel negative about their role, but feel they are well paid, they probably still have negative feelings overall. What is known about the topic? Despite much research highlighting the importance of job satisfaction and organisational justice in healthcare, no research has examined the influence of transformational change, such as a healthcare organisational relocation, on these factors. What does this paper add? The research adds to academic literature relating to job satisfaction and organisational justice. It highlights the importance of organisational justice in influencing the job satisfaction of staff. What are the implications for practitioners? Financial rewards do not necessarily motivate staff but low rewards do demotivate. Shortages of health professionals are often linked to a lack of job satisfaction, and recruitment and retention strategies are often based on salary.

Users’ Level of Gratification, Service Mechanism on Continuance Motivation to Play Online Games in Social Networking Sites

The objective of study to examines the relationship of users’ level of gratification, service mechanism on continuance motivation to play online games in social networking sites. Data was collected from 406 game players in Malaysia and analyzed with Structural Equation Modeling-SmartPLS. Results found that three factors to measure users’ level of gratification to play online games were statistically significant on continuance motivation. Hypothesis regarding the fairness of game online service provider was rejected and incentive given to online game players was supported the hypothesis. A higher level of fairness will lower players’ level of motivation to play the online game. Further study is needed in the analysis of the relationship between fairness and motivation to play an online game.

The Face of Fairness: Self-Awareness as a Means to Promote Fairness among Managers with Low Empathy

Although managing fairness is a critical concern for organizations, not all managers are predisposed to enact high levels of fairness. Emerging empirical evidence suggests that personality characteristics can be an important antecedent of managers’ fair behavior. However, relatively little attention has been devoted to understand how to promote fairness among managers who are naturally predisposed to engage in lower levels of fairness. Building upon self-awareness theory, we argue that increasing managers’ self-awareness can motivate managers with low trait empathy to engage in greater levels of justice. We test the interactive effects of trait empathy and state self-awareness using an experimental study (N = 76) in which individuals were asked to communicate negative news. In support of our hypothesis, our results indicate that increasing self-awareness through self-focusing situations can help promote interactional justice when communicating negative news for individuals with low trait empathy. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Dynamic Channel Allocation to Interfered Cellular Networks

A channel allocation (CA) method is proposed that allocates frequency channels to the cells of a mobile network taking into account the frequency reuse pattern employed and the interference caused by neighboring TV broadcasters. The proposed CA is optimal in the sense that it maximizes channel utilization and at the same time achieves a very high level of fairness among the network users. The proposed method is implemented employing a Genetic Algorithm based iterative scheme. Due to its reduced computational complexity, the practical application of the proposed CA scheme is characterized by short completion time. To increase granularity the method can be extended to incorporate adaptive coding and modulation. It can also handle uncommon traffic conditions by dynamically reallocating channels to emergency cells.

Coevolution of role preference and fairness in the ultimatum game

AbstractTraditional economics assumes that humans are rational. However, it is known that humans behave fairly in the ultimatum game (UG). There are various explanations for this apparent paradox, such as the “inequity aversion.” However, the role preference (proposer or responder) of humans in the UG is obscure. I conducted a UG scenario experiment where subjects were asked their role preference in addition to their decision in the game. The results showed that the subjects prefer to be proposers rather than responders. In particular, it was found that rational subjects had a high preference for the proposer role. On the basis of these results, I conducted evolutionary simulations of the UG, where each individual has role preference intensity. A role is allocated to the individual proportional to the preference intensity. The results showed coevolution of role preference and fairness. The preference for the proposer role evolved when rational strategy evolved, whereas this preference weakened as rationality decreased. This indicates that fairness has a strong link with role preference; in other words, human fairness is always threatened by the “power and position” of some particular individuals. Hence, its equal distribution among individuals may be effective in maintaining a high level of fairness. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity, 2012

Thin capitalization and its practical application in Portugal: a note

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is the analysis of an anti‐abuse clause inserted in the Portuguese corporate income tax code (CITC) to deal with some forms of tax avoidance, and the degree of complexity that its practical application can induce for tax payers and tax authorities. The clause is related to “thin capitalization”, and aims at preventing that the financing arrangements between a parent company and its worldwide affiliates can be a source of tax minimization.Design/methodology/approachThe economic and tax justification for such a clause is presented, and its evolution, in the wake of the European Court of Justice's rulings is discussed. Then, the paper analyses the wording of article 67 and concludes that it can be a source of many doubts for taxpayers, tax authorities and tax courts, when litigation follows from divergent views of firms and tax auditors. The reason for difficulties in the clause's application is the same that plagues many other areas of taxation: there is an established rule, followed by one, or several, exceptions. The paper exemplifies some hypothetical situations that can render the clause applications as quite complex and uncertain.FindingsThe degree of subjectivism of the exceptions established in article 67 can be a source of significant tax complexity. However, being true that numerical rules can be simpler to use, principles make the application of the law to specific situations fairer, by giving courts room for discretion in appreciating each case on its merits, and not being bonded by an explicit rule. The paper argues that a higher level of fairness is worth some degree of complexity.Research limitations/implicationsWhen managers have to decide on financing plans, especially in multinational contexts, tax implications are at the forefront of relevant issues. Thin capitalization, when established in a way that postulates a rule, followed by exceptions, can render its actual impact in reported income quite ambiguous, given the judgments and technical complexities that can arise in the process.Originality/valueThe paper deals with practical complexities in applying the mentioned clause in the Portuguese CITC. It contributes to the literature by focusing on a micro interdisciplinary analysis – financial, accounting, legal and tax – of an anti‐avoidance mechanism inserted in many tax codes. As such, in every country that has a similar clause, it is at the interplay between law and management, given the potential impact of legal principles and rules in taxable income, corporate tax due, and rates of return.

An Auction-Based Pareto-Optimal Strategy for Dynamic and Fair Allotment of Resources in Wireless Mobile Networks

Ongoing advances in sophisticated mobile computing technologies and wireless communications have propelled substantial research work toward designing and implementing a new breed of mobile communications systems. One of the fundamental design objectives of such systems is to ensure complete roaming ability for the mobile users. In addition, upon handoff events, the mobile users also require to be able to perform renegotiations pertaining to their required quality-of-service (QoS) requirements with the concerned system. In this paper, we envision a fair and dynamic auction-based QoS negotiation scheme to deal with this issue. The envisioned scheme provides the mobile users with the flexibility to dynamically negotiate or renegotiate their preferred service levels with the corresponding service provider. The proposed technique has three crucial design objectives: First, it ensures a high level of fairness among the competing mobile users (each with a specific budget). Second, it ensures efficient utilization of the available network resources. Finally, its auction-based mechanism aims at maximizing the revenue of the service provider. A mathematical analysis is provided to demonstrate that, when the three design goals are taken into account, the resource allocation function that the proposed scheme provides represents a Pareto-optimal solution. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is also verified through extensive simulations.

Time-Frequency Spectrum Sharing Scheme for Next Generation OFDM Systems

Spectrum sharing and multiple-access techniques are challenging matters for future wireless communication systems. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been considered as the most important physical layer candidate for the next generation wireless systems. Alternatively, multiband OFDM (MB-OFDM) approach has shown some novelty and efficiency for high-rate (HR) WPAN applications and so has been selected for future HR ultra wideband (UWB) systems. Based on an optimization problem formulation, we jointly consider resource allocation and scheduling to define a novel dynamic timefrequency spectrum sharing mechanism based on the MB-OFDM approach. Viewed as a cross-layer solution, the proposed MB-OFDM multiple-access (MB-OFDM-MA) scheme can achieve an efficient multiuser spectrum sharing under QoS constraints. While the optimization formulation results in a high-complexity time-frequency sharing solution, we propose a low-complexity suboptimal solution able to jointly provide fairness provision with the QoS support. Compared with traditional orthogonal frequency divisionmultiple access (OFDMA), the simple time-frequency MB-OFDM-MA approach ensures a high level of fairness among the users while satisfying high-priority users having strict QoS requirements.

QoS provisioning for large-scale multi-ap WLANs

Large-scale deployment of IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs) with a high density of access points (APs) has become commonplace due mainly to its potential for numerous benefits, such as ubiquitous service coverage, seamless handover, and improved link quality. However, the increased AP density can induce significant channel contention among neighboring cells, thus causing severe performance degradation and throughput imbalance between cells. There have been a plethora of research efforts to improve the WLAN performance, but most of them focused only on single WLAN environments without accounting for inter-cell contention. The de facto QoS-provisioning mechanism for WLANs, i.e., the Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA), is no exception to this. The EDCA focuses only on inter-flow priority distinction and has not considered the effect of inter-cell contention which significantly restricts its efficiency. This paper presents an enhanced QoS provisioning framework that takes into account inter-cell level differentiation as well as inter-flow level priority, which may be viewed as extension of QoS provisioning from a single-WLAN domain to a multi-WLAN domain. We also propose an architecture for managing multi-AP systems in which a central controller regulates the wireless channel occupancy of APs by adaptively configuring the cell-level QoS parameters. Our extensive simulation results show that the proposed inter-AP cooperative QoS scheme overcomes the limit of legacy 802.11e and provides a high level of fairness in large-scale densely-deployed WLANs.

Fairness of medium access control protocols for multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks

It is an undisputed fact that fairness is an important element of a well-designed medium access control (MAC) protocol for multi-hop ad hoc networks. However, most popular MAC protocols still fail to attain an acceptable level of fairness in media access although several enhancements have been proposed in the past. These proposed enhancements are effective only in limited scenarios. It is our objective in this paper to do the following: (i) analyze the fairness problem; (ii) identify and analyze the three main causes leading to the fairness problem, namely, the lack of synchronization problem (LSP), the double contention areas problem (DCP) and the lack of coordination problem (LCP); (iii) based on the analysis, propose a new MAC protocol named the extended hybrid asynchronous time division multiple access (EHATDMA) as a solution. For better assessment of fairness, we have designed an index named max–min fairness index, which is scenario-independent and reflects the difference between the fair sharing provided by a protocol and the ideal max–min fair sharing. Comprehensive simulations have been carried out to compare the fairness of our protocol with the existing ones. Simulation results show that although the existing protocols employ various enhancements meant to improve the fairness property, most of them are still strongly biased towards throughput when a conflict between throughput and fairness arises. In addition, the fairness performance of these protocols varies widely from one scenario to another. On the other hand, EHATDMA strikes a good balance between throughput and fairness. It delivers a consistently high level of fairness regardless of network topology, traffic load and radio parameters, yet maintains high throughput whenever possible. Our simulation results also reveal that the most important mechanism affecting the fair sharing of radio channels among flows is the non-work-conserving mechanism.

The impact of victim‐offender mediation: A cross‐national perspective

AbstractThe field of victim‐offender mediation, now in its third decade, has grown extensively throughout North America and Europe, with programs in more than twelve hundred communities. This article reports on results from three related studies on the consequences of participating in victim‐offender mediation, including programs in four of the United States (Umbreit, 1996, 1994a, 1994b; Umbreit and Coates, 1993), four provinces of Canada (Umbreit, 1999, 1995c), and two cities in England (Umbreit and Roberts, 1996). VOM is implemented differently in various places, reflecting cultural norms and mores. Given innumerable ways of doing victim‐offender mediation, are there common experiences shared among participants that can inform program delivery and justice policy?The VOM model was found to be a highly transportable and flexible program in diverse settings. High levels of client satisfaction with both the process and outcome were found, and a high level of fairness was expressed. VOM continues to be a promising model, reflecting the principles of the restorative justice movement and offering a firm foundation of practice wisdom and research from which other newer forms of victim‐offender dialogue, such as family group conferences, circles, and boards, can benefit (Bazemore and Umbreit, 1999).

Managing a professional association.

Publisher Summary This chapter explains how to manage a professional association. According to this chapter, very few people enter the field of psychology to become association executives. The term professional association encompasses those societies that strive to advance the body of knowledge in their fields, to keep their members informed of professional developments, and to provide a variety of services to their members and to the general public. The principal elements of a professional association are membership, leadership, governance, executive, staff, and the public. Although associations are subject, as are all human systems, to occasional malfunctions, the general structure works pretty well to accomplish their purposes. The ultimate power resides, as it should, in the membership, and there are numerous levels of checks and balances to ensure that power is exercised responsibly. The typical association structure may not be the simplest way of doing business, but it ensures a high level of fairness and shared responsibility. Finally professional associations employ hundreds of thousands of employees at all levels. Association management can be a challenging and rewarding career for a psychologist.