Multiple Conflicts Research Articles

Adaptive and Deadlock-Free Tree-Based Multicast Routing for Networks-on-Chip

This paper presents the first synthesizable network-on-chip (NoC) based on a mesh topology, which supports adaptive and deadlock-free tree-based multicast routing without virtual channels. The deadlock-free routing algorithms for unicast and multicast packets are the same. Therefore, the routing function gate-level implementation is very efficient. Multicast packets are injected to the network by sending multiple packet headers beforehand. The packet headers contain destination addresses to set up multicast trees connecting a source with multiple destination nodes. An additional locally uniform identification (ID) field is packetized together with flits belonging to the same packet. Therefore, flits of different unicast or multicast packets can be interleaved in the same queue because of the local ID-tags, which are updated and mapped dynamically to support bandwidth scalability of interconnection links. Deadlocks in tree-based multicast routing are handled using a flit-by-flit round arbitration and a fair hold-release tagging mechanism. The effectiveness of the novel mechanism has been experimented under multiple multicast conflicts scenarios, where the experimental results show that all traffic is accepted in-order and lossless in their destination nodes even if adaptive routing functions are used and the sizes of the multicast messages are very long.

The Crisis of Social Reproduction among Migrant Workers: Interrogating the Role of Migrant Civil Society

Abstract: Transformations in urban economies are leading to the growth of jobs where labor and employment laws are routinely violated. Workers in these jobs are subject to harsh conditions such as low wages, hazardous work sites, and retaliation for speaking up. Many of these workers are undocumented migrants who are in a weak position to make demands on their employers or to request government assistance. These workers often turn to migrant civil society organizations for help with the multiple conflicts they face at work. Drawing on case studies of nonprofit organizations in Chicago, this paper focuses on the role of such organizations in the social reproduction of the migrant workforce. I posit that such organizations are integral to the functioning of the informal economy because the wide range of programs and services that they provide are essential to the social reproduction of migrant workers.

製品設計における手戻りと矛盾のトレードオフを考慮した設計プロセスの導出手法(機械要素,潤滑,設計,生産加工,生産システムなど)

We propose a new guide method for developing an easy-to-design process for product development. This process ensures a smaller number of wasteful iterations and less multiple conflicts. The design process is modeled as a sequence of design decisions. A design decision is defined as the process of determination of product attributes. A design task is represented as a calculation flow that depends on the product constraints between the product attributes. We also propose an automatic planning algorithm for the execution of the design task, in order to minimize the design loops and design conflicts. Further, we validate the effectiveness of the proposed guide method by developing a prototype design system and a design example of piping for a power steering system. We find that the proposed method can successfully minimize design loops and design conflicts. This paper addresses (1) a design loop model, (2) a design conflict model, and (3) how to minimize design loops and design conflicts.

Reconciliation in Conflict-Affected Societies: Multilevel Modeling of Individual and Contextual Factors in the North Caucasus of Russia

Over the past two decades, there has been a growing interest in reconciliation in societies emerging from conflict. The North Caucasus region of Russia has experienced multiple and diverse conflicts since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and violence continues, although at a lower level than a decade ago. We examine willingness to forgive members of other ethnic groups for violence that they have perpetuated as an indicator of the potential for reconciliation in the region. Using data from a large representative survey conducted in five ethnic republics of the North Caucasus in December 2005, we analyze responses to the forgiveness question in relation to social–psychological models of reconciliation, and we add a key geographic measure, distance to violent events, to the usual theories. Using the survey data (N = 2,000) and aggregate data for the eighty-two sampling points, we use a multilevel modeling approach to separate out the effects of individual and contextual factors. We find little support for the social identity theory expectations as ethnic hostility is not an important factor, except for in the case of the Ossetians, a mostly Orthodox minority disproportionately affected by multiple conflicts and the Beslan school killings. Instead, personal experiences of violence and terrorism, the impacts of military actions against communities, differences in general trust of others, and the extent to which the respondent's life has been changed by violence negatively influence the willingness to forgive. Conversely, respondents in ethnic Russian communities and those relatively close to violence are more willing to engage in postconflict reconciliation.

An Introduction to an Evidence-Based Approach to Interventional Techniques in the Management of Chronic Spinal Pain

Practice guidelines are systematically developed statements to assist practitioners and patients in making decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances. Clinical practice guidelines present statements of best practice based on a thorough evaluation of the evidence from published studies on the outcomes of treatment. In November 1989, Congress mandated the creation of the Agency for Healthcare Policy and Research (AHCPR). AHCPR was given broad responsibility for supporting research, data development, and related activities. Associated with this mandate, the National Academy of Sciences published a document indicating that guidelines are expected to enhance the quality, appropriateness, and effectiveness of health care services. Guidelines as a whole have been characterized by multiple conflicts in terminology and technique. These conflicts are notable for the confusion they create and for what they reflect about differences in values, experiences, and interest among different parties. Despite this confusion, public and private development of guidelines is growing exponentially. There are only limited means to coordinate these guidelines in order to resolve inconsistencies, fill in gaps, track applications and results, and assess the soundness of individual guidelines. Significant diversity exists in clinical practice guidelines. The inconsistency amongst guidelines arises from variations in values, tolerance for risks, preferences, expertise, and conflicts of interest. In 2000, the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians (ASIPP) first created treatment guidelines to help practitioners. There have been 4 subsequent updates. These guidelines address the issues of systematic evaluation and ongoing care of chronic or persistent pain, and provide information about the scientific basis of recommended procedures. These guidelines are expected to increase patient compliance, dispel misconceptions among providers and patients, manage patient expectations reasonably, and form the basis of a therapeutic partnership between the patient, the provider, and payors. The ASIPP guidelines are based on evidence-based medicine (EBM). EBM is in turn based on 4 basic contingencies: the recognition of the patient's problem and the construction of a structured clinical question; the ability to efficiently and effectively search the medical literature to retrieve the best available evidence to answer the clinical question; clinical appraisal of the evidence; and integration of the evidence with all aspects of the individual patient's decision-making to determine the best clinical care of the patient. Evidence synthesis for guidelines includes the review of all relevant systematic reviews and individual articles, grading them for relevance, methodologic quality, consistency, and recommendations.

Shrub Encroachment Impacts the Potential for Multiple Use Conflicts on Public Land

Public rangelands in North America are typically managed under a multiple use policy that includes livestock grazing and wildlife management. In this article we report on the landscape level extent of grassland loss to shrub encroachment in a portion of the Rocky Mountain Forest Reserve in southwestern Alberta, Canada, and review the associated implications for simultaneously supporting livestock and wildlife populations while maintaining range health on this diminishing vegetation type. Digitized aerial photographs of 12 km of valley bottom from 1958 and 1974 were co-registered to ortho-rectified digital imagery taken in 1998, and an un-supervised classification used to determine areas associated with grassland and shrubland in each year. Field data from 2002 were over-layed using GPS coordinates to refine the classification using a calibration-validation procedure. Over the 40-year study period, open grasslands declined from 1,111 ha in 1958 to 465 ha in 1998, representing a 58% decrease. Using mean production data for grass and shrub dominated areas we then quantified aggregate changes in grazing capacity of both primary (grassland) and secondary (shrubland) habitats for livestock and wildlife. Total declines in grazing capacity from 1958 to 1998 totaled 2,744 Animal Unit Months (AUMs) of forage (-39%), including a 58% decrease in primary (i.e., open grassland) range, which was only partly offset by the availability of 1,357 AUMs within less productive and less accessible shrubland habitats. Our results indicate shrub encroachment has been extensive and significantly reduced forage availability to domestic livestock and wildlife, and will increase the difficulty of conserving remaining grasslands. Although current grazing capacities remain marginally above those specified by regulated grazing policies, it is clear that continued habitat change and decreases in forage availability are likely to threaten the condition of remaining grasslands. Unless shrub encroachment is arrested or grassland restoration initiated, reductions in aggregate ungulate numbers may be necessary.

Duration of Peace and Recurring Civil Wars in Southeast Asia and the Pacific

Civil wars in Southeast Asia and the Pacific are perhaps the most intractable in the world and thus merit special attention. We adopt a regional approach for our analysis of the duration of peace after civil war terminations. Our contribution is three-fold: First, we capture all dyads (rebel versus government) rather than lumping multiple dyads into one war. This is appropriate in a region where there are multiple conflicts in a country at any one time. Second, we test a new conflict termination dataset developed at Uppsala University. These data allow us to offer a fine-grained analysis not normally found in the civil war literature. Third, we employ a method specifically suited to recurring data in a duration setting. The results generally support our hypotheses that wars in the region are intractable in the face of negotiated settlements and longer wars increase the duration of the subsequent peace. Also, there is a tendency for the peace to become longer with each recurrence. The impact of longer wars is obscured unless repeated events are carefully treated as non-independent events.

Techniques for restricting multiple overtaking conflicts and performing compound moves when constructing new train schedules

In this paper a discrete sequencing approach for train scheduling is extended firstly by incorporating essential composite perturbation operations and secondly by restricting unnecessary multiple overtaking. Unnecessary multiple overtaking occurs when a train overtakes another train using a siding but is itself overtaken at a later time on a different siding by the train that it previously passed. Compound perturbation operations may be needed in order to restrict precedence impossibilities from occurring when passing facilities do not separate adjacent sections of rail since the sequences are linked by common precedences. Both features affect the sequencing process and can significantly improve the solution quality if handled efficiently and correctly. From a numerical investigation significant benefits are demonstrated on benchmark problems of a previous paper.

The shrine of remembrance Melbourne: a short study of visitors' experiences

AbstractThe Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia opened in 1934 to articulate the social memory of the Great War of 1914–1918. The site has developed to incorporate other memorials and a Visitor Centre. An exploratory study of visitors indicated that the traditional and new memorials continue to evoke a number of responses to war. People expressed a sense of sadness and gratitude for sacrifices made by all those who have fought in war. Many people had poor knowledge of the battles which had initiated the creation of the Shrine. The study indicates the Shrine's complexity which now commemorates multiple conflicts. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Penny Ante: Are Commissions Paid on 'Plain Vanilla', 10b-18 Corporate Stock Repurchases Reasonable? Microtune Case Study

Previous studies of corporate stock repurchase programs found low efficiency (high execution cost), questionable performance (inconsistent profitability), idiosyncratic transaction reporting (monthly cost reports may not match actual monthly transactions), archaic shareholder accounting conventions (profit/loss on equity trades always excluded from the income statement), and multiple potential governance conflicts. To that litany of shortcomings in the execution of corporate buybacks, the current study adds excessive commission costs. Commission and related expense data on corporate stock repurchase programs is difficult to obtain. Consequently, though only a single data point, Microtune, Inc.'s (TUNE) unintentional release of its May 2008 stock repurchase commission cost data merits attention. Microtune paid a commission rate of 0.492% (1.95 cents per share), a rate that seems high for a riskless, plain vanilla transaction. Excessive commission fees may be among the less serious shortcomings of corporate stock buyback programs, a matter of pennies. Still, pennies add up. In 2007, S&P 500 buybacks peaked at $589 billion. If all buybacks were executed at the rate paid by Microtune, commissions on buybacks would have been $2.9 billion. Is the Microtune transaction representative? Are buyback commission and expense fees high? If high, does that reflect the cost of regulatory compliance, or do companies just pay too much? If answers to these questions must hinge on the inadvertent release of commission data by a single company for a single month, then the natural conclusion is another question: Is reporting of corporate stock repurchases adequate?

Design Process Guide Method for Minimizing Loops and Conflicts

We propose a new guide method for developing an easy-to-design process for product development. This process ensures a smaller number of wasteful iterations and less multiple conflicts. The design process is modeled as a sequence of design decisions. A design decision is defined as the process of determination of product attributes. A design task is represented as a calculation flow that depends on the product constraints between the product attributes. We also propose an automatic planning algorithm for the execution of the design task, in order to minimize the design loops and design conflicts. Further, we validate the effectiveness of the proposed guide method by developing a prototype design system and a design example of piping for a power steering system. We find that the proposed method can successfully minimize design loops and design conflicts. This paper addresses (1) a design loop model, (2) a design conflict model, and (3) how to minimize design loops and design conflicts.

For a History of the Tax Burden from the Christian Majorca (13th-14th centuries)

Constituted like an independent kingdom, with the later aggregate of Ibiza -1235-, Majorca happens to integrate - 1276- in a set with own monarch divided between the Balearic islands (will also include built-in Menorca in 1294) and possessions in the French south, but it continues being fiscally independent, in spite of to have seen forced its first monarch to swear fidelity to the one of Aragon. It is when the Aragonese crown absorbs the kingdom of Majorca in 1349 that its fiscality happens to be employee of the necessities of the peninsular territories and is subordinated to outer companies that exceed their tax collecting capacity. The pressure of the monarch, surrounded in multiple outer warlike conflicts, the climatic and epidemics crises, the interests of their social groups and a high level of corruption, constitutes a conglomerate of causes that at the beginning of the five hundred ruins the Majorcan public finances, that are in situation of dependency of the creditors until entered century XIX.

Public Perception of Local Communities towards the Sustainable Management of Laguna Lake, Philippines

Common failures in resolving multiple use conflicts are attributed to the inability of institutions to recognize and incorporate people's perceptions towards the resource. This study aims to determine the local communities' perceptions and factors influencing their perceptions towards Laguna Lake and its sustainable management. Copies of a self-administered questionnaire were distributed to systematically selected householders situated near and far from the Laguna Lake, Philippines. Correlation analysis determined the factors influencing the householder's perception. Results showed that attitudes, income and willingness to manage the lake affect the local communities' perception (P < 0.10). Results also showed that most respondents recognized that the lake is deteriorating due to pollution and each individual can take a role to sustainably manage it.

Managerial Agents Watching other Agents: Multiple Agency Conflicts Regarding Underpricing in IPO Firms

We contribute to multiple agency theory by examining cases in which ventures making initial public offerings (IPOs) have managerial agents on their boards whose goals conflict with those of the investment bank agents hired to underwrite the stock. Underwriters have an incentive to underprice IPOs to maintain strong ties with institutional investors. We develop theory on agent differences based on time horizons and risk taking by managerial agents as framed through behavioral agency theory. Examining governance mechanisms, we find both monitoring by board insiders and board experience decrease underpricing. Furthermore, underpricing increases when venture capitalists have prior ties with underwriters.

Multilevel Food Safety Governance and Its Discontents

What's the Beef? The Contested Governance of European Food Safety. Edited by Christopher Ansell, David Vogel. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. 400 pp., $67.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-262-01225-1), $27.00 paper (ISBN: 0-262-51192-4). What's the Beef , by Christopher Ansell and David Vogel, is a book about policy analysis. It explores the contested governance that has resulted from the multilevel and multiactor regulation of food safety within the European Union. Ansell and Vogel see contested governance as a fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of existing institutional arrangements within the European Union. The contributions to this edited volume focus on explaining how contested governance arises and on assessing whether recent reforms of European food safety governance will lessen the level of contestation. The main thesis of What's the Beef is twofold. First, Ansell and Vogel maintain that European food safety governance has become especially contested as a result of several food safety crises (most notably Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy , or Mad Cow Disease), European integration, and international trade liberalization. Their main qualms with multilevel governance stem from its comparatively weak institutionalization and the multiple conflicts that such governance engenders. These weaknesses arise because (1) European or international regulation interferes with the different cultural preferences and institutional logics of European states; (2) there exists a lack of trust in postnational institutions; (3) organized interests have numerous access points into policymaking as a direct result of multilevel governance; and (4) the institutions of multilevel governance have precarious legitimacy. Other contributors emphasize what can be considered subsidiary explanations—such as conflicts resulting from changes in agricultural production, disagreements over the appropriate basis for regulatory decision making in the face of substantial risks, and differences in the perceptions of the risks involved. Second, Ansell and Vogel also argue that, when contested governance arises, it creates a window of opportunity for reform efforts that are designed to restore trust and legitimacy. The main trends they identify in this regard are (1) the removal of health protection from the control of …

‘Regional conflict formations’: Is the Middle East next?

As Iraq is plunging into civil war, politics and violence in the Middle East are increasingly perceived to be highly interconnected and entwined. This article offers an attempt to understand the nature and scope of this regional interconnectedness involving three of the region's states—Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Its approach takes advantage of the work by scholars of other regions than the Middle East, more precisely those analysing the ‘new wars’ and ‘Regional Conflict Formations (rcfs) of primarily Central and West Africa and the Balkans. The article suggests that, provided some methodological problems are addressed or at least acknowledged, the rcf model offers a useful approach to studying and addressing this region's multiple conflicts. Its assessment of the rcf model's utility in reference to the Middle Eas—broken down along the suggested levels of military networks, political networks, economic/financial networks and social networks—suggests that its emphasis on material – physical linkages neglects important symbolic – political resources that easily cross borders and are equally determining in fuelling and framing conflicts. This lacuna is echoed in US policy making toward the Middle East. The article concludes that, in order to avoid myopia in both analysis and policy making, such more discursive processes ought to be integrated into and made complementary with the rcf conceptualisation of conflict-related cross-border traffic. This will also allow for better analysis of the complexity of identity politics and it underscores the fallacy of assumed Western exogeneity to this region's conflicts.

Policy Equilibrium and Generalized Metarationalities for Multiple Decision-Maker Conflicts

A policy equilibrium is defined, and its properties investigated, for conflicts with more than two decision makers (DMs). A fundamental construction is the metarational tree, which expresses DMs' interactions as sequences of rounds, each consisting of an initial move by the focal DM followed by countermoves by the opponents. Using the metarational tree, the stability definitions of the graph model for conflict resolution can be adapted to apply to policies. These generalized metarational stabilities are shown to generalize Nash, general metarational, and symmetric metarational stabilities. Relationships among generalized metarationalities are derived, as are their connections with policy equilibria. Finally, the refinement that allows only credible moves (moves that are in the immediate interest of the mover) produces a new family of credible generalized metarational stabilities that generalizes the concept of sequential stability in the graph model.

Conflicts Associated with Recreational Shooting on the Pawnee National Grassland

This study explored conflicts associated with recreational shooting on the USDA Forest Service's Pawnee National Grassland (PNG). Data were obtained from interviews with 21 individuals representing 5 of the principle user groups affected by shooting. Analyses revealed multiple conflicts (i.e., interpersonal and social values conflicts) associated with shooting. Ranchers, for example, reported both interpersonal and social values conflicts with recreational shooters. Conflict on the PNG was best described by combining goal interference and social values theoretical frameworks. Results allowed managers to identify differences and commonalities among stakeholders as well as build a foundation for a collaborative planning process that included all identified stakeholders.

4.5.4 Dialogic design for the intelligent enterprise: Collaborative strategy, process, and action

AbstractDialogic design provides efficient, reliable approaches for organizations to envision and implement cohesive, comprehensive, and compelling roadmaps for enterprise evolution. Using structured dialogue to integrate the collective intelligence of stakeholders, we produce a shared representation of the intelligent enterprise, enabling “organizing around intellect.” Dialogic design is progressive in focus, scaling from strategic vision to business process design to system requirements, mapping each level's priorities to successive requirements. Each focus inquiry iterates from deep problem understanding, to generative solution design, through consensus action planning.We applied Structured Dialogic Design to the transformation of a small consultancy, with findings applicable to any enterprise. The process efficiently enables a democratic, collaborative approach to redesign of socio‐organizational systems and practices, using a software‐supported collaborative process. It efficiently achieves true consensus on organizational and business strategy, resolves multiple conflicts of values and resource decisions, and determines the most effective priorities while preventing groupthink errors.

Researching public action and development concepts in the context of mental health

This report summarises a project of participatory action-research combining concepts from the field of development management with practice in international mental health. The research was conducted in Estonia, Kyrgyzstan, and Romania. The policy-as-process model is central to understandings of development management, but it is unfamiliar to organisations working in mental health, even those working from a community level, bottom–up perspective to influence mental-health policy. At the same time, practice and learning from the field of mental health and radical user-empowerment models have received little attention from development managers. The research reported here found that the policy-as-process model was useful to mental-health activists and that it provided an alternative framework to more traditional, top–down, and prescriptive policy concepts, and made it possible to make sense of the multiple perspectives, value-based conflicts, and power dynamics that characterise understandings and practice in mental health. Among the recommendations is a call for closer links between mental-health activism and development management, and a transfer of knowledge, understanding, and experience between the two disciplines.