Private Objectives Research Articles

An automated negotiation approach to solve single machine scheduling problems with interfering job sets

In this paper, we propose a decentralized approach to solve multiple-criteria single machine scheduling problems. We consider a single machine that is utilized by two agents where each of them has its own jobs and a private objective. The objective function of the first agent is the total completion time or the total weighted completion time of its jobs, respectively, whereas the objective function of the second agent is the maximum lateness or the total weighted completion time of its jobs. The problem is motivated by scheduling problems found in semiconductor manufacturing. An automated negotiation mechanism is presented to solve the scheduling problems. The basic ingredient of the mechanism is a mediator that proposes contracts using a variable neighborhood search (VNS) technique. We study the behavior of both greedy and cooperative agents. In addition, a hybrid strategy is developed where the mediator accepts deteriorations of the objective values with a certain probability. The performance of the negotiation schemes is assessed using randomly generated problem instances. It turns out that the solutions determined by the negotiation mechanism are close to the Pareto frontier from a centralized approach with full information. We use a problem-specific Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA)-II scheme to determine the solutions on the Pareto frontier. It is shown that the degree of cooperation of the two agents depends on the objective function used.

Towards an Agent-based Model for Demand-Responsive Transport Serving Thin Flows

Low volume traveler flows cause problems for public transportation (PT) providers. The Smart-PT project aims to find out how such flows can be combined to increase the service provider viability. The capability to conceive multi-modal trips is fundamental in that context and is modeled by the Trip Sequence Composer (TSC) concept. A TSC is an essential component of the traveler's brain, of the customer support operated by collective transport providers, of trip advisers in websites etc. We present a simulation model design to evaluate the effect of cooperating TSCs on the viability of demand responsive collective transport providers. While obeying specific regulations, specialized services targeting mobility impaired people can also serve regular requests in order to save fleet and personnel costs. All stakeholders are assumed to optimize their private objectives and none of them has global perfect knowledge.

Sharpening Regulation in the Australian Superannuation Industry to Ensure Compatibility of Public and Private Objectives

Three decades of bipartisan reforms have taken place in the Australian superannuation industry ostensibly in the public interest. The regulatory reforms have created a paradox: ongoing reforms but flawed fund member outcomes. For example, the superannuation system is not delivering lifetime retirement incomes but high levels of administrative and investment fees are currently costing fund members more than $21 billion each year. Systematic problems remain with conflicted investment advice, and periodic large-scale, financial collapses have resulted in further losses to members. In seeking to elaborate and resolve this paradox, the research project outlined in this paper provides a voice to Australia’s superannuation trustees through the mechanism of three surveys across a thirteen-year period. The surveys confirm that dissatisfaction with regulatory reform is widely shared amongst stakeholders most involved with reform implementation. While all regulation is ostensibly in the public interest, regulators can be thwarted by the lobbying of vested interests and be subject to subtler forms of regulatory capture. One form particularly identified in the Australian context is regulatory complexity, which acts to protect incumbents through barriers to entry, and benefits the professional consultants that provide most input into the regulatory process. More needs to be done to blunt the force of private interest rent seeking. We believe that one solution lies in the proper integration and implementation of the Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) framework as recommended by the OECD Council on Regulatory Policy and Governance. RIA has the capacity to minimise rent seeking by fostering transparency and engagement and reinforcing the system of checks and balances to ensure that policies and regulations serve the public interest.

Workers' shareholding and participation

In Serbia, at the moment, there are simply no forms of workers' shareholding or participation of workers in the consultation and decision-making in commercial enterprises. On the other hand, the process of democratization of working relations caught, first of all, the European space, and then the other parts of the world. Set with clear economic and social content, without ideological burden, workers' shareholding and participation conditions have to expand, strengthen and become one of the important factors in the structure of modern society. The process of transformation of social ownership, in our area, began with the workers' shareholding. Workers employed in the company, were given the right to buy internal shares under privileged conditions. That was the main form of transformation. The starting point was the confidence in the company to initiate, organize and manage the process of transformation in their own interest. The funds obtained through the issuance of shares by selling a part of the company or the whole companies, according to the express provisions of the law, belong to the company or its complex form. Later, already in 90s, workers' shareholding and participation unjustifiably attributed to ideological properties, which led to their complete exclusion from economic and legal system. By subsequent regulations, privatization was almost exclusively reduced to the sale, leaving and excluding all other possible different forms of privatization. This approach lost the sight of the basic economic objectives of privatization: there has been no acquiring of new capital or new investment cycle; there was no rise to new business entities able to receive and fertilize the capital, nor has the privatization been the impetus for the dynamic development of the economy and employment. Economic enterprises were extinguished, and unemployment increased. And now, in a much less favorable economic and social climate, it is reasonable to raise the issue of whether there is still a requirement by the introduction of the workers' shareholding and participation for activation of the inner forces of taking upon themselves the responsibility for the crisis. The previous condition for this is certainly the creation of a legal framework for the establishment and development of the workers' shareholding and participation. This would at the same time bring us closer to the legal system of the European Union and its member states, in which the workers' shareholding and participation are wide set and regulated institutes by the law.

Noise-to-State Exponentially Stable Distributed Convex Optimization on Weight-Balanced Digraphs

This paper studies the robustness properties against additive persistent noise of a class of distributed continuous-time algorithms for convex optimization. A team of agents, each with its own private objective function, seeks to collectively determine the global decision vector that minimizes the sum of all the objectives. The team communicates over a weight-balanced, strongly connected digraph and both interagent communication and agent computation are corrupted by noise. Under the proposed distributed algorithm, each agent updates its estimate of the global solution using the gradient of its local objective function while, at the same time, seeking to agree with its neighbors' estimates via proportional-integral feedback on their disagreement. Under mild conditions on the local objective functions, we show that this strategy is noise-to-state exponentially stable in the second moment with respect to the optimal solution. Our technical approach combines notions and tools from graph theory, stochastic di...

Bodies of Knowledge – Anatomy and Transparency in Contemporary Art

Since the 1990s, the growing expansion of a vast array of medical technologies for the visualization of the inner body seems to have revamped, in an improved version, the tradition of the anatomical theatre, fuelling not only the question of the relation between inner and outer body, public and private space, visible and invisible objects, but also the problem of the relation between art, science and knowledge. The objective of this article is to shed some light on how contemporary artists engage with the very notion of “knowledge of the inner body” proper of the anatomical tradition. To this aim I briefly summarize some fundamental aspects of such tradition and subsequently examine the work of two artists, Laura Ferguson and Annie Cattrell, as examples of very different approaches to the meaning of the visualization and representation of the inner body in contemporary art.

Prevalence of human cell material: DNA and RNA profiling of public and private objects and after activity scenarios

Especially when minute evidentiary traces are analysed, background cell material unrelated to the crime may contribute to detectable levels in the genetic analyses. To gain understanding on the composition of human cell material residing on surfaces contributing to background traces, we performed DNA and mRNA profiling on samplings of various items. Samples were selected by considering events contributing to cell material deposits in exemplary activities (e.g. dragging a person by the trouser ankles), and can be grouped as public objects, private samples, transfer-related samples and washing machine experiments. Results show that high DNA yields do not necessarily relate to an increased number of contributors or to the detection of other cell types than skin. Background cellular material may be found on any type of public or private item. When a major contributor can be deduced in DNA profiles from private items, this can be a different person than the owner of the item. Also when a specific activity is performed and the areas of physical contact are analysed, the “perpetrator” does not necessarily represent the major contributor in the STR profile. Washing machine experiments show that transfer and persistence during laundry is limited for DNA and cell type dependent for RNA. Skin conditions such as the presence of sebum or sweat can promote DNA transfer. Results of this study, which encompasses 549 samples, increase our understanding regarding the prevalence of human cell material in background and activity scenarios.

Dynamic labor demand in China: public and private objectives

This article studies dynamic labor demand by private and public manufacturing plants in China. The analysis uncovers the objectives of public and private enterprises and estimates labor adjustment costs by ownership. Public plants maximize the discounted present value of profits without a soft budget constraint. There is strong evidence of quadratic and linear firing costs at the plant level. The higher quadratic adjustment costs of the public plants may reflect their internalization of social costs of employment adjustment. Domestic private plants and collective plants have about the same discount factor, much lower than state‐controlled plants.

Distinctive features of analysis of reliability of overhead distribution networks with sources of distributed generation

The authors have shown that the existing reliability management experience abroad because of the topology specifics, switching devices, relay protection and automation tools used is not fully applicable to domestic distribution networks. In this regard, new modeling and optimization methodology of power supply reliability parameters, oriented also at the appearance possibility of distributed generation sources in the structure of electric networks was proposed. The paper presents the results of a comparative analysis of the application conditions of distributed generation tools with different equipment of electrical networks by automatic and non-automatic switching devices, in order to substantiate optimal connection zones of generating sources under different application conditions. Recommendations for setting relay protection tools under the joint use of reclosers and fuses in the networks with distributed generation sources to eliminate false alarms and unwarranted disconnection of fuses at transient faults were developed. It is shown that under the valuation of reliability indicators, cost estimate of measures on providing electricity networks with required switching and protective devices serves as private objective function during multicriterion substantiation of optimal integration options of distributed generation into electric networks.

Malicious-Proof and Fair Credit-Based Resource Allocation Techniques for DSA Systems

We propose a credit-based resource allocation technique for dynamic spectrum access that is robust against malicious and selfish behaviors and ensures good overall system fairness performance while also allowing spectrum users to achieve high amounts of service. We also propose a new objective function that, when combined with the proposed credit-based technique, leads to further improvements of the system fairness performance. Our proposed techniques overcome user misbehavior by masking the impact of the users' pursued private objectives on the overall system performance. They also improve fairness among users by allocating service to users adaptively by accounting for how much service each user has received in the past. Our simulation results show that our proposed techniques maintain high system performance by allowing users to achieve high amounts of service and by ensuring fair allocation of spectrum resources among users even in the presence of misbehaved users. Using simulations, we also show that these high performances are also achievable under various different network scenarios.

The Role of Sensitivity to Social Attacks and Firm Prominence on Corporate Political Activity

It is important to understand why firms invest in corporate political activity (CPA) and how such investments impact firms and society. Resource dependence theory suggests that large firms have the most to gain from CPA and explains why firm size has been a reliable predictor of CPA. Large firms vary, however, in the extent to which they invest in CPA. We focus on large family-influenced firms by theorizing that their sensitivity to social attacks leads them to resist CPA investments until they rank among the very largest firms, at which point their inherent exposure forces them to pivot and out-spend peers on CPA. We find support for our theory in a sample of firms listed on the 2005 S&P 500 from 1998 to 2005. One implication is that firms’ owners vary in their willingness to be seen shaping government policy toward their private objectives.

OR Forum—Design of Risk Weights

Banking regulations set minimum levels of capital for banks. These requirements are generally formulated through a ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets. A risk-weighting scheme assigns a weight to each asset or category of assets and effectively functions as a linear constraint on a bank’s portfolio choice; it also changes the incentives for banks to hold various kinds of assets. In this paper, we investigate the design of risk weights to align regulatory and private objectives in a simple mean-variance framework for portfolio selection. By setting risk weights proportional to profitability rather than risk, the regulator can induce a bank to reduce its overall level of risk without distorting its asset mix. Because the regulator is unlikely to know the true profitability of assets, we introduce an adaptive formulation in which the regulator sets weights by observing a bank’s portfolio. The adaptive scheme converges to the same combination of weights and portfolio choice that would hold if the regulator knew the asset profitability. We also investigate other objectives, including steering banks to a target mix of assets, adding robustness, mitigating procyclicality, and reducing system-wide risk in a setting with multiple heterogeneous banks.

Distribution Loss Reduction by Household Consumption Coordination in Smart Grids

In this work, we address the problem of optimizing the electrical consumption patterns for a community of closely located households, with a large degree of flexible consumption, and further some degree of local electricity production from solar panels. We describe optimization methods for coordinating consumption of electrical energy within the community, with the purpose of reducing grid loading and active power losses. For this we present a simplified model of the electrical grid, including system losses and capacity constraints. Coordination is performed in a distributed fashion, where each consumer optimizes his or her own consumption pattern, taking into account both private objectives, specific to each individual consumer, as well as objectives common to all consumers. In our work, the common objective is to minimize active losses in the grid, and ensure that grid capacity limits are obeyed. These objectives are enforced by coordinating consumers through a nonlinear penalty on power consumption. We present simulation test-cases, illustrating that significant reduction of active losses, can be obtained by such coordination. The distributed optimization algorithm employs the alternating directions method of multipliers.

Under Construction: Development, Democracy, and Difference as Determinants of Systemic Liberal Peace

The widely documented dyadic democratic peace observation has led to optimism that the spread of democracy might prove pacifying even outside of democratic dyads. Yet, tensions between the logic of liberal peace in dyads and systems suggest that economic development may be better suited than democracy as a determinant of systemic liberal peace. In particular, regime type heterogeneity (difference) stands to increase conflict at the system level. We argue that there exists a systemic developmental peace, in which increased wealth encourages powerful developed nations to discourage other countries from fighting, even as these same developed states continue to use force in service of their own private objectives. We also separate out the effects of aggregate democracy from regime type difference in our analysis. Systemic and cross-level statistical tests support the following propositions: greater systemic development encourages peace, difference propagates war, and increased systemic democracy has no consistent impact on interstate conflict.

Design of Risk Weights

Banking regulations set minimum levels of capital for banks. These requirements are gen- erally formulated through a ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets. A risk-weighting scheme assigns a weight to each asset or category of assets and eectively functions as a linear constraint on a bank's portfolio choice; it also changes the incentives for banks to hold various kinds of assets. In this paper, we investigate the design of risk weights to align regulatory and private objectives in a simple mean-variance framework for portfolio selection. By setting risk weights proportional to profitability rather than risk, the regulator can induce a bank to reduce its overall level of risk without distorting its asset mix. Because the regulator is unlikely to know the true profitability of assets, we introduce an adaptive formulation in which the regulator sets weights by observing a bank's portfolio. The adaptive scheme converges to the same combina- tion of weights and portfolio choice that would hold if the regulator knew the asset profitability. We also investigate other objectives, including steering banks to a target mix of assets, adding robustness, mitigating procyclicality, and reducing system-wide risk in a setting with multiple heterogeneous banks.

Efficient Objective Functions for Coordinated Learning in Large-Scale Distributed OSA Systems

In this paper, we derive and evaluate private objective functions for large-scale, distributed opportunistic spectrum access (OSA) systems. By means of any learning algorithms, these derived objective functions enable OSA users to assess, locate, and exploit unused spectrum opportunities effectively by maximizing the users' average received rewards. We consider the elastic traffic model, suitable for elastic applications such as file transfer and web browsing, and in which an SU's received reward increases proportionally to the amount of received service when the amount is higher than a certain threshold. But when this amount is below the threshold, the reward decreases exponentially with the amount of received service. In this model, SUs are assumed to be treated fairly in that the SUs using the same band will roughly receive an equal share of the total amount of service offered by the band. We show that the proposed objective functions are: near-optimal, as they achieve high performances in terms of average received rewards; highly scalable, as they perform well for small- as well as large-scale systems; highly learnable, as they reach up near-optimal values very quickly; and distributive, as they require information sharing only among OSA users belonging to the same band.

The Aetiology of Business Crisis: A Simple Paradigm for a Complex Casuisitic

Conclusion: The study and consequently the understanding of business crises requires the aetiology of the situation. To find the causes which have led to insolvency. This is an arduous job because the decisions that are responsible for this often do not appear. The derivations must be understood. That is, the way in which those decisions which brought about the insolvency have been disguised with rationality and logic when frequently they were non-logical (which does not mean illogical, but that they were logical but not with respect to the formal objective but rather to a private objective being personal and pertaining to the decision makers themselves). Only in this way is it possible to perform an adequate analysis of the crisis and be able to evaluate the possible ways out of the crisis even if before causing damage and greater frustrations a prudent liquidation is indicated - which might then allow for the eventual reuse of productive structures. In some cases the analysis of the causes (from the derivations if there were any or from the unavoidable insolvency, remaining rational, which is the other option) can recommend solutions that people will consider better than the frustrating and illogical fantasies typical in moments of insolvency.This is why aetiology is the essential task in this paradigm, even if it appears to be a paradox. Each case of crisis requires the causes to be known. In a previous work, cited earlier, we showed that in the court files in cases of insolvency the “reasons for the crisis” are generally grouped as financial. However, this is a “legal reality,” more than anything else it is an autopsy. It is about evaluating if the company can come out of the crisis, This is why the causes are studied. It is tiresome and complex, but necessary.The paradigm of business crises is a part of a paradigm of management. It begins with the analysis of the causes of crisis. The preparation of the plan of salvation then follows, and from here it returns to classical management theory with the end of the crisis and the beginning of the new cycle.

중국 이주민 거주지역 내 시장공간의 문화경관해석 - 서울시 대림동 중앙시장을 대상으로 -

Nowadays, the Korean society is full of multiculturalism as there are many foreign ethnic enclaves. Many Chinese quarters are built in various parts of Korea along with the increasing population of Chinese immigrant. Especially, the Chinese quarter has shown the sign of time and the cultural characteristic of the local residents. This research is to study the market space of Chinese ethnic enclaves in Dairimdong. This research method is the field study to use a participant observation. Below are the research results: Chinese merchants put a private object such as tanzi on a sidewalk and install large awning covered full of sidewalk. Sidewalk transform from an outdoor space into an internal space because of Chinese merchants. Passers-by move to use vehicle roads and transform not only the car`s space but also the passers-by space. Urban planners originally classify space into three categories, which are building - sidewalk - vehicles road. However, after Chinese came to the market, Chinese classified space into new three categories which is building - space for both sidewalk and tanzi - space for both sidewalk and vehicles road. New classification of space is quite different from the previous. In addition, Chinese thinks that the Dairimdong`s Market is a very comfortable place. Because Dairimdong Market have many Chinese physical facilities. Next, Chinese thinks that the Dairimdong Market is a very friendly place to buy Chinese products easily. This market has become a place of consumption for the Chinese. Eventually, Dairimdong`s Market has changed because of Chinese immigrants. It is possible to make satisfactory planning and design proposal to build Chinese quarters in the future through the explanation of space and status by way of culture. There are many careless mistakes in previous subjective planning and design proposal of the designers. Thus, it should consider the problems created by their way of use in later planning and design.

Synchronization and Self-Organization in Organizations. The Combinatory System© View.

In any organization people may be observed from two different points of view: first of all as organs (or components of organs), in the sense that organizational relationships assign them a precise spatial and temporal placement, they carry out a specialized function in relation to the entire structure, they have a specific functionality that delimits the admissible interactions with the other elements, and they show a particular functioning; secondly , as members of a social collectivity in which, independently of their organizational role and connections, they appear as similar agents , moved by private objectives, capable of producing micro decisions, behaviours and effects relatively analogous to that of the others. My study considers the second aspect of human behaviour in organizations and aims to present a simple theory - the Theory of Combinatory Systems - which may allow us to describe, explain, and to a certain extent control many relevant and intriguing collective phenomena and their observable effects, which are produced by agents acting as unorganized social systems, even if they are also members of an organizational structure. In plain words I define as a combinatory system any collectivity (composed of individuals or organizations) whose agents, consciously or unconsciously, act (exclusively or prevalently) on the basis of global information which they direcly produce and update as the consequence of their micro behaviours. On the one hand, the global information is - or derives from – a synthetic variable whose values are produced by the combination of the micro states of the agents (hence the name Combinatory System ) but, on the other, these values affect the subsequent states as a result of a micro-macro feedback , acting over a period of time, that produces self-organization in the agents’ micro behaviours. If we accept the traditional definition of self-organization as the macro behaviour of a collectivity of agents in which the micro behaviours appear to be “directed”, or “organized”, by an Invisible Hand , or Supreme Authority , in order to produce the emerging phenomenon represented by the formation of ordered structures, of recognizable patterns, then it is easy to recognize that the macro phenomena produced by the macro behaviour of the system become factors in self-organization, since they are interpreted by the agents as information they can base their decisions on. In other words, the invisible hand is nothing other than the synergetic effect of the micro-macro feedback action (or circular causality ) that generates and updates the global information that produces self-organization and emerging macro behaviours attributable to the collectivity.

Land value capture finance for transport accessibility: a review

Cities worldwide have been experiencing escalating problems in obtaining financial resources for transport investment. Investments in transport thus need to seek new paradigms to solve these problems. Accessibility is a pivotal element in this context because it may induce increases in land value whereby some or all of these increments in land value resultant from the increase in accessibility can be captured to recover the capital costs of a transport investment. From this perspective the present paper reviews the main land value capture finance (LVC) mechanisms (betterment tax, accessibility increment contribution, and joint development) in relation to increased transport accessibility. The three financing instruments retain common features such as the ability to achieve wider public goals and private objectives, and they are flexible and can be implemented through different forms of financial instruments. We conclude that, for the successful implementation of a land value capture finance programme to take place, we must always consider the context (the urban area and the transport mode) in addition to the economic relationship between the life cycle of the transport system, its profitability and the property market.