Theoretical Purposes Research Articles

A Canonical Theory of Dynamic Decision-Making

Decision-making behavior is studied in many very different fields, from medicine and economics to psychology and neuroscience, with major contributions from mathematics and statistics, computer science, AI, and other technical disciplines. However the conceptualization of what decision-making is and methods for studying it vary greatly and this has resulted in fragmentation of the field. A theory that can accommodate various perspectives may facilitate interdisciplinary working. We present such a theory in which decision-making is articulated as a set of canonical functions that are sufficiently general to accommodate diverse viewpoints, yet sufficiently precise that they can be instantiated in different ways for specific theoretical or practical purposes. The canons cover the whole decision cycle, from the framing of a decision based on the goals, beliefs, and background knowledge of the decision-maker to the formulation of decision options, establishing preferences over them, and making commitments. Commitments can lead to the initiation of new decisions and any step in the cycle can incorporate reasoning about previous decisions and the rationales for them, and lead to revising or abandoning existing commitments. The theory situates decision-making with respect to other high-level cognitive capabilities like problem solving, planning, and collaborative decision-making. The canonical approach is assessed in three domains: cognitive and neuropsychology, artificial intelligence, and decision engineering.

GENXICC2.1: An improved version of GENXICC for hadronic production of doubly heavy baryons

We present an improved version of GENXICC, which is a generator for hadronic production of the doubly heavy baryons $\Xi_{cc}$, $\Xi_{bc}$ and $\Xi_{bb}$ and has been raised by C.H. Chang, J.X. Wang and X.G. Wu [Comput. Phys. Commun. 177 (2007) 467; Comput. Phys. Commun. 181 (2010) 1144]. In comparison with the previous GENXICC versions, we update the program in order to generate the unweighted baryon events more effectively under various simulation environments, whose distributions are now generated according to the probability proportional to the integrand. One Les Houches Event (LHE) common block has been added to produce a standard LHE data file that contains useful information of the doubly heavy baryon and its accompanying partons. Such LHE data can be conveniently imported into PYTHIA to do further hadronization and decay simulation, especially, the color-flow problem can be solved with PYTHIA8.0.

English

The purpose of this study is to identify the purchasing drivers of apparel consumer in apparel product categories, in the context of the evolving organized retail industry in India. The paper attempts to correlate the distinct store features as perceived by respondents with the true motivations of various consumers in purchasing and patronising of organized outlets. In the process it provides insight of various attributes influencing the purchasing behaviours of an average Indian consumer. The framework evolved for evaluating effectiveness and impact of different attributes influence the behaviour and a major impact on the overall profitability of the retailing business. Increase in the rate of literacy, growing number of working women, highly disposable income, easy availability of credit at low interest rates and high rate of media penetration along with the assurance of similar quality products with large ambit of price differentiation, painted the India’s dynamic organized retail landscape. Rising interest and growing expansion of organized retail market leading to success of a business, depends solely on consumers’ urges that there is a need to study their buying behaviour. The study is based on primary data, a total of 178 apparel retail customer from leading outlets in Hyderabad and Secunderabad are surveyed by using structured questionnaire with mall intercept method. The results reveal that the shoppers do not rate the factors equally, without leaping in the dark, proper emphasis can be given to the factors. The results further prove that the apparel consumers’ buying behaviour is mostly influenced by the attributes like style > value > diversity > demand > credibility > concern > referral groups. This study contributes information to both academic and retail managers for their theoretical and practical purposes. Key words: Consumer behaviour, retail format, apparel, demographic patronage behaviour.

Legitimizing Diverse Uses for Qualitative Research: A Rhetorical Analysis of Two Management Journals

This paper examines how management researchers rhetorically construct the theoretical purpose and contribution of qualitative studies. By means of a rhetorical analysis of qualitative studies published in theAcademy ofManagementJournalandJournal ofManagementStudies, we identify three sets of rhetorical practices, or repertoires, in the period 1999–2011. These repertoires differ with regard to how they position and legitimize the use of qualitative research. The first repertoire, which we label ‘modernist’, bases the legitimacy of qualitative research on its exploratory and theory‐building strengths. The second ‘revisionist’ repertoire accepts key assumptions of modernism, but allows for an expanded role for qualitative research. In contrast, the third ‘subversive’ repertoire is non‐positivist and rejects the traditional theory‐building/‐testing dichotomy. Using the insights from our ‘rhetoric of science’ approach, we argue for the use of alternative repertoires that decouple qualitative research from the rhetoric of exploration.

Conceptualizing confinement: Prisons and poverty in Sierra Leone

This article develops an expansive notion of confinement as a lens through which to think about the lives of former prisoners, former fighters and slum dwellers in a post-conflict setting characterized by political volatility, exorbitant poverty and limited opportunities. The theoretical purpose of the article is to explore whether an expansive notion of confinement might help us make sense of the lives of people whose possibilities are limited materially, spatially and discursively. The intention – inspired by Loïc Wacquant, Zygmunt Bauman and archaeologist Eleanor Casella – is ‘to move beyond the prison as the dominant optic for thinking about confinement’. The concept of confinement under development is illustrated with empirical examples culled from fieldwork in prisons and a poor urban neighbourhood in Freetown, Sierra Leone, West Africa. The orientation is towards confinement as site, practice and state of mind. The argument is that an expansive notion of confinement that attends to space, time, practices, meanings and states of mind is a useful way of thinking about the situated struggles of people living in prison and relative poverty.

Creating Burglary Profiles Using Latent Class Analysis

This research creates a new criminal profile for burglary by establishing the link among certain offender traits, past criminal behavior, and crime scene features. Utilizing latent class analysis (LCA) to identify underlying groups within the offender and offense characteristics, the relationship between certain offense styles and the most likely offender may then be established. These offense–offender profiles may be used by police to predict traits of an unknown offender based on information from a crime scene alone. Based on a sample of 405 burglaries committed between 2008 and 2009 in Florida, four criminal history groups, four offender types, and four offense styles were identified using LCA. A significant relationship was found among the offense styles and offender trait types, as well as between the offender trait and criminal history categories. This study serves both theoretical and practical purposes, as the findings have important implications for academia and law enforcement alike.

Parenting burn-injured children in India: A grounded theory study

BackgroundBurn injury is one of the major traumas that a child can experience. Parents of burn-injured children experience anxiety, depression, guilt and post traumatic stress disorders as they care for their burn-injured children. Such empirical evidence related to effects of burns on parents and parenting process is unavailable from low and middle income countries like India. ObjectivesThe aim of the study was to discover the process of parenting burn-injured children in India. The objective of this paper is to present one of the substantive processes “Enduring the Blame” that emerged from the data. DesignConstructivist grounded theory methodology was used to explore the experiences of parenting burn-injured children. SettingThe study was conducted through a tertiary hospital that provided advanced paediatric burn care in a town in South India. ParticipantsNine mothers, nine fathers, three grandmothers and one aunt from 12 families of children who were 15years or younger and had sustained greater than 20% total body surface burns were purposively included. MethodsTwenty-two semi structured individual or family interviews were conducted in Tamil over a period of one year. The interview started with an overview question and then was followed by trigger questions as the participants shared their experiences. Second interviews were conducted with three participants in three families for theoretical saturation purposes. ResultsMothers and fathers encountered blame from family members, health professionals, strangers, and their burn-injured children along the burn injury trajectory. They suffered double trauma of their child's burn and the blame. Parenting their burn-injured child involved a process of “Enduring the Blame.” Enduring the Blame included four stages: internalizing blame, submitting to blame, rising above blame, and avoiding blame. ConclusionsEncouraging and assisting parents in caring for their children instead of blaming is a vital component of paediatric burn care. Parents will benefit from ongoing assessment and psychological interventions that will provide emotional support. Studying the perceptions of health professionals and the burn-injured children will help in further clarification of blame related issues and developing a parenting theory.

New World Monkey Nightmares: Science, Art, Use, and Abuse (?) in Platyrrhine Taxonomic Nomenclature

The taxonomy and nomenclature of New World monkeys is becoming precariously unstable and impractical, plagued by revisions aimed at conforming to approaches that reject the Biological Species Concept for narrowly construed reasons and resulting in a hyperinflated taxonomy at species (often) and genus (sometimes) levels. This undermines a major goal of classification at the most basic taxonomic levels to ease communication and facilitate research. Since it is difficult to justify extensive changes in terminology without a deeply justified theoretical purpose or without showing what scientific benefits these alterations can bring, working primatologists need not accept this doctrinaire trend. Knowing as little as we do about what a species actually is, does not justify contorting the value of a species nomenclature so that it reflects nothing more than coat color, a node, or endpoint of a dendrogram.

Shannon-entropy-based nonequilibrium “entropic” temperature of a general distribution

The concept of temperature is one of the key ideas in describing the thermodynamical properties of systems. In classical statistical mechanics of ideal gases, the notion of temperature can be described in at least two different ways: the kinetic temperature (related to the average kinetic energy of the particles) and the thermodynamic temperature (related to the ratio between infinitesimal changes in entropy and energy). For the Boltzmann distribution, the two notions lead to the same result. However, for nonequilibrium phenomena, while the kinetic temperature has been commonly used both for theoretical and simulation purposes, there appears to be no corresponding general definition of thermodynamic or entropic temperature. In this paper, we consider the statistical or Shannon entropy of a system and use the "de Bruijn identity" from information theory (see Appendix A 2 for a derivation of this identity) to show that it is possible to define a "Shannon temperature" or "entropic temperature" T for a nonequilibrium system as the ratio between the average curvature of the Hamiltonian function associated with the system and the trace of the Fisher information matrix of the nonequilibrium probability distribution (see Appendix A 1 for a definition of the Fisher information). We show that this definition subsumes many other attempts at defining entropic temperatures for nonequilibrium systems and is not restricted to equilibrium or near equilibrium systems. Intuitively, the gist of our approach is to use the Shannon or Gibbs entropy of a system and make use of the relation dS=dQ(rev)/T as a definition of temperature. We achieve this by positing a statistical notion of infinitesimal heating as the addition of uncorrelated random variables (in a special way). As an example of the utility of such a definition, we obtain the nonequilibrium entropic temperature for a system satisfying the Langevin equations. For such a system, we show that while the kinetic temperature is related to the changes in the energy of the system, the entropic or Shannon temperature is related to the changes in the entropy of the system. We show that this notion, together with the well known Cramer-Rao inequality in statistics demonstrates the validity of the second law of thermodynamics for such a nonequilibrium system.

Customer Service Impacts on Bank Policy in Bangkok, Thailand

Abstract Becoming more customer focused in the banking industry of Thailand and measuring service quality levels is beginning to be understood to be a very useful tool to help manage the relationship between the business and its main stakeholder. This paper interogates a broader, deeper and more involved understanding of the issues generated within the Thai service-banking context; and to consider more implicitly the issues and questions raised, this empirical groundwork utilised an interpretive approach to understand the perceptions of bank customers. The population for this research were new customers of 6 months or less and had recent and on-going experiences of local bank practices, reflecting the criteria of theoretical purpose, relevance and appropriateness. A random sampling process targeted to a closed list of new customers (385) who spoke adequate levels of English was applied – all respondents were Thai resulting in a total of 18 customers determined as the resultant sample frame. Overall results, included 5 Key-themes (Staff Related; Service Process; Technology/Media; Product Related; and Customer Related) and 25 sub-themes distributed across three areas (Service Design Elements; Service Delivery Elements; and Post-Service Management). The limitations of such a small study should be noted. These results may be considered adequate for exploratory analysis only and a larger, more involved study is needed to validate the present study.

Can Uncertainty Justify Overlapping Policy Instruments to Mitigate Emissions?

This article constitutes a new contribution to the analysis of overlapping instruments to cover the same emission sources. Using both an analytical and a numerical model, we show that when the risk that the CO2 price drops to zero and the political unavailability of a CO2 tax (at least in the European Union) are taken into account, it can be socially optimal to implement an additional instrument encouraging the reduction of emissions, for instance a renewable energy subsidy. Our analysis has both a practical and a theoretical purpose. It aims at giving economic insight to policymakers in a context of increased uncertainty concerning the future stringency of the European Emission Trading Scheme. It also gives another rationale for the use of several instruments to cover the same emission sources, and shows the importance of accounting for corner solutions in the definition of the optimal policy mix.

VLSI ARCHITECTURE FOR DESPECKLING OF SAR IMAGE USING PARAMETRIC MULTIWAVELET

Removal of speckle noise from SAR (Synthetic Aperture RADAR) image is of greatest interest to many researches for practical as well as theoretical purposes. Many traditional linear and non linear methods are proposed for the despeckling of SAR image. Recently, non linear method using wavelet transform is found to be better of this denoising, due to its advantages over linear filtering. Since Multiwavelet provide compact support orthogonality and symmetry property simultaneously, the experimental results show a better SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) value of 3% when compared to ordinary wavelets. This paper demonstrates the work of VLSI architecture of designed parametric multiwavelet with Baye's shrink for the noise reduction. The architecture is implemented in virtex5 (xc5vsx240t-2ff1738) FPGA and experimental results shows that the proposed work have 8% of improved image quality. Therefore it is suited better for all denoising and compression applications.

The Rigidity of Spherical Frameworks: Swapping Blocks and Holes

A significant range of geometric structures whose rigidity has been explored, for both practical and theoretical purposes, are formed by modifying generically isostatic triangulated spheres. In block and hole structures $(\mathcal{P},\boldsymbol{p})$, some edges are removed (to make holes) and others are added (to create rigid subparts called blocks). Previous work noted a combinatorial analogy, in which blocks and holes played equivalent roles—so that they might be interchanged. In this paper, we geometrically connect stresses in such structures $(\mathcal{P},\boldsymbol{p})$ to first-order motions in a swapped structure $(\overline{\mathcal{P}},\boldsymbol{p})$—where holes become blocks and blocks become holes. When the initial structure is geometrically isostatic, this shows that the swapped structure is also geometrically isostatic, giving the strongest possible correspondence. We use an affine presentation of the statics and the motions to make the key underlying correspondences transparent.

Efficient Noninteractive Proof Systems for Bilinear Groups

Noninteractive zero-knowledge proofs and noninteractive witness-indistinguishable proofs have played a significant role in the theory of cryptography. However, lack of efficiency has prevented them from being used in practice. One of the roots of this inefficiency is that noninteractive zero-knowledge proofs have been constructed for general NP-complete languages such as Circuit Satisfiability, causing an expensive blowup in the size of the statement when reducing it to a circuit. The contribution of this paper is a general methodology for constructing very simple and efficient noninteractive zero-knowledge proofs and noninteractive witness-indistinguishable proofs that work directly for a wide class of languages that are relevant in practice (namely, ones involving the satisfiability of equations over bilinear groups), without needing a reduction to Circuit Satisfiability. Groups with bilinear maps have enjoyed tremendous success in the field of cryptography in recent years and have been used to construct a plethora of protocols. This paper provides noninteractive witness-indistinguishable proofs and noninteractive zero-knowledge proofs that can be used in connection with these protocols. Our goal is to spread the use of noninteractive cryptographic proofs from mainly theoretical purposes to the large class of practical cryptographic protocols based on bilinear groups.

All talk and no bite: Copyright infringement and piracy trends in India

The Copyright Act 1957 presents the face of modern copyright protection afforded to different intellectual works and is a key statement of intellectual property rights (IPR) in the Indian legislation governing this domain, as well as being compliant to the TRIPS Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. This Act has been acceptably referred to on many occasions on global platforms, on account of its being one of the most elaborate and well-structured pieces of legislation in the field of intellectual property law. However, this well encompassing, highly creditable and widely acknowledged legislation seems to fall down in its practical implementation rendering its theoretical purpose partly futile. The situation so stands, that India continues to project major piracy rates with little regression in the trend despite the fact that this law is still very much in force. The reasons which deny effective copyright protection in India, for works of miscellaneous categories, have much to do with the lack of an equally strong enforcement mechanism. This paper provides an insight into the inadequacies of the Indian legal and administrative systems which have ultimately diminished the effectiveness of the copyright regime contrary to that envisioned by the law.

Network analysis of a financial market based on genuine correlation and threshold method

A financial market is an example of an adaptive complex network consisting of many interacting units. This network reflects market’s behavior. In this paper, we use Random Matrix Theory (RMT) notion for specifying the largest eigenvector of correlation matrix as the market mode of stock network. For a better risk management, we clean the correlation matrix by removing the market mode from data and then construct this matrix based on the residuals. We show that this technique has an important effect on correlation coefficient distribution by applying it for Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). To study the topological structure of a network we apply the removing market mode technique and the threshold method to Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) as an example. We show that this network follows a power-law model in certain intervals. We also show the behavior of clustering coefficients and component numbers of this network for different thresholds. These outputs are useful for both theoretical and practical purposes such as asset allocation and risk management.

A highly accurate, inexpensive procedure for computing theoretical chronoamperometric current at cylindrical wire electrodes

Cylindrical wire or fiber electrodes are attractive for electro-analytical applications, but the theory of transient methods at such electrodes is complicated, implying that theoretical discussions and experimental data analysis usually rely on various approximations. In particular, a number of approximate expressions has been proposed in the literature to describe the chronoamperometric limiting current at such electrodes. All these expressions have a low accuracy. In the present work a new, highly accurate and computationally inexpensive procedure for computing the current is presented. The procedure relies on local polynomial approximations covering the entire time domain, and provides at least 14–15 significant digits. It can therefore be useful both for theoretical purposes (e.g. as a source of reference values for testing electrochemical digital simulation techniques that are usually less accurate), and for the analysis of the experimental data.

Apontamentos para uma abordagem tensiva da metáfora

The paper analyses metaphor under the bias of tensive semiotics. The primary aim is assessing the analytic performance of conceptual apparatus of such theoretical purpose to unravel meaning effects resulting from different modes of metaphor manifestation in varied types of text. Theoretical literature is based on Fontanille (2007), Fontanille e Zilberberg (2001) and Zilberberg (2004; 2006a; 2006b; 2007). In order to investigate metaphor tensive performance, this paper starts from the assumption that metaphor let itself to be apprehended within discourse in different degrees of presence and intensity. Further, metaphor is assumed to be a mechanism of production of meaning that settles the tension between two or more isotopies, using in-depth discourse content tension and different modes of semiotic existence. When it establishes the tensive approximation between distinct signification planes metaphor demands a concessive syntax that renders it an impacting and unattended phenomenon, from the order of event. Nonetheless the analysis of a small text sample shows that varied factors can enhance metaphor impact graduation, by nearing it to event, to fact and to routine. The paper deepens argumentation on the role of tensive elements within metaphor functioning in discourse in act.

Stepwise superposition approximation approach for analytical solutions with non-zero initial concentration using existing solutions of zero initial concentration in contaminate transport

Analytical solutions for contaminant transport are widely used for both theoretical and practical purposes. However, many existing solutions are obtained subject to an initial condition of zero concentration, which is often unrealistic in many practical cases. This article proposed a stepwise superposition approximation approach to solve the non-zero initial concentration problem for first-type and third-type boundary conditions by using the existing zero initial concentration solution. Theoretical examples showed that the approach was highly efficient if a proper superposition scheme with relative concentration increments was constructed. The key parameter that controlled the convergence speed was the time increment (Δ t) multiplied by the rate constant (λ). The approach served also as an alternative way to make a convenient concentration calculation even if the non-zero initial concentration solution of a problem was known.

Numerical Measure of a Complex Matrix

AbstractWe introduce a natural probability measure over the numerical range of a complex matrix A ∈ Mn( \input amssym $\Bbb C$). This numerical measure μA can be defined as the law of the random variable 〈AX, X〉 ∈ \input amssym $\Bbb C$ when the vector X ∈ \input amssym $\Bbb C$n is uniformly distributed on the unit sphere. If the matrix A is normal, we show that μA has a piecewise polynomial density fA, which can be identified with a multivariate B‐spline. In the general (nonnormal) case, we relate the Radon transform of μA to the spectrum of a family of Hermitian matrices, and we deduce an explicit representation formula for the numerical density that is appropriate for theoretical and computational purposes. As an application, we show that the density fA is polynomial in some regions of the complex plane that can be characterized geometrically, and we recover some known results about lacunae of symmetric hyperbolic systems in 2 + 1 dimensions. Finally, we prove under general assumptions that the numerical measure of a matrix A ∈ Mn (\input amssym $\Bbb C$) concentrates to a Dirac mass as the size n goes to infinity. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.