In this paper we characterize the "price of anarchy", i.e., the inefficiency between user and system optimal solutions, when costs are non-separable, asymmetric and nonlinear, generalizing earlier work that has addressed "price of anarchy" under separable costs. The generalization models traffice equilibria, competitive multi-period pricing and competitive supply chains. The bounds established in the paper are tight and explicitly account for the degeee of asymmetry and nonlinearity of the cost function. We introduce and alternate proof method for providing bounds that uses ideas from semidenfinite optimization. Finally, in the context of nulti-period pricing our analysis establishes that user and system optimal soulutions coincide.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2006. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 191-198). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Device driver is an important part of an operating system. All I/O device accesses must be done through device drivers. Because they reside in the kernel address space, a driver fault may lead to a system failure, which is not acceptable for embedded systems with high dependability requirements. Many embedded systems execute safety-critical tasks and hence a system failure will cause a great loss. Running drivers in user mode can prevent the drivers from damaging the operating system kernel. User mode driver resulted in a large performance degradation when it was proposed during the 1980s. Nonetheless, the performance has been improved due to good implementations of system call and context switch. According to the previous study, the performance of a user mode driver for a Gigabit network card can achieve 93% of that of the kernel mode driver in a Linux-based platform. Although the performance of user mode drivers has been improved, there is still a crucial problem which handicaps user mode drivers from being utilized widely. That is, drivers have to be modified in order to support a given user mode driver framework. In this thesis, we propose a user mode driver framework, which allows a kernel mode driver to be executed in the user space without any code modifications. The framework emulates the kernel-space execution environment in the user space, In this framework, communication between user mode driver process and the kernel is done through I/O request redirection and shared memory. We implemented the framework on an ARM Linux based embedded system platform. The prototype of our framework supports two classes of user mode drivers: character device drivers and network interface drivers. The former includes a LED and a 7-segment user mode device drivers, and the latter consists of an Ethernet user mode device driver. Our work has two contributions. First of all, we enable direct execution of kernel mode drivers in the user space without any driver code modifications.. Second, we evaluate the performance of user mode drivers in an embedded system. To the best of our knowledge, no results about performance of user mode drivers on embedded systems have been reported. According to the experimental results, the performance of our user mode drivers can achieve 61%~99% of that of the kernel mode ones. This demonstrates that the framework we propose can improve the reliability of system under the acceptable costs of performance.

The SATIN project has the aim to enable end users to create their own mobile applications without prior programming experience, and in this way assist non programmers in the transition to the digital society. In this thesis an environment has been designed anddeveloped, that surrounds the existing SATIN mobile application creation editor, with thepurpose of supporting the developers and facilitate collaboration. Based on the theory of End User Programming, a web-based environment built inDjango, a Python framework, was developed and the existing editor was adapted to functiontogether with this environment. The resulting environment is to be seen as a proof ofconcept for the future progress of the SATIN project.

The current cellular industry is undergoing a huge paradigm shift from an old homogeneous one-tier network structure to a new heterogeneous two-tier structure with joint deployment of traditional macrocell base stations along with a relatively new small cell base stations, widely known as femtocells. Femtocells are low-powered, low-cost, user-deployed base stations meant to improve poor network coverage and, thereby, increase overall system capacity. As more and more femtocells are deployed, their spectrum usage and resulting interference become non-negligible. While using different operating frequency for femtocells is indeed possible, a co-channel deploy- ment of these will increase spectral efficiency, a much sought design by cellular opera- tors. In this thesis, a femtocell-based scheme is considered as a prospective means to enhance the performance of the current cellular infrastructure. In the adopted frame- work, the femtocell access point is tasked with connecting local femtocell users to the network operator without creating undue interference to cellular users. As such, the femtocell is required to cease communication when a nearby cellular user is present to prevent interference. In the envisioned paradigm, an access point possesses little information about the parent cellular base station. For instance, it may not know the individual channel gains, user locations or frequency allocations. To achieve this goal, femtocell users collectively act as sensing devices and are used to acquire data about local signal strength. This work shows that, despite having little knowledge of the operation of the macro environment, a femtocell can take advantage of the data provided by the acquisition devices and agility of the re-configurable antenna to gain insight about proximate cellular devices. The proposed inference scheme leads to a significant performance gain over oblivious femtocells. Experimental results are provided to support this study and its conclusions.

Game reviews play an important role in both the culture and business of games the words of a reviewer can have an influential effect on the commercial success of a video game. While reviews are currently used by game developers to aid in important decisions such as project financing and employee bonuses, the effect of game reviews on players is not known. Additionally, the use of game reviews to improve evaluation techniques has received little attention. In this thesis we investigate the effect of game reviews on player experience and perceptions of quality. We show that negative reviews cause a significant effect on how players perceive their in-game experience, and that this effect is a post-play cognitive rationalization of the play experience with the previously-read review text. To address this effect we designed and deployed a new heuristic evaluation technique that specifically uses game reviews to create a fine-grained prioritized list of usability problems based on the frequency, impact, and persistence of each problem. By using our technique we are able to address the most common usability problems identified by game reviews, thus reducing the overall level of negativity found within the review text. Our approach helps to control and eliminate the snowballing effect that can be produced by players reading reviews and subsequently posting their own reviews, and thus improve the commercial success of a game.

Problem: One of the factors that cause new products to fail in a competitive market is the lack of user involvement in the innovative stages of product development. By investigating the benefits of involving users and analysing their ability to generate creative ideas, companies can design products that improve the user-value and the overall perception of the company. This paper examines the variances of users’ idea generation and their ability to come up with producible and user-valuable ideas. Method: A quantitative survey with a mixed-methods analysis was conducted in order to collect primary data. The experiment was carried out in the setting of Karlstad Airport with 193 respondents. The respondents were divided between groups of frequent users, non-frequent users and non-users in order to see their variances of idea generation and the impact of a priming stimulus on each of the user groups. Theory: The theoretical framework used in this thesis mainly consists of theory explaining the concept of priming and Peter Magnusson’s doctoral dissertation focusing on involving users in service innovation. The thesis also takes on the Service-Dominant perspective to better explain the background for user innovation procedures. Conclusion: This study concludes that user involvement in the idea generation process is of a high value for the company due to the broader perspective on the users’ actual needs. Priming can have a strong positive or negative effect on the creative idea generation depending on whether the users are identified according to their product related knowledge.

Like many other transportation agencies, the Ministry of Transportation Ontario (MTO) is also using the same work zone closure strategies and standards that it has used for decades. However, the lane closure strategies should incorporate the impacts of construction duration and inconvenience to the road users and find the balance where users face minimal inconvenience while contractors have the appropriate amount of time to finish the work and produce a high quality product. In-order to evaluate and assess the appropriate time for lane closures, it is important to estimate the capacity of the lanes. The capacity estimates can help in determining the optimized time for lane closures to minimize the user delays while providing sufficient time for contractors to achieve the desired productivity and quality of work. There are different models, computer Software and wide variety of studies to evaluate and estimate the Workzone Capacity and associated User Delay Costs at workzones. These costs are primarily affected by traffic flows, vehicle speeds, and work zone capacities. In-view of the above, this study is designed to estimate freeway capacity of construction workzones and discuss the associated user delay costs and economic issues. For this study, the capacity at the work zones was measured as the mean queue discharge flow rate during forced-flow conditions. Forced-flow conditions were defined as congested conditions during which a sustained queue formed. There are several studies and approaches for collecting traffic volume data for estimating workzone capacity. For this study, it was decided to utilize a manual counting method for volume data. This would help provide the visual confirmation of queuing and intensity of work activity at workzones. Six sites located in Southern Ontario, were selected for this study. The data from these sites is used to develop a mathematical model for estimating workzone capacity for Ontario.

User Authentication is the process of establishing confidence in the User identities presented to an information system. This thesis establishes a method of assigning a confidence level to the output of a user authentication process based on what attacks and threats it is vulnerable to. Additionally, this thesis describes the results of an analysis where the method was performed on several different authentication systems and the confidence level in the authentication process of these systems determined. Final conclusions found that most systems lack confidence in their ability to authenticate users as the systems were unable to operate in the face of compromised authenticating information. Final recommendations were to improve on this inadequacy, and thus improve the confidence in the output of the authentication process, through the verification of both static and dynamic attributes of authenticating information. A system that operates confidently in the face of compromised authenticating information that utilizes voice verification is described demonstrating the ability of an authentication system to have complete confidence in its ability to authenticate a user through submitted data.

Optimized quality of IT services are those which need pre-analysis of users’ requirements, service provider’s capabilities as well as service specification and standardization. For any organization, maintaining of quality of IT service has become one of the key challenges which holds a significance importance to users’ satisfaction. Thus, this research tries to explore and identify the key factors of service quality dimensions and its affect on Information Technology Service so that organization can understand and follow the possible way to maintain quality of IT service to satisfy its end users. To achieve ultimate target of this research, the relevant three literatures have been reviewed and then the concept structure has been proposed for the analysis. From the respective three literatures, service quality dimensions have been selected to be tested for quality practices in Information Technology Service Department in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC).A qualitative research approach has been used to get a better understanding of the issue. The empirical data has been gathered through the study of internal documents, five days of participant observations and in-depth structured interviews with three quality assurance staffs and one IT service user from UNODC. Data presentation and analysis have been done in accordance with the literatures framework and research questions. Finally, conclusion has been drawn by answering research questions based on the issues identified. The findings of the exploratory case study suggest that considering of dependability, prior requirement analysis, and functionality of IT product and services could be taken up to bring realistic, clear, and goal-oriented quality approach in the Information Technology Service which address users’ expectations. The quality dimensions and the gap identified in the research study provide an avenue to address the quality related difficulties that IT service organizations encounter while developing of IT services. This study is expected to create a significant contribution to the areas within a domain of service quality in Information Technology as well as in Information System and Information Management.